Sticky Notes - unsophisticated technology!

My computer was upgraded last week and I am now getting to grips with the Windows 7 operating system. I'm sure that there is plenty of sophisticated functionality and work-flow enhancement that I should be excited about, but instead I have to tell you about my new favourite thing.... Sticky Notes! Sticky Notes are virtual Post-it notes that you 'write' (type) and leave on your (computer's) desktop. It comes as no surprise to me to learn that the Post-it note, although invented in the late 70s, made it big in the 80s. Yet another element of 80s culture (I've already confessed to leotards, leg-warmers and dance movies in my post on Thing 8) with which I feel a deep affinity! In all seriousness, ignore anyone who tells you Sticky Notes are just a silly gimmick (that's you, long-suffering colleague). If, like me, you are forever scribbling down lists and things to do on scraps of paper (or genuine Post-it notes) which float around your desk and are in danger of being swept off or buried at any moment, then Sticky Notes may be just the ticket. I wrote a couple last night to remind myself of some things I need to do today, and sure enough I'd forgotten all about these things until I saw the Sticky Notes on my computer desktop when I logged on this morning!

On a more philosophical level, I've been trying to work out why it is that I like Sticky Notes so much. There are many ways in which I could have harnessed computer, mobile phone and web technology to remind me about the things I have written on the notes (for example by setting reminders in Microsoft Schedule+, or an online calendar, or my phone). However, the key for me here is that the Sticky Note replicates almost exactly the unsophisticated and very visual in-your-face way in which I do things outside my computer (i.e. scrawling on Post-its or scrap paper), and it's more efficient (won't blow away or fall off the desk etc.). It suits the way my mind works. Sometimes technology can be too sophisticated. I think the Sticky Note is a perfect example of the effectiveness of keeping it simple (so there, long-suffering colleague!)

Wildlife in the library

My longsuffering colleague just found a beautiful moth on the floor, which I've just released back into the wild. This isn't the first time wildlife has found its way into the library. We do our fair share of fairly run-of-the-mill (but still quite scary!) evictions - wasps, bees, flies and spiders. Slightly more unusual are the pigeons. At least once or twice a year the library staff here can be found coo-ing, shoo-ing and running around flapping papers, brooms, feather dusters and other bird scaring paraphernalia in an attempt to encourage stray pigeons to leave. A student once offered to bring in her father's pet falcon to dispose of a particularly persistent pigeon - thankfully the pigeon found his own way out soon after! On another occasion I came in on a Saturday morning to discover an amazing dragonfly, measuring about 10cm long, and shimmering blue and green, at the enquiry desk. I have also seen plenty of wildlife from my office window - a heron on a rooftop at my eye-level, just a few metres away across the passage; skeins of geese, teams of ducks (nouns of assemblage are wonderful things!); a swallow, which sat for a good half an hour on the open office window; a robin singing on the window ledge. This year I've had the pleasure of watching a juvenile magpie get to grips with flying, using the rooftops of the college as runways and launchpads. And then there is the daily chorus of blackbirds, each keenly defending their territory at the top of their voice. Wildlife is everywhere, even in libraries...

Thing 2 - Blogging (the technical side)

Here I'm going to talk a little about my experience of setting up the blog. The technical stuff. In my next post I'll talk about the psychological/emotional (yes really!) stuff - which for me is a much bigger deal! I thought I'd break it into two posts so that anyone reading who doesn't want to be privy to my blog neuroses can avoid them by just reading this first post...

I have to admit I'm finding Blogger quite fiddly to work with. It was really easy to sign up, name, and choose a basic template, a definite point in Blogger's favour, but once I began to want to fine-tune things (font sizes, font colours, etc.) I started to feel a bit dazed and confused! I am at best a third-rate techie, and have to keep asking a longsuffering colleague for help (which he willingly gives). When I'm in the advanced tab of the template designer I'm not always sure which option corresponds to which element of the blog design. I'm sure once I've spent a bit more time fiddling around I'll get the hang of it, and in fact the kind of changes I want to make are probably barely perceptible to anyone else, just personal whims regarding the size of this text with relation to that, or the amount of space between things (if you read my first post, you'll know that space, be it white or, in the case of my blog, a pale custardy colour, is important to me!). I'm sure there are very good reasons for Blogger to work the way it does, so I don't really mean to suggest that my niggles should be catered for, but it's just a bit frustrating to have an idea in your head of how you want something to be, and for it not to be immediately obvious how to achieve this.

One final thing - I wanted to use one of my own photos for the background, but it has to be under "300K", and seeing as all my photos come from a fairly decent digital camera, the file sizes are much larger. Can anyone help me with this? Is there a simple but effective way for me to reduce the file size of my photos?