Journal of a Sabbatical |
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January 4, 2001 |
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like a blog only different |
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Today's Reading: Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian by Sara Anna Emery 2001
Book List
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The Connection rebroadcast that blogger segment recently, which once again got me thinking about how a blog is different from an online journal and why I don't seem to be able to keep up a "links and commentary" type blog. I spent a lot of time web surfing today so I started recording it in the manner of a blog. These are the results. Like a blog, only different. I saw a link to this Global Top 50 Birding Sites on Massbird and checked it out. They've rated and linked to some excellent birding-related sites all over the world. My main work for the morning and part of the afternoon was pricing various Mac configurations for the Photoshop part of the Dendrological Atlas Project. You'd be amazed at how long it can take to look up a few prices for a few devices in a few different configurations by a few different manufacturers. Then since I was online anyway and the network hadn't seized yet and my connection hadn't dropped carrier yet, I got decided to research some stuff about the Blackstone Valley National Historic Corridor. In trying to answer a question about whether Watchemoket Cove is within the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor for somebody who is doing a Big Year (that's one of those birding events I don't bother with - yet) for the Blackstone corridor, I had to search for a map of the Blackstone Corridor that I could read with Adobe Acrobat 3.0 because the one on the National Park Service site is only readable with 4.0 and it takes too long to download the upgrade from Adobe. I hate downloading software. My connection is not nearly fast enough. Anyway, I finally found a map and determined that the official "corridor" ends at India Point, which is within walking distance of the cove. Drat. Now I have to tell that guy I was wrong, and he'll have to find his Eurasian wigeons and common black-headed gulls somewhere else within the Blackstone Valley. My search led me to a good tourism site from the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council though. So if I ever get back to that dusty old Blackstone River project I planned to write a thousand years ago, I can update my planned route. While I was in this mood for tracking things down, I tried to find the entry in which I wrote a list of things I wanted to accomplish on this sabbatical. I distinctly remember writing it, but I can't find it. It may have been in The Adventures of Janet Who Has No Life But Is Extremely Busy, which was the predecessor to this journal, but I deleted that whole thing when I ran out of disk quota on my server. Now that I get more megabytes for my buck, I could bring back all that old stuff if the floppies I archived it on are still readable. But such a project ranks way way way behind finishing the China trip journal and even behind finishing the Hokkaido trip journal (which I somehow hadn't realized I hadn't finished until I went to link to the daphniphyllum story from the Hungary trip journal and realized I'd never written it). In reading my old old old entries I notice that my problems with visual communication and hypertext still haven't resolved themselves. I still seem to think too verbally and too linearly. The good news is that there seems to be a temporary backlash toward using text on the web because of people browsing on their cellphones with the tiny screens. The obsolescence of text has been delayed at least until they get way better resolution on the teensy screens and we humans get better eyesight or mandatory glasses. There was something else or two or three I was going to bring up but the thoughts have fled my mind. Oh well. |
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Copyright © 2001, Janet I. Egan |