Delighted and Amazed (again)

Today, in an exceptionally desultory manner I looked at the Google book site. I did the task as a required exercise but, hey presto, I found a book that is an icon of our family life as well as a talisman. It represents the essence of our childhood. Growing up in a family of 5 children we received books as gifts every birthday and Christmas. The selection of each book for each child was left to our Aunt Monnie who was an expert and a professional in literature and education. That did not mean we were not allowed to read "Schoolfriend" or "Phantom" comics and we read Enid B with pleasure.
Back to Google books: I am so excited to discover information about this talisman book, which I had never thought to track down in the usual Google search way. I also retrieved information on "Ernest and Celestine", a series of children's books I adored and read to my children in the 70s. This series is now out of print. While other classics of the time - "Dogger", "Corduroy", "John Brown Rose and the Midnight Cat" are still available in bookshops, "Ernest and Celestine" has disappeared. Through Google books I have found where I can buy copies of the Ernest and Celestine books through Amazon, etc.
By the by, Aunty Monnie selected those books for my children and if she was still alive, I, along with my brother and sisters, would ask her to select books for our grand children.(She was 92 when she died and still able to play scrabble in Latin.)

I called my previous dog Celestine as I loved the character so much.
I have created a very esoteric group through an earlier 23 Things task called "people who call cats after places/owners, and dogs after literature". My dog names have been Siegfried Sassoon, Maddie after "Martha Quest" by Doris Lessing, Celestine as noted above, and Morticia (who was named by the breeders who used TV series for the litter). I chose two of my dog's pups names- Malvolio and Viola. My cats - 2 in 30 years - were Rankine from the owner and Chandler from the owner.I could be calling my new cat Burwood if I get one from the RSPCA.

I say Hey ho and hurrah to 23 Things

Amazing and very, very spooky

How easy is this to explore google maps? The program shows how WE ARE WATCHED, sooo comprehensively.

I started very simply with my address, my friend's address, then the way to my friend, then the satellite image of home. After that I was away, getting satellite images of a friend's home in West Palm Beach in Florida. I looked up the address of the library where my namesake in Halifax is doing the 23 things program.

I am simply overwhelmed and amazed at Google. As I reflected, I thought about the John Le Carre et al, books I read in the late 60s, early 70s and the spy/thriller films I have watched over the last 20 years. I took for granted the spying tools but now I see even I could do some spying a la Bourne Identity.

4 seconds max, and I am somewhere obscure in the world, another 2-3 seconds and I am looking at the actual residence: no need for myriad yellow stickers on pages of the street directories to mark the way to a place in an unknown suburb. Just a click, print and I have the journey mapped for me, here or in Siberia or West Palm Beach Florida.

I want to think about about how google can do this. It gives me a headache. I have read the story of the creation of google a few times. I can almost discern the logic the two "lads" used to work out how to create the search engine. Less than ten years later the search engine has all the places in the world tagged, and can show the way to a milk bar in Izmir (formerly Smyrna) in Turkey.

I often consult an atlas when I read, to show me the location of the book's setting. This was essential for my latest book - Louis de Berniere's "Birds without wings". With my new-found experience of google maps, I can hone in on all the places where the characters lived, or fought famine or their big and small wars and look at the spaces and travel routes used by them when travelling for business or more often, on forced marches to oblivion.


I have already lauded the google maps program to friends who have children and grandchildren in the US and UK. 23 things has expanded my knowledge, again.

Because

Because I learnt how to use RSS I have found a treasure trove of interesting and stimulating information through the sites and Blogs I have feeds for (or is it to?).
I have read items on finding treasure/information randomly. There are bloggers who believe that "randomness" could be under threat because of the ever increasing sophistication of research engines finding answers and information too efficiently. I read about this in an erudite article on the technological library. My new RSS-initiated, randomly-gained knowledge, is valuable enough for me to now follow some pertinent threads as well as prompting me to think differently about my own research methods.
I have been alerted to some oddball items as I set up an alert to annoyed librarian, but not to the site. So when Google finds news about annoyed and librarian I am sent a message. I have discovered a site that is for librarians who say f... and yes there are over a thousand members.
I have to navigate very intricate paths to refind some of the links, over hill and down dale, but if I am persisitent I can retrace my steps. Otherwise, if I think I may lose some article or an extraordinarily odd blog, I copy it and store somewhere safe. I do not know how to feed it to myself and I do not need to know.
I have found a namesake in Nova Scotia undertaking the 23 Things program and shall follow her blog with interest. Her links are very informative.
I ask myself what I would do without my new sources of information and I shrug my shoulders and say I could live without it. This is not to say I am not loving the new treasures unfolded
because of 23 Things.

Austral Pride - ode to our 85 year old stove

THE AUSTRAL PRIDE

I love my stove more than I love my pearls, TV, furniture, in fact nearly every object I own. Most of our things are replaceable, but my stove is not.

Here is a stove that has been cooking family roasts, cakes, casseroles- for over 80 years of Christmas, Easter, summer holidays, winter chill, spring bounce and autumn glow. There are knobs to turn on and off: finite tweaks can get the temperature to highest heat for fast boiling to a tiny flame to cook soup all day. The fingers do the controls: there is no automatic switch. The back of the hand gauges the oven temperature (ask your grandma).

I love the fact that in 1927 a mother cooked a roast for her family and, 80 years later and thousands of roasts later, in 2007 my husband cooks a roast for his family. When the Swinburne cookery classes were being conducted in 1922, the stoves used would have looked much like this, but not as decorative.

This lovely piece of history works and connects us to our forbears, in a "throw away" time. A good spirit is felt by all who come to visit, especially tradespeople who sigh to see such wonderful craftsmanship and manufacture.

My stove is going to be in my will along with my pearls.

Progress when I did something else?

For task 7, I did not want to simpsonise myself though I looked at the program. I created a ribbon of achievement, I am blues singer "Sleepy Baby Hawkins" (generated based on my name) , and I have used the generator site to create several logos which I blogged about.

See: http://gallery.webfetti.com/webfetti/favorites.jhtml

I love the internet

I listen to ABC FM when I drive. Today on my way to work, I heard a recommendation for a busker in NY's Central Park, who it appears is taking the world by storm through YouTube. The busker is a ukulele player, not my favourite instrument. The player is Jake Shimabukuro. While driving I memorised the spelling to find the video on YouTube as I was intrigued by the recommendation from this classical station.

I got the spelling wrong but nevertheless, Google corrected this and up came over 50,000 entries for Jake. Here is one of them:
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:5pp31q_6LDgJ:galleyslaves.blogspot.com/2006/07/paganini-of-ukelele.html+%22Jake+Shimabukuro%22+%2B+youtube&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4

If I knew how to insert the video clip I would do this but this expertise is not mine...yet.

In previous times when I heard recommendations like this I would have gone to a record shop and tracked the player down and bought the record/CD/DVD. That sequence tells its own story - I still talk about records, but have only recently stopped talking about the wireless (radio) and radiogram (CD player).
Today I typed three words and pressed a button.

I am in: but not to play

I am in under an assumed name with a birthdate that will put me into Facebook's elderly membership list. The steps in are just brilliantly easy and lead to success which is instant and pure magic.
I have put two photographs in an album and the images are so good they look three dimensional.
Apart from that, I am too busy with my favourite blogs, so I shall not look for friends or join groups in Facebook.

Trepidation: entering Facebook

I have tried three times to join Facebook and each time I lose momentum as I think of myself in the Groucho Marks way -
I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.
When I think I shall disguise my name and hide my email address, as Tom says I can, I feel concern that the name I choose may belong to a wanted person and I shall be stopped at airports. I know, how foolish and oh scaredy cat me.
I am not ready to join Facebook .... yet.

Others' blogs: Task 4

I go a few steps out there and then come back to assess if I am following the correct path and sign posts -(for) the 23 Things program. Very typically for me, I often throw the rule book out as I loathe convention and adherence to formality.



However, to complete task four, I can report I have many favourite blogs, some of which I have included in my feed reader.

I enjoy reading the blogs of political writers in the newspapers. I agree wholeheartedly with Dana's comment that we should educate ourselves by reading other people's views. This is very much the case for me, especially when I am in total disagreement. How can we believe in what we do, without knowing how deeply we believe? I really love seeing views parallel to mine in news blogs, principally because they are usually much better argued than the opposite point of view (to mine).

My reading constantly reinforces this. I am reading a book* set in the beginning of last century at the time of the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the WW1, from the "other side's" view point. Gallipoli is covered from the Ottoman point of view- featuring Attaturk, the founder of modern Turkey. I would recommend everyone should read about battles from the "enemy's" side. The same goes for any deep disagreement: learn about the other side and hone your own arguments better. Or better still, you may even change your mind!



Back to reading other blogs and commenting, I do this regularly and have picked up marvellous insights.

"Birds without Wings" by Louis De Bernieres: http://www.librarything.com/work/2375/book/21930564

I think I am getting it

I am thrilled, to use an odd word for me, to have (a) created a blog which I blog on; (b) thought about my photographs coming alive for me and others- through flickr; (c) LibraryThing has got me thinking that I might share my thoughts on reading, which is a solitary past time, with "complete strangers"; (d) my mind has expanded, and not because, for an internet sceptic, I have achieved a list of technical feats.


I have been musing about an almost explosion of thoughts lately on the profession of being in a library, in my case, working with the past and history. I have already been totally enthralled with how technology has brought archives to a new sphere of influence and to a whole brand new audience. But today, I read a bit about Web 2.0 -

I got this because I learnt RSS and put the Libodyssey blog as a feed. This extract is from an early Libodyssey post. As I did not wish to explore technical matters other than do my tasks, I ignored this item until today.
....................... "Stephen Fry (actor, author and broadcaster) describes Web 2.0 as "an idea in people’s heads rather than a reality. It’s actually an idea that the reciprocity between the user and the provider is what’s emphasized. In other words, genuine interactivity if you like, simply because people can upload as well as download"[6]. The phrase "Web 2.0" can also refer to the transition of websites from isolated information silos to interlinked computing platforms that act like software to the user. Web 2.0 also includes a social element where users generate and distribute content, often with freedom to share and re-use...............

The little description above explains why I am so enjoying the new mode of internet competency. The internet for me was an inert, useful tool, necessary for and in my world. Since I can hardly understand how Marconi got his telegraph working in Vancouver a century ago, let alone the fax, radio, television, I have taken for granted the mysteries of the internet, as I did the phone and the wireless, etc. and just worked with the tools. With Web 2.0 I am interacting rather than using. This has unlocked for me the reason for my joie de vie about the 23 Things program. It is not simply because I have learnt mysterious techniques. It is because I am using them to communicate (intellectual) thoughts and ideas I would only have discussed in social circumstances, that is person to person. With new skills I can do new things with old (but valuable) information and think new thoughts about it all.

Feeds and weeds

I feel like a gardener who has just thrown a few seeds over a patch. I am vaguely aware of the nature of the seeds I have just sown - RSS - but I do not know what to expect.

With intelligent encouragement from my colleagues, I have asked to be fed.
I pressed the buttons for feed reader and asked for items once a day - Annoyed L and news once a week from Infodoodads. Both are cribs off Dana.

I shall await my feeds and may be I shall get as enthusiastic about the RSS achievement as I am about all the other tasks. I have mentioned before how I am concerned (just a tiny bit) at my lack of knowledge about the technical side of my button pressing. The instructions to try new wizardry are brilliantly simple, well so far, and except for RSS which I had to try several times. But, if I am bombarded somewhere with results/weeds from my feeds that I do not want, I shall just pull them up at the press of a button: simple gardening and no fear of overgrown patches.

I have begun to do a bit more with my LibraryThing. I have started to take a peek at some of the reviews of the books in my library. I have got over my annoyance at the way the user has to re enter data constantly to include 20 or more books by an author, in my case John Le Carre, and the fact that the cataloguing of my authors puts John Le Carre under C and De Bernieres under B. I think I shall be very interested in reviews of books that I have read which are not particularly well known, such as "When she was good" by Philip Roth. This lets me see, in a way, a mirror of myself. I think this may be an internet (psychological) phenomenon which is well known to internet virtuosos.

History and well-behaved women

I read a review on the weekend about a book on well-behaved women .*

The background about the author and the theme of the book were read with interest - I have always loved book reviews as well as reading books. The most intriguing and revealing line in the review for me is "Still, as Ulrich notes again and again, history is'nt simply what happened in the past; it is what later generations choose to remember." **
I have spent many months this year researching our archives for relevant documents/primary sources for the Swinburne Historian, Dr Peter Love. An almost astonishing element to our history, of a Technical School, was the emphasis, from the very beginning, on training and education, for vocational/career purposes for girls and women. Peter has referred to this legagy of George and Ethel Swinburne several times in our first centenary history publication, due for release very soon - early November.








* Well behaved women seldom make history, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Knopf

** See review by M Dirda in Australian Financial Review, Friday 5 October 2007.)

Harmony

There is a gentleness in this scene. It is another photo taken by my son for his business.

New esoteric group

Here is my new group in my new account:
http://groups.google.com/group/siegfriedchandler?hl=en

I love creating logos and I have explored a bit further in my task for week 5, even though I expressed my scepticism in the post before.

Week 5 task ???

I tried for a bit to see how the week 5 task can reveal itself as useful. Each online feeder service did not appeal to me. I realise I am completing a task within the 23 Things program and shall press any number of buttons to achieve this goal, but I think I am experiencing a familiar feeling of knowing nothing (of this technical world) and not wanting to find out. I have created a new account, though I am not sure I shall use it.
Metaphorically speaking, I am in a new car, idly pressing buttons and one of them may open the sunroof, the boot, set off the car alarm which I have no idea how to fix. But one of them could propel me out of my seat or destroy the engine because I pressed self destruct. Now this is of course fanciful. But I have had some anxious moments pressing all the buttons for these new programs even though I know that Swinburne keeps me on trainer wheels and I cannot crash the server.
On the other hand the previous tasks have led me to new knowledge and skill and I have begun to enjoy the possibilities.
I can create (free) logos. Invitations and greetings can now have a special ELECTRONIC flair which will dazzle my circle of family and friends.
I am already planning a whole new focus for my photographs, including the ones in fusty albums from the turn of the century. I shall scan them with a Hewlett Packard scanner, recommended by a professional blogger on my flickr site. I shall include a selection in PictureAustralia Ourtown

I am happy with this blog, which has given me an opportunity to think aloud. I have to do this thinking, sensibly, as I use my name. This concentrates the mind and allows me to distill my thoughts rather than shooting off, which I have a propensity for.
I have found one of Dana's favourite blogs - Annoyed L extremely amusing. It makes me laugh and think: a perfect combination and well worth this blogging business.

Two Tasks in one

Thank you to Chris who encouraged me to enter LibaryThing.

Since I read so much I did not want to enter a new world of books.

I have created my Library: http://www.librarything.com/profile/sara11 It will be interesting for me to see if my curiosity gets me to peep at some of the fans of the books I have selected initially.

Hang of creating a logo

A blogger wondered where my previous attempts at logo making (playing) were going. I went back to the site and created this on the free logo section.