My New Blog and Some Tiny Updates

My New Blog - Because You Might Not Want to Hear Me Complain About Work and Libraries

Now that I'm starting to work in my new profession, I have decided to set up a separate blog for my discoveries, musings, and rants related to library and information science. It somehow seems appropriate to keep my professional and personal posts in different places (and my posts here are now being friends-locked more often).

Instead of sticking with LiveJournal, I have decided to set up my new blog on Wordpress.com. I missed using Wordpess since moving out of Ottawa-Centre, where I used it for the OttawaGreens.ca website. It's easy to find: thebookpile.wordpress.com (the current title, "Open Source Librarian", is a placeholder). I promise to keep posting all of the juicy stuff here on LJ.


Google Chrome

It's only available on Windows, so I was only able to give it a quick whirl at work. I found that it does three things better than Firefox:

1. Tabs are located above the URL box. Having them below the URL box has always seemed illogical to me.
2. It's noticeably faster at page rendering and JavaScript (at least, from my 12 minutes of testing).
3. Dragging a tab outside of the window opens that tab in a new browser window. I never knew I wanted this feature in a browser until I tried it. I really miss this in Firefox now.

I would also add that it's cool that one tab can crash without affecting the others. I didn't include this in the above list because I didn't get a chance to see it happen, so I can't comment. Also, the graphic story intro was very neat.

There are, however, two areas where Chrome lost me as a user:

1. No Linux port yet, which means that I can't run it on my own computers.
2. No support for extensions. Stuff like Zotero, which is wonderfully useful when I'm writing a paper for school, will likely never exist for Chrome.

I can't really see myself switching between browsers, so I'll likely stick with Firefox for now. Still, Chrome does look promising. Once I've written my last scholarly paper in April 2009, I might jump on board (if there's a Linux port available at that time).


Grades

Got my grades back for my second term. I must have tanked on my last assignment in Advanced Cataloguing because I got my first sub-80 mark (a 78). I'm really, really disappointed with that because it was a great class and I enjoyed it a lot. My other grades were slightly higher: 83 (Digital Libraries), 84 (Surveillance and Freedom), 85 (Information Equity), and 85 (Literature Appreciation). That gives me an average of 83 for the term and 84.1 overall, which is respectable. Given that I was commuting between Ottawa and London on a weekly basis, in addition to reading through Bill C-61 and pestering my MP about it, I'd say that's pretty decent.


Reading News

I am halfway through Volume 1 of Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories. This is a two-volume set, with each one containing two of the novels, and the collections of short stories. I had already read A Study in Scarlet during my Lit. Appreciation Class, so I continued with The Sign of Four (novel), and have now finished The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (short stories). The smaller cases are fun because I can read a 20- or 30-page mystery before going to bed.