Seven Books That Changed The Way I See The World

Inspired by Bobbi L. Newman's blog post on the topic, I've tried to come up with the seven books that changed the way I see the world. It's not an easy task, and doubtless I've missed some. It is a list I've cobbled together, hastily, in the last three quarters of an hour, and it is a list which is presented in experiential order:

The House at Pooh Corner - A.A.Milne (1928)

In my mind the better of the two Winnie-the-Pooh books, I first experienced it from my mother's knee at a very early age. It doubtless helped foster my personality and shape my sense of humour. It's a brilliantly written and very funny book, and the end makes me cry.

The Thousand Eyes of Night - Robert E. Swindells (1985)

Swindells was my favourite author as a child, and this was the first of his I read. It came from the local public library. It is the story of a few kids who speculate that unusual mice might have been responsible for some local eviscerations. Contrary to the rules applied in most children's stories I'd read by this point, death poses a very real threat to our protagonists. This detail, as much as anything, made Swindells a gripping author. When I took this book back to the library, I immediately got out The Ghost Messengers, after which there were few other authors who could grab my interest. Swindells' works shaped my concept of adult interaction and perhaps helped make me a secretive sort, enthralled more by my fantasies and woodland adventures than by the drudgery of reality. Swindells had me looking for ghosts at school and making maps of non-existent secret tunnels. In my teenage years I took Lucy Topham, protagonist of A Serpent's Tooth, as something of a role model (though chose to ignore her more drippy character traits). 

The Witches - Roald Dahl (1983)

First experienced in the book-corner at school, circa 1987, read to us by my favourite teacher (and Dahl fanatic), Mrs Morris. The same life-changing concepts in Swindells are to be found here, albeit with a cheeky and dark sense of humour running throughout. Like many children of my age, The Witches stands as Dahl's master-work; the way it ends, in particular, is brilliantly perception-tweaking and is for me the best point of the whole book (another book that excited within me an interest in dark themes and surprise endings is Ruth Brown's A Dark Dark Tale). Dahl influenced me in other ways, too: I nearly killed my grandma with a cup of 'tea' painstakingly brewed from various household liquids and powders.

1066 And All That - W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman (1930)

I read this on a caravan holiday. The pages were falling out and covering me in crusty yellow glue, but in spite of the poor binding I could tell that this book was a Good Thing. It demonstrated to my young self that comedy could be applied to scholarly subjects, and that everything in life can be seen in humourous terms (even death by lamprey). More recently my concept of history is shaped by the Oxford History of England (another influential work which I'm squeezing in here). Its volumes remind one (as is often the case with history) that there are few new things under the sun and that societies of the past were not so far removed from societies of the present. 

Animal Farm - George Orwell (1945)

Following on rather neatly, then, is this allegory of crushed political dreams which I read in bed one teenage evening. Orwell is in good part responsible for my cynicism, I suspect. On the subject of fables, I should also make mention of Watership Down: a tale of death, sex, war, and bunnies. If Watership Down were a sci-fi, it would have an oily-legged slave-woman on the front and would tell the tale of greasy refugees from a dead planet who infiltrate another world to steal its women-folk. It isn't that. It's an allegory of that with rabbits. I think this realization got me to think a bit more about subtexts in literature.

The Pub & The People - Mass Observation (1943)

Picked out at random from the J.B.Morrell library in my last year at York, this was my introduction to Mass Observation and social anthropology. I found its anal documenting of the commonplace to be really rather fascinating: a brilliant and valuable piece of history. It taught me the value of simply looking at the world.

The Female Eunuch - Germaine Greer (1970)

Read on holiday in Northumberland this book probably changed the way I see the world more than any other I've read since the most formative years of my childhood. It unpicked my understanding and stitched it back together again, adding a cherry of pipe-dream utopianism on top as something to which I might aspire. Its blend of socialism and feminism bore deep down through the psychological strata laid in my head by the aforementioned books, and stirred from her slumber the Greenham-tinged Lucy Topham template of my teens, recasting her in a more informed and more self-confident image. I felt my view of the world tested and teased, and while some of what Greer writes is questionable, it still got me thinking about gender and society, and my relationship to both, in a way I hadn't before. 

So that's the seven. I bet I've left something really important out, but it's getting late and I've dissertating to do.

CPD23:6,7 Showing Some Leg

I watched the 1940s melodrama Madonna of the Seven Moons today. It's on iPlayer 'til next Friday should you fancy it too (it's also on YouTube). At the start of the following clip, Maddalena and Giuseppe Labardi await the return from boarding school of their daughter Angela and her new friend, Evelyn:

NOTE: Highlight the spoilers to read:

Maddalena is a straight-laced and devoutly religious society woman, and the anxiety her liberated daughter causes her soon proves too much, ultimately contributing to a mental and physical breakdown. She awakes from this breakdown as a different person : Rosanna : an atheistic gangster's moll and very much the opposite of everything Maddalena represents. It transpires that Maddalena has been subject to previous long-term disappearances during which she has established a parallel life for herself among the Florentine criminal classes. Things come to an operatic head during Carnevale. It's a film of dualities, masks and mistaken identity; from the early reveal of the assumed-to-be-female Evelyn to the climactic fatal mistaking of a rapist for his similarly-clad brother, the whole film dabbles with ideas of society, image and self-representation. The central narrative premise may be a touch shaky, but the thematic elements of the film spoke to me a great deal.

Like Maddalena, I present different faces to different audiences. The way I behave with my parents is different to the way I behave with my work colleagues, which in turn is different to the way I behave with my close friends. This is not an unusual state of affairs, though Google+ appears to be the first social networking tool to really get to grips with it. Pretty much everyone who has an opinion on the matter seems in agreement that the best thing about Google+ is the circles feature that allows one to restrict ones comments to particular groups of people. I do this on a wider level already (as, perhaps, do you). Consider the following approximation of my social groupings (where red represents my closest friends):

For myself, as for many of my peers, Facebook is a place where old school-friends display baby scans. I almost solely use it for its (clunky but effective) message client. Meanwhile, my work colleagues are largely unrepresented in my on-line relationships. The Twitter circle incorporates two near-discrete accounts (yet another way in which I temper my personality with respect to my audience). There are other net-based networks that I have not included in my diagram: forums, for instance. In general, though, I am a 'lurker' in these environments rather than an active participant. Not since the early days of Wikipedia have I taken a reasonably active role in such an on-line community.

One social network I have not joined is LinkedIn, which for a couple of years I assumed was the name of a naff teen-rock combo. Reading Samantha Halford's experiences (Twinset & Purls) generally confirmed my prejudices that this is not a site for me: I like my privacy, and certainly don't want to go waving my CV and my physical identity in the face of anybody who happens to be passing. The place stinks of the Masonic Lodge, but without the perks of copious drinking, tongue-in-cheek ceremony and ribald bonhomie that I suspect accompany the real-life orders. It's far too dry and 'business'-like; not real business so much as that parody of business peddled by Alan Sugar and his Filofax followers. I exaggerate for effect, but the formal tone and market-floor pitch does nothing to convince me that putting my employment history, identity and location on a particularly exposed bit of the internet is a sensible thing for me to do (though do please see this response for a counter argument).

Two chartered librarians exchange LinkedIn 'connections'.

I do have a profile on the LISNPN, though I've never really used the site (it's forum structure is a bit too clunky for my like, and most of what goes on there gets mirrored on Twitter). Except for the recent New Professionals Conference I've not attended any library-related social events excepting those organized by my Library School social society. I considered going along to one of the cpd23-related events this week, but my schedule got the better of me, and there was nothing that wouldn't've required more travelling than socialising. I do enjoy getting out there and meeting people, although I am always rather shy at the offset, and terrible at small-talk. This initial timidity on my part is something I need to overcome, and is complicated by an anxiety about how I am perceived. I can't help but worry if, not unlike my namesake in Madonna of the Seven Moons, I might not quite meet the expectations of my peers. This problem is further compounded by the fact that I only sent off for CILIP membership in the last fortnight, and have still to receive my introductory pack and secret handshake instructions. I look forward to their arrival with relish.

Ann wears this...

Librarians of a nervous disposition should look away now. I am about to consider a topic that strikes fear into the very hearts of several members of our sustren. I am about to consider the stereotype of the librarian (shriek, gasp, emit!).

Here's a fun little 'infographic' published this week by an apologetic Wikiman:

What temperature are you? Here's how I match up:

Has hair in a bun

I've not regularly worn my hair in a bun since school, when it was temporarily fashionable so to do. The last time I bunned up was just over ten years ago when I assumed the role of an artist for a murder-mystery dinner and stored in my barnet a paint-brush and pencil. The ability to make use of the hair bun as a personal stationery-stash is of great practical value, but is offset by the comparative complexities of creating the bun when considered alongside a pony-tail or hair-gripped alternative. I would not rule out wearing a bun in future, though by current measures of fashion I would find other methods of hair-restraint to be preferable.

Says "Ssshh!" all the time

Of course, a librarian wouldn't have to say "Ssshh!" if the patrons were suitably respectful of their peers, or if the library had been built with better acoustic dampening. The Wikiman asserts that libraries "are no longer silent" anyway: terribly annoying to anybody trying to use them for study, but handy for those of us in the profession who are a touch averse to confrontation. Traditionally I fall into that latter category: certainly, this librarian...

Is meek

I don't see my meekness as a weakness, except where it verges on submissiveness and timidity and hinders my ability to confront mischief-makers. In that respect I'm very keen to find my inner harridan and unleash from her a dash of stern self-confidence. Meet one of my idols:

This is Library Ann. She is an important role-model to me, and she accompanied me throughout my library-school notes. I type the truth when I tell you that I want to be like her when I grow up. She is my image of what a librarian is and should be, and in many ways she inspired me to become one. She is generally somewhat meek, but she takes no nonsense. Though she has a schoolmarmish air, she is by no means cold, except when cold is needed. She is practical and authoritative with a cheeky sense of humour, and I admire her ability to "Ssshh!" with kindness and understanding. It is this blend of meekness and matronly sensibility that I wish to foster within myself, at least as far as my public presence is concerned. Behind the scenes I may have to be a little more wily and tenacious if I am to secure the resources that my library's patrons require. Typing of wile and tenacity...

Likes cats
I went through a phase of not liking cats, when one responded to my advances by gouging great chunks of flesh from my legs. Also, I fear the possibility that I may perhaps be allergic to their fur. I do hope that this is not the case, as, despite the brief, pain-induced aversion I experienced in my youth, I now have a great fondness for cats and aspire to share my home with at least one of their kind at some point in the future. 

Likes order
My bedroom floor suggests otherwise, but this is because my wardrobe is insufficient to my needs. In ideal circumstances I sustain a degree of order to my life and my belongings, but should circumstances slip from that ideal, so my orderliness drifts casually away: things get dumped in the sorting area of my life rather than being neatly shelved where they belong. This untidy chaos will persist until such point that it reaches a 'critical mass' whereby nothing can be successfully located within a reasonable timeframe. Only then will the order be reinstated. This, I accept, would be no way to run a library.

Loves social media
My next cpd23 post will discuss my thoughts on this matter in more detail. Previous posts have also made reference to such things. "Love" is a strong word, especially when considered against "Likes cats".

Wears cardigans
I currently own sixteen cardigans. It is not enough. 

Is a leftie
The last three times I calibrated myself against The Political Compass, my coordinates were (latest reading in bold):

Economic: -9.38, -8.88, -8.38;

Social: -7.38, -6.67, -6.41.

Likes knitting
In my early teens I used to crochet and French knit, but I've never knitted at this side of the channel. I once got a book of Vogue knitting patterns out of the library with the intention of taking it up, but I know full well that the slinky dresses therein would've come off my needles considerably baggier and less stylish than depicted. I don't think I really have the time to fit it in, either. That said, imagine all the cardigans I could make...

Likes Adam and Joe
Slack squadron Podcat. Not like some of our ilk who've been known to have the odd (non-retro) text read out. If you see me on the bus, guffawing like a loon with my earphones attached, it may not be due to some ridiculous yet risible action on your behalf but rather as a consequence of this pair's radiophonic ramblings. [Recalls BaaadDad with whimsical fondness, and sighs to the remembrance of times past].

Has a love of gin
Of all the common alcoholic beverages devised by a bored humanity, the only one for which I have no great fondness is gin. My bar is well stocked, but gin is only in there for my guests.

Totting all that up, I'd say that I come to about 25°C on The Wikiman's thermometer: neither "Cold and Old" nor "Hot New and True".

This is all good clean library fun, but there are those among us who run in horror at the scent of tweed. They worry that the apparition of a librarian in twinset and pearls is enough to make an ordinary member of the public loose their breakfast across the OPAC keyboard. In the stereotype's defence, I thought I'd end by offering a little excerpt from a recent essay what I wrote on the subject of library marketing:

“Current perceptions...may not fit the reality we wish to communicate. As the recent case of the ‘librarian doll’ offered by a US retailer shows, there is a potential for negative stereotyping. The small action figure was a bespectacled woman in a cardigan, long plain skirt and sensible shoes. An ‘amazing push button’ action moved her finger to her lips with a ‘shushing action’. Marketing can counteract such stereotypes.” (Kendrick, 2006:3)

Favourers of cardigans and plain skirts may question why this stereotype is negative (that the doll was a tribute to real librarian and campaigner Nancy Pearl lends further objection). Indeed, stereotypes lie at the heart of marketing; one should not rush to dismiss established shorthands: “In advertising you’ve probably got about thirty seconds...so the use of a stereotype is...to tell people...what the relationship is as fast as possible.” (Bullmore, 1990). If the librarian ‘brand’ is sufficiently iconic as to support a doll, might it be better to build upon that than dismiss it? “The high visibility of many librarian characters within popular culture does show good awareness levels of many positive aspects of the profession, and provides a good grounding for further sector advocacy” (Luthmann, 2007:777). One can usurp stereotypes and harness them to advantage. While we may take offence at some depictions, there exist several librarian heroes in popular fiction. Even ‘negative’ forms may not be as damaging as alleged. The irascible librarian of East Cheam is only so in the face of Tony Hancock, and the much-trod spinster cliché, like any effective stereotype, owes something to reality: most librarians are educated women, if not necessarily tweed-clad cat-lovers. Stereotypes may self-perpetuate, attracting those who conform to its model. Yet Luthmann (2007) observes a profession preoccupied with its own image, despite the wider media seeming comfortable with the stereotype. Even the born-again Frank Skinner finds parts of the image appealing. He notes with alarm the lack of books in Church Street: “I was worried that my out-of-date complaints about libraries had been replaced by a new horror — the books weren’t musty, they were missing... Angry of Hampstead, when he’s outraged at...library closures, probably doesn’t know exactly what he’s defending.” (Skinner, 2010). Any reformer must retain the baby when draining the bath.

Image borrowed gratefully from eBay, where you can buy the original for $10.

CPD23:5 The Fairest of Them All

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there lived a thoughtful young shelf-elf called Evelin who had dreams of becoming a beautiful and noble librarina. Many was the time that Evelin would head up to the old wishing-well on the hill beyond the glade, drop in a pebble and hope for the day when a handsome library manager would come to the village and whisk her away to a librarianship post in the Royal Castle. But no matter how hard she wished, the handsome library manager never came, and Evelin would trudge despondently back down the hill and set about her duties as a shelf-elf. 

Then one day, while she was out shelving in the woods, Evelin discovered, hidden among the 808.042s, a strange old blog. She took the blog home, cleaned it all up so that it shimmered brightly in the evening sunlight, and hung it neatly on her best wall. As she stared at it, she noticed the shiny surface begin to ripple, and then a voice spoke:

"Thankyou, Evelin, for rescuing me and cleaning me up so beautifully. To reward you, I shall help you to become the fairest librarina in all the land."

"How did you know my name?", trembled a somewhat shocked Evelin. She had never before heard a blog speak except for when she'd accidentally pressed "v" while reading "Caustic Cover Critic" in Opera. 

"I am a magic blog and I know everything." replied the blog, without a hint of modesty. "Come, post upon me and your wish shall be granted soon enough!"

And so Evelin began to post. And post. And post...

Fair Enough - by StEvelin 1° Reflection: Turns out I am the fairest in the land. I feel quite flattered by this revelation. 2° Reflection: Oh. Apparently I'm not the fairest in the land. Someone called Snow White is a thousand times fairer... 3° Reflection: I'm the fairest here still, just not in the whole land. Snow White's got that one sewn up, it seems. 4° Reflection: Feel a bit disappointed, actually. Is she really "a thousand times" fairer? Seems a lot. 5° Reflection: Think I'm just disappointed cos I was told I was the fairest in the land, but she's so much fairer. 6° Reflection: Maybe not a thousand times fairer, but she's definitely fairer. That's ok. I can deal with that... 7° Reflection: I'm still fairest here and that will do me fine. Wish I'd not been built up so in the first place, though. 8° Reflection: One can so easily get hung up on one's egalitarianism.

"Your posts, particularly those relating to CPD23, are supposed to be reflective analyses of your progress towards the librarianship you crave." encouraged the blog. 

"Alas," replied an anxious Evelin, "I fear I stray more towards the didactive than the reflective." She bit her lip in frustration.

"Come now, fair child," comforted the blog, "Do you not see that your comment is a recognition of your short-comings? Only by acknowledging your failings can you come to correct them, and only by correcting them can you blossom into the librarina of your dreams."

"I see," Evelin reflected. "I really must get a grip on that."

This week I got me a Google+ account. I can't say I'm very excited about this turn of events. It's basically Facebook but with Twitter-style lists that allow you to manage your audience a little more selectively. Which would be all well and good had I an audience... I'm on there as my on-line alter-ego, Evelin Harper-St.James, on account of the woeful lack of privacy that makes Facebook security look Alcatrazian. I would be charmed should any plussed-up library-types deign to encircle my elegantly hatted self. 

Also this week, my SaintEvelin Twitter account overtook my other account on count of Followers, and gained itself more "Klout" in the process. I see this as a landmark step in my 'coming out' of the library closet, and I believe it is now only a matter of time before my handsome library manager arrives and whisks me away to my happily ever after...

Desktop Publishing

As an addendum to my last post, I thought I'd give anyone who cares a guided tour of my computer as it generally appears of an evening:

1-8: Opera control panel

1. New tab

2. Open file

3. Back 

4. Reload / Stop

5. Forward

6. Side-panel toggle

7. Home-page (local version of my own website)

8. Closed Tabs graveyard

Nothing much to say about these. I've gone with a minimal look, with a cassette player vibe. The Closed Tabs list is a particularly useful function.

9-12: Opera Extensions

9. Translate page / text

10. Launch Google cached version of page

11. Launch Wayback Machine history of page

12. Index image links on page

Opera Extensions are useful gadgets, and some are good fun too (if sometimes a bit clunky). The translation tool is particularly handy. I have a number of other extensions running that don't require icons. Some of the better ones include: Facebook Photo Theatre Killer (which suppresses the new photo viewer in Facebook and uses the old system instead), Image Preview Popup (which displays a linked image as a tool-tip), Mouse Trail (which allows me to draw on the screen with a right click), Re-Enable ContextMenu (which allows right-click menus on sites that try to suppress them) and WordCount, which displays the number of words in a highlighted selection. These Extensions are additional to the suite of lovely tools that come with Opera as standard (page resizing is particularly useful, and the speech plug-in allows me to keep reading a page while I go to the toilet!). 

13-16: Search engines 

13. Wikipedia search

14. YouTube search

15. Google Maps search

16. Other search engines (Google UK by default)

The drawback of such built-in search boxes is that I always miss out on those Google front pages. 

17-22: Opera LED panel 

17. Clock 

18. Security status

19. Image view toggle 

This allows me to turn off images or just use cached versions. It used to be useful in the narrow-band days; it's less so now. 

20. User / Author style-sheet toggle

If anyone wants to complain about my choice of colours on this blog, here's a tool I might suggest to them. It replaces the author's style-sheet with a custom one. So if you'd rather read this as green on red, feel free!

21. Print view toggle

22. Fit-to-width toggle 

This was quite useful once upon a time, but these days websites set their page-widths quite solidly. Indeed, most of these "LED" tools are remnants from a previous age.

23-25: Seesmic panels

23. KingConstance Twitter feed

24. Facebook feed

25. SaintEvelin Twitter feed

Beyond the horizontal page-fold: a list feed, @ mentions, and retweets.

So this is Seesmic: the main control panel for my Twitter empire (mu-ha-ha-ha-ha). It's very good, though it doesn't seem to handle list histories very well. I use Twitter itself for that.

26-27: Opera tabs

26. Seesmic

27. Twitter: SaintEvelin account

In addition to my two accounts (which follow different sets of people), I have two lists: Constant Evelin (a public list that collates the tweets from my two accounts, and which can be seen in a panel at the right of this blog), and Vince Cable (a private list, duplicated in both accounts: a reduced field of key people I follow. It enables me to catch up quickly after a period away from Twitter (near-impossible using my unadulterated feeds)). Had I not set up a second account, I would by now have developed a library list for myself, but SaintEvelin's timeline largely fulfils that function. I may add further lists as time goes on, but the current arrangement seems sufficient so far.

28: IRC

28. IRC window.

This sliver at the bottom of the screen allows me to chat with friends while getting on with other things (or just watching telly in my browser). 

29-32: System tray

29. Clock (you can never have too many!)

30. USB port management (there's other things hiding in there, but I like to keep this icon on top)

31. Language management 

English, Russian, Greek and Arabic, to give me quick access to non-Roman characters; I also keep Unicode character charts close to hand. I like my special characters.

32. File selector

My last computer had a partitioned drive. The partitions were named: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Wogan. When I got this computer, I continued the theme. Consequently, my main drive bears the name "Forsythe". This file selector is one of the ways in which I can navigate Forsythe's badly organized contents.

33-37: Taskbar buttons 

33. Photo-Paint (My paint program of choice; open today so that I can make an annotated screengrab) 

34. X-Chat IRC 

35. Excel (Ooh, look, I'm doing my data analysis for my dissertation (honest!)) 

36. Eudora (My favoured email client (though I still pine for Pine))

37. Opera

38-51: Quicklaunch

38. Foobar (it really whips the Winamp's arse)

39. Notepad (essential tool for any cybernaut)

40. Sea Monkey (WYSIWYG HTML editor)

41. Photo-Paint

42. Opera

43. Eudora

44. X-Chat

45. Desktop

46. Window switcher

47. OED (what librarina could resist having the OED available at the touch of a button?)

48. Forsythe (my hard drive)

49. Computer (my computer, Trevor)

50. Diary (a working spreadsheet for various projects)

51. "Start" orb

52-58: Google Desktop Sidebar

52. Google Desktop search (not as useful as might be useful)

53. Scratch Pad (an oubliette for all manner of cryptic notes-to-self)

54. BBC World feed

55. KingConstance Twitter feed (because I don't always have my browser open)

56. Web Clips news feed (RSS dripped down my eyeballs)

57. Facebook notification gadget (so I know when I've got a message on Facebook)

58. Google Desktop Sidebar

So that's that: every feather in my desktop's nest. This is how the internet looks from where I sit. I hope you enjoyed the view.

CPD23:4 Getting Fed Up

I've been using RSS feeds since October 2007 when my last computer blew up and I got a new one with a widescreen monitor and a couple of sidebar options bundled in. I chose to use the Google Desktop sidebar and plugged in a couple of packaged news feeds. I currently have a BBC World News feed and a custom feed that collates stories from AP International News, C4N Latest News, the local paper, three Guardian feeds, Reuters World News and a couple of blogs. Before I joined Twitter, I also had a few friends' Twitter feeds running in there too. Subsequently I've had a couple of Twitter applications on the sidebar, but alas they seem to periodically stop working (presumably a certification problem). I am therefore getting ready to leave behind the rather limited Google sidebar and find something a bit more flexible. I have no idea what I might find.

My use of feeds is not limited to the sidebar, however. When I started at library school, I wrote myself a web page to collate feeds from a number of library news sites. As for blogs, until recently I've tended simply to follow them casually from my browser bookmarks rather than setting up a newsreader. Since I started this blog, though, I've been using Blogger's internal newsreader to keep abreast of those blogs I've chosen to 'follow'.

My web browser of choice, Opera, offers a limited newsreading facility (Opera Portal) but I don't use it. Depending on how my sidebar search goes, I might well end up cobbling something together myself which will be much more to my tastes than any third-party feed-aggregating portal.

No Man in Gown, or Page in Petty-Coat;

A Woman to my knowledge, yet I cann't (If I should dye) make Affidavit on't.
Do you not twitter Gentlemen?

                                                                             - Thomas Jordan (c.1620-1685?)

I must confess to having been somewhat sceptical about Twitter at first. After all, it's just an upside down  SMS-supporting forum-cum-blog with an insanely small character limit. But it is also surprisingly effective and curiously fun. I first signed up with the intention of using it simply as a form of feed aggregation, but soon found myself sucked into its strange world of carefully honed brevity and flagrant punning. Twitter is ridiculous; wilfully so; and therein lies a key strength: Twitter has an innate sense of humour. It's also a very convenient way of distributing news (and gossip): a sort of interactive ticker-tape machine. Indeed, it has generally rendered my sidebar feeds redundant, as I tend to pay more attention to Twitter than to the RSS.

I made my first tweet at 11:11 pm, on the 24th April 2010. "Hello World!", I said, as is customary, followed 37 minutes later by "I honestly don't know what this is for." Eleven minutes after that I wrote "By which, I mean, I understand the potential benefits of an SMS-based blog, but there my grip meets its pommel. Why am <i>I</i> here?", and then, after another six minutes had elapsed: "But enough existential witterings. I tweet therefore I am..." The next day I was still not impressed by Twitter: "Nope. Still not impressed by this. Doesn't even stalk people properly when you follow them. Twitter me not...", but by the 27th I was posting things like "The hole in the library roof is showering forth great gobs of rain (as usual)." I was beginning to see the purpose of this thing: "Now I see the purpose of this thing! It's to keep me away from the mundane and humdrum task of writing a briefing paper. It's good at it." It is indeed very good at it.

The above were the tweets of KingConstance: the name derived from the OED's entry for "twitter" :

‘Really, Mrs. Kingconstance,’ 
Miss Spice twittered excitedly,
‘you are too kind!’
 

                                                                              - Sarah Grand (1854-1943)

I've already discussed in previous blog posts (almost all of them, I suspect) my decision on 21st June to launch a second Twitter account (SaintEvelin) so as to allow KingConstance a more consistent regality unpolluted by plebeian tweeting on subjects such as library work. Twitter does not support the use of two accounts simultaneously, and so, in the interests of practicality, I am now using a third-party web-client called Seesmic. This allows me to access and publish to both my Twitter feeds (and also my Facebook news feed): a considerably convenient state of affairs indeed. There are things about Seesmic that could be improved, but on the whole it is proving to be a useful and effective tool that suits my needs quite adequately. Other similar clients exist, but of those I've tried, Seesmic seems the best for me.

Opera, Opera, Opera Opera Opera,

Opera, Opera, Opera Opera.

                                                                              - Aysel Gürel (1929-2008)

Something that doesn't seem to be for me is the website appraisal system "Pushnote", advocated by CPD23. As stated above, my browser of choice is Opera, and Pushnote have not created a version of their application for Opera. This is understandable (if also inconvenient): on a simple analysis of market share Opera accounts for little more than 2% of web traffic. Opera users are therefore by no means a top priority for the people behind Pushnote.

I have been using the Opera browser since 2002, after taking a dislike to Netscape 6 and being amazed with the speed of Opera (in those narrowband days it was a crucial claim to be the fastest browser on the planet). I had a brief flirtation with Mozilla during the Opera 7 epoch but soon returned to the superficially more customizable Opera. My version looks nothing like the official release, owing to a steady process of cosmetic and practical reorganization over the best part of a decade (visually it has more in common with Opera 5 than the current version 11). We love each other very much (especially now that the Voice feature works again, and in spite of the new image-viewer). It may not be as quick and as sleek as Google Chrome, but speed isn't the deciding factor it once was, and Opera still seems a lot faster than the increasingly clunky Firefox (which I put up with at work) and IE (which I compare with having to cycle up a hill made from Marmite (sounds more appealing than it is)). I also like my extras too much. Chrome is a fabulous piece of no-nonsense design, but it's all smooth plastic and rivets and I really do like my nonsense. I like to be able to get the back off my browser and customize it to my needs; stick useless apps to it that I'll hardly ever use, and generally feel like I've made it my own.

Opera, then, is my comfortable pair of web-slippers, and I do not willingly tread the cold stone floor of the internet kitchen without it. This does, however, make the Pushnote application of no practical value to me. Not that I'm convinced I'd find it very worthwhile anyway (though refer to Twitter for a previous example of scepticism confounded): I see little purpose in seeing others' opinions of a site once I'm already there and am able to judge its quality for myself. The value of a rating is surely at its highest when encountered in advance, and of negligible assistance after the fact.

Meanwhile, the library community on Twitter is all a-twitter at the concept of something called Google+. I freely admit a near-complete lack of excitement about this, much as I felt with Google Wave. But I also felt the same about Facebook, and to a certain extent Twitter. One of these things I now have a genuine affection for, to the point that I have two Twitter accounts, so it just goes to show that sometimes ones expectations can be confounded. 

A Hundred Tweets In: A Brief Breakdown

I have now reached my 100th tweet as SaintEvelin. Not a lot, I know, but I thought it might be fun to see how the hundred break down.

18	Glastonbury
16	Fashion
12	Retweets
10	Blogging
8	Parish notices, isolated status updates and miscellanea
6	The motion picture "Labyrinth"
5	General library stuff
4	Names
3	Cliques
3	Wasps
3	Etiquette
2	Food
2	Dust
2	Hashtag games
2	Silly drawings
2	BBC 6 Music
2	Interior design

About a quarter of my tweets have been of a professional bent. The majority have been social, albeit a little more in my own character than my other twitter account allowed. I think, at this early stage, this is an appropriate balance. Whether it is a reasonable reflection of my tastes is questionable (the high placing of Labyrinth does not necessarily reflect my cinematic preferences, though the second place standing for fashion is somewhat more in keeping with my interests).