by | § ¶ | trackbackThe runway has been cleared of debris
The machine which our site is hosted one was compromised by a malicious app which turned it into a zombie box. Together with Togoparts and Oneshift, we were out of action for about 36 hours as we switched DNSes from temp to live to temp and back again. Thankfully, no data was lost.
by | § ¶ | trackback"Where is Maria Hertogh now?"
Just went for yet another National Education force feeding session that was chock full of cliches such as 'we are a little red dot', 'we're drinking from our toilets you know'. Oh oh and don't forget the 'oh look at me I'm so daring and cheeky because I poke fun at PAP while conducting a NE lesson'. So when the usual race and riots issue was brought up, it made me wonder what ever happened to Maria Hertogh. I've read and heard about her plight which caused major riots. But no one ever bothered to tell me what ever happened to her afterwards. Even wikipedia's latest entry was dated 1976. And it was about her getting charged with plotting to murder her husband!
So I decided to try out the NLB's new SMS reference service to see what professional librarians could find. I fired off a short and to the point question "Where is Maria Hertogh now?" on my mobile. And I must say that the SMS method seemed perfectly suited for concise question like this.
In a matter of moments my mobile was buzzed by a huge reply (by SMS standards) spanning three seperate SMSes from the automated reply service. I thought the message was pretty awkward for me and my old nokia to read. I wasn't particularly concerned about stuff like the operation times of the service. All I really needed to know was that my request has been received and will be attended to in due time. So perhaps a simpler, briefer one would be been better? Dare we sgst txtspek?
Anyways, the reply came in around 10.30 (past the stated 9pm working hour stated!) that very same evening saying "From NLB: Maria Hertogh: No latest info. The last newspaper report in Business Times dated 26 Aug 89, Pg 6 - Executive Life, she was in USA at age 52".
I found this all very cool if a tat inpersonal. Was there someone behind the number that would appreciate it if I sent a thank you reply? But it's excellent for short and sweet questions that one might find feel rather embarrassed to ask at the reference section. If you have some burning question on your mind, or if you're always stuck on a train or a bus with nothing to do, then you might want to take down the SMS number now. It's 91787792. Remember it's not a chatline, so don't abuse it!
Here's the NLB page detailing all the various enquiry methods available for the armchair researcher in you.
Keywords: ask!,maria_hertogh,nlb,reference,sms
by | § ¶ | trackback*GULP*
Ok so I took too long to renew my domain name registration. Lets hope my payment clears before the 14th. Otherwise we'll be having a little blackout soon.... *fingers crossed*update: We live to blog another year!
by | § ¶ | trackbackNews From School!
Researchers in the UK at the University of Leicester recently launched a study designed to discover if certain individuals or groups of individuals are pre-determined to be environmentally-conscientious. According to the article at Innovations Report: "The study will examine regional and social differences in environmental attitudes and behaviour, with a view to understanding differences in outcome and developing effective interventions. The study will also be used to explore the link between personality and "green behaviour"." Researcher Adrian White adds that they "also hope to seek out whether there are distinct "types" of green? For example, recyclers who drive high fuel-consumption vehicles, those with energy efficient light bulbs but who take holiday flights every few months. We will identify whether there is one type of "green" or different types. (via TreeHugger)
Keywords: leicester