My Virtual Greenhouse

Perhaps it's the thought of the recent frost warning and impending Minnesota winter that made this little web application seem attractive. After enjoying the green and growing things this summer, the thought of the drab, long winter without color seems too much to bear; so I signed up for a virtual greenhouse where I'll be notified of new bouquets and when to water the flowers in my greenhouse. I can also send bouquets. And the embed code is supplied for blogs or web pages. I put the fresh flowers delivered daily code in my blog sidebar just to see what happens. You don't have to register for that particular feature.

This should be a little glimpse of hope during the long winter that's coming early by all signs from Mother Nature.

Do You Think You Know Web2.0?

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Pam has The Book of Answers!

NCLC's administrative assistant, Pam, checks out The Book of Answers by Carol Bolt, borrowed from Jennifer, to find the answer to any question.

The idea was such fun that I thought I'd blog about it and in the process found the Original Book of Answers website where you can find out the answers to your burning questions too.

The book or any of its successors would make a fun gift for any hard to buy for person or any librarian you know. (We all know librarians know where to find all the answers.)

23 Things on a Stick Postcard Cat

With about one month left of Round 2 of 23 Things on a Stick, NCLC had 30 signed up for this round. Seven of those 30 have either finished the 23 things, or consider that they have completed the 23 things.

Those completing all 23 to date are: Dolce Libro, Inkdrinker, Laura's 23 Things on a Stick, Library Landing,
Sarahs23StickThings, and The German Experience. Rangegurl53 considers herself done; you'll have to read the blog and see what you think. Did she do the 23 Things or not? You be the judge and let me know what you think.

Quite a few others are about at the halfway mark, so I hope they are motivated to complete the program. The average completion rate has been about one-third. Perhaps this group will be above average at the rate they are going so far. It's been fun and educational to read all the blogs.

Congratulations to those who have completed the 23 Things on a Stick so far. I like the one word summary expressed by Dolce Libro on the experience: Empowerment.

Finally ALA on the Image Generation Bandwagon

As I've been playing with easy to use image generators online, not to mention free, the thought had often crossed my mind that ALA was missing out on a great opportunity by only offering their READ cd for sale. Since it also required some expensive Photoshop software to create the READ posters in addition to the READ cd , which was not inexpensive itself, the average librarian, operating on a shoestring library budget, would have to think twice about making a major investment for PR.

Imagine my surprise when I came back from vacation to find that they had finally hopped on the bandwagon and placed the ability to generate READ mini-posters online.

If you'd like to try it out for yourself, you can do it here.

Summer Sipping

The Minnesota multitype directors met earlier this week in St. Paul. Several of us met the evening before the quarterly meeting for dinner and conversation at the Big Bowl in the Rosedale mall. We enjoyed some great food as well as some very good homemade ginger ale. The last time we met there, I enjoyed the ginger ale (even though it wasn't Vernor's) so much that I went home and looked for a recipe to make it myself. I told the group about it this week and they expressed interest in having the recipe shared with them since it turned out to be so simple.

So here it is:

Simple Syrup for Ginger Ale

3/4 cup sliced ginger (no need to peel it)

2 cups sugar

1 cup water

Sparkling water and ice to taste
Lemon or lime for garnish

Combine the ginger, water, and sugar in a saucepan and bring to

a boil over moderate heat. Lower the heat, simmer for 10 minutes,

then let cool to room temperature. Strain and keep refrigerated for up to 2 weeks. To serve, put ginger syrup to taste (about 2 Tbs
per serving) in a glass and add sparkling water and ice. Garnish
with lemon or lime slices. Makes about 16 servings.

I've absentmindedly reversed the sugar and water measurements and that turned out fine as well, so if you wanted to decrease the amount of sugar in your homemade drink you could use 1 cup of sugar to 2 cups of water; it isn't quite as syrupy, but it still makes an excellent sipping drink even if it isn't Vernor's.

If you don't know what Vernor's is, you didn't grow up in Michigan. I even found a photo on Flickr.

Playing with Images Again

Inspired by JD's blog where she cartoonized some beautiful roses, I decided to try cartoonizing Miss Kitty and another photo to see how they might turn out. Miss Kitty isn't really easy to see, but the teapot photo showed more of the result. These two were done quickly, but I'll have to keep this app in mind and experiment more to see what it can do with other photos.