Miscellaneous Thougts (A Bit Scattered).

Artist in His Studio1630-32 Oil on Panel Colnaghi, London.

Daily Thoughts

Sometimes you think of things that are not quite in your domain of expertise. I noticed that the supermarket is now renting DVDs with a company called DVD Xpress. It mostly sells very trashy movies, but sometimes these are a way to find what people want to watch. I picked up a brochure to bring to work. They have been asking us to find more popular material.

There is also a listing of bestselling dvds and rentals on Video Business. http://www.videobusiness.com/ . Sometimes you just notice these things as part of surfing the web.

I watched part of The Ultimate Avengers, The Movie an animated movie based on the Marvel comic book, The Ultimates. It was quite fun. I especially liked them finding Captain America frozen in ice. It is fairly simple and straightforward with many of the classic heros, Thor, Ironman, Captain America, The Black Widow. I liked that Nick Fury, Agent of Shield is black in this story. It adds a nice touch.

There is a short piece about the history of the Avengers as an extra. Kurt Busiek is one of the people interviewed. In addition, there is a second film, The Ultimate Avengers: Rise of the Panther which looks quite interesting. You watch the film and think, this is more about the interactions of the heros with each other than the villains. The villains seem to be the generic evil enemy of the month.

This morning I went to see my doctor again. I lost another three pounds. I wasn't expecting it. I still am doing the Yoga RX exercises, but I didn't do too well with my diet during Thanksgiving. The pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie got me. I have to watch myself for the holidays. No sweets.

I am honestly feeling a bit distracted. Billy The Blogging Poet just quit doing blogging. He is going to do a new green enterprise, a recycling franchise. It looks kind of interesting. I wonder if he is going to focus at all on recycling books and cardboard. He was part of the Metaxu Literary Cafe. I think I lost a decent part of my readership when Metaxu Cafe closed. http://recyclebills.squarespace.com/recycleblog/

I found something interesting while wandering the internet. It is called mibook. At first it looks like an ebook reader, but when I got to the site, I found something very different than a standard ebook reader. http://www.mibook.com/ This is a specialty focus ebook type device. The sample focuses on cooking, gardening, and home renovation. In effect it is a how to book device focusing on a specific niche.

I feel like today is a day where I am picking up bits and pieces from all over the internet. Sometimes I do that when I am blogging.

I did not read a book at the laundromat today. I did not read anything. I watched a film and watched some television at the laundromat. Maybe, I needed a break from reading books.

All commercial content except for the books and dvds which I post from Amazon and the Powells.com search box has been removed. I also removed some links from my link exchange. I did this to make this blog more focused as well as indicate it is not a particularly commercial blog. Project Wonderful is no more, so are a few other things. Some of the services I used were not providing adequate results for the amount of time I put into them.

I did not even realize that I didn't have some widgets which I used regularly. I just put in my Fuel My Blog Widget. I generally prefer widgets that are somewhat interactive. Twitter is interactive (it is a microblogging platform), Fuelmyblog is interactive (it has a forum and thumbnail directory), Blogcatalog is a community (it has a forum, directory, thumbshot guide, and many other features. These three are what I am focusing on. More than three is too much.

I am not that fond of Technorati, Stumbleupon, and Entrecard. These are focused on building traffic, not interacting with people. It is like being in a horse race with other people to get the most people to visit. They often take a lot of time, with not much depth.

Morning Thoughts

Morning Thoughts

I have not been doing anything too exciting this morning. I took a few minutes to look at Amazon and Barnes and Noble online for business management book titles. I read some more of The Future of the Internet.

I read a little bit of the documentation for Opera. I also looked at Entrecard for a little bit. It has been a slow but steady morning. I even took a short walk around the neighborhood and bought a cup of coffee from the local deli. The coffee woke me up quite nicely.

Because everything is pretty quiet today, I went through and made sure all my links in my sidebar are still working. It is good to do this occassionally. Websites and blogs have a tendency to evaporate unexplicably. No dead links here if possible.

I also checked my Sitemeter to see where my web traffic was coming from. Most of it is coming from Google Blogsearch and Entrecard. There is a smattering of hits from Twitter, Yahoo, and Fuelmyblog, as well as a few individual websites.

I am doing housecleaning for the blog. If you want to, feel free to make any suggestions you think might help to improve this blog.

Fuelmyblog and other social networking sites, Walking the Stacks, Jackie Ormes African American Women Cartoonist

Today, I am top blog on Fuelmyblog. It is one of those popularity contest things where you aim to get the most recommendations. Fuelmyblog is a type of social networking site. I enjoy looking at the different sites. They are identified by pictures. I like it when I get showcased. I hope it means more people will read my blog. I removed the link because it only stays up for the day you are featured.

I also changed the banner at the top of my blog after some not so kind complements on the quality of the banner. I used Microsoft Photodraw V.2 to create the new banner. Last time, I used paint. It was not that hard to figure out Microsoft Photodraw. I also created a new thumbnail icon for Entrecard.

Occassionally, I take the time to make a full circuit of the stacks or shelving to make sure everything is in order. I check for items that are lying on top of other books, misplaced books, sections that are out of order. I do a circuit of the area which I am in charge of business, law, reference to make sure everything at least looks neat and in order. If anything is slightly out of order, I let my library aide (they changed the name from pages) know where to put things in order. I also pick up loose material on tables and check to see that the public access terminals for looking up books are working. Adults and children like to hack into the catalogs for looking up books so they can get internet access without having to signup to use computers.

As part of this I take the time to look at the new books section every other day so I know exactly what is there without having to leave the desk. In addition, I occassionally look at what is being processed to go upstairs that needs to be added. Yes, we do see what is going to be put out before the patrons, so we can often get things before the patrons. I will also occassionally look around in the storage area, we have two floors of mezzanine (basement) where we work to look at the older books. There are a lot of really interesting older titles.

When I was looking at the new books section, I came across a rather interesting title, it is an oversize book. It came out in February 2008. Jackie Ormes, The First African American Woman Cartoonist by Nancy Goldstein. Jackie Ormes's work first appeared in 1937. It is the first time I have seen this. There apparently is an Ormes Society which supports African American women cartoonists. http://theormessociety.com/ . The comic is a title called Torchy Brown in Heartbeats, an African American romance cartoon. She also made the first African American character doll from comics, Patty-Jo. The cartoons are very interesting to look at.

Jackie Ormes The First African American Cartoonist is reviewed in the forthcoming March 30, 2008 New York Times Book Review on P.13. The review is worth reading, for the most part it is on target.