For indexers everywhere

I found this lovely snippet in Glenda Browne's excellent The Indexing Companion

"Ruth Pincoe was born to be an indexer. Her family was so organised that the milk jug in the fridge had a note that said 'See also back shed'."

Going forward ...

If you - as I do - hate the management-speak term "going forward" you should go to a blog called The Standard, and in the post for 7 Sept you'll see a link to Joe O’Connor's wonderful rant which Chris Laidlaw played on National Radio last Sunday. Drop everything and listen - it's wonderful. By the way,  have you heard our politicians use the term? Key has done it without conviction, and another politician whose name escapes me used the phrase 5 times in an interview on Morning Report about 2 months ago. Sigh.

Gentle weightlifting for the over-50s

I heard about an easy weightlifting exercise for older people, to help build and maintain muscle strength in the arms and shoulders. It seems so easy, so I thought I'd pass it on.  Recommended as a 3-day/wk regime.

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at each side. With a 5kg potato sack in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there as long as you can.

Try to reach a full minute, then relax. Each day, you'll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer. After a couple of weeks, move up to 10kg potato sacks. (I'm at this level now).

Then try 50kg potato sacks and then eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100kg potato sack in each hand and hold your arm straight for more than a full minute.

After you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each of the sacks.

Cephalonian method

Effective Induction Cardiff Cephalonian

View more presentations from Mike Moran.

Google Squared

Bates InfoTips is full of goodies. This month she talks about Google Squared. It's still in the Google lab but worth a tryout. It may be better for recreational rather than academic use.

There will be much weeping, and gnashing of dentures

The chap in the middle is my priestly uncle Gordon Kerins. He has been a Marist priest in Waitara for ever, but the Bishop of Palmerston North, in his holy wisdom, has decided to replace the Marist priests in Waitara with another group, and that Gordon, at the age of almost 94, can see out the rest of his life in Wellington. This is such a cruel decision.

A moving day

Today we have moved the Law Library office from one side of the world to the other. Well actually, no - I exaggerate - but now that I have your attention ... my colleagues and I have moved to our new (temp) office,  and students walking past on their way to the InfoC probably think we're a whole new library department because it’s the first time they’ve seen an information desk in this area before. It feels like we’re a little more in the centre of things, especially as we’re now in the same neighbourhood as the staff room!  Let’s hope the students who need us will find their way to our new location.  This is not the sort of day you look forward to, but in the event we were amazed at how smooth and quick it all went, in no small measure due to the excellent ‘support staff’ who had us in good working order by morning tea time. 

Kek Lok Si Temple, Penang

Kek Lok Si Temple, Penang
Originally uploaded by corkers21

Beautiful detail from one of the temple buildings.

Kek Lok Si Temple, Penang

Kek Lok Si Temple, Penang
Originally uploaded by corkers21

I'm quite proud of this photo, taken when we were in Malaysia about 4 years ago. This is a Buddhist temple and the name means "Temple of Supreme Bliss".

Twitter sceptic (Tweptic??)

I'm doing the stuff - reading about Twitter, how good it is for libraries, and I now have signed up some libraries to follow. But how far do you have to go with all this stuff? Heck - I'm just getting used to texting! I suppose Twitter is a more exciting way of texting, without all the hrrble txtng lnguge. Texters can at least feel secure in the knowledge that only the texter and recipient will be reading the message, initially anyway. Tweets are public property. I don't really need to know if someone's had porridge for breakfast 3 mornings in a row, but this sort of info comes into the 'ambient awareness' tag, according to Clive Thompson, quoted in "How Twitter will change the way we live" (Steven Johnson, Time Magazine, 5 Jun 2009). The mere fact that most 23 Things programs feature Twitter tells me that I have to move away from scepticism. If it's good enough for our National Library to tweet, it's good enough for me. Tweet tweet.

Week 2: BloggingThings 2 - 5

Blogging can be addictive, time consuming, absorbing, frustrating, exciting ...