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Showing posts from January, 2008

Tax doesn't need to be taxing

But it is if the self assessment website goes down on the day for submitting your return... Whoopsie. Lets hope that anyone trying to file today is given leeway if their return isn't in on time! - Updated: Yup, a 24 hour extension of the deadline.

Clicking 'ignore'

I find myself spending less and less time on Facebook recently, and most of that time is spent looking at notifications, and clicking on ‘ignore’, because I don’t want to join the Oregon Trail, or allow my friends to buy and sell me.. . A large part of the problem is applications that insist you invite friends (generally at least 20) before you can see your results / scores / what other people have said about you. If I add one of those applications, and it demands I invite my friends to play too, I just exit, and uninstall it. I like my friends too much to bombard them with invites every time I decide to while away some time playing a quiz! It seems even Facebook themselves have finally realised that the amount of invites / notifications to play whatever game your friends are playing at the time is statring to get ridiculous. I noticed today that this information has appeared in my News Feed: Too many requests? We've added a "clear all" option for when you have

Google Librarian Central

Link from Library Stuff I have to confess to removing GLC from my Bloglines subscriptions late last year. Not only was it not being updated, but it went through a phase of having all its old entries appearing as new entries, repeatedly, and this went on for days. In the end, I got so irritated with it I removed it. It did seem very odd that it stopped, with a promise of a return after the Summer, and no update posts since, even if just to say that they might have decided against continuing the blog. I found it often had useful tips, even for non public / school librarians, which it seems to be mainly aimed at. Hopefully they really do like librarians, and will be back at some point...but if it's in the Spring, just in time to warm up for the American library conferences, I have to admit, I'll be giving in to my lurking cynicism!

Will they or won’t they?

Build the wind farm, that is? "Insiders" claim the Scottish Government is going to turn down the proposal to build one of Europes largest wind farms in the Western Isles. As the official decision's not actually due for another two or three weeks, the SG seem to be a bit irritated by all the speculation, and have issued a very terse press release , basically telling everyone to calm down. Why did I just get Michael Winners voice in my head there..."calm down, it's a commercial".... Yuck.

Facebook's trying to tell me something...

So, if you advertise on Facebook, you'll fall asleep in minutes, and sleep soundly through the night? Wow , what a selling point!!

I'm still playing to stereotype!

But...it is important that Scottish literature is maintained as a separate category from English literature in the Library of Congress classification system! Otherwise I might have had to take to referring to The Great Gatsby as having been written by a great Canadian author...after all, they speak the same language, must be the same countries, right? Hee hee hee...

She would have hated me as her student!

Tara Brabazon's hitting the headlines again, with an interview in The Guardian. She thinks that librarians will like her take on things, as we all want more books, and must feel as she does, that using Google, Wikipedia, and even blogs is 'bad' research. Well, I disagree. I like using Google - it gives me a good starting point. Wikipedia quickly gives me information on topics that I don't know about. Blogs give a personal view of issues, and often uncover a bias or truth not widely publicised. Yes, books are wonderful, but to get to the information in them, I need physical access to them...which isn't always possible. Online tools allow me to start my research from resources I can access, then if needed, I can move on to physical resources. I can't easily tell if a book even discusses a certain topic without having it and its index in my hand, but I can do a keyword search on a pdf, or webpage, and rapidly check its usefulness. I'm also a big enough girl t

Definition of "National"?

*Rant warning, and yes, this may play to the stereotype of Scots, but it's frustrating!* Methinks someone at the BBC needs to check their facts a little more carefully about the National Year of Reading. In this case, "National" means the nations of England and Wales, not Scotland or Northern Ireland...so there's no "NYR" events or contacts here, we're apparently not taking part in it, it is not a UK wide event. Any attempt to find a book group, volunteer, or be otherwise involved via their website in anything other than England and Wales would come to a dead end. Please, please, can someone at the BBC actually check facts before they declare something's UK wide when it's not? *rant over*