Meme games

Something we get a lot of in the social network world is what I call “meme games”. A common one is to write “X random things about me” and then “tag” a number of friends to get them to do the same. All good fun, and one day I’ll do mine, I promise!

Similar are games to play with iTunes, or Youtube or Google, searching for specific keywords and writing down the first ten things that come up. This one that I saw today is fun:  Google “<your name> needs” and write down the first 10 things from the results. Here’s mine:

• Steve needs to find a squirrel hitman.
• Steve needs a leg transplant.
• Steve needs sleep.
• Steve needs a new song.
• Steve Needs A Bad Ass Tee.
• Steve Needs The Money.
• Steve needs to get away for a while.
• Steve needs new friends – friends to get him out from behind his camera.
• Steve needs advice or help.
• Steve needs to be able to access his data when it is convenient for him.

He he! Good fun. What’s yours?

Nifty Firefox tip for bookmarks toolbar

Here’s a nifty idea for your Firefox toolbar. (Well, I think so!)

If you visit a site regularly, you can drag the URL from the location bar to the bookmarks toolbar. But in the normal case, you’ll quickly fill the space if you have more than a few such sites.

But, since most sites now use a unique icon (favicon), what I’ve found is that you can delete the name of the bookmark and leave just the icon showing. Like this:

which means you can then fit many more sites into the toolbar.

After copying a link to the toolbar, right-click on the bookmark and choose Properties, then delete the name, as shown here:

Cool, huh?

She

She on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

Well, no. As a rule, I don’t spend time at work reading, even though I do work in a library (on of the biggest research libraries in Australia) and have the fiction collection just outside my door.

But one of the things I work on — when not managing Library Systems, or organising collection spaces, or actually programming — is our eBooks collection. This is kind of an unofficial project, with official sanction, if that makes sense. (It means there’s no funding, and I do it largely in my own time, but the Chief approves of it.)

And today, I put the final polish onto the latest title in the collection, “She”, by H. Rider Haggard, scanning a couple of plates from a print edition from our print collection.

Online reading is not to everyone’s taste, but I get thank-you emails from all over the world, so I know many people benefit from my efforts. And (strangely) I enjoy it.

Emma Hack exhibition

Emma Hack exhibition on Flickr.

This afternoon, went with The Lovely Kay to an art exhibition of  new work by Emma Hack, “Panoramic Bodies“, held at the Adelaide Airport. Odd place for an exhibition you might think — especially as you go through the security scan. But actually a good idea, given the number of people passing through, with time on their hands.

The works combine Emma’s talents as a body artist with photography, with the natural wonders of the Australian landscape providing majestic settings for the painted bodies of models and acrobats.

In addition, there are works from two other series displayed: Wallpaper, in which bodies are painted to match various wallpapers, is extraordinary. And Beautiful  ways to die, featuring hauntingly beautiful and subtly disturbing images.

All three collections are well worth a trip.

Fun with Payslips

Our organisation doesn’t do printed payslips. Good thing too, as a general principle: who needs a drawer full of old payslips? So our payslips are online, through a Peoplesoft portal thinggy. Fine.

However, occasionally one needs to print a payslip, and this is where it gets “interesting”.

Logging in to the portal is OK, viewing the payslip is OK. But:

* clicking on the “printable version” link causes Firefox to crash.

* trying to print the web page as-is fails because Firefox only presents the first page.

Now, I could report this, but … who to? And if I knew who to, I know the answer would be: “use Internet Explorer”. Which is difficult when you are a Linux user, and even if I were so unfortunate as to be using Windoze, I would still prefer Firefox.

Fortunately, I was able to copy and paste the page content into Open Office and print that. Messy, but at least now I have a payslip.

I accept that the University has adopted standards for good reasons (even if I disagree with them). But a payslip is something the user should be able to print from home, and you cannot, or should not, dictate standards on the user’s home machine.

Day 41/365 : (Some of) my favorite books

(Some of) my favorite books on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

Here’s a selection of my all-time favorite novels. When I look at these, it’s like seeing old friends. There are also absent friends — books lent to others that never came back; books lost; books given to the library; books left in foreign places.

Everyone of these is a book I will re-read. Some day.

In this stack:

• Haruki Murakami, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
• Sue Woolfe, Leaning towards infinity
• Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
• Peter Carey, The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith
• Peter Hoeg, Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow
• Ian McEwan, Atonement
• Murray Bail, Eucalyptus
• Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News?
• Sheri Tepper, Beauty
• Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker
• Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
• Iain Pears, An Instance of the Fingerpost
• Robin White, Siberian Light
• Ann-Marie MacDonald, The Way the Crow Flies
• Jostein Gaardner, Sophie’s World
• Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog
• E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
• Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
• Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes
• Susanne Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel
• Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai

This post was inspired by Good Reads

Day 40/365 : Glenelg sunset photo trip

Baubles on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

Got home from work tonight and the Lovely Kay said, “Let’s go to the beach and photograph the sunset.” So we did.

Down to the palindromic Glenelg we went, where the council charges for parking 24 hours a day X(

First stop was somewhere for fish and chips, the sunstill being high and my stomach making more noise than the Glenelg Tram. Here’s me waiting for the fish and chips to arrive:

Where’s my Harley? lol

Anyway, fish scoffed and seagulls fed, it was time for some camera action. And God obliged with a wonderful display:

So, trip worth while, despite the shoddy fish and chips and the council parking rip-off.

More pix on Flickr and slideshow