Yearly Archives: 2008

I have many obsolete skills

I came across this list of obsolete skills. Reading it just makes me feel old. Some of the more ancient skills I possess:

  • Adjusting a television’s vertical and horizontal holds
  • Adjusting the levels for recording to audio tape
  • Balancing the tone-arm on a turntable
  • Changing the C120 film cartridge in an Instamatic camera (yes, I had one)
  • Editing audio tape with a razor blade and splicing block (video tape too!)
  • Typing in code for “freeware” programs from a computer magazine
  • Using Gopher (the early days of the internet before the world-wide-web)
  • Loading data from a cassette tape (my first computer, an Atari 800 had a tape drive)
  • Punching a hole in the shell of a single-sided 5.25″ floppy disc to make it double-sided (I even owned a special hole-punch for this)
  • Rewinding an audio cassette using a pen or pencil
  • Ripping the little holes off the sides of continuous feed computer paper
  • Setting a baud rate, parity and stop-bits
  • Setting up a modem using AT commands
  • Switching a cars headlights to high beams by stomping a button on the floor
  • Using a flash cube (on my Instamatic camera, of course)

All now useless bits of information, just taking up brain cells…

Nothing like the Sun

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Did you see the lunar eclipse last night? I stepped out of my place about every 15 minutes or so to watch the show. When I was out there I wondered how many other people throughout the ages watched the moon darken with awe, as I was doing. Watching the Earth’s shadow slowly make its way across the lunar surface, I could understand how ancient peoples might start freaking out during such an event. I was also reminded of “Sister Moon,” the title song from Sting’s excellent album, …Nothing Like The Sun (who actually lifted that line from the Shakespeare’s My Mistress’ Eyes sonnet).

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the Sun.
My hunger for her explains everything I’ve done.
To howl at the moon the whole night through,
And they really don’t care if I do.
I’d go out of my mind, but for you.

I didn’t have enough ambition to mess around with my camera and tripod during last night’s -5 F temperatures, but you can see images of the eclipse from SpaceWeather.com.

Vampire Weekend

The self-titled, debut album by the band Vampire Weekend has received a great deal of acclaim since its release, almost to the point of hype. When a debut causes the band to be the new darlings of the critics, I become skeptical. Is everyone just jumping on the bandwagon? Although I’ve been burned by the hype in the past, after hearing some samples online I took a chance and bought the disc.

The music from this New York quartet should probably be filed under Indie Rock, but as is often the case with good music, it transcends labels.

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Why I am a Librarian

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The “Why I’m a Librarian” meme has been going around the library blogosphere, so I thought I would put my two cents in.

Why I Became a Librarian

About a year and a half after I got my bachelor’s degree in business administration, I was struggling to find decent employment and my place in the working world. A very wise man suggested to me that I seek out the services of a career counselor, which I did. After a battery of personality assessment tests, my career counselor went over the results with me. Librarian was one of the top occupations on the list. As surprising as it was to see the word “Librarian” there, the more I thought about it, the more I believed I would enjoy the career. So off to graduate school I went.

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Now with photo zoom

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For a while now, I’ve been looking for a decent method to display larger photos on this site (some pictures look so much better at larger sizes). I’m using Lightbox, a very nice javascript thumbnail viewer. Pretty slick, huh?

Snowshoes

I did go back and add larger versions to quite a few previously posted photos. Some of my favorites include the posts: North Woods Camping, The Butterfly and Aurora over Franklin. I’ll probably add more as time permits.

For you web geeks out there, the Lightbox package is a minimal 302 bytes. It will open the image to full size, or as large as will fit in the user’s browser window. It also degrades nicely if javascript is turned off in the user’s browser.

Deserted island discs

It was a bit of a long day at work today. When I left and headed for the bus stop it was snowing — again. While waiting and riding on the bus, I listened to one of my favorite albums of all time, U2’s The Joshua Tree. That helped a lot to changed my mood. I thought about how good that albums is, and I was reminded of the old game, Deserted Island Discs. You probably know the drill: If you were castaway on a deserted island, which albums would you choose to have with you?

What better daydream to have in the middle of a cold and snowy wait for the bus, than being stranded in a tropical paradise with great music?

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