Sat 31 Jan 2009
So I discovered the beauties of presets on Adobe Lightroom. To me, it simplifies adjusting images to perfection. With a click of a button, a picture can take on a new effect. Some are more dramatic than usual.
This is a picture of my roommate Nicolas who cut this flower for a friend. He grew these on the balcony and they recently bloomed.
Thu 29 Jan 2009
We invite you to our open door seminars, in LTB 2152:
Database Searching
Wednesday, February 25, 12:00-1:00PM
or
Thursday, February 26, 5:00-6:00PM
Learn to select and access the best databases for your subject, search their content and find full-text articles.
RefWorks
Wednesday, February 25, 5:00-6:00PM
or
Thursday, February 26, 12:00-1:00PM
Learn how to use this citation management system that makes building bibliographies a flash.
These seminars are open to all; no registration required. The seminars are cancelled if no one is present 10 minutes after the hour.
Thu 29 Jan 2009
The new BioOne platform will officially launch on Tuesday, January 27, 2009. You will access the new platform automatically. Help will be available for the new interface, including webinars and tip sheets.
Benefits and features include:
- Open URL compliance
- Links to the Biodiversity Heritage Library Project & JSTOR
- New reference and article tools (including saved searches, customized e-alerting, easy reference export to citation manager, and seamless cited to/cited by linking)
Tue 27 Jan 2009
Announcing the recent acquisition of a suite of International Monetary Fund databases.
International Financial Statistics Online is a standard source of international statistics on all aspects of international and domestic finance. It reports, for most countries of the world, current data needed in the analysis of problems of international payments and of inflation and deflation, i.e., data on exchange rates, international liquidity, international banking, money and banking, interest rates, prices, production, international transactions, government accounts, and national accounts. This database contains time series data from 1948 and contains approximately 32,000 time series covering more than 200 countries. One can browse the database, select series of interest, and display and save the selected series in a spreadsheet format, such as Microsoft Excel.
The Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS) present, for most member countries of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), current figures on the value of exports and imports with the most important trading partners, providing current figures for about 158 countries. Smaller countries appear in the area and world tables. The information on exports and imports by trading partners that countries report to the IMF varies in terms of frequency and currency. Reported data, including total imports and exports reported for publication in the IMF International Financial Statistics (IFS), are the basis of all estimates in DOTS. The entire DOTS database is continuously supplemented with estimates.
Balance of Payments Statistics summarizes, for a specific period, the economic transactions of an economy with the rest of the world. It reports total goods, services, factor income, and current transfers an economy receives from or provides to the rest of the world. The database contains time series data from 1948 and approximately 100,000 time series covering more than 170 countries and areas.
For these databases and other library resources visit http://www.poly.usf.edu/library. Click on Databases by “Search the databases” to begin.
Tue 27 Jan 2009
This is a test post. Please visit Information Technology to learn about IT services at the University of South Florida.
Mon 26 Jan 2009
I have the best group ever.
Pretty much, we’re going to use tankcat or hovercat… or something else random as our logo. I’ll be posting the work I do on it as I get stuff done.
I had to reinstall adobe design prem CS3. Egads, annoying as ever. But now I have 90 some odd Gigs of free space on one partition, and 92 on another. Hoorah!
Mon 26 Jan 2009
PRONTO is a service for faculty members to obtain a quick scan of an article in print or in microfilm format held at the USF Tampa Library. In order to facilitate easier and faster communication between PRONTO and ILL, PRONTO services is now using a module of the ILLiad program to process incoming requests. Patrons who already have ILLiad accounts for ILL will log-in the same way; patrons who do not already have ILLiad accounts, will need to create them.
The new URL for the PRONTO service on the USF Tampa Library site is http://www.lib.usf.edu/public/index.cfm?Pg=BooksArticlesMediaDeliveryPRONTO
Mon 26 Jan 2009
From a Project MUSE email:
Project MUSE just released the back issues of nine of its long-held journals. The addition of the back issues now offers subscribers the complete run of eight of the titles. This latest addition of back issues is part of MUSE’s ongoing pilot program to determine the feasibility of expanding coverage to include back issues. The journals initially included in the pilot are selected journals published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Back issues were added for the following journals:
Sun 25 Jan 2009
Thu 22 Jan 2009
Ok, so first of all I can’t find spell check on this thing so forgive me if my spelling is horrible. Chapter 4 of Creating Web Siteshad a great start. Power Tools–I liked that. I downloaded Nvu, because its free and recommended by the text and I fiddled around with it but I still don’t understand the purpose of it whatsoever. I even played around with adding bullets and a picture which I found to be not too terribly difficult. I can’t seem to find this WYSIWYG thing in Nvu, however so I’m sure that I’m totally screwing things up.
Chapter 4 talks about defining a site in FrontPage and Dreamweaver but not with Nvu. Not so sure what to do about that.
UPDATE ON CHAPTER 4 27 Jan. 09
Again, after meeting with a fellow classmate, I feel much more confident in my understanding of this chapter. I figured out the whole WYSIWYG issue and I have even been able to work with Nvu and be successful. Yay! Currently, I have added a color scheme to my website so that’s exciting. I am saving everything as index and I hope that is ok–I mean I hope I’m doing it correctly I guess we shall see…
Tue 20 Jan 2009
This is a testing blog information
Tue 20 Jan 2009
Ok, so I’m reading Chapter 3 of Creating Web Sites and I feel pretty comfortable. Nothing too shocking. I learned about getting web space, (which I can get through USF thankfully!) and domain names, and even understanding URLs. All was well until pages 74-78 (the end of the chapter). First off, I tried to do the exercise but it didn’t work! Am I not supposed to see the resume on my web site or do I have it all wrong? I’m totally lost. I downloaded it from missingmanuals.com, opened it with notebook, saved it htm, uploaded it using SHS; but it still didn’t apprear on my web site. I’m beginning to get frustrated here! Ugh!
UPDATE ON CHAPTER 327 Jan 09
After meeting with a fellow classmate, I have realized that perhaps the exercise is not supposed to show up on my website. I could be totally wrong, however. But it seems to me that the exercise was to just simply practice uploading things and not worrying too much about whether or not it actually shows up on your site. If I am correct, that is.
Sat 17 Jan 2009
After reading chapters 1, 2 & 17 in Creating Web Sites, I must say I feel more informed about things I didn’t know. Not that this is a book review or anything, I must say that Matthew MacDonald does a wonderful job of presenting information to the Luddites of this world–information that could be viewed as scary and foreign. For some folks, such as myself, the very thought of HTML and coding and web sites makes me ill, and as we all know the things we fear most are things that are unfamiliar to us. Ok enough about that…
Chapter 1 was a really good chapter for me. I never knew the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web. Turns out, according to Matthew MacDonald (2006), the Internet is “a network of connected computers that spans the globe,” (10); while the World Wide Web is “one of the many ways to exchange information across the Internet” (10). Who would’ve thunk? Not me!
Chapter 2 was a little bit more scary for me but I muddled through it with success. I learned that HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. Again, never knew. I’ve worked a bit with HTML with my blog (more on that subject later) but I never quite understood its significance until now. I found pages 42-3 to be the most beneficial to me. The basic HTML codes will be something I am sure I will be looking at over and over again through the semester.
Chapter 17 was a bit of a review for me. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve had a blog for some years now so I didn’t really learn anything too exciting but a review is always helpful.
Thu 15 Jan 2009
Well, this is looking good now.
Networks 2 is going to be a fun class. Doing a good bit of work in there just for the fun of it. I went through and the first thing I did was change /etc/issue and /etc/motd so that now while I’m telneting into the machines, the messages display corny jokes and such. Later, I’ll probably add a watch script to the /var/log/messages log, so that when anyone telnets into one of the machines, the /etc/issue and /etc/issue.net files read different things. That’d be awesome.
As for Cryptology… the first assignment was a little dull, but the class itself is hilarious. Be sure to go watch “The website is down” if you want something funny to watch. Should be on youtube. It does have some language, so be mindful of minors.
The rest of my classes are… well… required. Ethics is going good, communication has had it’s moments of sheer laughter (cmon… communication for engineers is like stilts for kangaroos). My semester is pretty packed with just a lot of reading and writing. And by packed, I mean barely stuffy… because last semester was the hardest I’ve ever had, and now I can’t even choke on two projects and an exam if I wanted to… because it’ll never compare to last semester, which three finals and four projects and two presentations. That is a workload to ne’er be forgotten.
More later… as I feel like it.
Tue 13 Jan 2009
Mon 12 Jan 2009
I will be away at the SLA Leadership Summit from Tuesday, January 13th to Saturday, January 14th. I will be back on campus on Monday, January 19th. At the meeting, I will start my term as Chair of the Association’s Information Technology Division.
Email access will be limited. For immediate assistance, you can reach the Library’s front desk at 863.667.7817. The Tampa Library reference desk can be reached at 813.974.2729 or 866.550.8036 (toll free).
Online assistance can be found at http://poly.usf.edu/Offices/Library/Research_Help.xml.
Mon 12 Jan 2009
Elsevier communicated the following enhancements to Engineering Village 2.
- The “Ask An Expert” section of www.engineeringvillage.com has always given users the opportunity to ask questions of an expert engineer, EV’s product specialist Colleen Hunter, and/or an organization’s librarian. Expert engineers have experience in a variety of disciplines, including mechanical, chemical, and industrial engineering. By re-designing the “Ask An Expert” page, we hope to make it easy for users to find answers to commonly asked questions, and to direct their more specific questions to the appropriate resource. Users will be able to sign up for online trainings and download training materials via links to www.ei.org and send feedback via email.
- To help Referex users navigate through their e-book results, a Keyword Cloud will be added to all titles. The Keyword Cloud, located in the Book Details section of a search result, will show the most frequently appearing keywords in that title. By hovering over a keyword, users will be able to see how many times the word appears in the book. Clicking on a keyword will take the user to a set of results that displays the pages on which the keyword appears.
- For advanced users, the Expert Search character limit will be doubled to 8,000. This will allow users familiar with advanced Boolean logic the ability to conduct more complex searches.
Sun 11 Jan 2009
Fri 9 Jan 2009
Wed 7 Jan 2009
Before the Christmas break ended, I spent two days in Miami with my brother and his friend Riz. Riz was an expert with the roads over there and took us around to some of the most interesting places. My brother was, of course, looking for a place to stay for the coming semester.
Sat 3 Jan 2009
Fri 2 Jan 2009
Here are the items newly arrived at the USF Polytechnic Library during the month of December. As always, new circulating books are found in the “New books” stacks in the Group Study area.
To note, a new title for our Professional Development collection, Defusing the angry patron : a how-to-do-it manual for librarians and paraprofessionals . While the book does have a library focus, it contains useful tips and techniques that will help anyone dealing with customers.
Books
Fri 2 Jan 2009
Note: the Poly Library shares its space with the ERDC HelpDesk. The HelpDesk is the unit managing the distribution point for the bookstore textbooks. Inquiries should be made to them directly; we do assist when possible but we do not have access to all the pertinent information.
Textbooks have started to come in. They typically arrive 3 days after you receive an email from the bookstore. The courier usually delivers them around 3PM to 4PM, Monday to Friday. You are welcome to call ahead at 863-667-7005 to know if your textbooks have arrived.
