Lately, it seems everyone is going through an angst-y period. Perhaps reading up on the history of the coal industry this morning wasn't the best idea. I didn't quite realize this, but I think I kept at it because it distracted me with other bigger frustrations. But reading about how the planet is dying usually quickly overwhelms me with hopelessness. Looking at cute pictures of puppies and reading optimistic blogs always helps but it hasn't quite done it for me today. So I'm going to focus on something that's really quite exciting to me. And that the fact that it is a sunny warmish day, which means I'll try to take a walk after Shaheli and Colin stop in the cafe for a break.
"Why in the world would you study coal mining history? What does that have to do with anything?" Well, good questions. I doubt I normally would, even though I do find myself frequently looking up random bits of information. But it has relevance, I promise. Until now, it has been a kind of secret. I've only told two people so far - Colin and my best buddy Becca.
I am going to do NaNoWriMo.
There, I said it. Perhaps not that big of a deal. Perhaps the statistics show that loads and loads of people who voice this declaration end up not finishing. Perhaps I don't have such a hot record of sticking with things and getting them done on time. Perhaps I still am a bit afraid that I'll fail or that it's not worth it. Perhaps you don't know what on earth I'm talking about, so I'll pause and give you some help.
NaNoWriMo (not entirely sure how you're supposed to pronounce it) stands for NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth. It was thought up by some guy in 1999 who got together a group of friends and they attempted to write 50,000 word novels each. In one month. Perhaps horrible, poorly written, crappy writing, but writing nonetheless. Because the idea is that writing a novel is a "someday" dream for many people. Yet realistically, most people will never write anything publishable. So what? How are you going to ever write a novel when you're frozen in perfection? Just write it! Who cares?
I might not get to the word count goal by the deadline, but I sure will try and I know it won't be a waste of time. I will gain something in return, even if it's just a better understanding of how writers write their books. A couple days ago I signed up for an account at nanowrimo.org.
I'm withholding from talking much about what I'm going to write. Part of it is because I haven't quite figured out a whole lot of the story and because of that, I don't want much direct influence or people giving me their ideas of what my story should be like. This is my story, and they could go ahead and write their own. I probably won't be able to keep it a mystery the entire time though. And I may never let anyone else ever read it.
But I will give you this: it is definitely sci fi slash futuristic. No, no flying cars and aliens yet. Mostly just about a kid in a future I imagine has a strong possibility of happening 50 or 100 years from now. Of course, being who I am, I can't resist wondering and looking up answers to questions such as "What's it like to live in a mining town?"
Nanowrimo (I'm not doing the correct capitalization - harder to type) is November. So I've got just over a month before it starts. And in reality it won't take over my life; it's probably only 2 hours a day, 3 at most. But it will be a big difference and it will be intense. Strangely enough, because this has become a goal of mine, I've focused and created goals for getting there. I don't want to be swamped with too many other things when November 1st rolls around so October is my "getting things done" month. This includes developing a website to at least the point that it's ready to be made public. Colin has been helping me a lot with this. It also includes finally getting a dentist appointment (eek), finishing digitizing my grad school papers, getting to goal posts in my genealogy project, and planning for the trips to San Francisco and Europe. San Fran will happen during November and Europe in December (Colin's sister is over there for study abroad so we will be spending the holidays there with his family). There's also Thanksgiving which will be spent with my family, so I've got a couple things already narrowing down the amount of time I can spend writing. I also hope to find another volunteer outlet by November and I'm always keeping my eye out for jobs.
I'm excited! This should be an adventure!
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Succulent Zucchini Bread
OMG I can't wait for the oven to finish baking the zucchini bread! So much labor and time to make it, including initiation with food processor, but soooo gooood. One of my all-time favorite foods. Okay, I'm usually not this gushy but - mmmm ... if I could only blog a smell in a way other than mere words.
I was going to write a bit more of an intellectual post but I think I'll just bask in the smell and then take a picture of the bread for you when it's out of the oven. If you've never had zucchini bread, I believe you're missing out on a life experience. I followed the recipe in my "The Joy of Cooking" book.
I was going to write a bit more of an intellectual post but I think I'll just bask in the smell and then take a picture of the bread for you when it's out of the oven. If you've never had zucchini bread, I believe you're missing out on a life experience. I followed the recipe in my "The Joy of Cooking" book.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Friday I finished up making and canning the apple butter we had started the night before. It'd been simmering in the crockpot all night. I used my secret super power and knew that it'd take exactly two pints, four half-pints, and just over half a pint left for immediate eating. I swear. It was that exact. I just have this uncanny knack for guessing exactly how much room the leftovers need and pick the container in which it fits without any breathing room - or any cramming - or any eating that last bit to make it fit. Anyway, the jars are beautiful.
In the afternoon I hiked at a small forest preserve. I hadn't been there before but I was glad I went; there were signs saying it would be closed for renovations in a couple days for about a year. It was very nice and I really enjoyed it. Found buckeyes and saw may apples. Saw fish, a turtle, a toad, and non-mallard ducks (my duck identification skills are measly). The fish was quite large, about as long as from my fingertips to my elbow, and was in shallow water where there was lots of weeds. At first I thought he was stuck and I was looking for a way to shoo him back into the deeper waters but then I realized he was just fine and not suffocating. There were also weird random slabs of concrete. There's no actual road back there, so I had fun making up stories about secret government labs or hidden communities in the 1970s.
Quick Linux update: I'm currently using Linux Mint 9 and really enjoying it. It reminds me a bit too much of the sluggish side of Ubuntu and the fan is acting up a bit but it's working just fine (MUCH better than Puppy) and I hope to make it better. Also, we've got the printer networked now so we don't have to physically plug it in but send print jobs via wifi. Pretty nifty.
Okay time for bed!
In the afternoon I hiked at a small forest preserve. I hadn't been there before but I was glad I went; there were signs saying it would be closed for renovations in a couple days for about a year. It was very nice and I really enjoyed it. Found buckeyes and saw may apples. Saw fish, a turtle, a toad, and non-mallard ducks (my duck identification skills are measly). The fish was quite large, about as long as from my fingertips to my elbow, and was in shallow water where there was lots of weeds. At first I thought he was stuck and I was looking for a way to shoo him back into the deeper waters but then I realized he was just fine and not suffocating. There were also weird random slabs of concrete. There's no actual road back there, so I had fun making up stories about secret government labs or hidden communities in the 1970s.
Quick Linux update: I'm currently using Linux Mint 9 and really enjoying it. It reminds me a bit too much of the sluggish side of Ubuntu and the fan is acting up a bit but it's working just fine (MUCH better than Puppy) and I hope to make it better. Also, we've got the printer networked now so we don't have to physically plug it in but send print jobs via wifi. Pretty nifty.
Okay time for bed!
Friday, September 24, 2010
Seven things: Pre-HS graduation schools including memories
Before I forget (again), I'm going to do the Seven Things that Kate tagged me to do. A little known fact about me: I only moved twice when growing up. The first was from downstate Michigan to Charlevoix, MI when I was less than one years old. The second was merely across the driveway from the trailer to the partly finished house my dad had been building when I was about five years old. I only remember part of the second move. Mainly, that my mom was very pregnant and it was very hot out and I never seemed to stop carrying the boxes while walking along the "sidewalk" (really just two boards on the lawn).
My hearing loss was discovered when I was over a year and a half old. The story is that I was so observant and looked at everything that it was really quite impossible to tell I was missing something. I only have one memory from pre-hearing aids which consists of *very* vivid smells, colors, and movement. I have very vague memories otherwise from before learning how to read.
Despite living on the same property for my K-12 education, I went to seven different schools before my high school graduation.
1. The first was a pre-K in Petoskey that specialized in helping kids develop faster (since I had a lot of catching up to do). I first went there when I was three and attended two years. I have absolutely no memories of this school. I do remember the trailer we were living in, with a specific memory of watching "Alice in Wonderland" on the TV in the living room. This was my all-time favorite movie. I often wonder just how much I understood of the actual story since I couldn't read and there were no captions.
2. The second was my first year of kindergarten which was in East Jordan (quite a long haul on the bus everyday for a five-year-old). East Jordan's public elementary school contained the area's program for hearing impaired kids. I would spent half the day in kindergarten and the other half in the program. I never fit in with the other kids in the program, but we would all meet once a year to go skiing together all the way into high school. I remember walking down the hallway from one room to the next. I only vaguely remember the kindergarten class though there is a flash of me sitting on the floor with the rest of the kids while the teacher read with some kind of big easel. The program room stuck in my memories a bit more, including the dreaded speech lessons.
3. I like to joke that I flunked kindergarten. I moved to the Charlevoix public school system and started with the kindergarten class. They weren't sure whether I'd be ready for first grade after my year at East Jordan but apparently after the year was over, they said I'd do fine moving on to first grade. My parents had expected me to do kindergarten in Charlevoix, I think mostly for social reasons (easier to start with a new class than join one), so that's what I did. I remember being in awe of my teacher who could cut and color so well. I also played the narrator/introducer in the traditional play "Peter Rabbit." I was the first to have that role; our class was too big and we needed more roles.
4. Most of my elementary school experience was positive. Teasing either didn't happen to me or I took it good-naturedly. I had two best friends who got in a huge fight in third grade and never spoke to one another after that. One moved to a new school and the other joined the popular group. I spent fourth grade looking for a new friend who I had until sixth grade ended and she moved to Traverse City.
5. Predictably, sixth grade sucked. She eventually moved back and graduated in the same class as I did, but timing definitely wasn't good. I continued going to the middle school for a marking period (half semester) of seventh grade. So I was there for a grand total of 1.25 years.
6. And then I decided to go to the charter school in town that'd just started up and where some of my friends went. I had joined band sixth grade and that become my passion at the charter school. We had a really good band despite being small. I met my best friend through band. She was home-schooled but came to the charter school for band and Spanish. We went to Toronto, Colorado, and England on band trips.
7. After almost four years at the charter school, I started thinking more about the rest of my education. I really enjoyed math and did well in English and social studies. Science was really lacking and I didn't really care about it anyway. I decided my academic growth would be stunted if I continued at the charter school so I moved back to the public school. I went to the old high school building junior year and then we were moved into a new building for senior year which was further from my house. I didn't make any real solid friendships but I did a season each of cross country and track, I quit band after junior year (it just wasn't fun anymore), and I started working at libraries, both the high school and public ones. We had only one AP class offered to us, US Government, and I took it. I also made a point to take the more advanced classes (there were less than 10 of us in the Calculus class) and somehow got through Chemistry and Advanced Biology. My AP US Government teacher was a Kalamazoo College graduate and she was the one who got me interested in going there.
Well that turned out to be a bit longer than I'd expected. "Oh, I'll just list the seven schools I went to before college, easy," I thought. Oh well. I hope you enjoyed the short-ish history of the first 19 years of my life. It could have easily been a *lot* longer! Big chunks, such as the fact that I also have a younger brother, I played piano second grade onward, and I got into backpacking, didn't get mentioned at all. Er, well they have been mentioned now, but you know what I mean.
My hearing loss was discovered when I was over a year and a half old. The story is that I was so observant and looked at everything that it was really quite impossible to tell I was missing something. I only have one memory from pre-hearing aids which consists of *very* vivid smells, colors, and movement. I have very vague memories otherwise from before learning how to read.
Despite living on the same property for my K-12 education, I went to seven different schools before my high school graduation.
1. The first was a pre-K in Petoskey that specialized in helping kids develop faster (since I had a lot of catching up to do). I first went there when I was three and attended two years. I have absolutely no memories of this school. I do remember the trailer we were living in, with a specific memory of watching "Alice in Wonderland" on the TV in the living room. This was my all-time favorite movie. I often wonder just how much I understood of the actual story since I couldn't read and there were no captions.
2. The second was my first year of kindergarten which was in East Jordan (quite a long haul on the bus everyday for a five-year-old). East Jordan's public elementary school contained the area's program for hearing impaired kids. I would spent half the day in kindergarten and the other half in the program. I never fit in with the other kids in the program, but we would all meet once a year to go skiing together all the way into high school. I remember walking down the hallway from one room to the next. I only vaguely remember the kindergarten class though there is a flash of me sitting on the floor with the rest of the kids while the teacher read with some kind of big easel. The program room stuck in my memories a bit more, including the dreaded speech lessons.
3. I like to joke that I flunked kindergarten. I moved to the Charlevoix public school system and started with the kindergarten class. They weren't sure whether I'd be ready for first grade after my year at East Jordan but apparently after the year was over, they said I'd do fine moving on to first grade. My parents had expected me to do kindergarten in Charlevoix, I think mostly for social reasons (easier to start with a new class than join one), so that's what I did. I remember being in awe of my teacher who could cut and color so well. I also played the narrator/introducer in the traditional play "Peter Rabbit." I was the first to have that role; our class was too big and we needed more roles.
4. Most of my elementary school experience was positive. Teasing either didn't happen to me or I took it good-naturedly. I had two best friends who got in a huge fight in third grade and never spoke to one another after that. One moved to a new school and the other joined the popular group. I spent fourth grade looking for a new friend who I had until sixth grade ended and she moved to Traverse City.
5. Predictably, sixth grade sucked. She eventually moved back and graduated in the same class as I did, but timing definitely wasn't good. I continued going to the middle school for a marking period (half semester) of seventh grade. So I was there for a grand total of 1.25 years.
6. And then I decided to go to the charter school in town that'd just started up and where some of my friends went. I had joined band sixth grade and that become my passion at the charter school. We had a really good band despite being small. I met my best friend through band. She was home-schooled but came to the charter school for band and Spanish. We went to Toronto, Colorado, and England on band trips.
7. After almost four years at the charter school, I started thinking more about the rest of my education. I really enjoyed math and did well in English and social studies. Science was really lacking and I didn't really care about it anyway. I decided my academic growth would be stunted if I continued at the charter school so I moved back to the public school. I went to the old high school building junior year and then we were moved into a new building for senior year which was further from my house. I didn't make any real solid friendships but I did a season each of cross country and track, I quit band after junior year (it just wasn't fun anymore), and I started working at libraries, both the high school and public ones. We had only one AP class offered to us, US Government, and I took it. I also made a point to take the more advanced classes (there were less than 10 of us in the Calculus class) and somehow got through Chemistry and Advanced Biology. My AP US Government teacher was a Kalamazoo College graduate and she was the one who got me interested in going there.
Well that turned out to be a bit longer than I'd expected. "Oh, I'll just list the seven schools I went to before college, easy," I thought. Oh well. I hope you enjoyed the short-ish history of the first 19 years of my life. It could have easily been a *lot* longer! Big chunks, such as the fact that I also have a younger brother, I played piano second grade onward, and I got into backpacking, didn't get mentioned at all. Er, well they have been mentioned now, but you know what I mean.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Trying different Linux flavors
While I'm waiting for the second iso image to burn to CD so that I can try out Linux Mint, I thought I'd give an update that hopefully isn't too long or confusing on my experiences with Puppy Linux which I've been playing with a couple days.
Overall, I spent about a day browsing and seeing what's out there these days in terms of Linux. Then I wrote up a list with the ones I was most interested in at the top. Ubuntu and its brothers such as Kubuntu and Xubuntu (known all together as *buntu) still didn't appeal to me, even in their "light" netbook versions. I especially looked in Lubuntu but it's at the bottom of the list and probably will never be tested. I desire a strange mix of intuitive (read: brain-dead and GUI) but a very light (not many programs) and easily molded OS.
Puppy looked very promising. I played with the live CD and really liked the feature of easily saving changes and whatever documents you create while in a live CD session. Yet I still struggled to stick with it for two days, browsing the forums and tutorials trying to understand and get Puppy working as a full install on my computer. Full just means treating it like almost any other Linux OS that you install on your hard drive. I have absolutely no need to keep it at frugal (install within ram) or as a live CD. Now, I realize that should have been a big clue that Puppy wasn't designed with people like me in mind.
There are so many negatives. Let me point out the positives first: 1) I really like how fast abiword (word processor) starts up. I have such a high intolerance for slow word processors. 2) Most of the getting things functioning went smoothly although took longer than I'm used to, even when under Crunchbang. 3) Setting up the printer was less painful than it was in Crunchbang since there was more guidance. Keep in mind I also knew what I was doing since this is the second time I've set up printing with this printer. 4) I've discovered I really like Opera.
I'm not gonna number the negatives, since there's so many and some will be left out. The one that ultimately made me decide Puppy wasn't gonna cut it was when I tried to connect my external hard drive. Which has all my files and everything backed up from eons ago. I ended up having to plug it in the Colin's mac (this was after he went to bed), copying what I needed to my USB thumb drive, and then mounting the thumb drive. This is so not cool. I found another guy who wanted to mount the same type of external hard drive (Maxtor) and he was at a loss too, despite the suggestions. The tips didn't help me at all either.
Each of the different ways to boot Puppy present a slightly different situation. Getting on wifi was pretty reliable. The one difficulty was that Puppy didn't recognize that some places required a redirect page to say "Yes, I'll behave" like at libraries. So I had to keep reconnecting to the library wifi yesterday but eventually it stuck.
The touchpad was causing a headache before I did a full install. I understood that click and scroll are off by default - no problems there, just turn them on. But then things went crazy. I tried to adjust things like the touchpad sensitivity and kept having to reboot the live CD. Eventually I discovered that if you do happen to slide the sensitivity bar all the way to 0, just slide it back to somewhere else and click save would (usually) solve the problem. Just as a precaution, I've left the side scrolling option unchecked because that seemed to start making things screwy. Having the mouse go to the upper right corner every single time you lift your finger off the touchpad is very uncool.
Many packages, or the files that contains programs, are "pets" (awww, how cute) which have been set up specifically to be installed in Puppy. Okay, got that. But then almost any actual package you want to install needs to be found through Puppy's package manager. This is the worst package manager I've used. It forces you to slowly do exactly one thing at a time (it even makes it almost impossible to use other programs while waiting!). And while it catches most dependencies, there are two major ones that it keeps insisting are required. But they don't exist! I don't mean "aren't in any of the five repositories I have and repeatedly updated to be sure" - I mean the internets tell me they don't. I even tried to determine if they were parts of another package and downloaded those, hoping they would fill up the holes (nope). Not to mention the long list that I was specifically told to write down and install later at the end of the full install - most of those can't be found either.
That said, I only tried to install two programs via the package manager. The first was Pidgin, an IM client. If there's any computer program I can't do without, Pidgin is it. The second was just a notifier program which pops up little messages in the corner letting you know things like "hey, download's done!" or "Colin just said something." Apparently the second works just fine. I can't really test it out because Pidgin refuses to load. Why? Because it requires one of those two packages that don't exist.
Verdict: Puppy Linux does well at what it does well at: working with very old computers and rescuing files from Windows computers that are otherwise dead and irretrievable. Even then, DSL would probably be my choice. Much leaner and snappier (true, I haven't used it since the beginnings of my Linux days over 5 years ago, but I swear it saved my life, or at least that academic quarter). Ye be warned, though - as the main OS of a netbook, it really does suck. And I usually root for the underdog.
Overall, I spent about a day browsing and seeing what's out there these days in terms of Linux. Then I wrote up a list with the ones I was most interested in at the top. Ubuntu and its brothers such as Kubuntu and Xubuntu (known all together as *buntu) still didn't appeal to me, even in their "light" netbook versions. I especially looked in Lubuntu but it's at the bottom of the list and probably will never be tested. I desire a strange mix of intuitive (read: brain-dead and GUI) but a very light (not many programs) and easily molded OS.
Puppy looked very promising. I played with the live CD and really liked the feature of easily saving changes and whatever documents you create while in a live CD session. Yet I still struggled to stick with it for two days, browsing the forums and tutorials trying to understand and get Puppy working as a full install on my computer. Full just means treating it like almost any other Linux OS that you install on your hard drive. I have absolutely no need to keep it at frugal (install within ram) or as a live CD. Now, I realize that should have been a big clue that Puppy wasn't designed with people like me in mind.
There are so many negatives. Let me point out the positives first: 1) I really like how fast abiword (word processor) starts up. I have such a high intolerance for slow word processors. 2) Most of the getting things functioning went smoothly although took longer than I'm used to, even when under Crunchbang. 3) Setting up the printer was less painful than it was in Crunchbang since there was more guidance. Keep in mind I also knew what I was doing since this is the second time I've set up printing with this printer. 4) I've discovered I really like Opera.
I'm not gonna number the negatives, since there's so many and some will be left out. The one that ultimately made me decide Puppy wasn't gonna cut it was when I tried to connect my external hard drive. Which has all my files and everything backed up from eons ago. I ended up having to plug it in the Colin's mac (this was after he went to bed), copying what I needed to my USB thumb drive, and then mounting the thumb drive. This is so not cool. I found another guy who wanted to mount the same type of external hard drive (Maxtor) and he was at a loss too, despite the suggestions. The tips didn't help me at all either.
Each of the different ways to boot Puppy present a slightly different situation. Getting on wifi was pretty reliable. The one difficulty was that Puppy didn't recognize that some places required a redirect page to say "Yes, I'll behave" like at libraries. So I had to keep reconnecting to the library wifi yesterday but eventually it stuck.
The touchpad was causing a headache before I did a full install. I understood that click and scroll are off by default - no problems there, just turn them on. But then things went crazy. I tried to adjust things like the touchpad sensitivity and kept having to reboot the live CD. Eventually I discovered that if you do happen to slide the sensitivity bar all the way to 0, just slide it back to somewhere else and click save would (usually) solve the problem. Just as a precaution, I've left the side scrolling option unchecked because that seemed to start making things screwy. Having the mouse go to the upper right corner every single time you lift your finger off the touchpad is very uncool.
Many packages, or the files that contains programs, are "pets" (awww, how cute) which have been set up specifically to be installed in Puppy. Okay, got that. But then almost any actual package you want to install needs to be found through Puppy's package manager. This is the worst package manager I've used. It forces you to slowly do exactly one thing at a time (it even makes it almost impossible to use other programs while waiting!). And while it catches most dependencies, there are two major ones that it keeps insisting are required. But they don't exist! I don't mean "aren't in any of the five repositories I have and repeatedly updated to be sure" - I mean the internets tell me they don't. I even tried to determine if they were parts of another package and downloaded those, hoping they would fill up the holes (nope). Not to mention the long list that I was specifically told to write down and install later at the end of the full install - most of those can't be found either.
That said, I only tried to install two programs via the package manager. The first was Pidgin, an IM client. If there's any computer program I can't do without, Pidgin is it. The second was just a notifier program which pops up little messages in the corner letting you know things like "hey, download's done!" or "Colin just said something." Apparently the second works just fine. I can't really test it out because Pidgin refuses to load. Why? Because it requires one of those two packages that don't exist.
Verdict: Puppy Linux does well at what it does well at: working with very old computers and rescuing files from Windows computers that are otherwise dead and irretrievable. Even then, DSL would probably be my choice. Much leaner and snappier (true, I haven't used it since the beginnings of my Linux days over 5 years ago, but I swear it saved my life, or at least that academic quarter). Ye be warned, though - as the main OS of a netbook, it really does suck. And I usually root for the underdog.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
News Roundup 4
This "news roundup" idea is proving irregular, but it was a great way to kick me back into blogging and will probably always be a topic I can use.
Couple of interesting tidbits:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-09-19-quadruple-amputee-channel-swim_N.htm
Very inspiring. When I read the headline I was baffled and wanted to know "How?!" Turns out he has fins. Yay for fellow cyborgs!
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5809180/asian_unicorn_dies_in_captivity_after.html?cat=9
It's sad that the one captured died but everything else in the article is awesome. I don't really understand how they can remain so elusive and mysterious. Partly curious to learn about it, partly want to just leave them alone. But it is good to study them so we can know how to preserve their habitat ... right? Not to get all glum, but what about the rest of the animal kingdom we do know about?
Enjoying gazing out the back door, watching the drops made small puddles on the two-slab concrete patio and on the tree. The drops are steady yet not too numerous that you can't notice the random drops hitting each leaf. Kind of makes the tree look twitchy. I notice the tomato plant is tipped yet again, but there's no point in going out there until after the storm passes over. Already it's brightening and the rain is pushing east. I get more excitement and delight out of the combination of sensory clues that a storm is almost overhead - bright flashes, booms that can rattle skeletons, shifting to an ethereal dark-yet-light - than the last bit when everything just sighs and starts going back to normal.
Anyway, I've started at least two blog entries today but they just aren't ready. Basically, I don't like boring people to death while rambling on and on about my love-hate relationship with computers.
Couple of interesting tidbits:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-09-19-quadruple-amputee-channel-swim_N.htm
Very inspiring. When I read the headline I was baffled and wanted to know "How?!" Turns out he has fins. Yay for fellow cyborgs!
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5809180/asian_unicorn_dies_in_captivity_after.html?cat=9
It's sad that the one captured died but everything else in the article is awesome. I don't really understand how they can remain so elusive and mysterious. Partly curious to learn about it, partly want to just leave them alone. But it is good to study them so we can know how to preserve their habitat ... right? Not to get all glum, but what about the rest of the animal kingdom we do know about?
Enjoying gazing out the back door, watching the drops made small puddles on the two-slab concrete patio and on the tree. The drops are steady yet not too numerous that you can't notice the random drops hitting each leaf. Kind of makes the tree look twitchy. I notice the tomato plant is tipped yet again, but there's no point in going out there until after the storm passes over. Already it's brightening and the rain is pushing east. I get more excitement and delight out of the combination of sensory clues that a storm is almost overhead - bright flashes, booms that can rattle skeletons, shifting to an ethereal dark-yet-light - than the last bit when everything just sighs and starts going back to normal.
Anyway, I've started at least two blog entries today but they just aren't ready. Basically, I don't like boring people to death while rambling on and on about my love-hate relationship with computers.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Homemade applesauce
Okay, I can finally get around to blogging about the weekend's big adventure (I hope). We made applesauce! Then canned it! Some of you already know that I've done other canning this summer - mulberry jam, more mulberry jam, even more mulberry jam, and salsa. This is the first time Colin canned with me.
Last weekend, we picked two bushels (about 25 pounds) of apples at a nearby orchard, Heinz's Orchard. In fact, the only one I could find within a reasonable distance and in this county. They told us they're the closest one to Chicago. Most of the ones I found listed are in Woodstock, IL, which we've never been to and it's in the next county over. The orchard was fun and we chose to pick fallen apples - they come half the price of the ones still on the trees. There were plenty on the ground and many were quite beautiful. We had no trouble filling up our bags with Jonathans and McIntoshes.
I'm not going to rant about the fact that no one ended up coming either weekend for an apple sauce party. However, Colin and I enjoyed processing most of a peck over both Saturday and Sunday. It wasn't necessarily difficult, just took waiting and watching time. We managed to do other things, include watch "The Lightning Thief" (which isn't all that good but it is fun) and "Pirates of the Caribbean" (yesterday was "Talk like a pirate day," after all) and play with electronic toys (Colin) and read a book (me). I also baked a batch of banana nut muffins, which I like but Colin and Shaheli seem to absolutely love. For Saturday night, I tried my hand at making goulash, which turned out pretty well despite the can of baked beans I've been trying to determine how to use up. I bought two cans early in the summer, some store brand, and we ate one with bratwursts and it was just so yucky. So I'm glad the rest of the goulash helped mask the flavor of the baked beans.
A little bit more backing up: Friday I took a little trip to McHenry, a town roughly 10 miles west (therefore 20-25 minutes) of here. The main reason was because the library there had a book I wanted but was checked out from the closest library. The library was strange; all the stacks were in one room. They did a good job with what they had, but the huge modern chandeliers and the lone high window made for some odd atmosphere. While there, I had more plans shaped around letterbox locations and a forest preserve. I only found one letterbox (had directions for three) and surprised myself by hoofing it on a 4-mile loop. I planned on just one leisurely mile or so, but realized if I went fast I could easily do the whole loop and still be back in time to pick up Colin. So I did and it felt awesome.
Anyway, here are pictures of the apple sauce process:
Et voila! The final product: 4 pints!
Last weekend, we picked two bushels (about 25 pounds) of apples at a nearby orchard, Heinz's Orchard. In fact, the only one I could find within a reasonable distance and in this county. They told us they're the closest one to Chicago. Most of the ones I found listed are in Woodstock, IL, which we've never been to and it's in the next county over. The orchard was fun and we chose to pick fallen apples - they come half the price of the ones still on the trees. There were plenty on the ground and many were quite beautiful. We had no trouble filling up our bags with Jonathans and McIntoshes.
I'm not going to rant about the fact that no one ended up coming either weekend for an apple sauce party. However, Colin and I enjoyed processing most of a peck over both Saturday and Sunday. It wasn't necessarily difficult, just took waiting and watching time. We managed to do other things, include watch "The Lightning Thief" (which isn't all that good but it is fun) and "Pirates of the Caribbean" (yesterday was "Talk like a pirate day," after all) and play with electronic toys (Colin) and read a book (me). I also baked a batch of banana nut muffins, which I like but Colin and Shaheli seem to absolutely love. For Saturday night, I tried my hand at making goulash, which turned out pretty well despite the can of baked beans I've been trying to determine how to use up. I bought two cans early in the summer, some store brand, and we ate one with bratwursts and it was just so yucky. So I'm glad the rest of the goulash helped mask the flavor of the baked beans.
A little bit more backing up: Friday I took a little trip to McHenry, a town roughly 10 miles west (therefore 20-25 minutes) of here. The main reason was because the library there had a book I wanted but was checked out from the closest library. The library was strange; all the stacks were in one room. They did a good job with what they had, but the huge modern chandeliers and the lone high window made for some odd atmosphere. While there, I had more plans shaped around letterbox locations and a forest preserve. I only found one letterbox (had directions for three) and surprised myself by hoofing it on a 4-mile loop. I planned on just one leisurely mile or so, but realized if I went fast I could easily do the whole loop and still be back in time to pick up Colin. So I did and it felt awesome.
Anyway, here are pictures of the apple sauce process:
A sink full of apples, Colin cutting one up.
Pre-cooked.
Mushy cooked ones.
Apple mills are tons of fun to play with!
There are two different colors here - we had some we needed to cook some more and that's where the darker sauce on top came from.
Edit: This was post last night (Monday 20 September 2010) but I had to fix the photo links this morning when I noticed they weren't showing up. Also, said quarts instead of pints ... I knew that.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Warning: 100% geeky librarian content
You've probably heard of ISBNs and know what it's used for. You might know what the acronym stands for and that there are ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 numbers. Or maybe even some of ISBN history, such as which came first. That's basically all I knew - up until today, that is. Now I can be some kind of a genie and determine what type of book you have if you just give me the ISBN.
Let's pick an example from the book I have right here:
First, I realized I could tell if it was a newer ISBN-13 if there was 978 in front of it. No need to count the digits. ISBN-10s are the older version, first created in 1970. However, in 2005 they started implementing a longer number because they were running out of ISBN-10s. But, as you might have cleverly noticed, the first 3 digits are currently all the same. "So why don't they just stick them to the beginning of each previous ISBN-10 and call it good?" Well, that's pretty much what happened. (Except for the last digit. Keep reading to find out about that magic last digit.) It seems the big reason for implementing ISBN-13 was so that it wouldn't be a hassle to start using 979. This is a lazy but proactive way to double the amount of numbers.
A little tangent: Have you ever wondered why there seems to be two barcodes right next to each other on the same book? I have. Now I know: the little short one is the currency and the recommended price. I don't need to look it up to see that "51899" means "18.99 USD." Why? Because right underneath is says "USA $18.99." But on books that lack this helpful redundant human-readable tag, this is a sneaky way to see if a bookstore is ripping you off. Personally, I wouldn't have paid 18.99 for this or almost any other book, which is why it's borrowed from the library.
A micro-tangent to the little tangent: Excited to use my new-found powers, I looked at the back of some other books. One says "90000." Eh? Well, that just means the publisher never chose a price for that book. If they did officially make a new price, they are required to make a new barcode reflecting the change.
Second, I wrongly assumed that the very last digit, which stands all by itself, was to distinguish between different editions. I purposely ignored the last digit until now (again, you might have noticed this). Because I discovered what I think is pretty nifty - that digit is a checksum. I recognized that from playing with linux; it's a separate file you download when installing some programs and it is highly recommended that you compare the very long number to the number in the checksum file. If they match up, great - the install went well. If not - groan and start all over again.
However, the idea with having a checksum in an ISBN is to correct human mistakes and to make sure all the other digits are correct. Wikipedia explains the mathy bit here. Basically you multiply each digit by 1 or 3 alternately, add them up, divide the total by 10 then whatever the remainder is, subtract from 10 and you have the checksum.
9x1 + 7x3 + 8x1 + 0x3 + 0x1 + 6x3 + 1x1 + 4x3 + 7x1 + 9x3 + 0x1 + 1x3 =
9 + 21 + 8 + 0 + 0 + 18 + 1 + 12 + 7 + 27 + 0 + 3 =
106/10=10 with remainder of 6
10-6=4
"ISBN is 97800161479014. 4=4. Yay!"
Now I'm aware of the fact that it can be much more complicated than this - all the different codes within the ISBN can be different lengths, yet it still works out if you omit the dashes. If you care to see why, go ahead and browse the source links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_group-0_ISBN_publisher_codes
http://www.isbn-international.org/faqs/view/5
http://www.barcode-us.com/isbn/isbnSymbols.html
To me, and probably some other fellow lib sci majors and grads, this is quite intriguing if not totally awesome. But I do know that this blog is more of a personal, catch-all blog than purely for librarians, so I will spare the rest of the population who doesn't get excited about ISBNs from expanding an already long post. Plus, it's taken me a fair part of the day (on and off) to get this written up. Watch for the next post on what made me keep wandering away from blogging today ...
Let's pick an example from the book I have right here:
978-0-06-147901-4: This is an ISBN-13 number. Because there are thirteen digits.
978: In the U.S., the first three are pretty much always going to be 978 with a possibility (that will grow in the future) of it being 979. Apparently 978s will "run out" in other countries before the U.S.Another way of looking at barcodes (barcodes without 978 in front): "Every EAN begins with a 2 or 3 digit prefix, which indicates the country of origin. EAN’s for companies registered in France, for example, might begin with the prefix 34; Japan’s prefix is 49. Since the book industry produces so many products, it has been designated as a country unto itself and has been assigned its own EAN prefix. That prefix is 978 and it signifies Bookland, that wonderful, fictitious country from where all books come." link
0: Published in an English-speaking country.
06: Published by the conglomeration known as Harper & Row / Collins / HarperCollins
147901: specific ID for the specific book and its specific edition, which needs a site like isbndb.com or even just a library catalog (preferably WorldCat since few libraries have a good chance of having your edition of your book)This might not seem like a lot of interesting information to some people (like Colin, who says "Just the country and publisher?"), but for someone who's typed up and played with tons of ISBNs (okay, not technically tons, probably just a mere one or two tons) it's an amazing wealth of information that was staring me right in the face and I didn't know about. Sure, I picked up a couple things along the way.
First, I realized I could tell if it was a newer ISBN-13 if there was 978 in front of it. No need to count the digits. ISBN-10s are the older version, first created in 1970. However, in 2005 they started implementing a longer number because they were running out of ISBN-10s. But, as you might have cleverly noticed, the first 3 digits are currently all the same. "So why don't they just stick them to the beginning of each previous ISBN-10 and call it good?" Well, that's pretty much what happened. (Except for the last digit. Keep reading to find out about that magic last digit.) It seems the big reason for implementing ISBN-13 was so that it wouldn't be a hassle to start using 979. This is a lazy but proactive way to double the amount of numbers.
A little tangent: Have you ever wondered why there seems to be two barcodes right next to each other on the same book? I have. Now I know: the little short one is the currency and the recommended price. I don't need to look it up to see that "51899" means "18.99 USD." Why? Because right underneath is says "USA $18.99." But on books that lack this helpful redundant human-readable tag, this is a sneaky way to see if a bookstore is ripping you off. Personally, I wouldn't have paid 18.99 for this or almost any other book, which is why it's borrowed from the library.
A micro-tangent to the little tangent: Excited to use my new-found powers, I looked at the back of some other books. One says "90000." Eh? Well, that just means the publisher never chose a price for that book. If they did officially make a new price, they are required to make a new barcode reflecting the change.
Second, I wrongly assumed that the very last digit, which stands all by itself, was to distinguish between different editions. I purposely ignored the last digit until now (again, you might have noticed this). Because I discovered what I think is pretty nifty - that digit is a checksum. I recognized that from playing with linux; it's a separate file you download when installing some programs and it is highly recommended that you compare the very long number to the number in the checksum file. If they match up, great - the install went well. If not - groan and start all over again.
However, the idea with having a checksum in an ISBN is to correct human mistakes and to make sure all the other digits are correct. Wikipedia explains the mathy bit here. Basically you multiply each digit by 1 or 3 alternately, add them up, divide the total by 10 then whatever the remainder is, subtract from 10 and you have the checksum.
9x1 + 7x3 + 8x1 + 0x3 + 0x1 + 6x3 + 1x1 + 4x3 + 7x1 + 9x3 + 0x1 + 1x3 =
9 + 21 + 8 + 0 + 0 + 18 + 1 + 12 + 7 + 27 + 0 + 3 =
106/10=10 with remainder of 6
10-6=4
"ISBN is 97800161479014. 4=4. Yay!"
Now I'm aware of the fact that it can be much more complicated than this - all the different codes within the ISBN can be different lengths, yet it still works out if you omit the dashes. If you care to see why, go ahead and browse the source links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_group-0_ISBN_publisher_codes
http://www.isbn-international.org/faqs/view/5
http://www.barcode-us.com/isbn/isbnSymbols.html
Brownie points for those who find out what book I'm currently reading!
Friday, September 17, 2010
Wavy hair
Every once in awhile, I get bored with my thick straight brown hair. I do love the color, with all the different tints (mostly gold and a hint of red), the really thick almost black strands and the really light almost invisible blonde strands. But overall, it's just plain brown. I've never dyed it, only done highlights once and even then I was pressured into it. I did like the red tint but was glad to get to grow out completely so my mom would stop nagging me about "touching it up" because it looked weird (this was while in high school). Anyway, like I was saying, every once in awhile, I get bored with it. Sometimes that involves a haircut (like when I cut it reeeeally short a couple summers ago - Colin didn't really care for it) but other times it just styling it differently.
Last night while we were watching an episode of Smallville, I made my hair up in two French braids and slept with them in. Since it was an off day for washing my hair (I usually wash it every other day, often shampooing twice and conditioning once - it's a pain in the butt to dry because it's so thick, but I need to do it before putting my aids in), I just made sure it didn't get soaked and even then I blow dried it while still in braids. Then I took the braids out and it was nice and wavy. I don't have any hair spray (I did but I used it so infrequently it went bad before most of the bottle was used) so it'll eventually straighten back out as the day wears on. That is, if I don't get exasperated with having it down and put it up in a pony tail like I almost always wear it. I took some pictures but it's hard to take pictures of your own dark hair to show waves and to not show a scary face.
Kind of a long detailed way of saying "I was bored so I made my hair wavy. Here's a pic."
Sometimes, I find myself staring at wavy and curly hair because it reminds me so much of waves and rivers and trees and wind. I don't know how else to describe it. I just get mesmerized by the beauty of it. Does anyone else feel this way or is it just me?
Last night while we were watching an episode of Smallville, I made my hair up in two French braids and slept with them in. Since it was an off day for washing my hair (I usually wash it every other day, often shampooing twice and conditioning once - it's a pain in the butt to dry because it's so thick, but I need to do it before putting my aids in), I just made sure it didn't get soaked and even then I blow dried it while still in braids. Then I took the braids out and it was nice and wavy. I don't have any hair spray (I did but I used it so infrequently it went bad before most of the bottle was used) so it'll eventually straighten back out as the day wears on. That is, if I don't get exasperated with having it down and put it up in a pony tail like I almost always wear it. I took some pictures but it's hard to take pictures of your own dark hair to show waves and to not show a scary face.
Kind of a long detailed way of saying "I was bored so I made my hair wavy. Here's a pic."
Sometimes, I find myself staring at wavy and curly hair because it reminds me so much of waves and rivers and trees and wind. I don't know how else to describe it. I just get mesmerized by the beauty of it. Does anyone else feel this way or is it just me?
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
My mind is starting to knot up on the genealogical research again, so I need to sort that out. I just might possibly have found the Elmina (Holmes) Brooks's parents but need to find more satisfactory evidence before I call it good.
Yesterday and today I have been in Deerfield. One of Colin's Indian coworkers is leaving this weekend so there are events happening both last night and tonight. Last night was bowling, which I hadn't done since study abroad (at least 5 years). It was quite fun actually. I was worried about my wrist but it turns out my thumb is bruised. During the day I spent time in two different libraries and a coffee.shop. Today, it's hiking and looking for letterboxes in the morning and right now back at one of the previous libraries. I'm thinking of going to a bookstore and getting a hot chocolate there after "coffee break" with Colin - we have to switch our cells to a new plan since my parents are switching to Verizon. Monday was less eventful, but lots of online research, an unsuccessful but fun hike for a letterbox, and grocery shopping.
Nobody came to help make applesauce on Sunday. Kind of disappointing, but we're hoping this weekend people will show up. The point of the party isn't exactly making applesauce. That's just the excuse and a fun diversion. We just want to hang out with people. So we have 25 pounds of apples sitting in the garage and the plan is to get people intrigued by inviting them to pick apples Saturday morning then start making sauce in the afternoon and probably into Sunday. That way people can show up either day - fingers crossed!
A couple things about applesauce making: there's no need to peel and core if you get a special apple musher grinder thingie. We actually got ours as a gift from Colin's mom who found it at a thrift shop. You still have to check and cut out any bad parts.
Memories of my grandma and my mom making sauce aren't all that pleasant. It was fun to spend some time in the orchard, see the mounds of apples, spend time with family, and smell apples all through the house for a while. But I remember spending hours in the orchard, picking *all* the little apples that had hope and were reachable, the hot steamy kitchen, groans over apples not having anything edible on them after all (after peeling and cutting out bad bits to find the whole apple is a bad bit), the accidental contamination of jars, etc.
Fun fact: Did you know that applesauce color comes from the skin of the apple? Crab apples make sauce pink but their insides are very white.
Later: Oops, forgot to post this earlier.
Yesterday and today I have been in Deerfield. One of Colin's Indian coworkers is leaving this weekend so there are events happening both last night and tonight. Last night was bowling, which I hadn't done since study abroad (at least 5 years). It was quite fun actually. I was worried about my wrist but it turns out my thumb is bruised. During the day I spent time in two different libraries and a coffee.shop. Today, it's hiking and looking for letterboxes in the morning and right now back at one of the previous libraries. I'm thinking of going to a bookstore and getting a hot chocolate there after "coffee break" with Colin - we have to switch our cells to a new plan since my parents are switching to Verizon. Monday was less eventful, but lots of online research, an unsuccessful but fun hike for a letterbox, and grocery shopping.
Nobody came to help make applesauce on Sunday. Kind of disappointing, but we're hoping this weekend people will show up. The point of the party isn't exactly making applesauce. That's just the excuse and a fun diversion. We just want to hang out with people. So we have 25 pounds of apples sitting in the garage and the plan is to get people intrigued by inviting them to pick apples Saturday morning then start making sauce in the afternoon and probably into Sunday. That way people can show up either day - fingers crossed!
A couple things about applesauce making: there's no need to peel and core if you get a special apple musher grinder thingie. We actually got ours as a gift from Colin's mom who found it at a thrift shop. You still have to check and cut out any bad parts.
Memories of my grandma and my mom making sauce aren't all that pleasant. It was fun to spend some time in the orchard, see the mounds of apples, spend time with family, and smell apples all through the house for a while. But I remember spending hours in the orchard, picking *all* the little apples that had hope and were reachable, the hot steamy kitchen, groans over apples not having anything edible on them after all (after peeling and cutting out bad bits to find the whole apple is a bad bit), the accidental contamination of jars, etc.
Fun fact: Did you know that applesauce color comes from the skin of the apple? Crab apples make sauce pink but their insides are very white.
Later: Oops, forgot to post this earlier.
Friday, September 10, 2010
The Brooks line
I've decided to write up one of my family line's history as I know it so far and make it "human readable." I hope it's not too dull to read. I've eliminated a lot of things from the following passages, mostly the names of those I'm not directly related to (except for siblings of a direct ancestor). I've found a lot of direct relative's sibling's family members. Why do I care about what happens to non-direct family members? Well, I didn't used to, actually. When I started out writing things on charts when I was 15 years old, I just wanted those I directly descended from and not make things overwhelming. Now, I recognize and have proven the idea that you can find more information about earlier roots by looking at records of people like cousins. For example, their record might list a smaller birthplace area (such as Sandusky, Ohio, rather than just plain Ohio) for a parent. Or I might go "hey! there's other people with the same last name in that cemetery!" and find that the previously unknown parents are buried there. Also, it'd be cool to find distant relatives living today, but I haven't actually managed that beyond who my Grandpa Larsen's niece knows.
-----
Brooks family, 1833/4-1922
The Brooks branch has been in Michigan a relatively long time. The first record of a Brooks in the state is in the 1860 U.S. Census. Oscar is 27 years old and Elmina (maiden name Holmes) is 24. The census shows the parents and two children, Alonzo and Everett, ages 3 and 1. Parents are listed as born in New York and children in Michigan. Before this, who knows? I just can't get past this 1860 barrier.
Ross, also written as Rob in some places, is born in 1861. Then my great-great grandpa Frank is born in 1863 in Jackson County. In 1869, there is records showing that a baby sister was born but died within the month. This means that the family has moved to Clinton County since 1863. There is no record of Oscar participating in the Civil War.
The second hint of the whole family is in the 1870 U.S. Census. Here, all four children (Alonzo, Eva, Ross, and Frank) living with Oscar and Elmina are listed as born in Michigan. Later that year, Harriet is born. In 1875, Alonzo marries Anna (Warner). Eva marries Loren A. Stone in 1877.
In 1880, only Ross, Frank, and Harriet are living with their parents. In 1885, Eva died. She was 26 years old and married. It's not clear why she died, but her married name was Eva R. Stone. Ross marries Nellie (Hunt) in 1887.
Frank marries my great-great grandma Bertha (Smith) in 1891. My great-grandpa Lee was born in 1899. He has two brothers, Ebbie (born 1892) and Ransom (born 1906 or 1907). When Lee was 9 years old, the family moved to Oakland County, where he remained the rest of his life.
Great-grandpa Lee marries Bessie (Francis) in 1920. Their first child was born not too long after that but died as an infant. In 1922, my grandpa LeRoy was born. Another son is born in 1828 but dies the same year.
-----
I started listing when and where all these people died but then decided it wasn't all that interesting (and, admittedly, kind of depressing). I've avoided mentioning anyone who is still alive (such as my grandpa's siblings) for the sake of privacy.
If you are one for details, you might have noticed at least one contradiction. Apparently census takers sometimes got the names bungled, or the birth recorders got tired and listed the wrong sex, and so on and so forth. One runs into the "human factor" all the time in genealogy. I use "human factor" as an umbrella term for all those mistakes and other things such as the person lying about their age or where their parents came from.
First, Elmina's name has been spelled Almina, Almira, Alvina, Elmira, and probably other ways. Why am I sure that Elmina is the real one? I'm not; but that's what's on her headstone and is the one that comes up the most. Second, the Everett / Eva confusion. Everett is listed as 1 years old in 1860. Eva is listed as 11 years old in 1870. There doesn't appear to be any record listing both of them as existing at the same time. But I can only find record of Eva past 1870. Weird, huh? Two theories: Elmina didn't really know what sex her 1-year-old was. Or the mix-up is the census taker's fault.
Another less weird one is Rob/Ross, whose actual name is Ross as is shown in marriage and death certificates. However, the sex confusion pops up again a generation later with Ebbie. There are two birth certificates - same date, place, and parents - but they're both listed as girls, with names Effie and Ebbie. However, I know it's a male Ebbie because there are records of him in censuses, marrying twice (to females), and having a possibly adopted daughter. I'm not certain, though, if it was a duplication of the records (I haven't been able to access the actual birth records, just transcripts) or if there were twins born, they were thought to be both girls, and then Effie died young.
This mixing up of genders for birth records or when they're very young interests me. Now, people expect to know immediately whether they say "aww she's so cute!" or "he's going to be a big boy someday!" It's awkward when the baby isn't decked out in pink or blue. But just a century ago? People were a bit more focused on other things, such as making sure the baby got fed which was a bit more of a challenge then for farming folks than for most people today. Most babies spent the first couple years of their lives or so clad in a simple white gown. Makes changing the diapers easier at least. I am not saying that the old days were better; after all, so many infants died and I don't think houses were as well baby-proofed. I'm just thinking maybe we need to think about whether babies need complete, miniaturized sneakers before they can focus on whatever's in front of them - or walk. Okay, strange tangent from genealogy, but that's one of the fun things about doing this kind of research. You never know what you might find!
-----
Brooks family, 1833/4-1922
The Brooks branch has been in Michigan a relatively long time. The first record of a Brooks in the state is in the 1860 U.S. Census. Oscar is 27 years old and Elmina (maiden name Holmes) is 24. The census shows the parents and two children, Alonzo and Everett, ages 3 and 1. Parents are listed as born in New York and children in Michigan. Before this, who knows? I just can't get past this 1860 barrier.
Ross, also written as Rob in some places, is born in 1861. Then my great-great grandpa Frank is born in 1863 in Jackson County. In 1869, there is records showing that a baby sister was born but died within the month. This means that the family has moved to Clinton County since 1863. There is no record of Oscar participating in the Civil War.
The second hint of the whole family is in the 1870 U.S. Census. Here, all four children (Alonzo, Eva, Ross, and Frank) living with Oscar and Elmina are listed as born in Michigan. Later that year, Harriet is born. In 1875, Alonzo marries Anna (Warner). Eva marries Loren A. Stone in 1877.
In 1880, only Ross, Frank, and Harriet are living with their parents. In 1885, Eva died. She was 26 years old and married. It's not clear why she died, but her married name was Eva R. Stone. Ross marries Nellie (Hunt) in 1887.
Frank marries my great-great grandma Bertha (Smith) in 1891. My great-grandpa Lee was born in 1899. He has two brothers, Ebbie (born 1892) and Ransom (born 1906 or 1907). When Lee was 9 years old, the family moved to Oakland County, where he remained the rest of his life.
Great-grandpa Lee marries Bessie (Francis) in 1920. Their first child was born not too long after that but died as an infant. In 1922, my grandpa LeRoy was born. Another son is born in 1828 but dies the same year.
-----
I started listing when and where all these people died but then decided it wasn't all that interesting (and, admittedly, kind of depressing). I've avoided mentioning anyone who is still alive (such as my grandpa's siblings) for the sake of privacy.
If you are one for details, you might have noticed at least one contradiction. Apparently census takers sometimes got the names bungled, or the birth recorders got tired and listed the wrong sex, and so on and so forth. One runs into the "human factor" all the time in genealogy. I use "human factor" as an umbrella term for all those mistakes and other things such as the person lying about their age or where their parents came from.
First, Elmina's name has been spelled Almina, Almira, Alvina, Elmira, and probably other ways. Why am I sure that Elmina is the real one? I'm not; but that's what's on her headstone and is the one that comes up the most. Second, the Everett / Eva confusion. Everett is listed as 1 years old in 1860. Eva is listed as 11 years old in 1870. There doesn't appear to be any record listing both of them as existing at the same time. But I can only find record of Eva past 1870. Weird, huh? Two theories: Elmina didn't really know what sex her 1-year-old was. Or the mix-up is the census taker's fault.
Another less weird one is Rob/Ross, whose actual name is Ross as is shown in marriage and death certificates. However, the sex confusion pops up again a generation later with Ebbie. There are two birth certificates - same date, place, and parents - but they're both listed as girls, with names Effie and Ebbie. However, I know it's a male Ebbie because there are records of him in censuses, marrying twice (to females), and having a possibly adopted daughter. I'm not certain, though, if it was a duplication of the records (I haven't been able to access the actual birth records, just transcripts) or if there were twins born, they were thought to be both girls, and then Effie died young.
This mixing up of genders for birth records or when they're very young interests me. Now, people expect to know immediately whether they say "aww she's so cute!" or "he's going to be a big boy someday!" It's awkward when the baby isn't decked out in pink or blue. But just a century ago? People were a bit more focused on other things, such as making sure the baby got fed which was a bit more of a challenge then for farming folks than for most people today. Most babies spent the first couple years of their lives or so clad in a simple white gown. Makes changing the diapers easier at least. I am not saying that the old days were better; after all, so many infants died and I don't think houses were as well baby-proofed. I'm just thinking maybe we need to think about whether babies need complete, miniaturized sneakers before they can focus on whatever's in front of them - or walk. Okay, strange tangent from genealogy, but that's one of the fun things about doing this kind of research. You never know what you might find!
Big dragonfly and baby dove
My cold is definitely going away but nowhere near as fast as I'd like. I spent yesterday with a headache and a weird sense of nausea, probably from all the gross stuff ending up in my stomach. I was barely able to eat any lunch but thankfully managed to eat more for dinner.
Since we got both packages of toys yesterday, we couldn't resist breaking them open last night. I played with the dremel but not on anything consequential; just on a scrap piece of plastic to get familiar with the tool. Colin stayed up past his bedtime; he was having too much fun playing with his new blinking toy. It's actually a very tiny computer that is very versatile and can be made to do lots of different things. This morning, he showed me that it blinks the prime numbers - flash flash ... flash flash flash ... flash flash flash flash flash ... I don't know how he does it - I just sum it up to magic. Think about it - how is computer programming not like magic?
The early days of September are one of my favorite mini-seasons; when the leaves are still green but there's a crispness in the sunshine and breeze. This morning when I stepped out to water our container garden, I spotted a big beautiful dragonfly. I was afraid of scaring it off or it being gone when I ran back inside to get the camera, but it let me take lots of pictures and get pretty close to it, then I dared to try to get it to sit on my finger. And it did! Definitely made my day. A picture of the big beauty.
I had noticed a garage sale happening right across the street when I took the garbage out and so I went over there. Not much that I cared for, but I couldn't resist getting a sweater that just seemed to be "me." Blue stripes, hooded, no buttons or zipper but a belt, and verrrry long. Perfect for those days I just want to be extra comfy but still stylish. I usually wear my roomy dark grey sweatshirt with "KALAMAZOO COLLEGE" in big bright orange letters across the front on such days. Extra comfy days, not stylish days. Duh. I may not be a fashionista, but I am aware of how to match clothes and all that. Sometimes I just choose to purposely wear clashing colors.
On the way back, I peeked in with the mama dove who has been nesting in the tree right out front. Earlier this summer, we had a robin family there. That's another story, really, but we like to imagine that the two baby robins are enjoying the life of flying around and eating worms now. I'm not sure how long ago we noticed the dove sitting in the nest, which had been modified to fit the larger birds. I do remember seeing the papa once, bringing twigs to the mama. Colin likes to walk up and say hello to the mama before going to work and after coming home. He did so this morning, but it wasn't until I peeked in a few hours later that there was signs of another life in the nest. I tried to get good clear pictures but it's so hard to capture a mostly hidden ball of fuzz. Here's a couple of most successful shots.
Not entirely sure what the mama and the baby are doing ... seems to be that mama is holding the baby by its beak. If you look closely, you can see its little eye blearily looking back in both pictures. I would guess it had hatched sometime between 9 and 11 this morning. I didn't notice any signs of other babies. But it's very exciting.
Since we got both packages of toys yesterday, we couldn't resist breaking them open last night. I played with the dremel but not on anything consequential; just on a scrap piece of plastic to get familiar with the tool. Colin stayed up past his bedtime; he was having too much fun playing with his new blinking toy. It's actually a very tiny computer that is very versatile and can be made to do lots of different things. This morning, he showed me that it blinks the prime numbers - flash flash ... flash flash flash ... flash flash flash flash flash ... I don't know how he does it - I just sum it up to magic. Think about it - how is computer programming not like magic?
The early days of September are one of my favorite mini-seasons; when the leaves are still green but there's a crispness in the sunshine and breeze. This morning when I stepped out to water our container garden, I spotted a big beautiful dragonfly. I was afraid of scaring it off or it being gone when I ran back inside to get the camera, but it let me take lots of pictures and get pretty close to it, then I dared to try to get it to sit on my finger. And it did! Definitely made my day. A picture of the big beauty.
I had noticed a garage sale happening right across the street when I took the garbage out and so I went over there. Not much that I cared for, but I couldn't resist getting a sweater that just seemed to be "me." Blue stripes, hooded, no buttons or zipper but a belt, and verrrry long. Perfect for those days I just want to be extra comfy but still stylish. I usually wear my roomy dark grey sweatshirt with "KALAMAZOO COLLEGE" in big bright orange letters across the front on such days. Extra comfy days, not stylish days. Duh. I may not be a fashionista, but I am aware of how to match clothes and all that. Sometimes I just choose to purposely wear clashing colors.
On the way back, I peeked in with the mama dove who has been nesting in the tree right out front. Earlier this summer, we had a robin family there. That's another story, really, but we like to imagine that the two baby robins are enjoying the life of flying around and eating worms now. I'm not sure how long ago we noticed the dove sitting in the nest, which had been modified to fit the larger birds. I do remember seeing the papa once, bringing twigs to the mama. Colin likes to walk up and say hello to the mama before going to work and after coming home. He did so this morning, but it wasn't until I peeked in a few hours later that there was signs of another life in the nest. I tried to get good clear pictures but it's so hard to capture a mostly hidden ball of fuzz. Here's a couple of most successful shots.
Not entirely sure what the mama and the baby are doing ... seems to be that mama is holding the baby by its beak. If you look closely, you can see its little eye blearily looking back in both pictures. I would guess it had hatched sometime between 9 and 11 this morning. I didn't notice any signs of other babies. But it's very exciting.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Well, I guess that's what I get for speaking too soon; the cold managed to knock me down for the past couple of days but it seems like it's now solidly going the way of the dodo bird. One thing I am thankful for is the cooler weather; it allows me to wrap up in a blanket with a cup of hot tea. Which is more or less what I've been doing the past couple of days.
Today we're expecting two packages of, well, toys. They should be fun projects for this fall/winter and I'll be sure to blog about them along the way. Probably more "Look how cute/awesome/geeky this is!" than step-by-steps. Colin is planning to blog about the more specific aspects, since he's noticed how immensely helpful other blogs have been in learning what to get and how to make them. Who knows, I might end up doing more details, but I doubt it. Example: Last night we were in Radio Shack and Colin was reading aloud a couple of things we needed and I just stared at him blankly and said "I have no clue what those are." And I meant no clue. The names didn't give me hint of what vague category they belonged in. So he pointed me to the right drawers and I just muttered the names to myself over and over. It's rare that I feel so clueless. But all was not lost; I do have some experience with soldering so I got to ask more intelligent questions like "Are we getting a cleaner in the mail?"
Hmm, I can't really think of anything else to say. Guess I have yet to get back my creativity, not to mention the rest of my brain cells. Oh well, I'll just post this for now and not feel too bad posting a longer entry if my brain cells do decide to show up later today.
Today we're expecting two packages of, well, toys. They should be fun projects for this fall/winter and I'll be sure to blog about them along the way. Probably more "Look how cute/awesome/geeky this is!" than step-by-steps. Colin is planning to blog about the more specific aspects, since he's noticed how immensely helpful other blogs have been in learning what to get and how to make them. Who knows, I might end up doing more details, but I doubt it. Example: Last night we were in Radio Shack and Colin was reading aloud a couple of things we needed and I just stared at him blankly and said "I have no clue what those are." And I meant no clue. The names didn't give me hint of what vague category they belonged in. So he pointed me to the right drawers and I just muttered the names to myself over and over. It's rare that I feel so clueless. But all was not lost; I do have some experience with soldering so I got to ask more intelligent questions like "Are we getting a cleaner in the mail?"
Hmm, I can't really think of anything else to say. Guess I have yet to get back my creativity, not to mention the rest of my brain cells. Oh well, I'll just post this for now and not feel too bad posting a longer entry if my brain cells do decide to show up later today.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Indiana and an Introduction to LBing
I was intrigued by Kate's post about the history of Labor Day and her thoughts on it. While I don't have a job, I find this another way to be reminded of how lucky I am. I try constantly to count my blessings but the counting can always use encouragement. Speaking of which, "Thanksgiving Day" is simply too silly to me as a former undergrad history major, but that's another issue. Labor Day is more free of forced traditions. Honoring Labor Day by remembering its roots and being thankful for what we do have is especially relevant these days.
Colin is puttering around somewhere, I think upstairs. He's still looking for some electronic tool stuff that he remembers owning. I say "remembers" because he hasn't seen them since two moves ago. Not a huge surprise, since he has at least three huge tupperware boxes full of stuff and that's just what's stacked in the corner behind the bedroom door. We've been brainstorming and getting excited with a DIY project that we both can/will do together. I probably shouldn't go into details because it might not work and if it does, it's going to be a great kind of present to give to people.
He has emerged triumphant from upstairs - even brought down two things of chocolate at least two years old ... oh yay. And candles! We got a bunch of candles from Bullfrog Factory last Christmastime. We needed something for Colin's family and one of the things Charlevoix is known for are these special candles. They have a secret way of making them so that the glow is evenly distributed throughout. So of course we bought a couple for ourselves which I promptly forgot about. It's a nice and timely surprise though, especially with the weather changing.
Being in Indiana for a couple nights with Colin's family and going to the wedding was nice and we were glad we went. I even had some fun slow dancing with Colin and jamming it with his sisters. We seem to have caught something from one of the four flights we took to get there and back but it's not too debilitating. I just keep sneezing a lot, my head hurts mildly, and my throat tickles sometimes. I can tell it's not just allergies but that's about it. We even got Colin's dad and youngest sister to go letterboxing with us while the rest raided the Goodwills.
I realized I haven't yet mentioned letterboxing (LBing for short) on this blog yet, but that needs at least one blog entry all to itself. Basically, it's like geocaching without the GPS devices. You find them by anything between precise directions and a single line of code. They can be as specific as "in Illinois" to "on the west side of the base of the third bush from your right next to the John Smith headstone in Ever-Rest Cemetery."
The basic situation: You find one. It has a logbook and a stamp. You have a personal logbook and stamp with you, a pen, and some kind of stamping material such as pads and/or markers. You stamp your personal stamp into the box's logbook, sign, and date it. You stamp the box's stamp in your personal logbook, write down the name, place, date, whatever else you want in your personal logbook. Thus, there is evidence you found it for both the person who made and put out (called "planted") the box and for yourself.
That's the basic idea of letterboxes. I've found about 40 to 50 so far (depends on which ones "count"). I promise, I'll explain more soon.
Also, if you haven't yet seen the movie "Kick Ass," get it. Watch it. It's pretty good. There is a fair amount of spurting blood but even for someone as squeamish as myself it was not bad at all. It's just so ridiculous. I like the story lines and the characters are awesome, especially Hit Girl. :)
Colin is puttering around somewhere, I think upstairs. He's still looking for some electronic tool stuff that he remembers owning. I say "remembers" because he hasn't seen them since two moves ago. Not a huge surprise, since he has at least three huge tupperware boxes full of stuff and that's just what's stacked in the corner behind the bedroom door. We've been brainstorming and getting excited with a DIY project that we both can/will do together. I probably shouldn't go into details because it might not work and if it does, it's going to be a great kind of present to give to people.
He has emerged triumphant from upstairs - even brought down two things of chocolate at least two years old ... oh yay. And candles! We got a bunch of candles from Bullfrog Factory last Christmastime. We needed something for Colin's family and one of the things Charlevoix is known for are these special candles. They have a secret way of making them so that the glow is evenly distributed throughout. So of course we bought a couple for ourselves which I promptly forgot about. It's a nice and timely surprise though, especially with the weather changing.
Being in Indiana for a couple nights with Colin's family and going to the wedding was nice and we were glad we went. I even had some fun slow dancing with Colin and jamming it with his sisters. We seem to have caught something from one of the four flights we took to get there and back but it's not too debilitating. I just keep sneezing a lot, my head hurts mildly, and my throat tickles sometimes. I can tell it's not just allergies but that's about it. We even got Colin's dad and youngest sister to go letterboxing with us while the rest raided the Goodwills.
I realized I haven't yet mentioned letterboxing (LBing for short) on this blog yet, but that needs at least one blog entry all to itself. Basically, it's like geocaching without the GPS devices. You find them by anything between precise directions and a single line of code. They can be as specific as "in Illinois" to "on the west side of the base of the third bush from your right next to the John Smith headstone in Ever-Rest Cemetery."
The basic situation: You find one. It has a logbook and a stamp. You have a personal logbook and stamp with you, a pen, and some kind of stamping material such as pads and/or markers. You stamp your personal stamp into the box's logbook, sign, and date it. You stamp the box's stamp in your personal logbook, write down the name, place, date, whatever else you want in your personal logbook. Thus, there is evidence you found it for both the person who made and put out (called "planted") the box and for yourself.
That's the basic idea of letterboxes. I've found about 40 to 50 so far (depends on which ones "count"). I promise, I'll explain more soon.
Also, if you haven't yet seen the movie "Kick Ass," get it. Watch it. It's pretty good. There is a fair amount of spurting blood but even for someone as squeamish as myself it was not bad at all. It's just so ridiculous. I like the story lines and the characters are awesome, especially Hit Girl. :)
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Discombobulated State
Today has been one of those days where you and everyone you encounter seems to be slightly off kilter. For example a conversation in the car on the way to the train station (Colin's driving):
*we turn before I expected us to*
Me: Why are we going to [A] stop?
Colin: You mean [B] stop.
Me: Right. *note: we usually go to [A] but it doesn't have an actual depot. I still sometimes get the two stop names mixed up. If your address is one, but you go to the other more often, it's only natural that you think your stop is the one like your address. Right?*
Colin: I need to buy a monthly pass.
Me: Oh that's right. *now remembers how he got in trouble with the conductor last night for having no cash or pass* Did you remember cash to get it?
Colin: You know they take credit card when you buy a pass in the train station.
Me: Oh, yeah.
Colin: Gee, thanks for being so helpful and remembering things for me. *cue tease session*
So then we get to the station and he buys his pass. Then realizes too late that he made a mistake. We can only go to [B] stop this month because [A] stop requires a different pass. That shouldn't be a problem, since the train gets there slightly later than at [A]. However, the drive to [A] is easier since there's no stop lights and you aren't required to cross the tracks. So we'll see how this goes. Surprisingly, I think we've only missed the train once, maybe twice, this summer. Both times we ran back to the house and I grabbed stuff to entertain myself with for a day near his office.
I came back and had some breakfast before heading over to the church library - again. The person "in charge" was running quite late - she almost forgot about coming, since the days have been changed. One of the guys completely forgot his hearing aids so we were quite noisy which is okay because there's no one else near enough to care. I nearly finished tagging and sorting the stack of books by DDC number that I'd been working on, and then I had to run to the doctor's office. Should be getting a call back this afternoon about the results of a test and whether it's a go or not to fill the prescription.
I had myself a lazy lunch of spaghettios. We're currently out of clean microwavable bowls so I used a tupperware container. What made me laugh was that I'd chosen to be colorful and pulled out an orange one; I didn't realize until after I dumped the can's contents in it that the food matched the bowl! This happens to me sometimes. I guess you could say it's "getting stuck on a color." This can prove fruitful or disastrous, depending on whether the outfit of the same color in different shades clashes or not. The biggest example is the fact that I'd spray-painted the free desk this lovely maroon (I love maroon) before I noticed that the curtains right where the desk was going are essentially the same color! Oh, and our Prius is maroon too. My high school colors were maroon and white, so my cross country sweatshirt is maroon. My purse from India is maroon. My sweatshirt from Rome is maroon. My scarf from Venice is maroon. Sheesh.
Not sure what I'll be doing the rest of the day, other than running the dishwasher. I really need to clean the bathroom. I'd like to take a hike if the weather holds. Need to read my book quota for the day. Perhaps fill the rest of the time with genealogical research. Also should think what to do with cucumbers to make a meal with salmon. Can't print the tickets for tomorrow's flight until about 6:00. Oh, we're going to southern Indiana for a family wedding. Evansville, which I've never been to before and looking at a map is making me realize just how far *north* Bloomington really is in the state. Two years of driving back and forth from Chicago disagrees with the idea, but maps don't lie. Well, that's not exactly true ... but for this instance, it is. Anyway, I should kick off before I allow myself to ramble the day away any further.
*we turn before I expected us to*
Me: Why are we going to [A] stop?
Colin: You mean [B] stop.
Me: Right. *note: we usually go to [A] but it doesn't have an actual depot. I still sometimes get the two stop names mixed up. If your address is one, but you go to the other more often, it's only natural that you think your stop is the one like your address. Right?*
Colin: I need to buy a monthly pass.
Me: Oh that's right. *now remembers how he got in trouble with the conductor last night for having no cash or pass* Did you remember cash to get it?
Colin: You know they take credit card when you buy a pass in the train station.
Me: Oh, yeah.
Colin: Gee, thanks for being so helpful and remembering things for me. *cue tease session*
So then we get to the station and he buys his pass. Then realizes too late that he made a mistake. We can only go to [B] stop this month because [A] stop requires a different pass. That shouldn't be a problem, since the train gets there slightly later than at [A]. However, the drive to [A] is easier since there's no stop lights and you aren't required to cross the tracks. So we'll see how this goes. Surprisingly, I think we've only missed the train once, maybe twice, this summer. Both times we ran back to the house and I grabbed stuff to entertain myself with for a day near his office.
I came back and had some breakfast before heading over to the church library - again. The person "in charge" was running quite late - she almost forgot about coming, since the days have been changed. One of the guys completely forgot his hearing aids so we were quite noisy which is okay because there's no one else near enough to care. I nearly finished tagging and sorting the stack of books by DDC number that I'd been working on, and then I had to run to the doctor's office. Should be getting a call back this afternoon about the results of a test and whether it's a go or not to fill the prescription.
I had myself a lazy lunch of spaghettios. We're currently out of clean microwavable bowls so I used a tupperware container. What made me laugh was that I'd chosen to be colorful and pulled out an orange one; I didn't realize until after I dumped the can's contents in it that the food matched the bowl! This happens to me sometimes. I guess you could say it's "getting stuck on a color." This can prove fruitful or disastrous, depending on whether the outfit of the same color in different shades clashes or not. The biggest example is the fact that I'd spray-painted the free desk this lovely maroon (I love maroon) before I noticed that the curtains right where the desk was going are essentially the same color! Oh, and our Prius is maroon too. My high school colors were maroon and white, so my cross country sweatshirt is maroon. My purse from India is maroon. My sweatshirt from Rome is maroon. My scarf from Venice is maroon. Sheesh.
Not sure what I'll be doing the rest of the day, other than running the dishwasher. I really need to clean the bathroom. I'd like to take a hike if the weather holds. Need to read my book quota for the day. Perhaps fill the rest of the time with genealogical research. Also should think what to do with cucumbers to make a meal with salmon. Can't print the tickets for tomorrow's flight until about 6:00. Oh, we're going to southern Indiana for a family wedding. Evansville, which I've never been to before and looking at a map is making me realize just how far *north* Bloomington really is in the state. Two years of driving back and forth from Chicago disagrees with the idea, but maps don't lie. Well, that's not exactly true ... but for this instance, it is. Anyway, I should kick off before I allow myself to ramble the day away any further.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Hunting Dewey Decimals
This summer, since a couple weeks after we moved here, I've been volunteering at the church library almost every Wednesday morning. It can be quite fun and it definitely is Good For Me. I get to use my sad, lonely MLS on something other than my own little projects.
There is a lot of work that needs to be done to it. First, it wasn't very well kept for most of the last 20 years so books are way out of date - my favorite is "Christianity and Communism Today". Written in 1960, it was probably of interest and relevance then, but now? Not so much. An excellent book for an archival library to hold onto, perhaps, but not for a small church library catering to those more interested in current Christianity than outdated ideas.
Second, there is a whole mound of donated books that aren't yet catalogued. And a lot of books have apparently sprouted legs and run off. And we're trying to get the card catalog straightened out - some books don't have cards and some cards don't have books, and it's not limited to just the two types I mentioned above. It's everywhere.
Oh, and you heard me correctly: it is an actual card catalog. There is no need to computerize the records and then require church-goers to check in and out books on a dedicated computer. We haven't even gotten to the stage of how we're setting up the borrowing system. The goal now is to get the books in order.
Since I'm the youngest of the volunteer crew by at least four decades, I've been using computer and internet to help look up the DDC (Dewey Decimal Classification system) numbers for books not yet assigned. Previously, the library was set up in a weird half-self-tailored and half-dewey classification system, with books in large groups such as "Faith in Life" and split between hard-cover and paperback. This has taken about a month of typing up ISBNs, titles, and authors while at the library, then looking them up for preferred DDC numbers. For most of them, I've been using a whole artillery of sites, none of which could do the task alone: ISBNdb.com, LC catalog, WorldCat, and librarything.com - even sometimes having to plain Google it. There were still a few searches that would prove unfruitful.
However, today I happened across an amazing tool - http://classify.oclc.org/classify2/
I started throwing all the books at it without even needing to consult the other sites for most of them. The ones I didn't find, I fiddled with on Google and determined what typos I'd made. I went back to try the ones that I'd been unsuccessful with earlier and found eight of them. I also made use of the tool linked to the classify site, http://deweyresearch.oclc.org/ddcbrowser2/ to determine better which one was most appropriate for the church library when the classify site showed an equal balance between one or two DDC numbers. For the total of about 250 books I've looked up, only three remained unfound. THREE. That is pretty awesome.
So, in case you didn't get my drift, I'm in love with http://classify.oclc.org/classify2/ It has so many awesome things about it that just make the librarian in me salivate. It doesn't stop at giving you the MARC record which contains merely, and only sometimes, the classification number assigned by a particular library. Oh no. It gleans information of how many libraries in the OCLC network have the book and how many assigned what DDC number to it. I wish you do or could understand just how amazing this is, but it would help to trudge through 200 books without the Classify site first.
It wasn't for lack of researching that I only just discovered this tool; I'd looked a lot of places trying to determine what was best to use, including a focus on how to use my phone's camera (Google Nexus One) and a barcode scanner to try to speed up the process. I tried out a handful of programs but after one of them crashed on me when I had 40 scanned in, and the fact that not many books actually had a barcode that I had to deal with (if they have one, they most likely also have the DDC number on the back of their title page also - none of the older books have those listed). But for future reference, and perhaps helping anyone who happens to need the information and comes across this blogpost, aNobiit works okay - when it doesn't crash. It says it has the ISBNs but when I try to export them the email text body is devoid of ISBNs. aNobii scanner, which is a different program but looks the same, *might* actually work but I just don't care to try it. However, today I accidentally discovered that Clipbot would work just fine. I haven't tested it but there's very little chance for it to crash and lose the ISBNs since there's no need to connect to internet at all; it simply reads and makes a lists of the numbers, then you can copy it to the phone clipboard and paste them into a text document (assuming you've got a text editor installed). This is exactly what I was looking for in the first place. *sigh*
Oh, and I forgot to mention that I don't have a data plan on my phone and there's no wifi at the church, hence ignoring those that queue up the web browser and search for the book as soon as you scan the barcode. I did get to play with these types a bit on our own home library, and it could be a fun project to catalog or at least record all the books in the house. Someday, someday.
There is a lot of work that needs to be done to it. First, it wasn't very well kept for most of the last 20 years so books are way out of date - my favorite is "Christianity and Communism Today". Written in 1960, it was probably of interest and relevance then, but now? Not so much. An excellent book for an archival library to hold onto, perhaps, but not for a small church library catering to those more interested in current Christianity than outdated ideas.
Second, there is a whole mound of donated books that aren't yet catalogued. And a lot of books have apparently sprouted legs and run off. And we're trying to get the card catalog straightened out - some books don't have cards and some cards don't have books, and it's not limited to just the two types I mentioned above. It's everywhere.
Oh, and you heard me correctly: it is an actual card catalog. There is no need to computerize the records and then require church-goers to check in and out books on a dedicated computer. We haven't even gotten to the stage of how we're setting up the borrowing system. The goal now is to get the books in order.
Since I'm the youngest of the volunteer crew by at least four decades, I've been using computer and internet to help look up the DDC (Dewey Decimal Classification system) numbers for books not yet assigned. Previously, the library was set up in a weird half-self-tailored and half-dewey classification system, with books in large groups such as "Faith in Life" and split between hard-cover and paperback. This has taken about a month of typing up ISBNs, titles, and authors while at the library, then looking them up for preferred DDC numbers. For most of them, I've been using a whole artillery of sites, none of which could do the task alone: ISBNdb.com, LC catalog, WorldCat, and librarything.com - even sometimes having to plain Google it. There were still a few searches that would prove unfruitful.
However, today I happened across an amazing tool - http://classify.oclc.org/classify2/
I started throwing all the books at it without even needing to consult the other sites for most of them. The ones I didn't find, I fiddled with on Google and determined what typos I'd made. I went back to try the ones that I'd been unsuccessful with earlier and found eight of them. I also made use of the tool linked to the classify site, http://deweyresearch.oclc.org/ddcbrowser2/ to determine better which one was most appropriate for the church library when the classify site showed an equal balance between one or two DDC numbers. For the total of about 250 books I've looked up, only three remained unfound. THREE. That is pretty awesome.
So, in case you didn't get my drift, I'm in love with http://classify.oclc.org/classify2/ It has so many awesome things about it that just make the librarian in me salivate. It doesn't stop at giving you the MARC record which contains merely, and only sometimes, the classification number assigned by a particular library. Oh no. It gleans information of how many libraries in the OCLC network have the book and how many assigned what DDC number to it. I wish you do or could understand just how amazing this is, but it would help to trudge through 200 books without the Classify site first.
It wasn't for lack of researching that I only just discovered this tool; I'd looked a lot of places trying to determine what was best to use, including a focus on how to use my phone's camera (Google Nexus One) and a barcode scanner to try to speed up the process. I tried out a handful of programs but after one of them crashed on me when I had 40 scanned in, and the fact that not many books actually had a barcode that I had to deal with (if they have one, they most likely also have the DDC number on the back of their title page also - none of the older books have those listed). But for future reference, and perhaps helping anyone who happens to need the information and comes across this blogpost, aNobiit works okay - when it doesn't crash. It says it has the ISBNs but when I try to export them the email text body is devoid of ISBNs. aNobii scanner, which is a different program but looks the same, *might* actually work but I just don't care to try it. However, today I accidentally discovered that Clipbot would work just fine. I haven't tested it but there's very little chance for it to crash and lose the ISBNs since there's no need to connect to internet at all; it simply reads and makes a lists of the numbers, then you can copy it to the phone clipboard and paste them into a text document (assuming you've got a text editor installed). This is exactly what I was looking for in the first place. *sigh*
Oh, and I forgot to mention that I don't have a data plan on my phone and there's no wifi at the church, hence ignoring those that queue up the web browser and search for the book as soon as you scan the barcode. I did get to play with these types a bit on our own home library, and it could be a fun project to catalog or at least record all the books in the house. Someday, someday.
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