A Dip into Udacity

Over the last few nights I completed Lesson 1 of a Udacity course in Intro to Computer Science. I did it out of curiosity - I've been dipping in and out of various coding websites lately. This one introduced the programming language Python, which I had no experience in whatsoever, but none was needed. I actually really enjoyed solving the problems presented, which I can't say of my experience of high school mathematics! Here's an example:

# Write python code that defines the variable 

# age to be your age in years, and then prints 

# out the number of days you have been alive.

age = 38

days_per_year = 365

days_alive = age * days_per_year

print days_alive

13870

The goal to reach by the end of 7 lessons was to build a search engine and a social network. The first  lesson also introduced 'string theory' and it was challenging to understand, but not impossible! The rest of the course was not free, but you could sign up for a 2 week trial. I don't think I will continue this course, but I enjoyed the intro!

Thoughts on books and culture in small towns

It was interesting to see the Culture Minister of France point out the link between books and culture, as part of a story on limiting Amazon's ability to ship books for free to buyers, as reported by SBS news yesterday (Anti-Amazon bill adopted by French parliament).

"France is proud of a network of bookstores it says is "unique in the world" and crucial for culture to reach small towns."

The very real fear is that with Amazon selling books at a much lower price than the local bookstores, that the local bookstores will be wiped out.

The 'books in small towns' comment caused me to reflect on a passage in a novel that I'm reading at the moment - Babara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour, where a child's father berates him for enjoying reading a book because he is terrified that his son will be bullied at school for it. They live in a poor and remote Appalachian town in Tennessee. Books there are regarded as full of dangerous ideas, challenging the word of God, and distractions for people who should be working.

Which leads me to thinking about the divides - cultural and digital. It is so important to have libraries in remote regions and small towns for all of the reasons that have been written about before, but especially to bring culture. Just having the internet is not enough in my opinion. It is uncurated and I don't think anyone would say that the most popular sites on the internet are the pinnacle of human culture. It is more important than ever to have curated collections provided for free by our national institutions (libraries, galleries, museums), because the internet should never replace books, art and real life artifacts.

The SBS article also included another quote by the French minister to the effect that if they allow Amazon market dominance in France with it's free shipping, and dodgy policies (e.g. selling some books at a loss) then it won't be long before the independent booksellers all shut up shop and Amazon will be the only choice. And we really shouldn't be surprised when Amazon suddenly stop selling books at a loss and start charging what they will. I hope the Australian government institutes similar laws, even if it does mean paying slightly more for books now.

Digital detox photo gallery

I am so amazed - I made this gallery with html and css and it works! I tried out a few techniques I learnt on Codecademy and it's so satisfying seeing them come to life. 

I had a discussion with a couple of my colleagues today about digital detox. We're about a fifth of the way through the 23 Mobile Things course and we're nearing the end of blogjune, so it's probably about right that this topic has come up! I remember it came up in Twitter chats on the 23 course as well. So I curated a little list of readings around the topic. My colleague came up with the idea of doing some reading (no ebooks allowed!) at the end of the course to reflect on our involvement with all the digital things, so we'll maybe do something like have a book club where we all read a different book on the topic and report back with our reviews and thoughts. Fun!

Tonight, Wimbledon

We're watching Wimbledon tonight. Tennis was my sport all through school, uni and my twenties. I played 3 or 4 times a week during those years - and I think it did me a lot of good. I'm sure, too, that it helped me develop certain personality traits - maturity, a sense of fairness, persistence, mental agility, social skills. I'd be a very different person without that influence. My cat, Mochi (that's rice cake in Japanese) is following the ball like it's an insect on the screen - so cute!

The School of Life

I was shopping in the city sales (again!) today and browsing around Pigeonhole I came across a series of books by The School of Life titled Toolkit for Life, volume 1. I recognised them from when I catalogued them at the Library vendor where I work on a casual basis, and I remember thinking at the time - these look good, will have to add them to my 'to read' list. The books have titles like How to Deal with Adversity, How to be Alone, and How to Connect with Nature. They sound like self help books, but they are actually philosophy, and seem very well written.

So when I got home I looked them up and found that The School of Life was more than just a series of books, it was a whole organisation with various divisions - a classroom, therapy, business consultancy, shop, library, and blog, with offices around the world.

The About Us page of their website explains that the organisation is "devoted to developing emotional intelligence through the help of culture". They will "direct you towards a variety of ideas from the humanities - from philosophy to literature, psychology to the visual arts - ideas that will exercise, stimulate and expand your mind". Sounds wonderful, and what an interesting idea for an organisation!

I work for a company which has a set of organisational values, one of which is happiness. It has always seemed to me that this value is a tricky one to work with - try telling an unhappy person to cheer up and see what kind of reaction you get! And sometimes the means to happiness that are suggested seem so cliched and meaningless because we've heard them so many times - be kind to others, eat well, enjoy nature etc., etc... I like the idea that The School of Life has come up with - aiming for emotional intelligence rather than happiness, and getting there through culture rather than cliches. 

I think I'll borrow the set of their books from the library and see where they take me! 

Winter solstice

Today I'm working through Shay Howe's online guide to HTML and CSS. This tutorial explains things in much more depth (I'm having lots of ah! moments) and it uses an external text editor. I feel like I've taken off the training wheels! I'm in the middle of another build-your-own-website project, but this time I know what to do, so it's revision and consolidation. 

Also tomorrow is the winter solstice! I'm not a fan of winter, I feel the cold too much, so I'm always happy when the shortest day of the year has passed, and I can start dreaming of spring.

Not a library post

I'm stuck for something to write about today. My partner just showed me this Japanese website about the World Cup. They're rating the beauty of female football fans, which is pretty typical of the male-dominated Japanese media. I'm continually astounded at what they can get away with and that was the thing that depressed me about my time in Japan - the one dimensional depiction of women in the media, the obsession with beauty (or more often 'cuteness') and the rigidity of gender roles. #thatisall