Join the Botany Library team to celebrate World Wide Knit in Public Day 2012 on Saturday June 16th 2012.
From 10am to 2pm, head to Botany Library and bring your knitting. Join others in being a proud public knitter. There are World Wide Knit in Public events happening all over the globe, so make it part of your day at Botany Library this coming Saturday.
You might also like to join their regular knitting group - Knitting in Public - every Tuesday.
Monday, 11 June 2012
Friday, 8 June 2012
Top 5 most requested DVDs
"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Alfred Hitchcock
Short post from me today. For one reason: it's not about me (who knew?) - what we do is all about connecting YOU with our services and resources. So I shall simply introduce this post and get out of your way :) For your delectation, I offer up our top 5 most requested DVDs. Why? Think about it: Wet weather + Our DVD collection = No Brainer, and I'm not sure about you guys, but I intend to spend this weekend working online while Due South (yes, featuring Constable Benton Fraser the Mountie because, hey, that's how I roll AND because I ADORE HIM times seven) plays in the background. Stay dry, stay safe, and have a great weekend!
On a slightly more sombre note, yesterday morning I learned that Ray Bradbury had died after a long illness. My mum introduced me to science fiction books and authors when I was about 7 or 8 years old, and one of the first sci fi stories I ever read was by Ray Bradbury. My favourite will always be Fahrenheit 451, which I first read when I was 9 years old, and would continue to pull out every few years or so. I still have a very battered and faded copy on my bookshelf. Thanks to mum, I moved from Bradbury to Arthur C. Clarke to Carl Sagan to Greg Bear to Frank Herbert, and so on. I'll never forget that Bradbury was responsible for my initial enjoyment of sci fi. And yes, I did cry, just a little, and turned to the internet (because I'm weird that way) to look for others who could so eloquently express what a loss it is in a way that I never could: Neil Gaiman, NPR, Stephen King being a few who stay in my mind. If you have a few minutes, take the time to check out bookshelves of doom's website because there are more great Bradbury links there, too.
Thursday, 7 June 2012
Baking bliss
There's something special about baking. It's a bit like alchemy - making something out of nothing. The individual elements aren't much on their own, but if you mix them together just right you get something pretty special. I could easily spend a whole day baking, the only problem being that I want to eat it all when I'm done. I love to bake for other people, but since I can't bake for you I'm going to share some of my favourite baking books with you, so maybe you can do a bit of magic yourself.
Miette - The cakes in here are beautiful, but the best part of this book is the European Buttercream recipe. It's not too sweet, and the texture is light and smooth and silky. About half of it is butter though, so like everything it's best in moderation. I made a batch of it last night and flavoured half of the batch raspberry and half with coffee. You can store it in the fridge or freeze it, which is great because it makes a lot and you probably won't use it all at once. It's the perfect icing for something a bit special. Honestly, I could go on about this icing all day. I used the raspberry stuff on a batch of white chocolate cupcakes, which got rave reviews around the office. The cupcakes themselves came from 500 cupcakes, a new discovery but so far I'm impressed.
A treasury of New Zealand baking - I'm slowly but surely working my through all of the recipes in this book. It's wonderful to find such a high quality baking book that comes from New Zealand, so I know that a) I can get all of the ingredients, and b) the measurements and temperatures are metric. And I love the pictures.
The bread bible - A recipe for just about every bread you could ever think of, including a good number of bread-maker versions for the time-poor baker. This has my go-to recipe for pizza dough, and a beautiful orange cinnamon-swirl bread. I don't even mind that it doesn't have any pictures (usually a prerequisite for any recipe book for me), because it all works so well. It is American, but there's a handy little conversion chart in the back for people (like me) who can't think in farenheit.
Cakes & bakes from my mother's kitchen - This is another pretty one, and I wish I'd had time to try more of the recipes from it. The Key lime pie in here is devastatingly good.
Miette - The cakes in here are beautiful, but the best part of this book is the European Buttercream recipe. It's not too sweet, and the texture is light and smooth and silky. About half of it is butter though, so like everything it's best in moderation. I made a batch of it last night and flavoured half of the batch raspberry and half with coffee. You can store it in the fridge or freeze it, which is great because it makes a lot and you probably won't use it all at once. It's the perfect icing for something a bit special. Honestly, I could go on about this icing all day. I used the raspberry stuff on a batch of white chocolate cupcakes, which got rave reviews around the office. The cupcakes themselves came from 500 cupcakes, a new discovery but so far I'm impressed.
A treasury of New Zealand baking - I'm slowly but surely working my through all of the recipes in this book. It's wonderful to find such a high quality baking book that comes from New Zealand, so I know that a) I can get all of the ingredients, and b) the measurements and temperatures are metric. And I love the pictures.
The bread bible - A recipe for just about every bread you could ever think of, including a good number of bread-maker versions for the time-poor baker. This has my go-to recipe for pizza dough, and a beautiful orange cinnamon-swirl bread. I don't even mind that it doesn't have any pictures (usually a prerequisite for any recipe book for me), because it all works so well. It is American, but there's a handy little conversion chart in the back for people (like me) who can't think in farenheit.
Cakes & bakes from my mother's kitchen - This is another pretty one, and I wish I'd had time to try more of the recipes from it. The Key lime pie in here is devastatingly good.
Happy baking! If you know of any other great recipe books I'm always on the look-out, so please share them in the comments.
Monday, 4 June 2012
Hunting for treasure
So what is geocaching?
It's kind of like a hi-tech treasure hunt outdoors. You'll need a GPS, some good walking shoes and a desire to go looking for something. The NZRGPSS describes it as
a hi-tech game of hide-and-seek. [...] it is your mission to try and find [caches] using only your GPS and any clues you are given.Essentially, a cache (which could be as small as a film canister or up to the size of a bucket) is hidden somewhere outdoors. Occasionally a cache is hidden in an urban setting, but it's usually in a non-urban environment. It could be up a hill, on a beach, under a rock, or up a tree. The GPS co-ordinates of the cache are posted online. It's then up to you to go and find it, write on the log sheet and bag the cache. There are sometimes multi cache options, where there's two or more locations involved - the first cache gives you a clue for the second and/or third locations. Kind of like a bread crumb trail to the treasure.
It might sound simple, after all you've got the GPS co-ordinates, but as the article in the Wilderness magazine clearly shows, GPS co-ordinates aren't exact to the nearest millimetre, so you'll still have to hunt for the cache once you are in the right place.
If you are already spending time outdoors, then why not add an extra dimension to your adventure? You might find that the thrill of the chase pushes you to explore places you never thought you'd go.
There's some good books to get you started, including The geocaching handbook : the guide for family friendly, high-tech treasure hunting. You can also search for geocaching and/or Global Positioning System in the library catalogue. I'd also recommend the geocaching section of the website of the New Zealand Recreational GPS Society (NZRGPSS) to start you on your journey, they have great links to online geocache directories. Happy treasure hunting.
Friday, 1 June 2012
Dear Internet.
Dear Internet.
I’ve got to be honest with you. The closest I have ever come to blogging is laughing at people who write really pointless, angry Youtube comments and making pictures of Colin Firth my computer screen saver, so I’m not really sure how to go about this. I think maybe we should start by being honest with each other. The Internet is nothing if not honest.
Well, my name’s Laura and I am a librarian. And yep, that does mean that I read a lot. I set myself a challenge at the start of the year to read 52 books in 52 weeks. So far, I have read 31 books in 22 weeks. I’m ahead of schedule because I read Poison Study by Maria V Snyder and liked it so much I read all of her other books in just over a week.
I love coffee and chocolate (I’m not addicted, I just enjoy twitching). I have a horse called Nimbus but I don’t often call him by his real name usually it’s ‘Orange Pony’ or any combination of my favorite swear words when he’s misbehaving. I think 30 Rock is the greatest show to ever exist (Closely followed by Community and CSI) and I admire Tina Fey so much that my religion on Facebook is currently listed as ‘Feyminist’.
My love of music started when I was 6 years old. When I relentlessly begged my parents to get me Alanis Morissette’s ‘Jagged Little Pill’.
Eventually they gave in and my obsession with music began. Growing up the sound track of my life was severely different from other kids but I didn’t care, I had Freddie Mercury, Carole King and Johnny Cash. There isn’t really a type of music I don’t like. Apart from Glee. Glee is the worst.
That’s pretty much all you need to know about me for now. My plan is to just make it up as I go and try my best not to sound like Charlie Sheen.
Best wishes,
Laura.
I’ve got to be honest with you. The closest I have ever come to blogging is laughing at people who write really pointless, angry Youtube comments and making pictures of Colin Firth my computer screen saver, so I’m not really sure how to go about this. I think maybe we should start by being honest with each other. The Internet is nothing if not honest.
Well, my name’s Laura and I am a librarian. And yep, that does mean that I read a lot. I set myself a challenge at the start of the year to read 52 books in 52 weeks. So far, I have read 31 books in 22 weeks. I’m ahead of schedule because I read Poison Study by Maria V Snyder and liked it so much I read all of her other books in just over a week.
I love coffee and chocolate (I’m not addicted, I just enjoy twitching). I have a horse called Nimbus but I don’t often call him by his real name usually it’s ‘Orange Pony’ or any combination of my favorite swear words when he’s misbehaving. I think 30 Rock is the greatest show to ever exist (Closely followed by Community and CSI) and I admire Tina Fey so much that my religion on Facebook is currently listed as ‘Feyminist’.
My love of music started when I was 6 years old. When I relentlessly begged my parents to get me Alanis Morissette’s ‘Jagged Little Pill’.
Eventually they gave in and my obsession with music began. Growing up the sound track of my life was severely different from other kids but I didn’t care, I had Freddie Mercury, Carole King and Johnny Cash. There isn’t really a type of music I don’t like. Apart from Glee. Glee is the worst.That’s pretty much all you need to know about me for now. My plan is to just make it up as I go and try my best not to sound like Charlie Sheen.
Best wishes,
Laura.
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