Daily Thoughts 10/17/2011

The curtain rises ... Contemporary plays and books on the Current Theatre.  Poster about contemporary works "on the Current Theatre," showing a conductor standing before an open theatre curtain. Date Created/Published: Chicago : Illinois WPA Art Project, [between 1936 and 1941]


Daily Thoughts 10/17/2011


I finished reading HTML for the World Wide Web this morning.  I am looking forward to reading more contemporary material.  I was talking to someone about web pages and Facebook at the laundromat yesterday.  He mentioned that most people just use Dreamweaver for their coding and leave handcoding of HTML and CSS alone.


I watched a little bit of instruction on Excel 2007 and Photoshop CS 5 on Lynda.com.  Photoshop is something which is used for most image editing on the internet.  I thought I needed to brush up a little bit on Excel.  I use Excel mainly to organize lists, not so much for formulas.


I also renewed my membership for the American Library Association Today.  There is a new roundtable on the list of memberships, the Gamers Roundtable, Gamert.  I heard about it while I was at New York Comic Con.  In addition to video games, we have more traditional board games like Scrabble and a Chess Club at the library.

Right now, I am drinking a mix of chamomile, rosehips, and ginger to clear a cold.

There are a number of things which are being worked on. Mount Vernon Writers Inc.  is incorporating as a nonprofit, there is a proposal for a second computer class, and our social networking presence is growing steadliy.

I checked the Facebook and Twitter account this morning.

I am noticing that the American Library Association group on Linked In is discussing the concept of coworking in libraries.  We get a number of people who come in to work at our library including a computer programmer, a paralegal, a writer, and a few others.  A lot of people can now take their work with them. This is a post by Tony Bacigalupo from August of 2009.  Tony Bacigalupo is one of the founders of New Work City in Manhattan, New York  It is not a new subject.  While I don't necessarily see the lbrary as a coworking space, I do see it as a space where it is easy for people to work with laptops.

Tony Bacigalupo-- Every Town Has a Public Library
http://tonybgoode.tumblr.com/post/174758246/every-town-has-a-public-library



Web Bits

At Summit on NYC Libraries Seen as Crucial, but Questions About Electronic Access, Broad Constituency Linger.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/892411-264/at_summit_on_nyc_libraries.html.csp 

Amazon Signs Up Authors Writing Publishers Out of the Deal
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology/amazon-rewrites-the-rules-of-book-publishing.html

CSS Paged Media Brings Smarts to the Web
http://www.webmonkey.com/2011/10/css-paged-media-brings-book-smarts-to-the-web/
This is an idea that makes sense to me.  It also makes it much easier to print and select web content.

Wikipedia Loves Libraries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Loves_Libraries
I am not as much of a fan of Wikipedia as of Wikimedia which has lots of public domain images.  I thought this was interesting.

Daily Thoughts 10/16/20011

Portrait of French writer Octave Uzanne (1852-1931) by Félix Vallotton (1865-1925), 1892
 Daily Thoughts 10/16/2011

I have been reading more of HTML for the World Wide Web.  I am beginning to realize I should be reading something a bit more up to date.  I put a copy of Elizabeth Castro's book HTML, XHTML, and CSS on hold.  I also put the book Beginning HTML, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript by Jon Duckett on hold.  There are pieces of the book which are bit confusing.  

I spent some more time on Lynda.com learning CSS and HTML.  I also spent a little bit of time this morning checking Facebook and Twitter.  I think I am learning a little bit more about computers and social media. 

Daily Thoughts 10/15/2011

First Class Reading and Writing room of the SS Kronprinz Wilhelm, 1901, This is from an Ocean Liner.

Daily Thoughts 10/15/2011

Last night, I watched some of The Mystery of Picasso which is a film consisting of animations of Picasso painting.  It is quite fascinating watching his paintings slowly come to life.  He does both ink paintings and oils in this film.  The colors are very intense to watch. Some of the film is in black and white, and parts of it are in color.  This film changed my opinion on           some of Picasso's more abstract art.

I read some more of HTML For the World Wide Web.  It has gotten to the point where the author is describing tables and frames.  I do not get this very well.  It would be the kind of information which would be helpful if' I was using a web page builder like Dreamwaver and editing the HTML and CSS code in minor ways.  Ultimately, it is becoming too complex to even think of hand coding.  The combination of CSS and HTML is a bit daunting for me.  I also watched some more of the CSS instruction on Lynda.com.  There is some information about browsers and rendering engines which I think would be useful for librarians to know if they are using the internet to search for information.

I put the book In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination by Margaret Atwood on hold.  I very much like her writing.  I thought the book, The Handmaids Tale was excellent.

Web Bits

An article about McNally Jackson Books.  They have an Espresso Book Machine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/fashion/sarah-mcnally-of-mcnally-jackson-books-in-manhattan.html