Category Archives: none of the above

Holidays, wind, computers, and dinosaurs

I’m back at work after a week off.

During that time we spent some time at Wilson’s Promontory which was lovely, even if teh violent wind forced us home 12 hours early. Bookgirl had a wonderful time wandering around the campground pointing and screaming at seagulls and other children, and reading Spot books.

In other news, my computer died. This has been rather frustrating. Luckily though, there was little of substance on my computer. It did however, make me wonder what would have happened if it had been Mrs Bookboy’s computer that had died. Along with her thesis and most of Bookgirl’s baby photos. Backing up is important. I am now a backup zealot. Backup or die.

All this does mean however that I will soon order a new toy. Here’s a hint.

To ease myself back into work today I read stories about dinosaurs and dragons to a group of pre-schoolers. Have I mentioned before how much I like my job?

Today’s installment of fun on the information desk

I was sitting on the information desk this afternoon when I felt something bumping my elbow. Turning around I saw a little girl, maybe 4 years old, nudging me & fidgetting around.

“I need to go to the toilet”, she said.

“Where is your mummy or daddy?”

“I don’t have a daddy.”

“Where is your mummy?”

“Bill [name changed] is mummy’s friend and is going to be my daddy in 4 days.”

“Who came to the library with you today?”

Just then her mum notices us and looks after the toilet request.

10 minutes later I hear screaming and a whole bunch of activity from the computers where the teenage boys are playing runescape. Over I went to check things out and the same little girl is running around and jumping all over the boys.

“How about you stop running around and go see your mummy?”, I suggest.

Another 5 minutes later. More running around near the boys. “What’s up?”. One of the boys tells me, “That little girl. She’s psycho. She bit me!”. Meanwhile, she is sprinting around the fiction section and I can’t see her mum anywhere. I go over and ask, “do you know where your mummy went?”. She looked at me and said, “Baby wants to get out of the car”, and runs out the front door of the library and straight toward the busy main road in front of the library.

I sprint out after her and catch up with her when she stops by (presumably) her mum’s car. “Baby wants to get out of the car”. Luckily, baby is a doll. Again I suggest, “How about we go find mummy”. She came back in and went to see mummy in the picture books, before charging off to the back of the library.

A few more minutes later, one of the boys is back, “That girl, she’s hitting us with CDs and stuff”. This time, her mum arrives, and they borrow some books & leave.

Another day in the library.

Themes

Sometimes, when I am struggling to produce content I just post links & play with themes.

The theme might change a few times over the next little while. I’m curious to see how the blog looks with a single sidebar as none of themes with two sidebars are really grabbing me at the moment. So please excuse me while I play around.

I might even produce some actual content.

2008

The new year is here. It has been for a couple weeks already, in case you hadn’t noticed. I was thinking about writing a wonderful, moving new years wish for all my loyal readers, but in all honesty you’re better off just reading Neil Gaiman’s.

If you do feel like adding something to your list of goals for 2008, how about this – if you don’t usually read YA books, read one. If you do usually read YA books – read one from a different genre.

I won’t bother listing a bunch of books or authors here but am happy to come up with some suggestions if you don’t know where to start. Feel free to ask in the comments, or just browse through some of my posts about books. If you have some good suggestions for someone reading their first YA novel, feel free to post them.

May your year be rewarding and full of wonderful books. I know mine will.

Layout, appearance and themes

A little while back I switched to the blog to its current theme. I quite like the way this theme works but have noticed that it can get quite messed up on lower resolution screens. This is particularly a problem when I post something like a youtube video that is a bit too wide. Because the video goes too far to the right it bumps the right sidebar down to the bottom on the left sidebar. Sometimes the comments posting screen looks odd too.

I only noticed this as I was on a computer at work set to a resolution of 800 x 600. I know this a crazy-low resolution these days, but this particular computer is used by many people, not just me.

So that got me wondering how many people have this problem. I’d love to know if other people are having trouble reading the blog and I will start looking at different themes just in case.