July 19, 2007 by Alison.

This blog started last year with the intention of somehow organizing my thoughts, links, and work related projects. Well, i went on hiatus and actually “working on projects” began to take precedence over “writing about projects”.

However, what better way to welcome myself back to the world of blogging than tracking the progress on the latest project causing a stir at the Georgia Tech Library : Flash in the Pan 2007. We have high hopes and only time will tell if our current strategy is indeed a strategy for success!

A few of us here are putting together a flash animation competition. An opportunity for creative students to rise to the occasion and “show us their stuff” ..(pun intended-ha). Not only will they have an opportunity to win a great prize , but the competition hopes to familiarize students, interested in digital media, with cutting edge tools and technology available to them at the Georgia Tech Library. If their lucky , they will even have their work seen by industry professionals.
There is something to the old phrase “Just do it”. Less meetings and more action-I say! Flash in the Pan has come about in a wonderfully fluid manner- through minimal structure and a series of fairly informal, non traditional meetings–we have produced everything from a loose time line for the event, to identifying who we hope to have as specialty judges, to coming up with our now infamous space monkey mascot! (Look for more on the monkey later!)

Where do ideas like Flash in the Pan come from? How does a simple water cooler conversation morph into a fully fledged, legitimate, learning experience or event for an academic institution? I will try to track the progress as we embark on our animated maiden voyage !…

However, this is not entirely unexplored waters for the library. Earlier in the year, I was chatting with a fellow coworker. A simple conversation about a “Homestar Runner” bookbag and shared admiration for the animated series led to us pulling together for a Q & A session with the creators. This was a rare appearance for Matt, Mike and Ryan and I was honored , the Chaps were willing to share their thoughts with the Tech community. The event was a huge success and the students were receptive; this turned out to be a great litmus test for overall interest, amongst the tech community , in Flash animation. Check out video of the event here! SMARTtech.

Due to an apparent interest in digital media etc. a Video/animation contest idea was spawned in the PR committee. We now have to contend with various issues as our jobs vacillate between librarian and an event planner of sorts.

What will it take to motivate students to participate!?..that is the current issue at hand. This is a bit different than just getting people “to show up”…you actually have to motivate someone to be creative….We’re hoping to do this by bringing in “high profile” industry professionals, (Adobe, Wacom, Sanrio, Homestar Runner and more ) and offering expensive highly sought after “tools of the trade” as prizes and give-aways. Dangling the carrot wont be enough though, will we also have to implement an effective marketing strategy.

Issues:

• Submission procedures
• Time line
• Equipment/Software/Classes necessary
• Press
• Prizes/judges sponsors
• Logistics: how many winners? Showings? event specifics?

Our hope is the competition will act as a publicity tool to raise awareness of appropriate library resources and foster good will with the students and faculty. Additionally, we hope to target specialized programs and student groups on campus, in our marketing efforts. The competition has the potential to promote library efforts in areas such as multimedia software/classes, event space, knowledgeable staff, SMARTtech and Digital initiatives.

Most of all ,we would hope to foster a learning environment that combines academics and entertainment. After all we’re trying to make learning fun aren’t we!.. I dont doubt this event will be a challenge, its a niche market of interest and we have to figure out how to increase interest. I hope to track our progress on the various stages as we go along…so stay tuned!…and of course you wanna know whats up with the Space monkey….dont you?
Along with me, many people are involved in its “evolution”…so check out some additional blog entries on the event from Jon Bodnar, Brian Mathews

Posted in PR projects | No Comments »

December 3, 2006 by Alison.

Funny…

Courtesy of the University of Chicago Library:

In The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), the hero is exposed to radioactive toxic waste and finds himself growing smaller and smaller. He is lost to family and friends while fending off the household cat and must make his own way in a world grown monstrously large. He forages food from crumbs and drinks from puddles of condensation. In one famous scene, he defends himself against a house spider by using an abandoned sewing needle, which he has to struggle to lift.

Stop the projector! Time for a little analysis.

When the Incredible Shrinking Man stops shrinking, he is about an inch tall, down by a factor of about 70 in linear dimensions. Thus, the surface area of his body, through which he loses heat, has decreased by a factor of 70 x 70 or about 5,000 times, but the mass of his body, which generates the heat, has decreased by 70 x 70 x 70 or 350,000 times. He’s clearly going to have a hard time maintaining his body temperature (even though his clothes are now conveniently shrinking with him) unless his metabolic rate increases drastically.

Luckily, his lung area has only decreased by 5,000-fold, so he can get the relatively larger supply of oxygen he needs, but he’s going to have to supply his body with much more fuel; like a shrew, he’ll probably have to eat his own weight daily just to stay alive. He’ll also have to give up sleeping and eat 24 hours a day or risk starving before he wakes up in the morning (unless he can learn the trick used by hummingbirds of lowering their body temperatures while they sleep).

Because of these relatively larger surface areas, he’ll be losing water at a proportionally larger rate, so he’ll have to drink a lot, too. We see him drink once in the movie–he dips his hand into a puddle and sips from his cupped palm. The image is unremarkable and natural, but unfortunately wrong for his dimensions: at his size surface tension becomes a force comparable to gravity. More likely, he’d immerse his hand in the pool and withdraw it coated with a drop of water the size of his head. When he put his lips to the drop, the surface tension would force the drop down his throat whether or not he chooses to swallow.

As for the contest with the spider, the battle is indeed biased, but not the way the movie would have you believe. Certainly the spider has a wicked set of poison fangs and some advantage because it wears its skeleton on the outside, where it can function as armor. But our hero, because of his increased metabolic rate, will be bouncing around like a mouse on amphetamines. He wouldn’t struggle to lift the sewing needle–he’d wield it like a rapier because his relative strength has increased about 70 fold. The forces that a muscle can produce are proportional to its cross-sectional area (length squared), while body mass is proportional to volume (length cubed). The ratio of an animal’s ability to generate force to its body mass scales approximately as 1/length; smaller animals are proportionally stronger. This geometric truth explains why an ant can famously life 50 times its body weight, while we can barely get the groceries up the stairs; were we the size of ants, we could lift 50 times our body weight, too. As for the Shrinking Man, pity the poor spider.

Posted in Interesting News/ Facts | No Comments »

December 3, 2006 by Alison.

Great selection of Library related RSS feeds..

broken down by category.

LIBWORM

Posted in Library links | No Comments »

November 27, 2006 by Alison.

The Tech Library is a U.S. Patent and Trademark depository. One of the things I do to pass time is look up some of the ridiculous things people are coming up with…you would be surprised what gets patented. I found this gem on a list of off the wall ideas.

A Rubber Band man? The pages take a while to load..but worth the wait for the excruciating detail on the concept. Explore the site while you are there.

Its started a whole industry apparently. Rubb-Origami.

Posted in Patents | No Comments »

November 27, 2006 by Alison.

According to David Pogue, techie writer for the New York Times and soon to be host of Discovery Channel’s “Its all Geek to Me”, there is no difference between prints of the same size from a 5, 8 and 13 megapixel camera, respectively.

 In theory you should be able to tell a difference…the reality it appears not or at least not noticeable to 95% of people tested.  Hmm, I should run my own test..a future blog perhaps?

Anyway, check out Pogues commentary , in the “The Truth about digital cameras“..

Posted in Photography | No Comments »

November 27, 2006 by Alison.

I take it everyone had a good Thanksgiving.

To give new meaning to the definition of Vegetarian: its a paper Turkey, designed in 3d open source software, Blender.

Check it out in MAKE.

One of our favorite past times here at the library is digging for new useful, free software…and giving it a test run. Blender is one of those such discoveries. To accompany your test run of Blender: the documentation: check out this site for other free tech related documents.

Considering Blender is completely free, open source, software its worth the download: Its small in size and runs on many platforms. Compared to other 3d modeling software such as Maya (used in animated features such as Shrek )..it does quite well, but having read various comparisons it sounds there is more room for “experimentation as you go” with Maya. When using Blender its best to already have a well thought out design /plan. Maya allows for more flexibility.

For more on Blender…check out the artists forum.

Posted in Computers /Technical | No Comments »

November 21, 2006 by Alison.

With election time having just past I’ve found myself caught in the middle of various political conversations. It always pays to know where to go to get up to date government information, don’t rely on your local paper. You have to do some digging, but it’s usually out there and it’s usually free.

FGI recommended blogs/ sites

• Federal Computer Week (FCW) [Feed]
• FDSys blog — The blog of the Government Printing Office’s “Future Digital System (FDSys).” [Feed]
• Government Computer News [Feed]
• Government Publications Library–University of Colorado at Boulder [Feed]
• Government Technology [Feed]
• Memory Blog, the blog for The Memory Hole [Feed]
• Open Access News [RSS Feed, Atom Feed]
• Red Tape Blog — Michigan State University library and GODORT of Michigan [Feed]
• Secrecy News [Feed]
• Swem Government Information [Feed]
• UC Berkeley GovBlog [Feed]

Posted in Interesting News/ Facts | No Comments »

November 21, 2006 by Alison.

There has been a rumor circulating that Vegemite has been temporarily banned by the FDA due to the ingredient folate,an FDA regulated food additive , which in the United States is only allowed in bread and cereal?..not spreads? Whats the difference?..Ok, if this isnt confusing enough, conflicting tales have some saying there is no validity to the Vegemite story, but then it is odd that it seems to be out of stock at most grocery stores.

What exactly is Vegemite? If your not already familiar with the “Men At Work” song “Down Under”..Vegemite is a salty spread used for toast and sandwiches made from yeast extract. The product is imported from Australia.

Why my interest in the ban?…I grew up on Vegemite’s first cousin, Marmite ( the British version and much better in my opinion..sorry Vegemite fans.)
I looked around and could find no such ban on the FDA site. Although I was able to locate seizures of Vegemite and Marmite “at the borders” in the  FDA refusal reports.

Wanna see what people are getting stopped at the border with?

Refusal Reports

Seems as if the conflicting stories are a result of the fact the problem is with Kraft, the US distributor of Vegemite. Kraft it seems , due to the folate issue (labeling perhaps?), is not allowed to import Vegemite for distribution until the problem is resolved, but individuals are allowed to bring Vegemite into the country.

My suggestion: switch to Marmite–its much better.

My recommedation for tasty british treats…Taste of Britain in Norcross– lots of wonderful teas, spreads, treats of all kinds…

Posted in Interesting News/ Facts | No Comments »

November 21, 2006 by Alison.

Since Im on the topic today, a few informative links on the subject of marketing and libraries:

Marketing Blog 

 Article

Posted in PR projects | No Comments »

November 20, 2006 by Alison.

I was recently assigned to the PR/Marketing committee. One of the focuses here is applying business philosophy in an academic environment. Marketing the library and its resources to the student body is crucial to the success of an organization. Demystifying research tools while making the library and its staff approachable are key. The committee is embarking on various projects to promote library databases and other resources.

One such project is the T-paper. A monthly newsletter aimed at library patrons.

The hope is for something eye catching, brief, yet informative. The newsletter format calls for a captive audience; what better place to put a “T-paper” than the public restrooms. The T-paper has been in place for over a year now and has been overall fairly successful. I took over design in November and edited October. Work was done in Photoshop and Illustrator.

Summer T-paper:

Posted in PR projects | No Comments »