Good Morning, Good Evening

Good Morning

There is a new book on Neil Gaiman out, Prince of stories : the many worlds of Neil Gaiman by Hank Wagner. I am looking forward to reading it soon. I really enjoy Neil Gaiman's writing. I think it is better than his films. Neil Gaiman's graphic novel writing is also very interesting.

If I could put together a panel of interesting fantasy writers and put them in one room, I would put Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, and Alan Moore as my first three choices right now. I really like their writing.

Good Evening

I dropped off my books at my local library and checked out a few more; The One Minute Organizer Plain & Simple 500 Tips For Getting Your Life In Order by Donna Smallin and The Complete Idiots Guide To Managing Your Time by Jeff Davidson.

I finished clearing off the top of my desk at work yesterday. Now, I have to go through my files and put them in better order tomorrow. It is a first step. It already has made things a little easier to do.

My house is starting to get a tiny bit better as well. It is going to take a little time. I feel like saying a platitude; the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

Things have been getting a lot more expensive lately. I started clipping coupons this week and used my first $1 coupon for paper towels. I have a really hard time finding worthwhile coupons. I never clipped coupons before. Maybe, I'll learn something. Most coupons are for trash which I really don't need. I usually buy generic.

I found a funny little thing while I was searching the web, The Genuine Haiku Generator. It appears to be a program to randomly generate haiku. I rather like the idea of it. It is of course slightly ridiculous. Please try it out. http://www.everypoet.com/haiku/default.htm

Thoughts For Today, Haiku

The Coloseum of Rome. Entertainment for the masses.

Haiku

Empire

Egypt built the pyramids

Rome was not in built in a day

Monuments to things past

Sometimes I get small inspirations while I am reading on various places.

Thoughts For Today

I have been doing some updating on my blog. I went through and made sure every single post on this blog had keywords attached to it. I think this is important to make it easier for yahoo and google to find my blog. I have been getting more traffic from keyword searches lately.

I also spent a little bit of time on the Society of Midnight Wanderers blog to get a better feel for it .

I haven't read that much of The Other Wind yet, I'll probably do some more reading later tonight.

Twitterku, More Business Ordering, Random Thoughts

Twitterku

Twitter is the near perfect medium for impromptu haiku. I have written two of them as part of my messages so far. I'll probably write more. It is very easy to integrate them into messages.

Coffee drifts in my dreams
Sweet burnt smoke in a hot cup
Drink it down with milk.

Waking in morning
*Birds chirp outside the window
*Summer is now here.

More Business Ordering

I went through and ordered more business books. An awful lot of the books are motivational hype in the business management area. I wish there were more how to run things books; how to write email, run an office, manage a team, and similar things. There is a little voice that seems to come from the books which says do more no matter what. I wish people would focus a little more on working smart.

After looking at hundreds of business management books, I found a hyped out title that seemed right on target. The cover was even bright canary yellow. Impact How To Get Noticed, Motivate Millions, and Make a Difference In a Noisy World by Ken MacArthur. This is a really well done title, it reaches out and grabs your attention immediately.

Random Thoughts

I am going to stop ordering for the next couple days. My next set of ordering is Social Science books. I think it should be a bit more interesting for me because it includes a lot of very interesting trends like globalization, environmental issues, green issues, investing, and economics.

I did some switching out of the law books. I brought up some new McKinneys New York Annotated and United States Code Annotated. I have some looseleaf material to file as well.

One new book came in for me to read Green: Your Place In The New Energy Revolution by Jane S. Hoffman. I hope it is an entertaining read.

I am about halfway through reading The Long Tail by Chris Anderson.

Morning Haiku

Basho By Hokusai (Public Domain Image)


mirrored pool of water
a stone drops quickly downward
round rings wave outward

full clear windy blue sky
seagull spreads white wings wide
dot in the distance

wind blows
cool gentle
spring kiss

These are my first attempts as I understand it. The first two are 5 syllable, 7 syllable, 5 syllable style poems which is the way most westerners approximate haiku. The other is an attempt to get the feeling of a seasonal effect. I am not sure if this is correct at all. I am about halfway through The Haiku Handbook. It has been interesting so far.

I finished reading The Haiku Handbook while I was sitting on the train. I attempted a few more on the way in.

windmills bloom flowers
their blades spinning in the breeze
air becoming electric

paddling in a boat
swimming in a wide river
cool breeze over water

sweet honey and lemon tea
pours down throat liquid golden
warmth in the morning

The Haiku Handbook makes me want to read Basho's Narrow Roads to the Interior. I enjoyed reading it. Maybe it helped me write something worth reading.

A Few Thoughts

In the morning, on the train, I read The Twelve Kingdoms Sea of Shadow by Fuyumi Ono. The copy I read was an uncorrected proof. This was a wonderful story about a girl transported to a mythical chinese fairytale land consisting of twelve kingdoms. There she acquires the spirit of a warrior, fights demons, and goes through a variety of hardships; getting her money stolen, almost being sold to a brothel, almost being captured by the local magistrates, and wandering the roads near starving. The characterization is wonderful.

I rather like the character Rakashun who spends part of his time as a rat person, and part of his time as a human. There are wonderful fairytales elements like people being born from fruits, and each kingdom having a god king. I am not giving this book a full review because it is an uncorrected proof and I am not supposed to. I am however suggesting that the book be purchased for our young adult collection.

The cover on the finished book is slightly different than the cover on the uncorrected proof. I also think, some of the content will be different, so if I quote things in the book, I will make a mistake. There are two page spread manga style black and white illustrations throughout the book.

Over 15 million copies of this book have been sold worldwide. It is part of a 7 volume series. Tokypop, the publisher mainly sells manga. So, this is a slightly different thing for them to do.



When I got in to work, two books were waiting for me. Michael Chabon's Maps And Legends Reading and Writing Along the Borderland. The dust jacket is very nicely designed, it is three sections of layered images. I really like it a lot. However, it does not completely cover the whole book which some people may not like. The cover art is by Jordan Crane. Jordane Crane has some pretty interesting looking art. http://reddingk.com/

The other book that came in for me is The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks. The Algebraist was nominated for the Hugo award. I am looking forward to reading both of these books.

I have been trying to figure out what the Second Life Library is all about. I took a look at the Info Island blog which explains events related to libraries in second life. http://infoisland.org/
I also looked at the various Youtube videos on second life libraries. There are a lot of them. Quite frankly, I have always found virtual worlds to be rather odd. Putting a library staffed by librarians in a virtual world is somewhat perplexing. I find the idea of stepping into second life, a virtual world, to visit a library quite frankly mildly scary. I wonder if it will be like World of Warcraft for librarians.

It seems that everything is changing really, really fast with library technology. We are getting the same treatment in libraries as the web is with web 2.0. Now there is the concept of library 2.0 which is a very vague technocentric ideal. I am a concrete person. I prefer to touch and feel what I am reading.

I have started reading The Haiku Handbook How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku by William J. Higginson with Penny Harter. This book appears to be an in depth overview of Haiku. I was hoping to pick up a book so I could learn the basic form of Haiku and write a few Haiku for the next poetry open microphone. The book has started with Japanese masters of Haiku. I am going to read it on the train home.

Thoughts For Today

Tomorrow is Mothers Day. Happy Mothers Day. Don't forget to get a card and possibly some flowers.

This morning, I added two people to my Facebook account that were mentioned yesterday at the conference, Gerry McKiernan, and Free Range Librarian.

Today has been pretty slow. I am going to go pickup a few books which I reserved at my local library in a little bit.

I am resting after quite a long week.

I went to my local library and sat for a little while using the computers. I heard something rather amazing. The first twenty pages for printouts are free. We charge a flat rate of 10 cents per page where we work.

I did a little bit of looking at blogs and fooling around with Entrecard. I also took a look at the magazines section. The periodicals person had asked me which comics we want to purchase. At my local library we have Action Comics (Superman), Batman, The Ultimate Spiderman, The Ultimate X-Men, and Wolverine. For manga there is Shonen Jump and Shojo Beat. I am going to suggest Action Comics, Batman, The Ultimate Spiderman, and The Ultimate X-Men. I might also suggest Shonen Jump.

I picked up a book on reserve which I am going to read from my local library. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Socially Responsible Investing Put Your Money Where Your Values Are by Ken Little, it is a new book, c2008, Alpha, an imprint of Penguin USA

I also think I will probably pick up a book on haiku so I can try my hand at writing a few haiku poems.