It's alive, alive!!

It being George, my new laptop. :) Which arrived Monday after some FedEx detours. The mouse and carrying case were also detoured via UPS. The shipping experience with Dell this go-round has been...less than ideal. But I don't care...because I have a new computer! A speedy computer. A pretty computer. (Vista may suck down the Ram, but boy oh boy is it pretty.)

And after far more tweaking than I expected, I'm online! There was a brief moment of panic when I feared my Actiontec modem (which George insists is actually a Texas Instruments RNDIS Adapter) wasn't compatible with Vista...but it seems I have 32 bit, not 64 bit Vista so a quick trip to the library to download a driver and I was good to go. Mostly. Ran into some more trouble...as soon as the driver was installed, George started talking to the web, downloading Windows updates...but me, I couldn't get online. To access my connection I needed a "username & password, provided by my ISP". For the record, Qwest tech support was no help at all...but the Qwest community forums were exceedingly helpful and after following a number of posters' suggestions, lo, I am connected to the internet in my living room. Oh frabjous day. At the moment I'm downloading Windows updates and World of Warcraft updates. (Cue the extremely contented sigh--WoW, I've missed you so.)

BTW, for anyone contemplating the joys of "upgrading" to Windows Vista...I highly recommend the book HACKING VISTA by Steve Sinchak. I checked it out of my local library and am loving it so much, I'm probably going to have to break down and buy my own copy. I'm not quite brave enough to alter the registry settings (yet!) but the book is filled with all sorts of simple tweaks designed to make Vista more friendly for the beginning computer user and to make it a bit more...compatible with other software. Vista does not play well with others, no matter what Bill Gates might say differently.

So very soon I should be back on track with the "things" and working on rolling my own search engine. And tackling my online book discussion duties with Eliza Dresang's Jane Addams award contenders. I am so very, very behind. I'd forgotten what a "joy" getting a new PC was. Stay tuned...

Wailey, wailey, wailey.

Have just received notice from Dell that they've shipped my new laptop & mouse! Huzzah! Mouse will arrive earlier than expected (Hooray!) on the 13th. Laptop ... will arrive later than expected (Horrors!) on the 17th. Countdown to George has been re-set accordingly. Cue the pained sighs. And not a few sniffles. Maybe even a tear or two.

Tiny Titans: Welcome to the Treehouse

Those of you who know me in RL have heard my superhero rant before--big industry (I'm talking about you, Hollywood!) promotes its superhero summer blockbusters to young children (buy the happy meal toy! the lunch box! the coloring book! the pajamas!) when the material really isn't age-appropriate. I find myself regularly explaining to parents of preschoolers that no, there really isn't anything about Batman on our shelves that's likely to appeal to their 3-year old in terms of content, illustrations, or length of text, no matter whether or not the child has already seen the movie. Ditto for the 6, 7 & 8-year olds. (Yeah, there's another rant in there about taking them to the movie in the first place, but I'll spare you that for the moment.) While there've been a few beginning reader series over the years that have helped fill the kid-friendly superhero void a bit, they go out of print, and when they go, they go fast. Thankfully, we're seeing some new offerings these days. The Big Two (DC and Marvel) have recently been publishing more kid-friendly superhero comics and even (gasp!) chapter-books. And I'm here today to tell you about my new favorite from DC:


Collecting issues #1-8 of Tiny Titans, TINY TITANS: WELCOME TO THE TREEHOUSE (ISBN 9781401220785) is a must-have superhero title for young children. Written by Art Baltazar & Franco (Patrick the Wolf Boy!) with art by Baltazar, it's an exceedingly cute and funny look at the teen titans as young children. They've got the powers, costumes, and personalities their later teen and adult selves would evidence but all of the emo, the angst, and the age-inappropriate baggage has been removed. This is a truly kid-friendly, all-ages title that shows the young sidekicks/super-hero wannabes attending elementary school (their teachers are all super-villains, though the most villainous thing they do is assign homework), exploring the Batcave (watch out for the penguins!), reveling in their first crush, making new friends, finding the perfect pet, and doing "battle" with their future nemeses on the playground. The humor here (horrible knock-knocks and all) is sure to appeal to anyone 4th grade on down but there are also some serious issues being addressed. Raven, Rose, and Robin all struggle to find their own identities and disassociate themselves with their sometimes embarrassing parental figures (Trigun, The Terminator, and Batman, respectively.) Cassie learns the hard way to be true to her self and to not let her peers dictate her sense of fashion. And Starfire gets a close-up look at what it means to be a two-faced friend.

Things, meanwhile, that made me howl with utter glee:

*Alfred putting the intrepid explorers, penguins and all, into the time-out corner.

*"Tiny Titans versus the Fearsome Five : The Winners Get to Use the Swings!"

*Aqua Lad's pet fish, Fluffy.

*The "How many Beast Boy Alpacas Can You Count? (Hint: They're the Green Ones)" activity page.

*Cyborg as Easy-Bake Oven

There's a lot here to appeal to adult fans of the Titans and a number of in-jokes that may go over the heads of anyone unfamiliar with the older-audience fare, Principal "They call him The Terminator" Slade, for example. As such, Tiny Titans is good clean fun for the whole family. Go check it out now!

Flickr! It's not just for fun anymore!

True story from the stacks: I actually used some of my newly discovered learning 2.0 tools assisting a customer this weekend. The gentleman in question wanted to upload a picture of himself to his yahoo profile and had no idea where to begin. No problem--I'd done that very thing whilst playing about with avatars. Next, he wanted to edit his picture. Not so easily accomplished on the library's software stations with a read-only CD...so I suggested he create a Flickr account, upload his pictures there, and set about tweaking them to his heart's content using picnik. Not only could he easily manipulate and save the changes there, his photos would be accessible to him from anywhere with web access. Although his computer time was up, he seemed v. intrigued--another convert to web 2.0!

Library Thing Redux

Apparently I'm something of a joiner these days. Virtually, anyway. I have just joined the LibraryThing group, "Read YA Lit." (It's over here if you're interested...http://www.librarything.com/groups/readyalit.) They were discussing a book a month through August and while discussion seems to have gone on hiatus, there're some fantastic recommendations of overlooked titles and whatnot flying back and forth. Not that I'm a fan of YA lit or anything...

Also thought the founder of the site had an excellent idea about how to use LibraryThing. Forget about cataloging everything in your library--instead, use it to catalog everything you read. Voila, instant memory aid the next time you're stumped to recommend a title.

Mind you, I've been using goodreads in that very fashion since creating my account. Not that I've updated those virtual bookshelves any more frequently than I have those in LibraryThing. (Gwendolyn, when did you find the time to add, let alone read 617 books?!) I suppose it now comes down to choosing one tool over the other. sigh. That seems to be one of my main complaints about social networking tools--there's so much duplication. The other being, of course, that there's so little time to actually make use of all of these tools...

LibraryThing, You Make My Heart Sing! a.k.a. Thing#11

Ahhhh, LibraryThing. Never again will I wonder if I actually own a copy of a particular title. Assuming I've got online access and can check my virtual shelf over at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/cyanbe, that is. And assuming I ever get around to actually entering my library...the graphic novels alone take up the better part of 9(!) shelves.

Check out a random display of titles from my library in the gadget at lower right! This took a bit of doing, actually. LibraryThing's Blog Widgets were easy to find and even easier to use...but once I'd generated the script I couldn't figure out how to add it to my blog, Blogger newbie that I am. (For any of you playing the home game who find yourselves in a similar situation, the gadget you want to add is under Basic, "Html/Java"--just paste in your script & you're good to go.)

I ran into a slight hiccup when adding a sampling of my library--I couldn't find a record for THE LIVING DEAD, edited by John Joseph Adams. Well, I couldn't find a correct record, anyway. The only thing that matched my ISBN search turned up THE LIVING DEAD by Stephen King. King is NOT the author--he's a contributor. One of MANY. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have been cataloged by the good ol' LoC and Amazon's info is incorrect. Not that that's stopped 131 other LibraryThing users from glomming on to this particular record. (LibraryThing warned me about this in the help files, actually. Bad cataloging is not, sadly, unheard of.) GRRRR.

My inner cataloger couldn't live with Stephen King, who authored only 1 of 34 stories in the collection and isn't even listed amongst the 1st 15 contriubtors, as main author. So I edited the record, uploaded a new cover image, added all of the other authors to the record, and submitted a v. short review. I also got sloppy--I didn't bother to re-order the contributors that had already been input into the record to match the TOC. (My inner catalog will never be satisfied. She demands marc fields the better to input physical description data in proper order. And, waffling as to whether to call the authors of the short stories "authors" or "contributors," she opted to leave their role blank instead. She will undoubtedly lose sleep over this. Diane, if you're reading, care to ring in on what the correct term is? My inner cataloger must be appeased. Mayhap I'll go back and fix the lot.) In the meantime, it'll be interesting to see if anyone grabs up my record rather than the Stephen King one.

Cool--I just successfully added a book to my library via Twitter! Want to know how? Read "Twitter Your Books to LibraryThing" at http://www.librarything.com/blog/2009/01/twitter-your-books-to-librarything.php. It's fast, it's speedy, it doesn't involve much in the way of typing! I may finally have found something to justify Twitter's existence! (Not a fan, no, how could you tell?) OH. Sigh. It would appear I have found yet another example of bad cataloging and must needs edit my newly twittered book. Again with the sigh.

Time to call it a night...I've got books to organize on my virtual shelf, dontcha know.

Coraline

Went to see Coraline Saturday night for the 2nd time. Still haven't managed to catch it in 3D yet, but I suppose there's still time. The animation in this movie is amazing. I loved, loved, loved it. And will undoubtedly own it once it's released on dvd. I loved the audience response last night, too--the kids were utterly silent for the most part, totally caught up in the film. And two little boys insisted on staying through the credits. Here's a trailer, in case you've missed it:




(BTW, I once again made the mistake of reading YouTube comments. They both amuse and irritate me no end. For the record, this is NOT a movie by Tim Burton. It is a movie by Henry Selick. Written for the screen and directed by Selick, actually. And yes, he worked on Nightmare Before Christmas. He was the director whereas Burton was the writer. Working on a movie together does not make Mr. Burton and Mr. Selick the same person. And, last I checked, Neil Gaiman was NOT a Scientologist. Nor is he trying to brainwash viewers to the Scientologist point of view. YMMV. And actually...this IS a movie for children. Just because a film is creepy and disturbing doesn't mean it's inappropriate for kids. Give kids some credit--they know how to appreciate both. I really must avoid the comments in the future. I can feel my blood pressure creeping ever-skyward.)

As much as I love this film, I do have a few quibbles with the liberties they've taken with the original source material. Spoilers abound below for both the book and movie, so consider yourselves warned...highlight over the text to read as per Wilma's most excellent suggestion! (And if anyone reading this knows how to hide text below a cut in blogger, please sing out. Help files only apply to "classic templates." Oh, LiveJournal, I miss you so...)

I don't mind that they've turned an independent and spirited young British girl into an independent, spirited, blue-haired young girl from Michigan who seems to have been transplanted to Ashland, Oregon. (Ashland?! That was the only explanation I could come up with for the folks running about in Shakespearean garb. Other thoughts?) I love the blue hair, actually. And the American setting bothered me not a bit. Though I missed the Frog wellingtons.

The insertion of spying dolls was interesting and while it had nothing to do with the book, I loved their look. (I want to make a Coraline of my very own.) The creation scene of Coraline's "Little Me" at the beginning was deliciously creepy and did a lovely job of setting the tone for the rest of the film.

I missed the rats' musical numbers from the book, but was delighed to discover that the Other Father sings. (And yes, that IS They Might Be Giants performing the number. Heee!!!)

Here are my main problems with the film version: I was very surprised and disappointed by the introduction of an original character--Wybie Lovat. Don't get me wrong, I like Wybie--he was good for comic relief and the provision of a very timely rescue. But that's what bothers me--the fact that Coraline NEEDED to be rescued.

Coraline of the book was a very courageous and determined young lady who did what needed doing (with a little help from a curmudgeonly cat)on her own and succeeded. That's a very powerful message for children, and it was diluted in the film. In fact, my most favorite line in the book was missing completely from the movie: "Because when you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave." That's a message that children (and grownups, too) need to hear.

I was disappointed by the final well scene in the movie. In the book, Coraline schemes and builds a trap for the Other Mother's right hand and disposes of it quite...handily. She shows smarts & courage. In the movie, she's pretty much on the run from the hand and is rescued at the last minute by Wybie and his dirtbike. They don't seem to have an actual plan for the hand's disposal--the well's proximity dictates their actions, not any actual forethought or planning. In short, movie Coraline is less brave, less independent, and less smart. And that just makes me mad.

All of the above being said...I still think you should go see it. And while you're at it, check out the book, too. Or the audio, read by Neil with music by the Gothic Archies , or the amazing graphic novel with illustrations by P. Craig Russell. You won't be sorry you did.