CPD23:10,11: The Tiresiad

Tell me, O Evelin, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after sparing the snakes in the sacred citadel of Eboracum. Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose mind he learned, aye, and many the woes he suffered in his heart across the land, seeking to win his old life and the return of his comrades. Yet even so he saved not his comrades, though he desired it sore, for through their own blind folly they perished—fools, who devoured the geese of Dame Judy; but she took from them the day of their returning. 

Of these things, Saint, beginning where thou wilt, tell thou even unto us. Now all those students of Ebor, as many as had escaped sheer destruction, were at home, safe from impoverishment and squalor, but not even there was Tiresias free from toils, and he alone, filled with longing for return to that passed life, did the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions keep back in his hollow caves, yearning that Tiresias should be his slave. But when, as the seasons revolved, the year came in which the gods had ordained that Tiresias should return fully to the world of men, the goddess, flashing-eyed Iris, pitied him, saying: “I will go to Sheffield, that I may the more arouse Tiresias, and set courage in his heart.”

So she spoke, and bound beneath her feet her beautiful slippers, immortal, silver, which were wont to bear her both over the waters of the sea and over the boundless land swift as the blasts of the wind. Then she went darting down from the planes of York, and took her stand in the land of Sheffield at the outer gate of Walkley, and she bore the likeness of a stranger, Mentor, the leader of the Librarians. There, within a tavern, she found many proud and drunken fools. They were taking their pleasure at draughts in front of the doors; some were mixing wine and ale, others were portioning out meats in abundance.

Her the godlike Tiresias was far the first to see, for he was sitting among the drinkers. Beholding Iris, he clasped her right hand and addressed her with winged words:

“Hail, stranger; in this house thou shalt find entertainment and then, when thou hast tasted food, thou shalt tell of what thou hast need.”

So saying, he led the way, and Iris followed. And when they were within the decorous lounge, Iris herself he led and seated on a chair, spreading a linen cloth beneath—a beautiful chair, richly-wrought, and below was a footstool for the feet. Beside it he placed for himself an inlaid seat, apart from the others, and brought bread and therewith dainties in abundance, giving freely of the store platters of all manner of meats, and set by them glass goblets brimmed with wine.

Tiresias spoke to flashing-eyed Iris, holding his head close, that the others might not hear: “Dear stranger, wilt thou be wroth with me for the word that I shall say? Come, tell me this, and declare it truly. Who art thou among men, and from whence? Where is thy city and where thy parents? On what manner of train didst thou come, and by what means didst thou reach Sheffield? For nowise, methinks, didst thou come hither on foot. And tell me this also truly, that I may know full well, whether this is thy first coming hither.”

Then the goddess, flashing-eyed Iris, answered him: “Therefore of a truth will I frankly tell thee. I declare that I am Mentor, lord over the book-loving Librarians. And now have I put in here, as thou seest, and I will now prophesy to thee, as the immortals put it in my heart, and as I think it shall be brought to pass, though I am in no wise a soothsayer, nor one versed in the signs of birds. Not much longer shall thou toil at the job club; another destiny lies to thee: for thou shall become a trader of records, and thereafter a juggler of books. And full eight years hence thou shall return unto thy student ways and take up apprenticeship as a Librarian here in this very citadel. For thou are to become a Great Precentor and Keeper of Books, and bear the halo of a Saint upon thy head.”  

“Tell me, if thou wouldst: who will be my guide through this labyrinth of libraries?”, trembled the abundantly alliterative Tiresias, timidly. 

 “I, Mentor, will be there to press thee on, having upon thee a full year's experience. And besides my own guidance and demonstration will be that of those far greater in wisdom even than I: colleagues from thy working life, figures from thy past, tutors at whose feet thou shall study the arts of book keeping. Why, even great spirits will take the form of birds and tweet to thee thy destiny!”

So spoke Iris, and Tiresias obeyed, and was glad at heart. Then for all time to come a solemn covenant betwixt the twain was made by Iris, in the likeness of Mentor both in form and in voice. She did make visit to Tiresias in many guises, and in such forms as she had listed unto him that day did guide the blind traveller through the trials and toils that awaited him. And it was under such guidance that he did first post here within of the full many adventures that had led him to securing his place within the stacks. This night taketh she the form of CPD23, and Tiresias is led once more to the trough of learning for to drink heartily of the Precentor's cup. It tastes of Merlot (and good Merlot at that). 

Saint Evelin in Room 237 with the Dissertation.

All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dul Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dulll Saint. All work and no play maes Evelin a dull Saint.    

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All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. Alll work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a ull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint.   

All work and no play makes Evelin dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dulll Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a duull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and mo play makes Evelin a dull Sint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dul Saint. All work and no play maes Evelin a dull Saint.    All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint.  

All work and no play majkes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. All work and no play make Evelin a dull Saint. All work nd no play makes Evelin a dull saint. All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saintl All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint. 

All work and no play makes Evelin a dull Saint.

CPD23:9 Never Forget Where You're Coming From

Evernote is a... um... well, it's for... it... um... Ok, I give up. I've been looking at this thing for the best part of a fortnight and I'm still none the wiser. I've been sitting here waiting for the rest of the CPD23 community to give me some ideas, but you're all being very quiet or very gnomic on the matter. Hmm...

Here's what the CPD23 post on Evernote has to say for itself:
"The problem: You want to be able to make comments on webpages and archive them along with your own notes so that everything is all in the one place and easy to access. The problem-solvers: Evernote allows you to take notes on webpages and archive them for later consultation. Your notes can have file attachments and be sorted into folders, tagged, annotated etc."

Let's take that bit by bit. "You want to be able to make comments on webpages and archive them along with your own notes so that everything is all in the one place and easy to access." Fair enough. Yup, I might want to do that. I might see a webpage and make a few notes on it. Tis true. So I open an email, or my browser's notepad, or my sidebar notepad, or Windows notepad, and I copy the URL and I make my note. Or, if I'm concerned that the page will be different tomorrow, I save a copy of the page, or take a screengrab, and stick that as an attachment to the email, or as a link in the notepad. Things could scarcely be simpler. Evernote seems to be a way of doing this, only in a more complicated manner. With Evernote, "Your notes can have file attachments and be sorted into folders, tagged, annotated etc." So just like you can in an email, or with files in Windows if you were sufficiently organized. I'm struggling to see the point.

"Evernote is not just for making notes but can be used for archiving pictures from your computer or webpages or photographs taken during conferences to save you having to take notes all the time. All you have to do is to click New Note again and click and drag a photograph from the web or your computer etc. and drop it into your new note (or you can copy and paste if you prefer)." A bit like when I click 'Compose' in my email client?  I'm still missing something.

"Evernote for Windows or Mac will automatically synchronize your notes with Evernote on the Web every few minutes... (This means that changes you make to your Evernote account on different appliances i.e. computers, phones or mobile devices will all synchronise to keep your account up to date)." Ok, so there's webspace involved (just like if I were to use a web-client for my email). I'm beginning to see the faintest sliver of a function.

"You can also save web content, which involves installing the Web Clipper (a quick and easy process which adds the Evernote button to your Internet browser). All you need to do it to highlight the information you want to save and click on the Evernote button." This function is unsupported by my browser of choice, but seems to be little more than a copy/paste shortcut.

From the Evernote website, we learn "Evernote magically makes printed and handwritten text inside your images searchable, too." It does, and it does it quite effectively: better than the OCR program I have on my computer. But it does it at a rather leisurely pace unless you pay them money. I put three pictures in last week, and only one has been translated. So maybe in a month the function will be of use, but as it is I could copy out the information quicker.

It is the searchability, and this OCR function, that really makes Evernote worthy of even the slightest attention. But my browser notepad and my home email client are eminently searchable (though Outlook and Windows are admittedly less so (to the point of declaring war)). The webspace aspect is clearly of use, but there are plenty of bits of free webspace knocking about the internet without having to download a client. I dare say there are also considerably speedier and perhaps equally effective OCR systems available too.

So I remain very unconvinced about the need to have yet another process cluttering my taskbar and wasting valuable memory. It seems to me that Evernote is something of a white elephant.

CPD23:8 (Local Edition) Google versus Christa

In these parts the passage of time is measured on only one calendar:

For me a calendar is not a calendar without Austin Mitchell, Richard Whiteley, Christa Ackroyd or Christine Talbot somewhere in the mix. But we can't carry Kirkstall Road's finest with us everywhere (though I do keep Gaynor Barnes in a backpack). To negotiate ones hectic schedule on the move, one needs some sort of portable diary to keep track of forthcoming events.

I've never been very good with diaries. I have a cupboard full just here, most of which seldom have anything written in them beyond January. Generally I have been rather better at remembering dates than writing them.

Now, though, alcohol and age weary my brain. When I started Library School it became apparent to me that some sort of grand timetable might be of use. And so I made myself a little calendar and kept it in my notebook. This was all well and good if I had my notebook with me: ideal for when I had a lecture, but less so at any other time. So I had another little notebook too, and various bits of paper, and everything would (sometimes) be collated into a grand spreadsheet here on my computer (you may recall it as #50 in this post).

This situation was unsatisfactory. I considered some web-based solution but realised I would never keep it up to date. What would be useful, though, I thought, would be an on-line lecture timetable of some kind. It just so happened that my university was thinking along a similar path, and had attempted to cobble together a Google Calendar. I played around with it, and eventually copied some script to a webpage where I could refer to the calendar with ease. Alas, most of the time only half my lectures would appear. Doubtless the problems were more the fault of the university than of Google Calendar, but the whole débâcle did nothing to win me over to the concept. I considered another faff around but decided it would be quicker to write the thing out on a piece of paper.

This far from ideal state of affairs lasted until just the other month, when I bought myself a new telephone (of the mobile variety) complete with a built-in calendar. My telephone travels with me pretty-much everywhere and so now when I have an event I wish to record, I can record it to that. My diary woes are solved.

At work, itinerant members of staff are encouraged to share their hectic lifestyles in the calendar bolted to Microsoft's Outlook email client. Outside work I am loathe to broadcast to a wider audience my precise location for fear that they might find me. In both regards, Google Calendar seems redundant.

On the subject of Google more generally, it's been annoying me an awful lot of late. As a consequence of this blog I have acquired "an account" which serves, essentially, to make searching the web more difficult, and checking my university email account even more of a chore than it was before. In this climate, my interest in a Google Calendar is somewhat less than my interest in the local news programming of an area other than the one in which I live (for at least that has some curiosity value).

In the '90s, my friends and I became mildly obsessed with Calendar, mainly because it was a bit crap. Our obsession was rewarded consistently: a behind-the-scenes documentary (Channel 4's Deadline), a late-night version of the show set in Emmerdale Farm's Woolpack (with Mike from Mike's Carpets behind the bar), a Calendar-based panel-show presented by Barry Cryer (Cryer's Crackers) with Richard and Christa as team captains, and real-life Alan Partridge-esque car-crash The Richard Whiteley Show. Until Google's knock-off version of Calendar comes complete with such extras as this, I will have nothing to do with it.

I was going to end this CPD23 post with a clip of Cryer's Crackers or The Richard Whiteley Show, but, alas, YouTube has scant footage of both (a Google conspiracy, no doubt). Instead, revel in the greatest gift that Calendar did bring:

Stop and reset.