Arts Blog test #1

One of Australia's most respected film critics and intellects here tells the story of his life at the movies, and elswhere. And if you're wondering about the title, read on.....
Held in the Arts Library at
A 791.43092 St8S

Welcome to 2008

Welcome to the new year, and if you're thinking that the Arts reading room looks unusually busy for this time of year, you're not mistaken. The floor in the Redmond Barry Reading Room is being resurfaced and the room is therefore closed from 1 January through until 21 January, which means that seats are at a premium throughout the building; as are internet PCs!
Hopefully things should be back to normal next week.

New books in Arts

Charles Valentin Alkan was one of the most remarkable musicians and composers working in mid-19th century Paris. His dazzling piano works are only now receiving the serious attention they so richly deserve, as exemplified by this new study now available in the Arts Reading Room.



You can hear examples of Alkan's extraordinary music by searching our compact disc collection on the Library catalogue; something such as Marc Andre Hamelin's blistering performance of Alkan's Symphony for Solo Piano for instance






A beautiful new book on American artist George Bellows who created some of the most strikingly vivid and dramatic images in American painting in the early 20th century.








This new book on our open access shelves in Arts is a marvellous close-up memoir of one of the stalwarts of John Ford's acting company, a man who appeared in some of the great director's most important films.

10# Another treasure from the tube

The divine Cecilia Bartoli, singing an aria by Handel with a ferocity that must surely get pretty close to the effect of those sacred monster castrati!




We have her CD "Opera Proibita" in the collection which contains this aria complete, and once heard it is never forgotten!

9# Unbelievable!!!!!

Sometimes even Godzilla is left speechless...and I don't normally go in for the electric guitar!

8# Catching up with the generator-gap

Now that's fun! You could waste....I mean productively use a whole heap of time on these image generators; not that I would of course......

7# Delicious stuff and playing tag

Having a penchant for Japanese prints I tried a few tags on Delicious and found lots of lovely stuff (including this actor portrait of Nakamura Utayemon as Yodogimi by Natori Shunsen).....has this "lady" been drinking, or what? Technorati is also good fun, and provides a structure for wading through the sea of blogs out there in virtual-land.

But I really like Library Thing, what a great idea! Apart from being able to keep track of your own library, you can get great tips and suggestions from other people's collections via tagging. Now what tags would you use for Moby Dick?

#6 RSS Feeds for the diet conscious

This could be how you end up if you don't approach RSS feeds warily! I can see their usefulness, but I think I'd rather visit websites and pick and choose from the content on offer...... I suspect that you could end up with an awful lot of unread items very easily. Which reminds me, I'd better go and check whats landed in my Google Reader.....blast!

5# To Wiki is human but to crush divine

This is a photo of a dear friend of mine, Gorgo, taken on his recent holiday in London......he just loves stomping around those olde worlde tourist venues! Some people say we look alike, but I just don't see it......

Anyway I've played around with a few more Wikis, and even added a couple of things to the Learning 2.0 one, so I'm hoping to get a gold star for this section.
Now onwards to RSS feeds, and I hope they don't interfere with my radioactive core, otherwise I shall be most upset.

# 4 Wiki wacky woo

Well I've had a good look at a few wikis now and thought I'd look myself up on Wikipedia, and what do I find? A most unflattering photo that makes my hips look much larger than they actually are! To whom do I complain?

I must say I'm a tad underwhelmed by wikis generally, my tiny dinosaur mind finds it hard to put too much trust in something that would accept a contribution from the likes of me (shades of Groucho Marx, "I don't care to belong to a club that has people like me as members")

# 3 Method in my radioactive madness

Goddies iPod playlist in the previous post was an attempt to see how easy it might be to post images with exceedingly urbane text (okay, okay), and it is indeed remarkably straightforward. This could be a great way for different collections and services to advertise recent acquisitions, events, the dreaded "staff favourites" and other novel matters. And perhaps in a slightly more conversational, less formal manner than normal .



But hopefully not leading to this.......

# 2 What's on Goddies iPod

What else did you expect me to be listening to? That train really was crunchy; I think I lost a filling.

I was recently devastating a small coastal community and popped my head into the local library where I picked up this marvellous recording. Needless to say I'd left my library card at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, but the librarian kindly let me take it anyway; I left the building standing to show my appreciation.

My good friend Mecha Godzilla gave me this wonderful recording of Rameau's opera for my recent birthday......totally wild! Makes me want to go off and stomp all over Paris!

As you can see I've managed to load some pics into this post, after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with help pages, Picasa, etc. Not all that clear, but trial and error and a few well chosen expletives saved the day. Now if anyone mentions copyright I'll fry them to a cinder......

# 1 Getting started

This was much easier than I thought....no wonder there are so many blogs out there! The hardest part was choosing a name, but then again we radioactive dinsoaurs generally think with our feet.