Cough Cough Sneeze Sneeze

Miss Susan has been using this song for years and it works!
For a healthier world, teach it to your kids, your grandchildren, your friends children.

Cough Cough
Sneeze Sneeze
Cover your mouth
Please Please
Let's be careful
How we cough
Let's be careful
How we sneeze
Catch those germs
Right i-in your sleeve
Ah Ah Ah Choo!

Credits:
Susan Plimpton - Writer Songsinger
Fr. Richard Tardiff - Guitar
Filmed on location at the Southwest Harbor Public Library
http://www.swhplibrary.org/
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

nor'-wester, n.

1. A waterproof hat worn by sailors; a sou'-wester. Also...

OED Online Word of the Day
31 June 2008

The New Yorker as a Commodity

Between the articles published at the New Yorker's web site, the full text archive in Marvel!, recent copies in the free box at the library and copies on top of the Maine Pack at the transfer station, the New Yorker has become a commodity available at close to zero incremental cost.

Stanford 0, Oxford 1

Via this list which I got from here, I listened to most of Dr. S. D. Lee's lectures on Old English from Oxford. They are wonderful! Dry? Not a chance. He obviously loves his topic, he's witty and funny and and the students obviously enjoy him and he provides lots of context both to the time and to the present. My notes are here.

Encouraged by that experience, I started listening to Ben Franklin and the World of Enlightenment from Stanford's iTunes site. They don't make it easy to found out detail of the course (and so I haven't) like who the lecturer is. Maybe it's just as well, because he's not very good, especially following Dr. Lee. The Stanford leacturer says "um" a lot, tell jokes that aren't very funny, has a lot of filler in addition to the um's and is sloppy with his facts and citations. Maybe he nervous knowing he's being recorded. I think the material is fundamentally interesting but it remains to be seen if I'll stick it out to the second lecture. Beyond that, I don't like the Stanford on iTunes site. It's very closed and proprietary, and does little more than send me to the main iTunes store.

Catalog Cards 1

Catalog Cards 2

Calalog Cards 3

I scanned these card full size (7 1/2 X 3 1/2) to a PDF and then used youconvertit.com to convert the PDF to a zip file of JPGs.

I've been painted!

I took the photograph on the top last summer when Susan indulged my long standing habit of walking across bridges.

April Trial: Search ALL of MARVEL! at Once

Try it here.


My quick test drive ("Kate Douglas Wiggin", all databases) was favorable, but by today's standards I wouldn't call it an "intuitive interface."

Complaints:

• It doesn't give me a URL to repeat my search.
• When I click View on the ValueLine result I'm told, "This subscription is not included in your account."
• When I click on a result it doesn't do what a normal link does, that is, give me a new browser window configured the way I like it (and the way I expect it.) Rather it give me a new browser window that it configures. And I don't like it.

Nine Low Bandwidth Sites Useful for Dialup, PDAs & Cell Phones

There are lots of sites around aimed at mobile devices - cell phones, pdas, etc. - that could be helpful for someone cursed with a dialup connection to the web. Mind you, my experience with these sites is using my Palm T|X for which they are very useful. I've been fortunate in not having had to use dialup in a long time.

Here are a few low-bandwidth sites that I've found useful:

Google Mobile

I use this a lot.

The Weather Channel

This is set up for a 36 hour forecast in Southwest Harbor, but it's easy to change.

Google News

Most of the links in this version of Google News go to low-bandwidth-friendly sites.

Bar Harbor Weather from Jackson Lab

This site works well not because it was designed for mobile devices, but because it was designed a long time ago - it was last updated in 2004. Thanks again to Gregg TeHennepe. Even though it's fast, it includes lots of information: tides, marine weather, animated radar loops, and links to many more weather resources.

Gmail Mobile

If you have a gmail account, this is where to get a very low bandwidth look at your inbox and send emails.

Gmail's basic HTML version

This isn't a spare as the Gmail's mobile version, but you might prefer it with a large screen computer and dialup. Either way, my recommendation: if you don't have Gmail, get it!

Amazon Anywhere

I don't use this much myself, but it is definitely fast.

Google: Enter a URL:

I don't use this much anymore, because there are so many sites these days that cater to mobile devices, but this might come in handy: enter the URL of a page that takes a long time to load and Google will try to make it suitable for use on your slow, small screen device. For example here's The 'Bary using the service.

del.icio.us/html/mshook/pdafriendly

Finally, here are one hundred sites that I've found to be of interest of the years which I decided were also low-bandwitdth-friendly. Have a look. You might find something interesting.

I welcome additional suggestions. Leave them in the comments.

URLs for Specialized Minerva Searches

I've long use this url:
http://ursus2.ursus.maine.edu/search/i
to find books in Minerva using an ISBN.

It got me to wondering, what about the other 26 letters of the alphabet?

Here's the answer.

Bruce Feiler on Word for Word

Bruce Feiler gives a fantastic historically and scripturally-based (from all three traditions) presentation on the Abrahamic tradition. It give motivation for action and hope.
Bruce talks fast. That allows him to say more really good stuff in the allotted time. You can download or listen to the presentation here. (Click on the little blue arrow icon to listen without downloading.)

SWHPL has two of his books - Abraham : a journey to the heart of three faiths and Walking the Bible : a journey by land through the five books of Moses - and a cassette audio book of the Walking the Bible. If those are out, Minerva has many more.

This fits in well with the topic of the Camden Conference which takes place February 22-24, 2008. These books aren't on the reading list, but they might as well be.

Opera Mini Broswer Notes

There's a new release of the Opera Mini browser for devices with small screens: mobile phone, pdas and portable games. I've installed it on my Palm and have written up some notes, mainly comparing it with the Palm's native Blazer browser.

The notes are here.

Why do I mention it?

"mobile devices outsell personal computers worldwide by a margin of 20-to-1." (Related in my mind - from a year ago, "The mobile phone has now surpassed bicycles as the number one selling consumer device in India. That's unbelievable in a country where 80% of the 1.1 billion population survives on less than $2 a day and 70% live in villages.")

In a very few years, more people will access the internet with these small screen devices than will access it using a laptop or desktop personal computer.

Are we prepared for that?

Sambingo....

...has a blog!

Camp Phoenix book available

Camp Phoenix : the history of a Maine sporting camp : T5 R10 Piscataquis County, Maine Nesowadnehunk Lake / Bill Horner, MD.

Now available at the library for sale (to benefit SWHPL) and to check out.