Today I read a very sad LibraryJournal article – Charlotte Mecklenburg Library is facing large cuts to their budget which will result in the closing of 12 of 24 branches and 140 staff layoffs.
I had the good fortune last month to attend a presentation at the Calgary Public Library by a librarian from Charlotte Mecklenburg who works in their ImaginOn Library location. It’s a truly unique library branch responsible for creating innovative children’s library programming. The article mentions that ImaginOn is not safe from the layoffs, but for Charlotte Mecklenburg I hope it remains untouched so they can continue on with their forward thinking programming and share their ideas with the rest of us librarians!
Last November my Mom and Dad went on their first cruise ever. Their destination – Antarctica!! Why you ask? Because my Mom won the trip through the Doctor’s Review Magazine. You can read about their experience in my Mom’s article in the latest Doctor’s Review here.
I decided that I needed some headshots for funky business cards that I am going to make! Gotta get around to that one of these days but between moving and applying for jobs things have become a little outta wack! I just wanted to thank my friend Gerald for taking an hour out of his day to talk around UBC in mid July to get these photos! You can see more of his work here: http://www.giant-squid.ca/
First and foremost I must say that I got this idea from my friend Monica because she made a video for her mom about how to set up a gmail account. Thanks for the great idea Monica!
Below is a video tutorial I made for my mother to help her import her CDs into iTunes. I used the free version of Jing to make this video. This is my first attempt at creating a video tutorial using this software and I would have to say that overall Jing was very easy to use! There are a few mess ups in the video where I use such weird words as “importation” and I don’t fully explain the organization of iTunes appropriately. I acknowledge that importation sounds weird and that I haven’t fully elaborated on the organization of iTunes – but I posted it anyways because I believe that it gets the message across! I just had to put in this disclaimer in case someone was watching this and though “wait a minute, she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about!”. The sound quality also varies throughout the video due to the fan on my computer turning on while importing the CD, and that all the windows in my apartment are open allowing a variety of typical Toronto construction sounds to make an appearance.
The only problem I ran into was figuring out how exactly to post this to my blog. I tried for several hours and each time was unsuccessful. I posted a question in the wordpress forum to see if anyone could help me with my problem and was told that .swf files are not permitted on wordpress.com, the most basic version, for security reasons. I followed the suggestion from the forum and used the vodpod firefox extension and was successful in posting to my blog. The only downside of this is that the size of the video makes it somewhat harder to see, however it is embedded nicely.
For a larger version of this video you can click here to see the version hosted on Screencast.
Josh loving the big redball!
I had to post this photo only because it is probably now the most viewed photo on my flickr page! I added the photo to the blogTO flickr pool and it got picked up on blogTO’s twitter feed which meant that a whole lotta people got to enjoy Josh being a goof. And Josh has been able to bask in his Toronto famousness. Just thought I’d share it with a few more of you!
This Redball Project in Toronto is part of the Luminato 2009 festival. Who knew that a giant inflatable redball randomly placed throughout the city could be so awesome! I love how simple this idea is and just how many people are drawn to look at it. I only stood and watched the crowd for about ten minutes and people were coming out of their offices just to have a look!




