Good Day, Today's topic is trucking.
And pickled eggs.

Today's topic within the topic is.... Lyndon, I met up with him here in Portland and asked him a couple questions. He used to live in the U.K. and now he lives in Canada. It's not just Lyndon though. He is married and has a family. They ALL hopped on the plane and came over. Lyndon and his family has been in Canada about 8 months. If you have any interest in working in Canada his blog might be of help to you. Search the archives, there is a lot of info tucked away in there..
Lyndon's Blog

Topics within the topic's topics:

• Do you like pickled eggs?... (Lyndon) likes Pickled Eggs.
• How long have you been in Canada? Over 8 months
• Favorite towns? Kamloops, Golden, Raymond (British Columbia). Mention of Gremmie.
• Ron calls. Learn about PAR's! PARS = Pre-Arrival Review System
• Canada recruiting British truck drivers. PNP (Provincial Nomination Program) details.
• How long did it take? - the entire process.
• Truck driving over camera. (camera survives)
• Trucking in North America compared to driving in the U.K. Speed cameras, black boxes, recap, electronic monitoring.
  
• Lyndon talks about the final process. (Sell Everything and Take Off, eh!!!!)

Subscribe via itunes? Im not sure that itunes subscription link works. Its rather new to me. I have a new phone now. Its not an iphone. Its better than that! Anyways, i am on a podcast - subscription - gathering - frenzy. Hopefully you will be able to watch this video on your ipod or phone. David Lynch i agree, you know. Watching a movie on a phone is lame. But I'm a recluse. Waiting 90 minutes to let a 10 minute video load.... I'm not bothered. i would rather stare at a inanimate object than interact with people. most of the time.

Cheers~

Random Links... If you haven't already, go check out GiGi! , she's a truck driver.
And Lyndon... JOIN the YouTube!!!!!! People are demanding it!

edit* I should mention there a a LOT of European drivers driving in Canada, And they have blogs. see Lyndon's blog roll.

I noticed this website a while ago but i couldn't figure out how to navigate the site and claim my blog.



In the past 24 hours i have claimed my blog, sold stock, split the stock, tried to buy my own stock and. I have no idea what im doing.

I'm just trying to out preform the taxi drivers.
Please feel free to go buy my stock! If you have a blog it is probably listed on the site.
Any blogshare guru's out there, feel free to tell me when to sell/buy/split shares. I got no idea how it works.

Eat some links "Portland Hamburgers". This site inspires me.
And another "The 18 Wheeler". Good witting, lots of pictures. Trucking blog from someone just starting out.

That's it for now, got a video coming Monday.
Later Gator

On 27 March 2008 on Infolit iSchool, in the virtual world, Second Life, Vicki Cormie (Ishbel Hartmann in Second Life) and I (Sheila Yoshikawa in Second Life) led a discussion presenting some of our highlights from the 2008 LILAC conference. Some of the discussion participants had also attended the RL conference. The chatlog (transcript) of the session is at http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=270 and the photo is of the session. The discussion touched on some important issues (subjects of future discussion!)

Vicki Cormie had prepared interesting notes on three sessions that she wanted to highlight, and I reproduce them here, below, with Vicki's permission.

1. The library? Why would I go there? Library use by undergraduate students in China, India and Greece. Speaker; Anja Timm
(Diversity and Social Justice Theme)

This address focused on the information literacy needs of students on taught postgraduate programmes in the UK. The aims of the project were:
"* to inject timely and topical research results into the debate about the way international students are recruited, prepared and taught and how plagiarism can be deterred
"* to develop resources that will be of use to various groups within the the higher education sector and support its engagement with the issues of student diversity and academic writing, e.g. teaching staff, senior managers, educational developers, etc."

The project went out to look at libraries and the ways students used them in China, India and Greece. It was found that there were huge differences in the ways students used libraries for many different factors. In India, students at some of the less affluent universities had libraries that did not meet their needs in any respect, being full of out of date materials and being run by people (rarely librarians) who saw themselves as custodians of the material, and therefore there to protect it from use by the students. The relationship with academic tutors in these colleges, was also found to be strikingly different from the experiences of students in other countries with their tutor being very much as a friend; someone the student could socialise with and be their key contact and problem solver of all issues that the student might come across. Academic tutors are usually not involved with research and tend to teach with fixed texts for the course.

(Sheila adds: a comment from my own experience. A small study by one of my students indicated that at undergraduate level international students might be *more* likely to have experienced good school libraries, perhaps as it is the better off students who have money to go abroad.)
Links:
http://www.lums.lancs.ac.uk/departments/
owt/Research/sdaw/
http://www.lilacconference.com/dw/2008/
keynote_abstracts.htm#timm

2. Podcasts: IL delivery on demand. Speaker: Rebecca Mogg (Net generation theme)

This short presentation looked at using Podcasts for IL delivery at Cardiff University.
One of the things that I really like about LILAC is the good balance of the academic papers and the practical sessions, and this session was an excellent example of the latter. It was short and to the point and came up with many good suggestions and of practical ideas of how academic liaison can be taught through the use of podcasting.

Cardiff University employed a former student who had worked with student radio to produce a series of short radio programmes which were released on a weekly basis under the title “The Essay Survival Guide”. The programmes were created around a very loose script of questions created by library staff and then answered by using soundbites from students, academics and library staff. The result was a professional and engaging series of programmes that never sounded boring.
Links:
http://www.xpressradio.co.uk/shows/
student-survival-guide-to-writing-a-good-essay#
http://www.lilacconference.com/dw/2008/register/index.php?action=details&eventid=33

3. Role delineation in an iterative, cognitive skills based model of Information Literacy. Speakers: Judith Keene and John Colvin (Practical approaches to information literacy).

This session was a good mix of theory and practice based on several years worth of research done on creating a model of information literacy with mathematics students at the University of Worcester. One of the most interesting things that came out of it, and certainly one of the things that caused the most discussion at the end, was at the different roles of lecturers and librarians in the different stages of the model and whether it was always appropriate for information skills to be taught only by librarians, especially in the sciences.
Link:
http://www.lilacconference.com/dw/2008/register/index.php?action=details&eventid=43

Yesterday Vicki Cormie and I led a discussion in Second Life (the virtual world) about our impressions of the LILAC (information literacy) conference held last week. For this we prepared a notecard (handout). "Waste not want not": I thought I could repurpose that material for the blog. I will make this into 3 entries.

In this first one I post web addresses of other blogs that covered LILAC, in the second I will post Vicki's material plus the address for the transcript of the Second Life event, and in the third provide my final round up.

There were a number of parallel sessions at LILAC, but if you look through all the blog entries you will find that, between them, they cover a good number of the sessions. I'm sure I haven't found all the entries, so please add comments to link to any other LILAC reports.
1. There was a dedicated LILAC 2008 conference blog maintained by one of the delegates at http://lilac2008.wordpress.com/
2. If you want to find the other entries on THIS blog, you should be able to do it by searching for the word lilac, using the search box in the top left of the screen. I have also used the blog tag lilac20083. Moira Bent has blogged the conference on Moira’s Info Lit blog with a good number of entries at http://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/moira.bent e.g. at http://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/blogs/index.php/moira.bent/
2008/03/26/lilac_2008_ask_assignment_survival_kit
4. Nancy O’hanlon blogged at http://teachingosulibraries.blogspot.com/
2008/03/lilac-conference-notes.html
5. Jane Secker (one of the organisers) has given her Reflections On LILAC at http://elearning.lse.ac.uk/blogs/socialsoftware/
2008/03/reflections-on-lilac/
6. Karl blogged at http://rsckarl.blogspot.com/2008/03/
live-from-lilac-part-1.html and http://rsckarl.blogspot.com/
2008/03/dead-after-lilac.html
7. There are 2 entries about the Second Life sessions on my Sheila Yoshikawa blog at http://adventuresofyoshikawa.blogspot.com/
2008/03/conference-dancing.html and http://adventuresofyoshikawa.blogspot.com/2008/03/conference.html
8. Angela Newton (also on the organising committee) reflects at https://elgg.leeds.ac.uk/libajn/weblog/9994.html
Photos by Sheila Webber: of the front of Liverpool's Catholic cathedral and of the view from that cathedral down to the Anglican cathedral (with, on the right, the John Foster building in which teh conference took place).

In late 2007, fifty Computer Science university students applied for 2008 internships at Bungee Labs. We flew nine of the most promising applicants from around the US to join Bungee Labs for our first “Intern DevFest”.

Over a 24 hour period the students had to extend WideLens - the Bungee Connect calendaring reference application - to develop new features and create a new derivative WideLens application…then present the results to the judging panel.

The nine students slogged hard all day (with frisbee breaks!) and most of the night and then presented their mashup solutions to the judging team the next morning.

Check out the video highlights of the four winners.

Teaching skills for Librarians is a one day course from Jo Webb and Chris Powys, on Monday 7 July, held in the Department of Information Studies, The University of Sheffield, UK. "A key course aimed at building on your current experiences of teaching information skills in libraries and learning centres. Developing new skills and adapting to new learning environments is essential for increasing levels of information literacy amongst our users. This one-day participative course will provide stimulating discussion and an excellent opportunity to share experiences. Practical tips for teaching library users will be set within a theoretical framework of teaching and learning." A completed booking form is needed to reserve a place, contact Hannah Rose (h.l.rose@reading.ac.uk). Cost is £70 plus VAT.

Torrevieja is an Alicante crime black spot. While many instances of crime are reported every day, there are simply not enough police to deal with them. The Guardia Civil Union AUGC, claim that Torrevieja has a greater crime rate than Madrid. Moreover, one out of every four crimes committed in Spain takes place inside the Valencian Community. Part of the problem is the way that the police force is funded. The police budget is based on the number of residents living in an area, but as many people who own properties are not registered as residents, there are not enough police. An additional problem is that the majority of residents, who speak English, also expect the police to speak English.
Illegal immigrants from North Africa carry out a lot of the crime. In some cases the crimes are carried out because the immigrants are simply desperate. Since 2004 “neighbourhood watch” schemes similar to those in the UK have been successful in reducing the crime rate. This neighbourhood watch concept has been extended to stolen cars, with the police circulated the description of any stolen cars so that neighbours can ‘watch out for them’. Nevertheless, if you are going to live in Valencia you should invest in a good wall safe and always lock your valuables in it. Make sure that all external doors are fitted with a dead lock and make sure that you use it. And, always make sure that your car and other properties that you may leave outside of your home are secure.

Photo by Sheila Webber: more snowy primroses, March 2008

Pervez Musharraf yesterday swore in the fifth prime minister to take office during his tenure as president of Pakistan. This one may very well be the last. While Pakistan's last four prime minister have been little more than parliamentary puppets, the election of Yousaf Raza Gilani poses a real challenge to the imbalance of presidential power that has allowed Musharraf to hold sway over Pakistani politics since 1999.

The new ruling coalition holds the president in public contempt. Soon after he was sworn in - in a ceremony boycotted by leaders of the ruling parties (the Pakistan Peoples Party, Pakistan Muslim League-N, and Awami National Party) - Gilani made it clear that he wouldn't let Musharraf dictate proceedings anymore. Speaking of the immense challenges that lay ahead, Gilani promised "to give supremacy to the Parliament so that we can jointly take the country out of these crises."

Elections in February proved devastating for Musharraf and his allies, with the PPP and PML-N sweeping to power on the back of an anti-Musharraf campaign. The ceremonial boycott, in which major leaders like Benazir Bhutto's widower Asif Ali Zardari, Nawaz Sharif, and the Pashtun nationalist Asfandyar Wali Khan participated, confirms that the new parliament under Gilani's premiership will seek to undermine or even directly challenge Musharraf's presidency. The beleaguered president's position is not helped by the distancing act of his army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who recently relieved two senior generals thought to be close to Musharraf.

Like many of the PPP's leaders, Gilani hails from an influential, land-holding family in the southeast of the country, continuing the Pakistani tradition of feudal, dynastic prime ministers. He held prominent positions in both of Benazir Bhutto's governments - the first as a cabinet minister and the second as speaker of the parliament. He also served a five-year jail term for alleged corruption offences from 2001, a charge which he and his allies maintain was entirely politically motivated. It's no secret that the centre of gravity of the PPP remains with Zardari, and that Gilani may simply be keeping the PM seat warm for the widower of the martyred Benazir.

With a change of the guard in offing, Washington's warm relationship with Islamabad is set too cool. Pakistanis bristled at the ill-timed visits of two senior state department officials this week, whose trip coincided with Gilani's election as prime ministerr. Musharraf's party suffered heavily in the polls in part because of the president's willingness to toe the American line and open up a front of the "war on terrorism" in Pakistan.

Deputy secretary of state John Negroponte and assistant secretary of state Richard Boucher received a frosty reception in meetings with the new prime minister, Sharif and Zardari. Sharif accused the US of turning Pakistan into a "killing field", while in a phone conversation with President George W Bush, Gilani insisted that "Pakistan would continue to fight terrorism in all its forms", but would take a more "comprehensive approach... combining a political approach with development programs." The alternately laissez-faire or bludgeoning efforts under Musharraf in the restive northwest of the country look to be on their way out. Pakistan may be in store for a change in both style and substance.

Ms Tessa Jowell

Tessa Jowells' Gypsy Encampment

Was heard to howl.

"What me hug a gypsy!

I'm a socialist NIMBY".