Australia Beat Iraq and I built a Shelf. Yes, today was indeed Tuesday.
My Pile of Shame.
I, like a lot of people, have a pile of books, movies and games which I started at some point and just never got around to finishing. Without further introduction: My pile of shame.
Iain M Banks Culture novels.
Completed Total: 0%
As I'm writing this from my brothers house I can't tell you specifically which of the Culture novels I have which I haven't read yet, but I think they're the first three he wrote for the series. I bought them as a three pack of books some time around New Years day and haven't read them yet. Haven't even started them. Every time I go to start reading them I get distracted or confused by the fact that none of the books tell me which is the first one I should read. And Wikipedia is not helping much.
Metro 2033 Dmitry Glukhovsky
Completed Total: 1/3RD.
I love books written by Russians, especially in the Science Fiction/Fantasy Genre. I think it might because they often present a different literary tradition and history so, like Anime from Japan, their stories tend to have different beats and rhythms to more traditional western literature. Characters have different motivations and fall into different stereotypes and backgrounds. I got about a third of the way through Metro before I stopped reading it. I think I got another book and just suddenly stopped reading it. I liked the setting, an underground city made up of the Moscow Metro after a nuclear war, but I had a lot of trouble reading it. Some of the stations mentioned weren't easily findable on the map provided on the inside cover and there were a few grammar errors in the translation which just put me off going on.
Max Payne 3.
Completed Total: Six hours.
It took about four hours to install this game, it came on five DVDs and I really liked Max Payne 1 and 2 but this game just didn't grip me the same way. It could be that I'm just waiting around for the end of June to actually get down to the serious business of gaming. Right now I'm busy with my ePortfolio and other writing and having to look after Matt every morning has also meant I can't stay up late gaming like I once could. Once upon a time I would stay up until midday the next day playing something like Alpha Centauri.
Also the difficulty is stupidly annoying. I keep dying a lot and enemies blend into the setting which makes it hard to find them even in slow motion.
The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien.
Completed Total: 5 Pages.
I could barely even start this, I've read Hobbit and Lord of the Rings but for some reason this one is the most intimidating of all the books. I've heard that it is a bit like First and Last Men(next week I'm going to have a Sci-Fi recommendation page and that is one of them) in that it tells a disconnected history of the happenings of Middle Earth but the lore and backstory of the series has always been too dense for my likings. I think I got through about five pages before I realised I had no idea what was happening.
Beowulf.
Completed Total:
I carry and axe upon this works.
And in my rage I suffer ignorance.
Does heroes plight no end in words cessation.
Indeed I tired of this prose.
Upon my axe I shall finish soon.
This work of torment.
Virtual Light, Neuromancer by Wiliam Gibson..
Completed Total: Halfway.
I've never really been able to get into William Gibson, except for his non-Scifi stuff, I liked Pattern Recognition and that other one I read back on the train in Italy, can't remember the name(it had a family of spies and secret wars going on in the shadows between the CIA and other organisations or something). But his sci-fi stuff was just so dated by the time I got to it I couldn't get into the grove of it as much as I might have once. Old sci-fi from the golden age has the same problem but it was quaint in a way that made it easier to overlook, Space-telegraphs and the like, maybe in a few years I'll be able to read this without being as jaded as I am right now.
Also I think a lot of people have ripped Gibson off in the last twenty years, making his work look like a shallow copy of later works, not the ground-breaking stuff it likely was.
A confederacy of dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
Completed Total: 0 pages.
I found this book once, a long time ago, in a food court in Toowong and took it home. It had a note saying it was from some website called I think Bood finders or something, where you'd leave a book you were done with in a place and ask someone to read it and then pass it on. The DotCom boom... what the hell was going on with that. Anyway I got this book, registered it years ago with the website and then... well I never did anything with it. I've heard it is an amazing work from a writer who was rejected by every publisher until after his death and he never wrote anything else, but I've never had the inclination to read it.
Planescape Tormanet, Baulders Gate.
Completed Total: Not installed.
Bioware have made some of the best games I've ever played, Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights(I played it at a LAN one time and just had a hell of a time, my only problem was no-one else wanted to stick around for the story parts so I only had a limited understanding of what was going on) and the Mass Effect Series are some of the great gaming experiences of my life. And Planescape: Torment is apparently the best game from their old isometric gaming engine along with Baulders Gate, but I've never even installed them and I have all of Baulders Gate, the full package with bonus content as well. I feel I'm missing out on a lot of old jokes online by not having played these.
Darwins Radio by Greg Bear.
Completed Total: 120 pages.
I got a long way into this book before I realised I just didn't care about the ending anymore. I didn't care about the characters who all seemed to be so focused on singular issues that I couldn't keep going. I was interested in the whole immortality thing and the fact that people tried to kill other people out of no-where. I assumed it was some kind of rage virus or something, but the pacing was just off and I couldn't engage with the plot so after I put it down I never went back and picked it up.
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Completed Total: 45 pages.
I got burned by China Mieville with unLundun, I actually liked that he made a storybook hero story kind of like Neil Gaiman but also had some nice subversive twists which made for some interesting plotting. But I got a bit fed up with the fact that his worlds are well constructed but the storylines are often a shuddering mess. The City and The City was a fantastic setting for a story, but it had a weak storyline that I could barely follow most of the time and Perdido station has a similar problem to Metro 2033, the map inside the cover really doesn't help me to understand where half the story is taking place and I wasted a lot of time looking through it to find the places I was after before giving up.
The Strain by Guillermo Deltoro and Chuck Hogan.
Completed Total: 175 pages.
I stopped reading this just as the Vampires start to wake up, I probably should finish it but it was a creepy story and I couldn't see it ever having a happy ending. So I stopped reading it and kind of regret it now because it was a really really creepy story and got under my skin. I also have the sequel which I won't read until I finish the original.
Perfume by Partick Suskind.
Completed Total: 32 pages.
I thought I was going to read this to the very end but stopped after the chapter on the boys time in the foster home when the author goes into delightful detail on the future of the horrible lady of the house and her miserable sad little death after bankruptcy. But then I didn't go back, I think I just couldn't imagine the story getting any better after that.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
Completed Total: 25 pages.
I started reading this because I wanted to be able to say I finished it, but I really couldn't get into it at all. Its DENSE as hell, Russian literature is like that I know but this was crazy dense. I'd like to read it one day, just because the bragging rights would be almost worth the effort.
Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin.
Completed Total: 0%
I couldn't get into the show and people have told me the books are better, but I can't imagine them being all that good considering how little I liked the show. I've also heard that the writer has the same problem Mielville has, great setting but horribly written storylines. I read about his writing technique, he's sloppy as hell, writes pretty much at random and doesn't seem to care that he has not got an end game planned. I couldn't be bothered to open the book, which I got for free during my friends last day working in a bookshop(I got a lot of books free that day).
Brave New Worlds edited by John Joeseph Adams.
Completed Total: 90%
There are two more stories in this collection which I haven't read. I just haven't found the time to get to them. This is truly my greatest shame because I've got through some really weird short stories in this collection to abandon it at the end seems foolish.
Love and War Letters. PNG 1940-1945 by Alan E Hooper.
Completed Total: 0%
A collection of love and war letters from the front lines of New Guinea during World War 2 from Australian soldiers to their families and loved ones. I've been meaning to crack this open since I won it at a raffle last year but I haven't really had a chance to sit down and read it. I like to read my non-Fiction in big long sittings and I think this might be a bit emotionally draining for me to do in bits and bobs.
Skylark of Space. Doc E.E Brown.
I found a copy of the third Skylark book at the Lifeline book fest a few years ago and then hunted down the remaining books in the series over the course of the next half hour until I found all of them. I purchased them, thinking I was brilliant for getting the complete set. I started reading the first one and realised this wasn't the Lensmen series, which I'd somehow forgotten was called Lensman not Skylark, and I didn't really like the obvious Good guy and Bad guy characters. I don't like it when the only reason a character is presented as bad is because they don't like the hero who breaks all the rules. And I just gave up before they even ended up in outer space.
My biggest regret with this list is that these aren't the only books I have which I haven't read, these are just the ones I actually regret not finishing yet. I've a few books from various series that I haven't even started yet and have barely looked inside the covers.
I want to finish some of these, just because someone somewhere wrote them and deserves to have their work validated by me reading it, but I find I'm time poor for reading a lot of times and just can't bring myself to return to a book once I've put it down. The only notable exception to this was Dune by Frank Herbert. I couldn't get past this one line on page 12 or so and eventually gave up on the book(seriously, I re-read it a few dozen times before I realised I was doing it and then just tossed the book into the boot of the car I was in). I went back a few years later and ploughed through the book in record time.
Any one of these books might be like that, once I give them a chance.
My Day.
I woke up late... again, this time I woke up just after Matt woke up and he woke me up by messing around with the blinds in the house which made enough noise to stir me from my slumber. I rushed around the house trying to get his breakfast and his clothes on him before Aaron showed up, but wasn't that fast because his breakfast was still frozen in part(Sausage and Bacon, we need to store them in the freezer to keep Matt from eating it raw).
After Matt ate his breakfast he, Aaron and Mary, who's on a break from looking after Matt right now but was happy to go with him and Aaron to coffee at Jindalee, went off to get coffee and tea leaving me behind to clean up the house, write some more of my reflection on the Library Camp(which I finished at around 9pm tonight, see below), put the clothes on the line and then keep writing like a madman.
Somehow in the middle of all of this I found some spare change and went to Subway to get myself some breakfast before returning to type. It was a boring morning overall and I eventually left, the writing nearly finished, to go home.
I was going to go directly home but decided to stop off at the hardware store first to get some Wooden Dowels or as I said to the guy at the Hardware store, wooden peg thingys for a shelf, he understood what I was after and we found them on a backshelf in the depths of the store. Turns out he is a cabinet maker by trade and knew pretty well what I was likely after. Its nice to get good service like that, especially when, like me, you have a limited idea about what you want and how to get it.
I got home and set about using my new found man-skills to attach a bench to a desk and found out some worrying things. 1. The shelving is too low to fit my computer, so I have to take the self out.
2. The holes in the desk were too small but the ones in the shelf were perfectly sized.
3. My dad was out of the house so I had to kind of guess what tools to use.
I got a screwdriver, a hammer and a drill and I made each of the three holes bigger by using each tool in turn, to test which worked best. I think the Screwdriver, put into the slightly too narrow hole and then wiggled around a bit was best, the drill bit was too risky and could have done all types of damage if I wasn't careful and the hammer, just jamming the dowel in, worked perfectly but seemed like an inelegant solution.
All three were put in place and the shelf now sits above my computer desk. I'll get around to putting stuff like action figures, trophy’s and maybe some toys on it soon as I can.
After that I didn't really get up to much, my mum is at Toowoomba babysitting my niece and my dad is apparently up for Jury Duty next month, which will be hilarious if he has to actually go. I checked that my bike was okay and had a banana for lunch and then rode to my brothers house at about 3:40pm. I didn't come close to my best time, but I did a good 42 minute run. My current best time is still 37 minutes to get to Matts and 35 to get home. If I hadn't caught the lights and slowed down on the hill before the freeway I would have probably shaved about two minutes off of that one today. But I'll live, I wasn't late. I was delayed because I had to stop to adjust my helmet as well. I wear my hoodie over the top of the helmet because otherwise my ears get all cold and it is really really annoying to have freezing cold ears. I used to wear a bandanna but the hood works better in winter I've found.
I had David over tonight, not Patrick like I usually have. David is still a bit new but he's a quick learner. We took Matt for a walk around the area for 45 minutes with a five minute break between cycling and walking, which was a good feeling but I needed to sit down when we were done.
Dinner was Chicken in Honey Soy Sauce with steamed veggies and Rice. Matt ate the Chicken, the Veggies and didn't touch the Rice. Because he hates rice, no matter how hard you try to hide it in the food he hates it. Except fried rice, which he can't eat because you usually have Egg through it.
Once I'd cleared the table and set up my laptop I realised that Matt was still in his day clothes not his pyjamas like he would usually be. Turns out David didn't give him a bath earlier in the night when I was cooking dinner. He was instead ironing all the clothes he took off the clothesline. So we had to quickly get Matt in the bath before he went to sleep.
After that was all done I set out to write my reflection and then stopped at 8:30pm when I settled in to watch Good Game on ABC2 with the five TimTams I allow myself every week while I watch the show. Good Game is probably the only show I really really try to watch every week, I think because it’s a good way to stay in touch with gaming now that I more or less gave up on reading Gaming websites(except the Escapist because they have Critical Miss and occasionally a good essay on the nature of gaming and developments in the sector).
After that was over I switched to watch the Australia Vs Iraq game. Which nearly gave me a heart attack towards the last few minutes after Australia scored a single point and just held on for the end. Not a nailbiter but still tense. Hell I couldn't write or concentrate while the game was on, which is likely why my entry today is slightly messy compared to past days. I tried to write while it was going on but kept having to stop to yell at the screen. I'm going to have serious difficulties next year during the World Cup.
Now I'm done I'm going to watch Warehouse 13 and then get some sleep. Stay safe everyone!
YouTube Clip of the Day.
Welcome to the old timey bar. Where beer is 12c and the coppers are after you.
I was going to post this yesterday but fell asleep: For those that remember the day, I'm pretty sure I've forgotten a lot of things. I used the Twitter notes from the LibCampQLD to jog my memory along but I'm pretty sure I'm missing out on some great and grand revelations from the day which, a year later, elude me.
Library Camp QLD Reflection.
17 March 2012.
State Library of QLD.
Library Camp QLD was the first time I've ever been to or experienced the unConference format and I found it to be an interesting system of running an all day event. The format involved having no set discussion topics outside of the morning panel session instead opting for topic suggestions from the audience which were then voted on and the most popular options were then scheduled in and roundtable style discussions on the topic were held around the Edge facilities.
The opening panel discussion was on the topic of the future of the profession as well as the future of libraries as a whole, held by Carolyn McDonald, Fiana Watkin, Zaana Howard and Matthias Liffers As a new librarian about to enter what I believed would be my last semester of study this talk was useful in telling me what skills I would likely need to use going forward. The speakers mentioned that the librarians of today need to be able ot initiate and respond well to change. Specifically they noted that while things like card cataloguing was dead and gone(outside of specific older libraries and the developing world) the skills which they required for cataloguing are still important and vital to librarians. Applying the older skills to new technologies is how the library profession will have to progress going forward. The key finding from this part of the discussion was defining the role of the librarian as connecting people to information and information to other information for people. Facilitating those connections for customers and clients is the key for success in the library profession.
They also talked about the public perception of librarians and how it is still very much stuck in the past despite the best efforts of library organisations to modernise and update it. I personally feel that the stereotype of a quiet bespeckeled librarian is too engrained into popular culture for it to be changed any time soon. This doesn't mean it is impossible to change it but I do feel that changing it is a wasted effort right now. I admit that I could be wrong on this, but my experiences in my last degree, working on political science and in particular election strategies and public relations, show me that changing people’s minds about anything can be difficult if not impossible when going against stereotypes. However the speakers talked about how this change in public perception is important enough to warrant the effort as far as they are concerned.
While this panel was happening the various topics voted on were tallied up and organised into slots for discussion and a scheduled outline was completed for participants to go over. After the talk volunteers were asked to chair the various different discussions and people decided on which discussions they wanted to go to. My own topic of Universal Library cards was not one which went up to the schedule, which was disappointing to me, as I felt that it is something that has some merit for discussion(my belief is that a universal card which could provide a unique ID and be used to sign up for and borrow from various eligible services such as public libraries, university libraries and school libraries. This would make it easier to sign up new people boosting the overall client population and saving people space in their wallets).
I wasn't entirely certain as to which panels I should have gone to as I didn't have much in the way of practical experience in working in libraries at this stage of my professional development. I went to the talk on social media and the discussion focused on public relations and working within the parent organisations established systems. Something I understood a little bit about. Public libraries, unlike other elements of government are reliant on connecting with the greater public. A class I went to in 2011 mentioned that Libraries are often the public face of the council but the frustrations that some of the people present had about working within council limitations was understandable. The difficulty in arriving at solutions to this problem was noticeable, no library has really worked out a way outside of building their own social media policy separate from their parent organisations. Some have had this work for them when their parent organisation implemented their own policies but others have had theirs superseded by the new ones from above.
After this I attended a lightning talk, where speakers would pontificate on a subject at large and invite discussion from the audience. The talk was on the use of the word library to describe libraries. In some institutions library has become a dirty word and was replaced by things like resource centre, learning repository and other similar words. The talks were for three minutes at a time but provided some interesting discussion amongst the people present.
The next discussion I attended was on the different uses of libraries and librarians in corporate and specialist libraries, which was a topic that went slightly above my head. I noted that because they have a specific service role compared to more variable roles encountered by public and educational librarians that they have an advantage in streamlining services and delivering customer requests. This lead to a discussion on whether we have watered down our core skills to appeal to people by providing too many services.
This marked the end of the day for me. Following the end of the library camp I went with some of the people there to a sushi restaurant in west end where we continued to discuss library issues and I got a good impression of where my career can go from here. Particularly interesting was talking to some of the male librarians as during my studies I rarely got an opportunity to see their perspective on the profession.
I feel that I learnt a lot about the details of the day to day concerns of librarians during my time at the Library camp. I also got an oversight into the recent history of the profession in Australia, two things which I didn't get to learn about too much in my regular classes during my time at QUT. This day provided me with perspectives I hadn't thought of previously and didn't know I needed until I'd gained them.
I, like a lot of people, have a pile of books, movies and games which I started at some point and just never got around to finishing. Without further introduction: My pile of shame.
Iain M Banks Culture novels.
Completed Total: 0%
As I'm writing this from my brothers house I can't tell you specifically which of the Culture novels I have which I haven't read yet, but I think they're the first three he wrote for the series. I bought them as a three pack of books some time around New Years day and haven't read them yet. Haven't even started them. Every time I go to start reading them I get distracted or confused by the fact that none of the books tell me which is the first one I should read. And Wikipedia is not helping much.
Metro 2033 Dmitry Glukhovsky
Completed Total: 1/3RD.
I love books written by Russians, especially in the Science Fiction/Fantasy Genre. I think it might because they often present a different literary tradition and history so, like Anime from Japan, their stories tend to have different beats and rhythms to more traditional western literature. Characters have different motivations and fall into different stereotypes and backgrounds. I got about a third of the way through Metro before I stopped reading it. I think I got another book and just suddenly stopped reading it. I liked the setting, an underground city made up of the Moscow Metro after a nuclear war, but I had a lot of trouble reading it. Some of the stations mentioned weren't easily findable on the map provided on the inside cover and there were a few grammar errors in the translation which just put me off going on.
Max Payne 3.
Completed Total: Six hours.
It took about four hours to install this game, it came on five DVDs and I really liked Max Payne 1 and 2 but this game just didn't grip me the same way. It could be that I'm just waiting around for the end of June to actually get down to the serious business of gaming. Right now I'm busy with my ePortfolio and other writing and having to look after Matt every morning has also meant I can't stay up late gaming like I once could. Once upon a time I would stay up until midday the next day playing something like Alpha Centauri.
Also the difficulty is stupidly annoying. I keep dying a lot and enemies blend into the setting which makes it hard to find them even in slow motion.
The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien.
Completed Total: 5 Pages.
I could barely even start this, I've read Hobbit and Lord of the Rings but for some reason this one is the most intimidating of all the books. I've heard that it is a bit like First and Last Men(next week I'm going to have a Sci-Fi recommendation page and that is one of them) in that it tells a disconnected history of the happenings of Middle Earth but the lore and backstory of the series has always been too dense for my likings. I think I got through about five pages before I realised I had no idea what was happening.
Beowulf.
Completed Total:
I carry and axe upon this works.
And in my rage I suffer ignorance.
Does heroes plight no end in words cessation.
Indeed I tired of this prose.
Upon my axe I shall finish soon.
This work of torment.
Virtual Light, Neuromancer by Wiliam Gibson..
Completed Total: Halfway.
I've never really been able to get into William Gibson, except for his non-Scifi stuff, I liked Pattern Recognition and that other one I read back on the train in Italy, can't remember the name(it had a family of spies and secret wars going on in the shadows between the CIA and other organisations or something). But his sci-fi stuff was just so dated by the time I got to it I couldn't get into the grove of it as much as I might have once. Old sci-fi from the golden age has the same problem but it was quaint in a way that made it easier to overlook, Space-telegraphs and the like, maybe in a few years I'll be able to read this without being as jaded as I am right now.
Also I think a lot of people have ripped Gibson off in the last twenty years, making his work look like a shallow copy of later works, not the ground-breaking stuff it likely was.
A confederacy of dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
Completed Total: 0 pages.
I found this book once, a long time ago, in a food court in Toowong and took it home. It had a note saying it was from some website called I think Bood finders or something, where you'd leave a book you were done with in a place and ask someone to read it and then pass it on. The DotCom boom... what the hell was going on with that. Anyway I got this book, registered it years ago with the website and then... well I never did anything with it. I've heard it is an amazing work from a writer who was rejected by every publisher until after his death and he never wrote anything else, but I've never had the inclination to read it.
Planescape Tormanet, Baulders Gate.
Completed Total: Not installed.
Bioware have made some of the best games I've ever played, Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights(I played it at a LAN one time and just had a hell of a time, my only problem was no-one else wanted to stick around for the story parts so I only had a limited understanding of what was going on) and the Mass Effect Series are some of the great gaming experiences of my life. And Planescape: Torment is apparently the best game from their old isometric gaming engine along with Baulders Gate, but I've never even installed them and I have all of Baulders Gate, the full package with bonus content as well. I feel I'm missing out on a lot of old jokes online by not having played these.
Darwins Radio by Greg Bear.
Completed Total: 120 pages.
I got a long way into this book before I realised I just didn't care about the ending anymore. I didn't care about the characters who all seemed to be so focused on singular issues that I couldn't keep going. I was interested in the whole immortality thing and the fact that people tried to kill other people out of no-where. I assumed it was some kind of rage virus or something, but the pacing was just off and I couldn't engage with the plot so after I put it down I never went back and picked it up.
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Completed Total: 45 pages.
I got burned by China Mieville with unLundun, I actually liked that he made a storybook hero story kind of like Neil Gaiman but also had some nice subversive twists which made for some interesting plotting. But I got a bit fed up with the fact that his worlds are well constructed but the storylines are often a shuddering mess. The City and The City was a fantastic setting for a story, but it had a weak storyline that I could barely follow most of the time and Perdido station has a similar problem to Metro 2033, the map inside the cover really doesn't help me to understand where half the story is taking place and I wasted a lot of time looking through it to find the places I was after before giving up.
The Strain by Guillermo Deltoro and Chuck Hogan.
Completed Total: 175 pages.
I stopped reading this just as the Vampires start to wake up, I probably should finish it but it was a creepy story and I couldn't see it ever having a happy ending. So I stopped reading it and kind of regret it now because it was a really really creepy story and got under my skin. I also have the sequel which I won't read until I finish the original.
Perfume by Partick Suskind.
Completed Total: 32 pages.
I thought I was going to read this to the very end but stopped after the chapter on the boys time in the foster home when the author goes into delightful detail on the future of the horrible lady of the house and her miserable sad little death after bankruptcy. But then I didn't go back, I think I just couldn't imagine the story getting any better after that.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
Completed Total: 25 pages.
I started reading this because I wanted to be able to say I finished it, but I really couldn't get into it at all. Its DENSE as hell, Russian literature is like that I know but this was crazy dense. I'd like to read it one day, just because the bragging rights would be almost worth the effort.
Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin.
Completed Total: 0%
I couldn't get into the show and people have told me the books are better, but I can't imagine them being all that good considering how little I liked the show. I've also heard that the writer has the same problem Mielville has, great setting but horribly written storylines. I read about his writing technique, he's sloppy as hell, writes pretty much at random and doesn't seem to care that he has not got an end game planned. I couldn't be bothered to open the book, which I got for free during my friends last day working in a bookshop(I got a lot of books free that day).
Brave New Worlds edited by John Joeseph Adams.
Completed Total: 90%
There are two more stories in this collection which I haven't read. I just haven't found the time to get to them. This is truly my greatest shame because I've got through some really weird short stories in this collection to abandon it at the end seems foolish.
Love and War Letters. PNG 1940-1945 by Alan E Hooper.
Completed Total: 0%
A collection of love and war letters from the front lines of New Guinea during World War 2 from Australian soldiers to their families and loved ones. I've been meaning to crack this open since I won it at a raffle last year but I haven't really had a chance to sit down and read it. I like to read my non-Fiction in big long sittings and I think this might be a bit emotionally draining for me to do in bits and bobs.
Skylark of Space. Doc E.E Brown.
I found a copy of the third Skylark book at the Lifeline book fest a few years ago and then hunted down the remaining books in the series over the course of the next half hour until I found all of them. I purchased them, thinking I was brilliant for getting the complete set. I started reading the first one and realised this wasn't the Lensmen series, which I'd somehow forgotten was called Lensman not Skylark, and I didn't really like the obvious Good guy and Bad guy characters. I don't like it when the only reason a character is presented as bad is because they don't like the hero who breaks all the rules. And I just gave up before they even ended up in outer space.
My biggest regret with this list is that these aren't the only books I have which I haven't read, these are just the ones I actually regret not finishing yet. I've a few books from various series that I haven't even started yet and have barely looked inside the covers.
I want to finish some of these, just because someone somewhere wrote them and deserves to have their work validated by me reading it, but I find I'm time poor for reading a lot of times and just can't bring myself to return to a book once I've put it down. The only notable exception to this was Dune by Frank Herbert. I couldn't get past this one line on page 12 or so and eventually gave up on the book(seriously, I re-read it a few dozen times before I realised I was doing it and then just tossed the book into the boot of the car I was in). I went back a few years later and ploughed through the book in record time.
Any one of these books might be like that, once I give them a chance.
My Day.
I woke up late... again, this time I woke up just after Matt woke up and he woke me up by messing around with the blinds in the house which made enough noise to stir me from my slumber. I rushed around the house trying to get his breakfast and his clothes on him before Aaron showed up, but wasn't that fast because his breakfast was still frozen in part(Sausage and Bacon, we need to store them in the freezer to keep Matt from eating it raw).
After Matt ate his breakfast he, Aaron and Mary, who's on a break from looking after Matt right now but was happy to go with him and Aaron to coffee at Jindalee, went off to get coffee and tea leaving me behind to clean up the house, write some more of my reflection on the Library Camp(which I finished at around 9pm tonight, see below), put the clothes on the line and then keep writing like a madman.
Somehow in the middle of all of this I found some spare change and went to Subway to get myself some breakfast before returning to type. It was a boring morning overall and I eventually left, the writing nearly finished, to go home.
I was going to go directly home but decided to stop off at the hardware store first to get some Wooden Dowels or as I said to the guy at the Hardware store, wooden peg thingys for a shelf, he understood what I was after and we found them on a backshelf in the depths of the store. Turns out he is a cabinet maker by trade and knew pretty well what I was likely after. Its nice to get good service like that, especially when, like me, you have a limited idea about what you want and how to get it.
I got home and set about using my new found man-skills to attach a bench to a desk and found out some worrying things. 1. The shelving is too low to fit my computer, so I have to take the self out.
2. The holes in the desk were too small but the ones in the shelf were perfectly sized.
3. My dad was out of the house so I had to kind of guess what tools to use.
I got a screwdriver, a hammer and a drill and I made each of the three holes bigger by using each tool in turn, to test which worked best. I think the Screwdriver, put into the slightly too narrow hole and then wiggled around a bit was best, the drill bit was too risky and could have done all types of damage if I wasn't careful and the hammer, just jamming the dowel in, worked perfectly but seemed like an inelegant solution.
All three were put in place and the shelf now sits above my computer desk. I'll get around to putting stuff like action figures, trophy’s and maybe some toys on it soon as I can.
After that I didn't really get up to much, my mum is at Toowoomba babysitting my niece and my dad is apparently up for Jury Duty next month, which will be hilarious if he has to actually go. I checked that my bike was okay and had a banana for lunch and then rode to my brothers house at about 3:40pm. I didn't come close to my best time, but I did a good 42 minute run. My current best time is still 37 minutes to get to Matts and 35 to get home. If I hadn't caught the lights and slowed down on the hill before the freeway I would have probably shaved about two minutes off of that one today. But I'll live, I wasn't late. I was delayed because I had to stop to adjust my helmet as well. I wear my hoodie over the top of the helmet because otherwise my ears get all cold and it is really really annoying to have freezing cold ears. I used to wear a bandanna but the hood works better in winter I've found.
I had David over tonight, not Patrick like I usually have. David is still a bit new but he's a quick learner. We took Matt for a walk around the area for 45 minutes with a five minute break between cycling and walking, which was a good feeling but I needed to sit down when we were done.
Dinner was Chicken in Honey Soy Sauce with steamed veggies and Rice. Matt ate the Chicken, the Veggies and didn't touch the Rice. Because he hates rice, no matter how hard you try to hide it in the food he hates it. Except fried rice, which he can't eat because you usually have Egg through it.
Once I'd cleared the table and set up my laptop I realised that Matt was still in his day clothes not his pyjamas like he would usually be. Turns out David didn't give him a bath earlier in the night when I was cooking dinner. He was instead ironing all the clothes he took off the clothesline. So we had to quickly get Matt in the bath before he went to sleep.
After that was all done I set out to write my reflection and then stopped at 8:30pm when I settled in to watch Good Game on ABC2 with the five TimTams I allow myself every week while I watch the show. Good Game is probably the only show I really really try to watch every week, I think because it’s a good way to stay in touch with gaming now that I more or less gave up on reading Gaming websites(except the Escapist because they have Critical Miss and occasionally a good essay on the nature of gaming and developments in the sector).
After that was over I switched to watch the Australia Vs Iraq game. Which nearly gave me a heart attack towards the last few minutes after Australia scored a single point and just held on for the end. Not a nailbiter but still tense. Hell I couldn't write or concentrate while the game was on, which is likely why my entry today is slightly messy compared to past days. I tried to write while it was going on but kept having to stop to yell at the screen. I'm going to have serious difficulties next year during the World Cup.
Now I'm done I'm going to watch Warehouse 13 and then get some sleep. Stay safe everyone!
YouTube Clip of the Day.
Welcome to the old timey bar. Where beer is 12c and the coppers are after you.
Click to viewI was going to post this yesterday but fell asleep: For those that remember the day, I'm pretty sure I've forgotten a lot of things. I used the Twitter notes from the LibCampQLD to jog my memory along but I'm pretty sure I'm missing out on some great and grand revelations from the day which, a year later, elude me.
Library Camp QLD Reflection.
17 March 2012.
State Library of QLD.
Library Camp QLD was the first time I've ever been to or experienced the unConference format and I found it to be an interesting system of running an all day event. The format involved having no set discussion topics outside of the morning panel session instead opting for topic suggestions from the audience which were then voted on and the most popular options were then scheduled in and roundtable style discussions on the topic were held around the Edge facilities.
The opening panel discussion was on the topic of the future of the profession as well as the future of libraries as a whole, held by Carolyn McDonald, Fiana Watkin, Zaana Howard and Matthias Liffers As a new librarian about to enter what I believed would be my last semester of study this talk was useful in telling me what skills I would likely need to use going forward. The speakers mentioned that the librarians of today need to be able ot initiate and respond well to change. Specifically they noted that while things like card cataloguing was dead and gone(outside of specific older libraries and the developing world) the skills which they required for cataloguing are still important and vital to librarians. Applying the older skills to new technologies is how the library profession will have to progress going forward. The key finding from this part of the discussion was defining the role of the librarian as connecting people to information and information to other information for people. Facilitating those connections for customers and clients is the key for success in the library profession.
They also talked about the public perception of librarians and how it is still very much stuck in the past despite the best efforts of library organisations to modernise and update it. I personally feel that the stereotype of a quiet bespeckeled librarian is too engrained into popular culture for it to be changed any time soon. This doesn't mean it is impossible to change it but I do feel that changing it is a wasted effort right now. I admit that I could be wrong on this, but my experiences in my last degree, working on political science and in particular election strategies and public relations, show me that changing people’s minds about anything can be difficult if not impossible when going against stereotypes. However the speakers talked about how this change in public perception is important enough to warrant the effort as far as they are concerned.
While this panel was happening the various topics voted on were tallied up and organised into slots for discussion and a scheduled outline was completed for participants to go over. After the talk volunteers were asked to chair the various different discussions and people decided on which discussions they wanted to go to. My own topic of Universal Library cards was not one which went up to the schedule, which was disappointing to me, as I felt that it is something that has some merit for discussion(my belief is that a universal card which could provide a unique ID and be used to sign up for and borrow from various eligible services such as public libraries, university libraries and school libraries. This would make it easier to sign up new people boosting the overall client population and saving people space in their wallets).
I wasn't entirely certain as to which panels I should have gone to as I didn't have much in the way of practical experience in working in libraries at this stage of my professional development. I went to the talk on social media and the discussion focused on public relations and working within the parent organisations established systems. Something I understood a little bit about. Public libraries, unlike other elements of government are reliant on connecting with the greater public. A class I went to in 2011 mentioned that Libraries are often the public face of the council but the frustrations that some of the people present had about working within council limitations was understandable. The difficulty in arriving at solutions to this problem was noticeable, no library has really worked out a way outside of building their own social media policy separate from their parent organisations. Some have had this work for them when their parent organisation implemented their own policies but others have had theirs superseded by the new ones from above.
After this I attended a lightning talk, where speakers would pontificate on a subject at large and invite discussion from the audience. The talk was on the use of the word library to describe libraries. In some institutions library has become a dirty word and was replaced by things like resource centre, learning repository and other similar words. The talks were for three minutes at a time but provided some interesting discussion amongst the people present.
The next discussion I attended was on the different uses of libraries and librarians in corporate and specialist libraries, which was a topic that went slightly above my head. I noted that because they have a specific service role compared to more variable roles encountered by public and educational librarians that they have an advantage in streamlining services and delivering customer requests. This lead to a discussion on whether we have watered down our core skills to appeal to people by providing too many services.
This marked the end of the day for me. Following the end of the library camp I went with some of the people there to a sushi restaurant in west end where we continued to discuss library issues and I got a good impression of where my career can go from here. Particularly interesting was talking to some of the male librarians as during my studies I rarely got an opportunity to see their perspective on the profession.
I feel that I learnt a lot about the details of the day to day concerns of librarians during my time at the Library camp. I also got an oversight into the recent history of the profession in Australia, two things which I didn't get to learn about too much in my regular classes during my time at QUT. This day provided me with perspectives I hadn't thought of previously and didn't know I needed until I'd gained them.