How the library works

The reason the library was so keen to have me stay is because they are working with four TA's this term in total (the library needs about 20 to function correctly) of which one must guard the computer terminal at all times and one must guard the course reserve.

I put this in my first post as part of the list of things that motivated me to create this blog. It is admittedly confusing to someone who doesn't know our library, so I thought I'd explain this in more detail with today's post.

The library has your typical Reference section, open-shelf section, and some computers with internet access (called the Computer Terminal Room for historical reasons). Like most college libraries, it also has a Course Reserve (which keeps copies of several books under closed-shelf space because the management considers these books shouldn't leave the library) a Hall of Thesis (where graduate and undergraduate theses are stored), and several Study Cubicles which can be lent to students in groups of four. (The list goes on, but I just need enough to get the explanation down.)

The library has a firmly established hierarchy with a director at the top, heads at each section, and employees under them. Also assigned to to the library, but out of the hierarchy due to being assigned by subcontractors, is security and maintenance personnel. (The subcontractor deals with the whole campus, but the few that are in the library are stationed permanently there.) At the very, very bottom are the TA's, short for Teaching Assistants. (Yes, we know there isn't exactly classes to be taught in a library, but the name is more of a payroll-enforced thing we have to deal with.) When I started working in the library in 2006, TA's were basically payed 47 US cents per hour (we're that low on the ladder).

The Windows to the Soul

Eyes are easy to draw. Take two teardrops and put one on top of the other. Pick a color for the circle where they intersect, and put a smaller black circle in the middle.

Position these correctly in the center of an egg-shape and voilà! Instant realistic human.

This is possible because human eyes are nearly symmetrical within themselves. You can use the same shape for both eyes and few people will notice. Not so with other animals.

This was a problem for me in making my avatar: the eyes I was using weren’t human. Animal eyes are more akin to two teardrops pointing away from eachother, than two copies of two intersected teardrops. So, I went back to my model and tried to trace his eyes.

Wheels and Language

Spanish is a funny language. Although it, like English, has regional variations, the variations of Spanish are widely disconnected from one another; so much that its speakers are allowed to forget they exist. This leads to the arisal of many funny words whch don't propagate at once. A country may create a word when the country next door had a word that perfectly well described that phenomenom.

Where am I going with this? I recently learned a new word in Spanish. Don't ask me which region it's from, but it's enough to say I had no idea it existed, so it's probably new (in the way "cool" was new in 1975 and "groovy" was new in 1950). It came to me through a pun, possibly exploiting its novelty. It goes like this:

Alumbras más que un sol, lamparita!

Now, to translate this, I first need to tell you what it means. The literal translation is, "you light more than a sun, lamp." The "lamp" at the end makes no sense when written like this; but the "you light more than a sun" part sounds awfully romantic.

In which I start telling how I drew my avatar

In About my display picture, I explained what motivated me to draw my current display picture. Having decided what I wanted to draw was only half the battle: I had absolutely no idea how to draw a mouse. Ideally, I'd have a live model, but I knew my mother wasn't going to buy me an escape-happy, wall-chewing rodent just because I wanted to draw it.

I therefore went with the next best thing: look for a photograph. Most people think the only way to use a photo for drawing is to trace it and reproduce every hair, every floating dust particle, every trick of the light exactly. This becomes noticable because, well, if your model were to move, you wouldn't be able to get all those details. What I had to do, then, was use the photos to find the proportions and basic shapes that, when our brains see them, make us think, "Aah! There's a mouse in the house!"