This is something I have really been waiting for! PhotoDropper is a plugin for WordPress that enables you to seemlessly search for CC licensed pictures in Flickr and other databases, and with a click insert the picture into your blog, complete with the photo credit. I have always found it a pain to have to […]

There has been a ton of mashups of speeches from the American primaries, but here are three amusing ones - two Latino songs about Obama, and one where he (surprisingly) performs a Bollywood hit. America needs a president that can perform Bollywood song and dance numbers to restore its standing in the world!

Stian

One of the problems I had when learning Indonesian in Jakarta was that what people actually spoke seemed to be very distinct from what was in my textbooks (never mind that my textbooks were also about 20 years old, but most importantly they taught a very refined Indonesian. I remember on the title page was […]

Although it was Eurocentric, I like to think back at the time when all serious scholars in Europe were expected to know at least French (and by association perhaps Italian and Spanish), German, English and some Greek and Latin. When you read a book, and there are frequent citations in those languages, that are not […]

My problem with doing research is that I come across so many interesting topics, and it is hard not to pursue them, and get lost. Sometimes I write books down in my “books to read” list, or download pdfs meaning to read them later. Sometimes I spend hours on things that I absolutely do not […]

3.
In the morning I cast my net into the sea.
I dragged up from the dark abyss things of strange aspect and strange beauty - some shone like a smile, and some glistened like tears, and some were flushed like the cheeks of a bride.
When with the day’s burden I went home, my love was sitting […]

Sometimes the world seems to be going in the right direction. The sun outside is beautiful, even in the cold Toronto weather, and I just found out that Obama won all three primaries along the Potomac, and the Harvard faculty voted yay to institute the first faculty-initiated open access mandate.
Stian

I’ve always loved reading literature or watching TV-series/movies about cities and places where I have been/are. When attending high school in Italia, it was a special treat reading a novel in Italian where the protagonist would explain that his mother was from Trieste, and his father from Milano… I lived close to Trieste, and I […]

2.
‘Ah, Poet, the evening draws near; your hair is turning gray.
‘Do you in your lonely musing hear the message of the hereafter?’
‘It is evening,’ the poet said, ‘and I am listening because some one may call from the village, late though it be.
‘I watch if young straying hearts meet together, and two pairs of eager […]

Looking through a bunch of old PDFs I have downloaded, I came across this little tidbit from the IFLA Newsletter, June 2007:
Help needed: Directory of National Libraries on Wikipedia
The Standing Committee has discussed the creation of a Directory of national libraries worldwide,
taking into account existing lists such as that maintained by the European Library […]