Mahut lost, sometimes I hate tennis...

Thank you Indiana Stan

The Beautiful Occupation

AELTC

No, not librarianship, though I do find books beautiful, especially after looking at bookporn’s Flickr photo gallery. And yes I do know the Travis song I’ve used to title this blog is about the Iraq war, but it works and is surprisingly apt (all you can do is “stand there watching it happening”, there should’ve been an intervention, especially to save Isner who looked like he was about to drop, and someone should’ve called the United Nations about cruelty to tennis players). I’m now going to use and abuse this blog to talk about one of the great loves of my life, tennis. I have never been prouder to be a tennis fan after watching last night’s match between the Frenchman Nicolas Mahut and the American John Isner. Unluckily I had to come to it late, but I watched it until the end, which was about 21:30, when Mahut unwisely but understandably brought it to a halt due to poor light and Isner against all comprehension wanted to carry on. By the end he couldn’t even hold his towel and was carrying it in his mouth, he picked up a banana and then though it’d be too much effort to eat it and he looked delirious with exhaustion standing statuesque yet still serving impeccably and somehow returning the ball as well. It is certain that the winner will go no further in the competition as they will have been playing for 3 days, over 10 hours and run the equivalent of a marathon which takes months to recover from. I’m rooting for Mahut by the way as, and I’m going to come across as smug by saying this, I pointed him out as one to watch in 2007 when he got beaten in the final at Queen’s by Andy Roddick; he’s been injured since then so he couldn’t capitalise on that promise. As for John Isner, he won the warm-up event to this and did well at Queen’s. By the way, Mahut had to qualify for Wimbledon and has had to play two marathon five-setters before this and it is still only a first round match.

H. Blair

If you ever talk to anyone who truly follows tennis, you’ll find that they can be just as passionate about the beautiful game as football fans, and what’s more, they’re great advocates for the sport. As a comment from my previous blog post said, thank you LucyLike23, “Now, after reading your post, I want to watch tennis - though it is not usually my cup of tea.” So I’m now going to try and convert everyone.

I can’t remember when I fell in love with tennis, but it was doubtless due to Tim Henman and definitely Wimbledon. It was probably that year he almost got to the final, but because of that damn rain delay... least Goran Ivanisevic won that year. I love tennis because the match and the winner’s lead can hang by a thread; one net cord, one wrong line judgement, the weather, one literal slip, one mental slip... anything can affect the match. A match can turn as quick as you can click your fingers, that’s why you never want to leave it. Whereas with, football say, you can go and get a drink and not miss anything; the roar of the crowd or the commentators will alert you if anything’s happening.

I’ve been writing this blog post in my head ever since I woke up before 6am this morning; unfortunately I haven’t had time to write anything down so I’ve forgotten most of the assuredly great stuff I came up with. For once, hyperbole, superlatives and clichés can’t sum up that record-breaking historic match last night. It’s like watching Usain Bolt or Michael Johnson or Torvill and Dean (and John Inverdale was right; Mahut and Isner will be forever linked), you can’t believe what you’re seeing but it is really happening. It’s unprecedented, unbelievable and entirely unexpected (the first time, and this is the first time and the only time; we’ll never see the likes of this again). You just can’t believe your eyes or ears and to paraphrase Johnny Depp Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, “Not impossible, but improbable.” Everyone I talk to about it just shakes their head in disbelief. I’m not going to even try and describe the indescribable. In what other sport can you see players carrying on into practically total darkness (like the 2008 final), matches spanning three days (without rain delays) and a match go on for 10 hours? And it’s still going on! It could only be tennis and only at Wimbledon. Wimbledon has treated us to some awe-inspiring events over the last few years, and I truly mean awe-inspiring as it has left me in admiration of the players. First there was the Nadal and Federer final in 2008. I was on holiday at the time and I started watching it from the beginning in the afternoon and it was still going, obviously, late into the evening. Me and my entire family were having a meal out in a restaurant and I kept racing over to look at the TV screen in the bar. After a while, the staff just let me take my food and eat it there and after my family had finished, they came and joined me. Then there was last year’s final, which I mentioned in my previous post, I can’t think about it without tears coming to my eyes. Roddick was two sets and a break up, usually an unassailable lead, and he still lost.

Getty

If you’re in any doubt how historic, important and significant the Mahut and Isner match is, it will almost definitely change the rules of tennis, at least at Wimbledon if not the entire sport. For me, I don’t think they should change it, just as you shouldn’t change the rules due to one singular event; this will never happen again, it’s an anomaly and a beautiful one at that. McEnroe is wrong, they should finish the match where they started it, on one of the most outside of outside courts, court 18, and not Centre Court in front of the Queen. I've invented a new term; there's break point, game point, set point, match point and championship point, now there's save point (for when you hold serve). In this match, every time Isner or Mahut held serve, it felt like they'd won. Every time they took a few points off the other's serve it was momentous. Every time they got a break point it felt like a championship point; Mahut saved three match points as throughout the last set he was serving to stay in the match. The statistics are incredible as they have literally broken all the records in tennis, not just Wimbledon, apart from the ones for the quickest, obviously. The one that gets me is the last set, already, is longer than the longest match ever and it is 3 normal matches in one. Even the scoreboard couldn't keep up and gave up the ghost at 47 all; humanity beats technology yet again. As Federer said, perfectly as he seems to do in everything, it was all "too much."

Oh and we won some football match too, which was also amazing, but for entirely different reasons. Why, with all our world-class players who are some of the most famous in the world, do we still scrape through by the skin of our teeth, runners up to a country who calls it soccer? The USA deserved to come top by the way; they should’ve won the match they played against us. Least the cheating French are out of the World Cup. I loved it when James Corden replaced France with Ireland in his TV show line-up. Mahut could teach his countrymen a thing or two about national pride, sportsmanship and determination. Both Isner and Mahut could teach football players a thing or two actually, about stamina, teamwork and being a sportsman. That's why I love tennis for the drama, the game and most of all for the characters.

AELTC

The war of attrition starts again at 15:30, will you be watching?

Here comes the sun

Thank you Icky Pic for the above photo, long may the sun continue (at least for Wimbledon). At last something really easy. I haven't had any reason to use Flickr before, except for the pictures that are integrated into Google Earth which is an awesome feature of an awesome application; it enabled me to follow where my brother had been on one of his holidays, so I knew what and where he was talking about. However I will certainly be using Flickr more in future because there is a veritable goldmine of wonderful photos on there. I immediately added RSS feeds of Sir Cam's and bookporn's photo galleries onto my iGoogle page (no screen capture as I'm on the wrong computer). I've also added Google Analytics to my blog, not much yet but it's only been one day. I particularly love bookporn's latest absolutely beautiful photo of a dilapidated building with decaying books, which I can't add to this blog either due to copyright issues. Check it out for yourself, it's titled "Last Folio." I'm always frustrated looking for photos via Google Images and with the tag option on Flickr, searches should be much more interesting and hopefully relevant, should being the operative word whenever tagging is involved... I've no need to create my own account though as I already have a shared gallery my brother set up. Me and my family use it to show each other what we have been up to, for holiday picture slideshows (often over Skype) and just to show off our prowess with a camera. Here's one of the gems:


That was taken at the Barcelona Open this year. It was the only opportunity I had of a photo with Rafael Nadal as he did vamos; he never even turned up to the tournament, but I've forgiven him. The gallery's particularly useful as my eldest brother lives in Barcelona and he's always off somewhere, so we can keep track as to what he's been up to. However as an image bank, there is nothing quite like Flickr. Here is an awesome photo I found, which is very apt at the moment:

Thank you Kol Tregaske who caught Andy Roddick out practising on one of the Wimbledon courts the day before he won in such stunning, strong and supreme fashion last night. I want him to win this year as I can't think of last year's final without tears coming to my eyes. Come on Roddick!

Interesting articles from CILIP

I was just browsing through Impact, the Career Development Group's journal, as well as the CILIP Gazette and discovered some interesting and even useful articles. The Impact journal was all about celebrating achievements and I found myself drawn to some of the career profiles, in particular Carol Barker's. However the most interesting article was titled "Confidence: The Key to Career Success?" by Ray Harper. It really struck a chord with me as, like a lot of people, I do have confidence issues, though I have grown very adept at covering them up, to the point of overcompensating. I have read many pieces about confidence, in professional as well as personal contexts, but the reason why this made such an impression was because it made me realise that despite my lack of self-confidence, I carry on regardless. I did as the article states, in the interview for my current job, have the confidence "to shout about [my] strengths and showcase [my] skills" even though as the article professes it "demands boldness and self-belief." This made me feel really positive, especially as I didn't have any previous library experience when I got the job... I am also good at mastering "new computer applications and adapting to different systems". It goes on to mention how proactive we must be in evolving with new technologies (very apt in relation to the Cam23 programme), in learning from mistakes, and in making the case for our libraries and information services by becoming advocates for our profession. Unfortunately, the latest issue isn't available on the website yet. If you haven't read the article yet, I can wholeheartedly recommend it, so seek it out.

The Gazette also contains some interesting articles such as an excellent report on the conference about 24-hour opening, a MyCareer profile detailing the catch 22: you have graduated but you cannot get a job because you have no experience, and an article about live-tweeting during meetings and conferences...

For those of you worried about Calvin and Hobbes:

I know it's not Cam23 related, but it's the cutest thing...

To twitter or not to twitter

I've been hoping there's a way round this one, but I can't see how to get out of it seeing as though I can't complete Cam23 without it, so I've created my own personal Twitter account. I've got an addictive personality (I've recently got obsessed with Glee; I spent practically my whole day off yesterday watching it), so that's why I've been actively avoiding Twitter for so long. I'm the same about any new technology: Napster, myspace, facebook... Take mobile phones as an example; I'm still using my first phone, the Nokia 3310 which I got in 2002.

I have been using the Judge Library's Twitter account, but only to post about work information such as new books and things, that's why I haven't felt the need to make my own account. I knew it would happen, that I'd get into it too fast too soon; I started off innocently selecting people to follow, along with the obligatory ones like Stephen Fry, I added John Cusack, DisneyPixar and Peter Serafinowicz. I've just found Miranda Hart too, I adore her TV series and she's always good fun on panel shows, in interviews and as a guest on the likes of the Strictly Come Dancing backstage gossip show It Takes Two. She was awesome by the way. I'm going to stop now before I get in too deep, I've replied to a couple of tweets so I'm being obedient.

I agree with the essay about categorising and tagging as I'm against pigeonholing of any kind. I'm not even sure how useful the subject classifications are in library cataloguing to be honest, I don't use them when searching as they're so subjective, no pun intended. Although I do put them in when cataloguing of course. Therefore I agree with Shirky's comments about how biased it all is. I especially like this quote from the essay: "The essence of a book isn't the ideas it contains. The essence of a book is "book." Thinking that library catalogs exist to organize concepts confuses the container for the thing contained." Jeez, I hate the American way of spelling. To combat the limits of tagging and categorising, I've labelled this post with as many things as possible and deliberately added references to this post to make it as full as possible. I've also dutifully added more tags to my previous posts and I've just found that there is a 200 character limit; it's being pesky about it...

I've been having fun commenting on everyone's blogs. It can take the smallest of things to make me feel the urge to comment, from a picture of a Miyazaki film, to beautiful photos; all it takes is a common interest. I'm loving libgeek's Terry Pratchett titled blog, Ange's Grease-themed blog title and Helen's frequent references to popular culture (told you I'd get my own back).

All this new technology has made me long for the more innocent times when we didn't rely on all our computers and they were just for fun. Anyone remember the Commodore 64?

Finally, ultimately, at last, after all, in the end...

...My work's shared Google calendar is on my iGoogle page, which means I only have to have iGoogle up instead of having to flit between Google calendar and my iGoogle page. Except, it doesn't show all the different tabs we've added, just the meetings and events. So all of the timetabling, annual leave, interlibrary loans and such like don't show up on the iGoogle page. So I still have to log out and log in to see those. But I'm so glad it's done, here's a picture of it:


It was annoying that I had to set up my own Google calendar to do it though as I use my Outlook calendar for reminders and the shared calendar for everything else, so I had no need of another calendar. Right, that's enough free Google advertising. I'm a post-it girl really; for all my computer skills I'm decidedly low-tech. I'm not sure how useful Doodle will be for me, but I will certainly use it if and when I need it. It seems very easy to use, not one of these internet-based applications that like to make things more complicated than they actually are; simplicity is key. I prefer to organise these things more casually over email, especially as I usually need to liaise with the people I'm meeting to sort out when and where it's going to be anyway. Here is today's Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, it's so funny because it's so familiar:

Mindboggling iGoogle

I used iGoogle for the first time yesterday, if only to check the weather. Incidently, it's fine all week, though we might get rained on on Sunday. Whoever said the British were preoccupied with the weather was absolutely right, or them saying that may have made us that way. Anyway, such musings are sending me off on one of my regular tangents. I'm trying to remember to load iGoogle first thing in the morning, getting into a habit is always hard and then it kicks in and it's like you never lived your life any other way. The problem is, my work has a shared Google calendar which is set up with our work email address, this is for our timetables, meetings and so we know where everyone is, but my iGoogle page is set up under my own email address, so I can't have both up at the same time. After a while it seems to log out of whichever one I'm not logged in on if you see what I mean, or if I try to add something to the calendar or change something on my iGoogle page, I won't be able to as I'm logged in on the other account. I have the calendar open all the time as it's very useful, and the quick links on the iGoogle page, such as COPAC and the Cam23 RSS feed, are also very useful and it'll kind of defeat the object of them if I have to sign in again. Also, after the initial eager adding of stuff, changing the theme and customising my page, I kind of got bored, in the same way I got bored joining groups, adding applications and finding friends on facebook. However I am annoyed my hamster seems to have escaped, either that or the application has failed to load. So I'm not sure how often I'll actually use it, though it is nice to start the day with the weather forecast, an inspirational literary quote and a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. Here's today's:

Writing to reach you

First lines are always the hardest, right? I hope this gets easier as it goes along. For someone who is scared of the blank page, this is quite an undertaking. I have a facebook and a myspace page, so I have done similar things before, but this is... different. Plus I used the standard template for those. For facebook or myspace you never know if anyone is actually going to read it, you're sending words out into the ether. But with this, it's for something and you know a cast of your peers are ready and waiting in the wings to comment.

So, the 23 things programme. I suppose I joined because I like to take advantage of every opportunity that comes my way; I'm on the Springboard course and have done several other of the Cambridge University courses. I'm always on the hunt for new skills and chances to progress. However I also want to integrate myself into the wider community, amongst other Cambridge librarians. I have only been in the job, and the profession, a year and a few months, but I feel I have sufficiently found my feet now (after a few wobbles) and finally feel grounded enough to look up and around at the broader landscape. As metaphors go, I'm not sure how well that works, I hope you understand what I'm on about. That's a great way to end a post I reckon.

Oh and yes, I am a big Travis fan.