nirak.net - Musings of an LIS Student

I don’t talk about my job very often here. I’m not sure exactly why that is. Part of it, I’m sure, is that I worry that I don’t possess the political acumen to know what is and what is not ok to post. There have been plenty of times in the past when I have talked about a topic that, unknown to me, was taboo or secret. I feel that I understand more about what I can and can’t post now, though.

The other reason I don’t post about work related stuff much is because, strictly speaking, it’s not usually library related. For the most part, my job has little to do with library operations- no circulation, reference, or technical services stuff for me. I hope that, lacking that, my libraryland readers will still find it tolerable.

karin :: Jan.17.2008 :: Asides, Work :: No Comments »

I didn’t actually get tagged for this, but I saw it on the blog humachine, and it looks like fun.

I added a step 4 to go with step three, so that I could use use a Creative Commons licensed photo. The previous directions just pulled from Flickr’s “interesting” page, of which very few are CC licensed.

1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the name of your band.
2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random Quotations page is the title of your album.
3. Use the random word generator to generate a word.
4. Use the word to search FlickrStorm (creative commons licensed photos) and the third picture will be your album cover. Or just choose any image.
5. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result.

Article Title: The World Famous Pontani Sisters
Random Quotation: The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. - Bertrand Russell
Random word: Tread
Image: Tired Cone by Travis Gray

Software & Hardware: Wacom Bamboo Tablet, ArtRage 2 (Through Wine), Gimp, Inkscape, Ubuntu 7.10

If you wanna do it, consider yourself tagged. Be sure to let me know in comments!

karin :: Jan.14.2008 :: Art, Free as in Freedom, Linux, My Stuff, Open access/Open source, Sites and Stories :: 1 Comment »

A big thanks to my husband for correcting my previous entry. I shouldn’t post late at night.

This is me. At home. See, I’m COLD. And I realize my glasses are a tad too big.

As you may or may not have noticed, I have been taking a little blogging break. One of the great things about working in an academic library (at least this one) is that I get the week off between Christmas and New Year’s. You may remember that I had some big plans for that time. I did get a lot of it done- the house was cleaner since last Christmas (notice I say “was”), my computers are running a bit faster, my files are organized, I backed up the most important stuff, I worked on a few presentations, cooked quite a bit (after cleaning the kitchen, of course) and played around with various installations (Drupal, wikis) on my web space. I also read, played video games, played around with my OLPC and slept a lot. Towards the end, I got sick- as I am prone to do when I have time off.

So now here I am, more than a week into the new year, and not a blog post to show for it. I blame a bad case of the winter blahs. It is seriously hard for me to get really excited and motivated lately, especially when my nose is running constantly and stepping outside makes me miserable. The fact that I’ve begun planning my trip to ALA Annual in Anaheim this summer (room reservations opened already) has not been helping- I want to go to California NOW.

On the bright side, ALA Annual should be exceedingly fun this year- Geoff and I will head up before the convention for vacation, and he’ll probably join me Saturday for the Scholarship Bash at Disneyland. After that, all are invited to the Rocky Horror Picture Show featuring my old cast Midnight Insanity (link probably NSFW) on the Queen Mary (this link is safe for work. mostly.).

Look at all the places to visit:

View Larger Map

So that’s what is keeping me going right now- just knowing that I’ll be by the ocean this summer.

School starts next week, and the week after that I am giving a presentation to my co-workers on Zotero. I’m sort of looking forward to the return to school, maybe it’ll help me kick the blahs- or at least, maybe it will keep me so busy I don’t notice them any more.

karin :: Jan.10.2008 :: Conferences, Library, School Stuff :: No Comments »