Categories
game webcomics

WoWee!

auriaesmallAuriae is my night elf warrior in World of Warcraft. I created her so I could hang out with Theo and Kandace, though the time difference and schedules have made that somewhat infrequent. Still, she’s a lot of fun to play, and if that makes me a big old dork, then so be it.

I play on the Dark Iron server, which any webcomics fan should know is the Penny Arcade Alliance server, and I’m in the PAA guild Exuberance. It’s a happy guild.

Anyway, I just thought I would admit, publicly, to my WoW gamer-ness. It’s part of my ongoing campaign to feel comfortable as a dork out in the open. Seriously though, these things are important.

Categories
humor internet webcomics

Crossstitchery

beeyatchCrossstitch has way too many S’s in a row. I kinda dig it. But wanna know what I really dig?

I really dig this I am 10 ninja crossstitch idea. Seriously, if someone wanted to do something like this, say for my birthday, in April, or just because it’s awesome, and I’m usually awesome, and it would therefore (usually) suit me – well, then I wouldn’t complain at all.

Also, while we’re on the subject; I know I’ve linked to it before, but it’s been awhile: Subversive Crossstitch

Go nuts.

Categories
Uncategorized

Things I do for fun

For instance, I spend about three hours investigating different <blockquote> styles, and finally decided on using Stuart Robertson’s CSS Curly Quotes technique. Of course, once I decided to use it, it took me most of that time to get the spacing et al to work the way I wanted it to. I’m really happy with the result, though. Behold:

He is wise who knows the sources of knowledge — where it is written and where it is to be found.
– A.A. Hodge

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall, nations perish, civilizations grow old and die out, and after an era new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the heart of men centuries dead.
– Clarence Day

Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.
– Virginia Woolf

Quotes provided by Useful Information.

By the by, if you’re using Internet Explorer, you’re missing the entire effect. You’re also, and perhaps more importantly, way behind the times. Don’t you know that even IE7 isn’t standards compliant!? Sure, it’s shiny and new, but try to use some blockquote:before or blockquote:after styles and you’re up virtual creek without a joystick.

That said, you should really go and download Firefox. Trust me, life’s better when you’re foxy.



Categories
humor libraries

The height of biblio-fashion

readingisforawesomepeople
Another great shirt from nerdyshirts.com.

People keep asking where I got the “She blinded me with library science” t-shirt I was sporting the other day(and once last week), so I thought I’d just send out the link (again). They’re made by the creator of the webcomic Questionable Content, Jeph Jacques. You can check the merch out here: http://questionablecontent.net/merch.php, though if you enjoy comics at all, I really recommend QC. It’s my fave, by far (and I was quite the expert in these matters at one point in time).

For other library gear be sure to check out http://www.cafepress.com/buy/librarian, which has lots of options, including a “blinded me with library science” rip-off design. Just remember that Jeph did it first.

Finally, there are a few more items up for grabs on a newish site: http://www.cafepress.com/libraryorbust, and even more at http://www.cafepress.com/curmudgeony/634513

While I’m here, here’s some library humor.

Categories
humor

*POW!* *BAM!* *PWN’D!*

pwn’d!

As a purveyor of all things fucking rad, I thought it my duty to inform you of this, the coolest shirt ever made.

Categories
montreal photo

Fire and ice

fire and ice

I was rudely rousted from slumber at two in the morning by the building’s fire alarm. Ten minutes later, four fire trucks showed up outside my window. Fifteen minutes later, they were gone and I was back asleep. It was worth it for the lights and the snow.

Categories
wordpress

All your base …

I have this horrible feeling that the database the site is running on is hopelessly fubared. A lot of the older content isn’t indexing correctly, and there’s a lot of debris hanging around from my previous installations. All of which is just to say that, having finally started towards a site I find nearly optimal, I may have to take it all back to formula. At least the process is bound to be much quicker the second third fourth fifth time around.

Who knows, maybe it will right itself somehow. In the meantime, I’m playing around with sitemaps to see if that helps my indexing. Wish me luck!

Categories
wordpress

Bend, don’t break

There’s some small amount of joy in messing around with code until you break it, and then backtracking to figure out if there’s some other way you could make it work. Granted, I’d probably have much greater success if I had even more than the slightest idea what I’m doing. I doubt it would be quite as much fun, though.

On a more practical note, if someone could tell me how to combine the functionality of Kashou’s Inline Ajax Comments with Mike Smullin’s Ajax Comments 2.0, I’d be incredibly grateful. I fiddled plenty, but it’s not something I’m likely to figure out on my own.

Categories
libraries love personal

Je devins une biblioteque fabuleuse

No matter the facts of our past, it seems that every memory carries a hint of melancholy. What are these days we’ve put behind us, what bonds were forged then broken? What then do we become, we strongly forged yet pulled asunder chains? Are these chinks in our armor, then, from gnashing together, from pulling apart, from trying to find that place where we could link together like a magic trick?

When it comes to separation, I’ve never been very proficient. One lucid moment of deja vu and deep inside I’m sure that all of this happens simultaneously. But we organize, we pull things apart here, put them together over there, arrange them by genre and color and place, until the synchronicity is all gone and we’re left with neat little piles, each one tagged and indexed and we wonder why we feel sad when we look upon our great achievement.

It’s natural, maybe inevitable. There’s no reconciliation. Once we’ve made our piles, we’ll never again find their homes, never again be able to separate them out and recreate the synchronous, chaotic jumble that we somehow tumbled out of.

It’s okay. We’ve arranged ourselves into vast libraries, now we get to be librarians: we provide access to some, deny it to others; we give out parts of ourselves and then, almost inevitably, demand them back; we reclassify certain parts as our standards change; and maybe, if we’re very lucky, we find a quiet moment when, alone and lost in the stacks, rustling through pages of memories, we rediscover some beautiful treasure that we had long since forgotten.

Maybe that’s what makes it all worthwhile.

That is over. Now I know how to salute beauty.
– A. Rimbaud (tr. by Louise Varèse)

Categories
personal school wordpress

What you see …

WYSIWYG editors are just plain annoying. They load slow and they try to do everything for you, but they do it wrong. I mean, haven’t these people learned anything from MS Word!? The default editor has a handy link button, and will even do bold and italics for me if I become too lazy to bracket my b’s and i’s, and really, that’s all I need.

At the moment I’m hanging out, slightly buzzed off a Canadian table wine called “Cochon Mignon” (cute pig), which is actually quite good, and thinking about doing my homework for tomorrow (which I imagine I really should). Next week we have our first set of due dates, as far as assignments go. I’m not quite stressed … yet. I work best under pressure.

The new site loads much faster than the old one. I attribute part of that to the shiny new underbelly of WordPress 2.1, and some of it to my having somehow broken my old install with random plugin installations and too many bells and whistles. This install I will keep clean and limber, because I like it that it loads much faster than it used to. And really, what is a blog besides a place to put words? Of all the communication mediums, words have always been my favorite anyway, so even in this age of fancy podcasts and youtubisms, I figure they’re what I’ll stick with. I have some fun plans for some other projects, though who knows if I’ll ever follow through on them. Mostly I just get excited about having plans, so much so that I really don’t feel like doing anything about them would contribute to my excitement. I’d much rather just plan things. One of the things I always forget when moving urls around is that it breaks referral links. Mostly, this means that the handy links I got from the Librarian Avengers “Why you should fall to your knees and worship a librarian” link won’t give me all the fancy hits that it used to. Rather, it will just direct to my boring, empty (but very speedy), portal page.

Speaking of which, my portal page uses Drupal, which is itself kind of fun. It’s nice to get out there and try out some new software every now and again. I even installed it manually, since Dreamhost doesn’t have a Drupal one-click install (yes, I really am that lazy most of the time). It kind of makes me wish I was in the web design course this term, but I am glad to be getting my requirements out of the way so that I can have fun next year (I think). I also, from time to time, mourn the fact than I’m not in McNally’s history of libraries class, but I guess it’s too late to do anything about that now. I’m excited about taking his history of books and print course next year, so at least that’s something.

Alright, back to the wine, and maybe even some studying….

Categories
wordpress

The new new look

So here’s the new look!

What, you weren’t expecting a new look?

Well … it’s too late now, so you’d better like it.

I upgraded to WP2.1, which is fresh and clean, and figured I’d take the opportunity to move some things around. The plain ‘ol ahniwa.com url now points to what I admit is currently a very undeveloped portal page. And the blog has moved next door to its old home, now lurking at ahniwa.com/blog. I guess it’s true when they say that the only constant is change.

I hope you’ll forgive me for not posting an “actual” post. I’ve been sitting in front of this computer for too many hours already, staring at text, and I haven’t eaten since about one. On a sidenote, the new WP is named Ella, after Ella Fitzgerald. So that’s pretty neat.

Categories
personal

Ten minutes before midnight

There’s a certain point in any foreign experience when a person hits a certain peak. The awkwardness of the new situation has worn off, for the most part, and while things are still new, they’ve also reached a point of comfort where you feel like you can be yourself. You, in turn, are a new experience to the other people involved in this foreign environment, which can in turn itself be kind of eye-opening.

This is the point I remember feeling, at one point in France. This is the feeling I had freshman year at Evergreen. It’s even the feeling I had when I came back to Olympia, both times, from France and Ohio, though in those cases there was an interesting blend of newness and familiarity. It’s the point that, in no small part, drove me to Montreal. It’s a point of self-discovery, or maybe of re-discovery of those parts of yourself that you love best. When we exist in an environment that is used to us, it’s inevitable that it will start to take us for granted, and that we in turn will take ourselves for granted. In a new environment, we’re fresh; we’re seen through new eyes and can therefore see ourselves through new eyes.

In these brief flashes of insight I’m a poet in love with the world; I want to dance at midnight, drink coffee ’til dawn; I want to improvise pirate stories by flashlight around a bottle of whiskey. I want to smile, I want to cry, and I want to laugh out loud at the complicated, perfect beauty of the world.

Categories
dance personal

Blog-a-day, blog away!

Every once in awhile I tell myself, “Self, today is the day that I’m going to start blogging on a daily basis.”

My self usually responds by saying, “Do I even know you?”, and goes to sit on the other side of the bus.

Regardless of my split personality problems, I really do intend to create florid, captivating windows into which one might peer into my life. That is my intention. But, I suppose like all intentions, good and otherwise, it ain’t haulin’ water. Or, bizarre analogies aside, intentions and actions are different beasts. In any case, I’m on day two of such a spurt, however brief it may end up lasting. Hopefully, by day three, or four, or eventually, one hopes, I’ll stop starting said blog entries by talking about how I hope to blog more. I don’t really care what you think of it, but it bores me to tears.

So far, today’s been a long day of reading, class, conversation, studies, a lecture, a group discussion, and for lunch: some tasty salami. Now I’ve got rice on the stove and swing classes in about an hour. I have two classes on Wednesday nights, Lindy [Hop] 3 and Blues. This is week 3, and so far the lindy class is quite easy, though a nice review, and the blues class is kicking my ass. I knew it would. Blues, or at least blues lindy, is to me what the dance is all about. Or perhaps it just emphasizes those things that I think dancing should be all about from the get-go. It focuses on the music, it stresses mood and emotive dancing, and it makes you move your ass. That last one is very important. Unfortunately, it’s also my biggest problem at the moment. Body isolation is tough for me, and while I can do a certain amount, even with my hips (and ass), really getting into it, pushing down, committing entirely to it, is really tough for me.

I know I’m there to learn, but with how long I’ve been dancing, I always feel like I should learn things naturally, that I should be able to pick new things up quickly and move on. I tend to get down on myself, but in a way it’s also kind of invigorating to really have to work to understand what I’m doing, what I’m doing wrong, and what I can do to improve. I’ll keep going until I figure it out. At least, that’s the vow I made to myself, but then you know how well he and I get along.

Categories
game photo school

A propensity for procrastination in publishing

And in writing, for that matter. But I’d like you to know that even though I haven’t blogged much lately, i.e. lately in the last two years except for in spurts and I’m very aware of it, that I DID have a conversation about blogging today with someone in my class, and that that has to count for something.

So as to not just blog about blogging, which is what bloggers do when they start to feel bad about not blogging because they feel like something is better than nothing even if it is just autoreflective and uninteresting tripe (something I do try to avoid, dear readers) — I’ve begun to play World of Warcraft again and I’m having a grand old time. Sure, it can be difficult to juggle WoW time with, oh, let’s say, homework time, but I’ve actually found a very simple compromise. Just don’t do your homework. I find that by avoiding the conflict altogether I not only save time by not doing homework, but I also save time by not even feeling conflicted! How cool is that!

No, really though, I’ve actually been both keeping up on my work (which is so far just a lot lot lot of reading), and rapidly gaining levels in WoW. My goal is to catch up with my friends who play, which means just a few levels to go, and then I can adjust myself to a more leisurely playing schedule (note that I say that as though I can control my gaming proclivities, hah!).

Oh, right, and I’ve also been swing dancing a lot, so go me! Last but not least, here is a goose:

duck duck goose!

Categories
montreal photo

Weather Update

winterweather

Sufficiently snowy.

Categories
libraries news

Library Stories Round-Up

While I was on a very nice Christmas vacation back in Olympia, I was sent a few interesting library-related stories that I thought I’d link to here for your reading pleasure. Hope everyone had a great holiday and that the new year is off to a good start!

Lock the Library! Teens are rowdy, that’s just the way it is. Hormones or something.

Limited shelf space means some things have to go, but does that mean we should throw away our classics?

Librarians stake their future on open source. “A group of librarians at the Georgia Public Library Service has developed an open source, enterprise-class library management system that may revolutionize the way large-scale libraries are run.”

Holiday updates and such will be posted in due course, along with some of the photos I took on my shiny new camera. Stay tuned!

Categories
game internet news

Zipa-pwned-i

Today’s comic over at Penny Arcade is both amusing and topical. Buzz marketing and fake viral advertising is the most worrisome and morally corrupt way to get at consumers, ever. As always, Tycho’s comments are also incredibly worthwhile.

Opinions on the internet are huge. They’re powerful. When I want to buy something on Amazon, the choice is made or broken by how people have rated it and how they’ve reviewed it. I bought a new digital camera recently, and a large part of the decision process was other (assumed) camera owners describing their experience with the camera. I was aware the entire time that people get paid to do this (I have been ever since I read William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition), and I would be lying if I said that it didn’t make me uneasy, but the fact remains that user reviews are the most current, unbiased, and broad-spectrum way to learn how worthwhile an item is in the hands of your average user.

Thankfully, the FTC is moving on the issue, or at least taking some tentative first steps. Force needs to be brought to bear on both advertising and product companies to let them know that marketing via anonymous, paid comments will not be allowed. The internet is a large conversation, taking place simultaneously among thousands of people across the world. Between folksonomically-tagged content, sites ranked in relevance to the number of people talking about them, and user-ranked consumerism, the voice of the individual stands out more, day after day, in this global conversation. It’s important then, in terms of this conversation, to know exactly who is speaking, and what agenda they’re harboring.

Categories
libraries news

Shushing the librarian

Brownout at the EPA

The agency shuts down five public libraries full of environmental data, and employees and activists question the Bush administration’s motives. (link – salon.com)

According to the story, these closures are not only ethically, but also fiscally irresponsible. So what gives!? Oh, right … our president.

More info available on the PEER website (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility).

Categories
personal

For those of you …

… who really, really want to get me something shiny for Christmas, but have no idea what such a thing might be, I’ve created my annual x-mas wishlist, linked over there on the right. It comes with the usual disclaimer: I don’t need any presents, and I don’t need these presents, but if you must, and if you don’t know … well, I like to be helpful.

In other x-mas-ey news, I’m making a Christmas mix CD to give to people. If you’d like a copy, let me know. 🙂

Peace to your ‘nog, -A

Categories
montreal personal

Goddam it’s cold!

I think that may be the first time in my life that as soon as I got home I felt I had to peel off all my clothes and immediately take a warm shower. It’s below freezing outside, it’s windy, and it’s raining. What the hell kind of weather is that!?

On the plus side, it’s neat when every branch of a tree looks like it’s been attentively wrapped in a little, clear blanket of ice.