10 A babe is born in Bethlehem - Sun 26 Dec 2010

Here's a poem I was inspired to write yesterday while roasting turkey in 38 degree heat (that's 100.4 degrees fahrenheit). Just a bit of fun :)

A babe is born in Bethlehem

Twas a cold Winter’s night 

in old Bethlehem town,

everyone was inside

and their shutters were down

When upon the main street

a small sound did arise,

a light pitter-patter

and the glow of four eyes

Walking slow, came a pair

needing somewhere to stay,

but each place that they tried

seemed to turn them away

Yet the night grew cold still,

and the air froze the two

A white mist swirled around

and a frosty breeze blew

Till upon a small inn

the tired couple did come,

the old innkeeper said

“Stay here, soon-to-be-mum”

For indeed it was true,

the female was with child

she looked at the old man,

and it seemed that she smiled.

Out into the cold barn

the pair trotted with haste,

on a bed of dry hay

the young mother was placed.

With a whimper she lay,

the male sat next to her

He gently licked her face

and then nuzzled her fur

For twas soon he’d be born,

in that Wintery fog,

a great saviour of man,

Yes! The true son of Dog.


Linked to Poetry Potluck - Celebrations and Festivities @ Jingle Poetry.

4 Word verification - Wed 22 Dec 2010

I have to say, I LOVE the word verification system on Blogger. The "Verifese" they test you with is like some sort of alien language that only the Mulder-ites can understand (or "want to believe"). 


Look at the example below - "slaporb". If that's not alien, I don't know what is! Who'd have thought that such succinct depth of meaning could be poured into a single word? Of course, as we all know, "slaporb" is a homonym and can, in fact, describe a fat, promiscuous Orc as well as being a round but gelatinous ball that sticks to walls when thrown.

While seeming to be its own distinct alien language, academics have actually found that Verifese has roots in English, and would be the stuff of dreams for the likes of Lewis Carroll and William Shakespeare, were they still above ground.


Lewis Carroll excelled in making up "nonsense" words, and in some circles, is credited with making "literary nonsense" a worldwide phenomenon (think Jabberwocky, or to a lesser extent, The Hunting of the Snark). Was Lewis Carroll, in fact, an alien? It might actually explain a lot ...


Shakespeare is said to have created over 1000 new words that he used in his writing, which quite possibly sounded like nonsense when first penned, but have now become words that you and I use everyday. Enough said here, we all know Shakespeare wasn't your average human.


In my previous post about l33t speak, I wrote about the new words that are being formed everyday online. This idea disturbed some, who recoiled in terror at what seemed to be the near apocalyptic destruction of the the English language. I wonder what the same people think of Lewis Carroll and Shakespeare?


In any case, I shall start a practice of listing some of the Verifese words that I come across while on my blogulous travels. (Yep - blogulous - just call me Louisa Carroll). My favourite for this week being "deadula". Uh huh. That's how you end up when Dracula sucks too much of your blood.


I encourage you, dear readers, to add some of the Verifese you come across when you post comments on my blog. Don't forget to add their meaning so we can all learn something new! 


Who knows? Maybe we can create our own internet meme.

8 December (Down Under) - A Haiku

A balmy breeze blows,

as the memories of youth

flash in Christmas lights.

Inspired by Sunday Scribblings (#246 - December).

2 Book Review - Lips Touch: Three Times

Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lips Touch: Three Times is a book of three short stories, elegantly written by Laini Taylor and divinely illustrated by Jim Di Bartolo.

Imaginative and beautifully surreal, it would appeal to anyone who remembers the flushes and fumbles of first love. Those who still have that dreamy and romantic teenager inside them - who knows fairies are playing among flowers and demons are lurking in shadows.

The first story, Goblin Fruit, follows Kizzy, a modern teenager from an old-world family, still steeped in the superstitions of the past. Kizzy is unable to see her own unique beauty until a new boy comes to town.

Full of magic and whimsy - if Goblin Fruit was real, it wouldn’t be fruit at all, but a sweet pastry, spiced with a heady blend of cinnamon and citrus - probably not good for you, but delightfully good to eat.

In Spicy Little Curses Such as These, an old woman ventures into hell everyday to trade the souls of evildoers for the souls of children, but sometimes such trades involve a curse or two.

Enchanting and ethereal - this is one of the most original and compelling stories I have read in quite some time, and left me in awe of Taylor’s fantastical storytelling.

While Hatchling is darker than Goblin Fruit and Spicy Little Curses, once again the scenes are beautifully set and the descriptive devices used by Taylor are second-to-none.

It follows Esmé who has lived with her mother in London her whole life, not knowing the dark secrets that fuel her mother’s nightmares. When a stranger with icy blue eyes arrives, both their lives are changed forever.

Taylor has a gift for writing with such exquisite beauty and dream-like description that she could make the meanest heart break with a few words scrawled on a page. Lips Touch: Three Times is written the way all true fairy tales should be - it is both enchanting and strangely sinister, balanced between divine beauty and subtle horror.

I implore anyone with a heart to read this book, and also urge you to check out Jim Di Bartolo’s website for a glimpse of the beautiful illustrations.

View all my reviews

5 Collectables

What are video games? Are they just a frivolous waste of time? Computer programs that allow us to spend our leisure time playing instead of doing chores? Something to entertain the kids so we can have a moment's peace?


Are they art? Digital animation that is real and interactive? Do the Da Vincis and Michelangelos of today paint using codes instead of brushes?


Are they a new and important cultural development? The reflection of a modern need to escape the realities of our declining economies and deteriorating environment?


I say YES. With well over 3.6 million Australian households in possession of a game console, I'd say video games are all of the above and more. They are becoming an important part of our cultural identity - marking a certain stage in our technological evolution - and in my opinion, are worthy of historical conservation.

The University of Michigan agrees, devoting a section of their Art, Architecture and Engineering Library  to a Computer and Video Game Archive, which "houses over 2000 games and 30 different video game systems". The archive is not only a way of preserving video games and the video game experience, but it allows students to have a "hands on" approach - they can use the collection to explore topics such as censorship and (one of my personal faves) gender identity in games. You can read more about the archive (and the coolest job in the world - Video Game Librarian) here.

The University of Michigan is not the only institution taking video game culture seriously, back in 2007 the Library of Congress began an initiative to catalogue over 2000 video games that they had collected simply through the submission of developers as a part of the copyright process. (As an aside, it might also interest some readers to know the Library of Congress has "the US's largest comic book collection, over 100,000 comic book issues that have come in through copyright"). You can read more about it here, although in my research (albeit, uber brief) I haven't been able to find a more recent report on this initiative.


I'm interested to hear your thoughts on preserving video games as a historical collection - particularly any heritage buffs out there (makes eyes at Alethea) - and of course Librarians who love to game!

6 Limits - A Haiku

The day slowly dies,

and I find myself saddened

by what could have been.

Inspired by Sunday Scribblings (#245 - Limits).

7 Lazy

I have been lazy this week and have yet to do any Web 2.0 study, and given I didn't get out of bed today until around midday, I think you can see how this weekend is going to go.

However.

In the spirit of keeping my blog somewhat up-to-date and for your viewing pleasure, I have three things to share.

1. My Christmas tree:

The tree is about 180cm tall. Note the red and gold theme, and lack of tinsel. Choosing a colour theme and omitting tinsel are techniques a seasoned tree decorator recently shared with me, to try and make your tree look more like a Myer tree. However, I have recently seen both Alethea and GozzieHoon's trees which have well-placed tinsel, and they look pretty fab. So, my advice is if you are going to use tinsel, I would suggest you use it sparingly.

I made the gold bows myself out of 5 metres of wired gold ribbon. If you want to do this yourself, I suggest using at least 10 metres of ribbon (or more) for a tree this size, as 5 metres proved to not be enough :P

2. Cool (and useful) little website:

The Literature Map   <-----  click here

The literature map basically shows "who writes like" author names, but in a cute and animated way. It's not as detailed as NoveList, for example, but you don't need a database subscription or library card to use it. Check it out!

3. Study like a scholar, scholar

You may have seen this before, as I "borrowed" the link from another Library's blog, but I love it so much I just have to share it here for anyone that hasn't already seen it. It's a play on the famous "I'm on a horse" Old Spice ad. Enjoy :)

0 Book Review - The Presence

The Presence: A Ghost Story by Eve Bunting


My rating: 2 of 5 stars


The Presence tells the story of Catherine, a teenage girl who is struggling with the tragic death of her best friend. She goes to visit her Grandmother for the holidays, where a ghost in the local church takes an unusual and rather sinister interest in her.


Publisher’s Weekly said that the “crisp writing and questions that remain unanswered till tale’s end will likely keep fans of ghost stories engaged”. If “crisp writing” is a euphemism for “shallow, with little character or plot development”, then they’d be right, but unfortunately I don’t think that’s what they meant.


This book is such a shame. The plot concept had the potential to be fantastic – there’s some mystery, some danger, some supernatural themes – but unfortunately, Bunting falls short on the delivery.


Perhaps if the book itself was longer (it’s only 195 pages), Bunting may have been able to flesh out the characters and the general story idea, but unfortunately, as it is, The Presence is like a plastic skeleton hanging in an empty room rather than the chilling, spine-tingling ghost story it purports to be.

If you’d like to read The Presence and make your own conclusions, you can find it on the City of Gosnells catalogue here.

View all my reviews

5 Wiki Wiki

With any luck, this will be a wiki wiki post, though once I get going one can never be sure when I'll stop!


The word "wiki" is supposed to have derived from the Hawaiian "wiki wiki" meaning quick or speedy. If you think about a wiki website, the name makes a lot of sense, given that a wiki allows multiple contributors to update information quite quickly.


If you've ever looked at Wikipedia (which would have to be the best wiki in the world) on the day of a major event - say, the swearing in of the prime minister - you will generally find that this new information about both the person and the nation has already been updated.


Apart from Wikipedia, the wiki I look at most often can be found here. Yes, it is The Vault, a Fallout wiki, and it is quite possibly the second best wiki in the world (though this has yet to be proven).

I have visited The Vault many times when I've been stuck on one particular part of Fallout, or if I can't work out how to do something (like make my avatar move the way I want, for example). If you take a look at The Vault, you can see it has over 11000 pages, meaning it has thousands of contributors and a plethora of information about the history of the game, it's characters, different cities in the Fallout universe and the best ways to play.


When I was a Library student, I remember we had a dreaded group assignment (in my opinion, group assignments are a kind of cruel, and unfortunately not unusual, form of torture inflicted on students so that Lecturers have less marking to do - am I wrong?). We found that the best way for our group to work on this - a group which included students who traveled a long way to the University, was through a wiki. At that stage, I had never contributed to one before and wasn't even sure what to do, but given that they are so easy to edit and update, I found working on that particular group assignment almost painless.


Well, this post is fast becoming very non wiki wiki, so I shall leave it for now. Suffice to say, I am a pro-wikiite and can really see the benefit in using them - they're the perfect way to share information, which is what I imagine the internet was created for in the first place ...


P.S. How awesome are those Common Craft videos by Lee LeFever? Here's one you won't see in the Web 2.0 training (it's a Youtube video, so you may not be able to see it at work):

5 Work and Play

It's not far-stretched to connect literacy and learning with games. When we're young, we're often taught games that are great fun, but that are also teaching us important skills that will carry us through the rest of our lives. 

As infants, we generally learn games that involve picking things up, moving things around and building things (all working on hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills). As young children, we start playing interactive games with others, perhaps pretending to be doctors, pilots or superheroes (all games teaching us social skills). Once old enough, we can start to learn games involving one of my favourite things - reading (think board games and of course, video games). Yay!

If you’re not sure about the connection between games and learning, why not take a look at this post by the Shifted Librarian.

How does this all relate to video games? I hear you ask. Excellent question.

Depending on the game, there are any number of skills the gamer is putting into practice at any one time. If you’re playing a racing game like Gran Turismo, you’re using hand-eye coordination, being involved in healthy competition and learning to deal with both success and failure, winning and losing (as opposed to the popular, but flawed, idea that everyone's a winner). 

Playing my favourite game, Fallout (3 or New Vegas, let’s not be picky here!) involves prioritising (deciding which quests to do and when), making choices (how you'll communicate with characters, whether you want to be good or evil) and living with the consequences (i.e. the game has different outcomes depending on what you choose to do).

A game like Singstar promotes collaboration, socialising and perhaps even stepping out of your comfort zone by singing in front of a crowd.

I could go on forever - but don’t worry, I’ll stop now.

The point I am making is this - I think games in libraries are a good thing, whether it be board games or video games. It's another way of getting kids and young adults into the library, and who knows? Maybe they’ll borrow a book on their way out! (Read, kids, read!)

The Amherst Village Library (part of the City of Gosnells’ Library Service) has Wii consoles that have proved to be very popular. After a little web trawling, I discovered the Brimbank Library Service in Melbourne also has Wii and Playstation 3 consoles. 

Does your library have video games? Let me know by commenting - I’d love to hear your opinion on how useful/fun/annoying/difficult you find them in libraries.

5 Rather Senselessly Snowed-under

As much as I love moving along with the times, I can't see the point in RSS feeds. I mean, I understand the logistics, and see the reasoning behind why people are supposed to subscribe. But really, why would you want to?

There are eleventy-billion ways to use the internet, but for me it usually comes down to these three:

1. Keeping up to date with friends/contacts, which I usually do by checking email and Facebook (and perhaps now the people I "follow" on Blogger). Facebook has it's own "news feed" so everything I want to see is right there anyway, and Blogger seems to have the same kind of thing - listing details of the blogs that you follow on your "dashboard".
2. Looking for a specific thing, e.g. the answer to a question (usually to prove I am right), a map (so I know where I am about to go) or what's on sale at the supermarket.
3. Surfing!! Yes, actually looking around and discovering new and exciting things out there.

Perhaps my view on RSS feeds stems from the fact that I'm basically a "phaser". I'm often interested in something new - I'll really get into the swing of it, try to learn what it's all about, and imagine I'll become mistress of that particular domain; before realising I probably won't and moving onto the next new thing. That is, I go through a lot of "phases".

Take gaming, which we know I love. While gaming itself is not a phase for me, the games I play usually are - I go through long periods of playing nothing followed by equally long, but intense periods of playing the next new thing (think Korean Gamer).

To cut to the chase, I'm never invested enough in any one thing to want to read about it every damn day. Having Google Reader on my plate is just another thing to have to check, and no doubt would lead to me becoming (R)ather (S)enselessly (S)nowed-under with information I probably didn't really want in the first place.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'd rather go out there looking for information myself.

0 Book Review - Fallen

Fallen by Lauren Kate

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This one PROVES you should never judge a book by its cover!

Unfortunately it wasn't worth the time it took to read - the characters are bland and under-developed, making it hard to invest any real interest in their plight.

The first 300 pages are basically a waste of paper. They should have been used to develop some semblance of plot and to make the reader care about the characters - instead whole chapters are wasted on poor attempts at emo-pleasing simile and pointless pockets of dialogue.

If you're looking at this book thinking "Gee, I'd like to read that", go read Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzgerald instead.

You can find Fallen on the City of Gosnells' Library catalogue here.

Better yet, you can find Hush Hush on the City of Gosnells' Library catalogue here.

View all my reviews

4 Stepping away from the Console

When I’m not yelling and killing people (on the Playstation, of course!), I step away from the console and go about doing real world things™.


I figure now that I’ve bored you with a couple of posts about gaming, it’s time to show you my “softer side” with the use of Flickr. Woohoo!

One of the things I love about our digital age are the cameras (including my iPhone cam). You can take photo after photo (just clicking away like a professional photographer) and it doesn't matter if you only get one gem out of 20, because it's not costing you a thing!


Before commencing the Web 2.0 training, I already had a Flickr account, but admittedly hadn’t done much to it since opening it and adding a pic or two, so it’s great to be re-acquainted.

If you’d like to check out my photostream, you should be able to find it here.

If you’re too lazy to click on the link (and really, you should be ashamed), here’s a few of my foto-faves (yep, another new term I just coined):

Garden of Tulips - This photo was taken in Sapporo, Hokkaido - the north island of Japan  - when I was there in 2000/2001.

Cheeky skink - This little guy was in my front garden. If you look closely you can see he is poking out his tongue. Cute! He also appears to be growing a new tail.

On the road to Bunbury - I LOVE this picture! I took it with my iPhone from the car window while traveling at 100kms per hour!! Not bad, huh? It almost looks like a painting.

(P.S. As an aside to this exciting photo-post, I must apologise for the weird spacing between paragraphs and such. I am having quite a time trying to get my blog formatting the way I want it. Could this be because I am using a Mac? Or should that make no difference? I have no idea. What a noob :P)

5 Warriors AND Women

Meet Violet. This is my avatar in the game Fallout: New Vegas. Fallout is quite possibly my favourite game of all time (although, remember I’m a bit of a noob, and haven’t yet played a HUGE number of games to compare). 

There are many, many reasons why I love this game - far too many to go into right now - but one of the main reasons is that you can play a female character of your own design. Of course, as in most video games, the design choices are limited - she is still generally young, she is heavily made up and has a figure I could only dream of - but at least she is dressed for her environment (as opposed to being half-naked), and if I wanted to, I could make her older (but alas not fatter).  

When I think of the (roughly twelve) Playstation games I have played so far in my noobtastic career, I can think of two where you could actually choose to have a female avatar, and two more where you could kind of play as a female, while the main emphasis still remained on the male characters (think Madison Paige in Heavy Rain). 

Now, if we think about the statistics I quoted in my first post, the fact that there are more games with male avatar choices than females makes sense - the game developers want to appeal to a male-dominated (only just!) market. 

But why, oh why, does the majority (of this minority) of female characters have to be the half-naked, anatomical equivalents of Barbie™? Is it because male gamers won’t play a game where the female characters aren’t “hot”?

If you’re up for a bit of heavy reading, you should check out this “feature” by Shaylyn Hamm (which is actually part of her thesis on the aesthetics of female video game characters). In this “feature”, Hamm talks about the wide variety of male characters (in terms of body shape, clothing and facial structure) and the limited design of female characters over a number of different games. 

As a part of her thesis, Hamm designed two new female characters for the multiplayer game Team Fortress 2, based on the male characters already in the game (the Medic and the Heavy Weapons guy). You can see her female characters here. 

I love them.

Neither of them are “pretty” or “ugly” and they are both dressed for their environment (i.e. fully clothed!). To me, they look like real women just doing their job, and I can honestly say if given the choice, I’d rather play as these women than the Barbie doll doppelgangers of most video games today. 

What do you think of Shaylyn Hamm’s designs? If you’re a guy and the option was there to have either a male or female avatar, would you ever choose to play as a girl? Let me know! :)

7 A blog of my pwn

No, it’s not a typo. It really says pwn. I actually meant to write it that way. Really!

If you’re a gamer, you probably didn’t think twice about seeing the word pwn. You probably read it as “own” (or maybe even “pown”) and moved on without a second thought.

But for my loyal readers who don’t game (you know who you are - the ones that read my blog for my wit and eloquence ;) ), here’s what I have to say about “Gaming Linguistics”.

If you read my previous post, you already know about Noob (sometimes spelt newb and n00b), so let’s go straight to pwn.

pwn = own. What on Earth does this mean and why would anyone ever use it? 

Urban dictionary (the place you should go to find out what your 16 year old is saying) describes pwn as the “act of dominating an opponent”, which is basically the point of any multiplayer game, is it not? This has become such a common term now that I have heard people (usually a tad younger than myself) use it in regular conversation - generally, when making a joke at the expense of another. In addition, there is a television show that airs on the ABC called “Pure Pwnage” (and yes it’s spelt that way), though I am yet to watch it. 

The development of the internet and the subsequent success of gaming, in particular online multiplayer gaming, has led to a whole sub-set of linguistic terms, known as “leetspeak” - many based on mistyped words, such as teh and pwned; abbreviations, such as FTW and AFK; and the substitution of numbers for letters (e.g. leet is often spelt l33t or sometimes even 1337).

Along with the weird and wonderful abbreviations commonly used in SMSing (one of my personal favourites being “c u l8er!”), has leetspeak changed the English language forever? Or is it simply a part of the internet/gamer subculture? 

Given their use on TV and in social conversation, my money is on the former.

If you’re not up to snuff with the finer details of leetspeak, you can find a fantastic overview of the “language”, including an English to l33t translator here.

I’d love to hear your comments - why not try writing them using some l33t?

5 Noob

I'm a bit of a Noob. 

Really, it’s true. I have no idea what I’m doing half the time and I often feel like I am the last one to learn something new.  

“What’s a Noob?” you may well ask. Excellent question :) 

Wikipedia (quite possibly the best informational resource for any true Noob - though don’t  go referencing it in your academic work) describes Noob as “a slang term for a novice or newcomer, or somebody inexperienced in any profession or activity”. If you’re really interested, you can read more about Noobs and the origin of the term here.  

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a computer Noob (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). I can write a blog (well, here’s hoping anyway). Heck, I even have my very own Facebook page. But, while I am reasonably computer-literate, my true Noobility (yep, I just coined that one) lies in the world of Video Gaming.  

Yes, I’m a Noob Gamer and I’m a girl. 

The story is simple - girl meets boy, boy plays video game, girl tries to stand between boy and game, boy doesn’t even notice, girl wonders what’s so good about stupid game, girl secretly plays while boy isn’t home, girl likes it and becomes noob gamer. 

Actually, it’s more common than you’d think. According to this article written in May last year, two-thirds of Australians play video games, with more than 46% of gamers being women. Long gone are the days of gamers being pimply teenaged boys with a moon tan and bad grammar. According to Kotaku (the online “Gamer’s Guide”), 2 out of 5 gamers are female and the age of the average gamer is 32. 

Sounds like me to a tee. 

So, with that in mind, and the incredible luck of being a Librarian involved in the Western Australia Public Libraries’ Web 2.0 training, I am going to try and write this blog for Gamer Librarians everywhere. I think you’ll be surprised by the relationship between the two! 

If you’re not a gamer, don’t be put off - I also love reading (did I really need to add that?), watch a lot of movies and have been told by many that I think too much (is that even possible?). So I can guarantee my blog won’t be filled with relentless gamish techno-jargon (yep, just coined that one too!). Stay tuned for news, reviews and general ramblings - and happy gaming to all!