Using Flickr to Help Patrons

I've been working with a woman who is writing a book about Muddy Creek and the Waco community from Civil War to the 1930s. She contacted me to help her get her historic facts straight. Most of the information she needed came from old directories or news articles about the area. Pretty straight forward.

Then she started asking questions about homes on Muddy Creek, and it was starting to sound like she wasn't real familiar with the geography of the area. And a "Tara" style home is really out of place in Waco.

Yesterday after work, I drove by some of the older homes in the area and took quick photos of them, not good photos, but enough that she could see the general style of home. I uploaded the photos to my Flickr account and made a special set for them, so she could find them easily. Finally I placed each of them on a map so she could see how the community fit in relation to the creek and to the main road through the area. It must have really worked to give her a reference point because now she's rewriting.

We'll see what comes next.

Cat Bordhi demonstrates Judy Becker's Magic Cast-On

I'm learning to make socks and this video shows a really easy way to cast on the first row for the pattern I'm using. Since I had a hard time finding it again, I thought I would post it here.

File Management Tool

A few weeks ago Linda Benedict who writes the Alone in the Archives blog mentioned a freeware program called Renamer, which allows you to rename files. This came in really handy for us recently because we made some minor changes to our file numbering system for the images we've scanned.

The thought of going through hundreds of files to add an accession number to the beginning of the file name or of going through thousands of files to change dots to dashes was daunting to say the least.

With Renamer you define the rule, for example 'replace' dots with dashes and in seconds it has changed 2500 files. This may sound like a petty concern, but the files sort differently with dots and dashes and it gets really hard to find things you know should be there.

Adding an accession number to all files in a folder was just as easy. Tauheeda, the student who was going to have to rename all the files was ecstatic.

Why Is It?

While the girls and I were driving down the road, we passed a man and a boy walking along the edge of the road. My youngest daughter saw them and made the comment "weirdos." The discussion that followed is not worthy of a post, mostly because it was pretty one-sided. My side.

Why is it that when we see someone walking or riding a bike our first thought is 'weirdo' or something equally derogatory? And heaven forbid, someone tries to be a good citizen while they are walking. If you carry a bag to pick up trash along the way, then you aren't just weird, you're a bag lady, or something equally demeaning.

Yes, I walk. A lot. Yes, I often carry a bag to pick up trash. Yes, I even pick up cans that go to support Habitat for Humanity.

Yes, I've been called weird and a bag lady and not just by my kids. Why is it that I am embarrassed for being a good citizen?

And last but not least, why is it that there are no trash cans alongside the Ravine?

Gmap Pedometer

This may not qualify as a Web 2.0 site, but it is one that I use all the time and since I was showing a student how it worked, it seemed like the perfect blog subject.

Using Gmap Pedometer you enter a zip code to select any location and zoom in on the streets. About a 15 or 16 works well, but if you make a lot of turns the balloons get in the way at 15, but you can zoom in further without losing the route you have started if necessary.

Find the starting point for your walk or run or whatever and click the "Start Recording" button to the left of the map. Double click on the starting point and at each turning point on your walk. You can see how far each leg of your walk is as you click and at the end of the route you will see the total miles walked.

If you walk the same route each day, you can save the map and refer back to it, like this. Since I tend to walk different routes each day, I use this site on a regular basis.

Ready for Spring

Saturday was such a beautiful day that I planted peas in the raised bed I made last year. I hauled two garbage cans of composted silage from the old silo which accounts for the black soil on top. That's one advantage to living on an old dairy, there is a lot of compost available for gardening.

I used scraps of lumber still piled up and built a cold frame on the south side of the house to plant lettuce and spinach and start broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. I'm sure my kids won't eat the Brussels sprouts, but I can hope. I may try to round up another window and build a second one beside this to start more seeds.

Where the concrete and tar are will eventually be creek stone. There are a lot of projects I still haven't finished on the house. The hardest part of laying the stone is actually going out and picking it up and hauling it back home. There aren't any creeks close enough and I don't have a truck.

Two New Baskets

My youngest daughter spent the first part of this week very sick with the flu, so I took several sick days to take care of her and take her to the doctor. While she slept or read, I make a couple baskets.

Debbie had asked me to make a basket for the Midwest Archives Council Silent Auction planned for the April meeting in Louisville. I wanted something classy that said Kentucky. I actually had a different basket picked out, but getting the handle with the horse head cut into it was going to be a problem. In the meantime I ordered a new basketry book from Amazon. Hey, I only needed six dollars to get free shipping.

This book included a pattern for the 2000 Anne Coleman Derby Basket. I had seen this one, but had never made it. Everything I needed was in the loft, so I decided this would work for MAC. It was woven on a 5x10 wooden base with a combination of 1/2" ff reed in the back and 1/4" fo reed in the front. It was woven continuously with 3mm cane on the bottom and the folded over lapel and 4mm cane for the over 2, under 2 twill that makes up most of the basket. The lapel was woven back and forth so that it gradually tapered to a rounded front. After cutting and tucking the spokes the front was soaked well and rolled over. This part was easier said than done. Even when finished I wasn't completely happy with the way the weaving bunched up after it was rolled. Before I send it off for the auction I need to find a horse shaped pin to put on the lapel.

The next basket was a simple laundry basket woven with 3/4" ff reed for the stakes and 5/8" reed for the weavers. For the design in the middle rows I picked up a braid that was in the new book and wove that in 1/4" fo reed. In my typical style I tried to jump ahead without reading the directions exactly, so it took several tries to master the braid, but once I figured it out it was very easy to do. To make the handle and rim stronger, I tucked the stakes to the outside and inside and used 5/8 fo with #6 round filler and 1/4" fo lashing. I had some small pieces of leather left over from the top basket and earlier baskets that I used for handles with Chicago screws to secure the ends. This basket has already been delivered to Toni's new house.

Pretty productive for a couple sick days. Fortunately, my kids do stay pretty healthy most of the time.