I stumbled across two sites yesterday which do exactly what I have been looking for for a long time: they let you enter the books you own into a database. Don’t ask me why I want to do that, I just think it’s nice to have lists of everything. So there.
LibraryThing seems to lean a bit more toward the social software side, bibliophil on the other hand seems more robust. Another big difference is that LibraryThing is only free for the first 200 books. Afterwards you either pay 10$ per year, or 25$ per life. Considering that it’s still in Beta, I wouldn’t be willing to bet on them being here in 2 1/2 years.
I spent the better part of yesterday entering ISBN numbers into bibliophil.org, but since they let you export your database in an Excel CVS file, and since LibraryThing then lets you import that very file, I’ve now got my collection in both of the services. And right now there are only about 180 books in there, so I’ll still have some time left to decide on what service I’ll be using in the future.
Oh yeah, here’s the link to my list on bibliophil.org (no clean links, they really should change that!)
After three years of being buried in a forest in Austria, the Saliera is back. I think it’s strange how unprofessional the thief acted during the last few days. I mean, he (and one or two more cat burglars) stole that piece in quite an impressive way. And now, after three years of cat and mouse chases all over the place, he turns himself in because he was filmed buying a mobile phone. Oh well, so it goes.
A few months ago I took part in the Starbucks Challenge. Read all about my experiences here and here.
Today I decided to revisit a Starbucks, and was pleasantly surprised. The Starbucks in question is the one inside the Millennium city, a shopping mall in my district here in Vienna. After I had been unsuccessful with one Barista there a few months back, I today decided it was time to renew my pledge to this noble a cause. I was already bracing myself for a lengthy explanation of Starbucks’ policy, but after I had asked for a cup of their Fair Trade coffee, the Barista simply said: “But I’ll have to French press that, so it’ll take a few minutes!” I was actually quite perplexed by the fact that not only did he know what Fair Trade was, he actually was willing to sell me one.
Well, after a few minutes he brought my cup of Fair Trade, and even asked why I had asked for Fair Trade in the first place. We had a short little chat about Fair Trade, and although he tried to convince me that actually all coffee bought by Starbucks is more or less Fair Trade, he was the most well informed Barista I have come across until now. Apparently things are moving forward at Starbucks.
Lately I’ve noticed that my favourite capitalistic social network venture allconsuming.net has gotten sort of a facelift. You’re now able to look at stuff you’ve consumed in a monthly view, there’s also a sidebar module telling you who’s consuming what you’re consuming, and they’ve also added functionality to the consumed items, so now you can actually track the stuff you’ve watched, listened to, read or eaten right down to the day.
I don’t really know why I’m so taken by this service. Basically it’s not much more than lists of things people do. I guess it’s just the way it makes one look at things. If I enter a book into the system I’ve just read, I’m instantly able to see reviews by other people who’ve read it. I can review it myself (something I’ve down a while ago with this piece of boredom), I can then see what these people have read themselves and on and on and on. I guess I like it that much because it’s such a nice way of killing time, and when you’re done killing those hundreds of hours you don’t actually feel like you’ve killed it. Well, you do, but it feels like you’ve killed it for a reason.
The good thing about field trips with university classes is the fact that you usually see stuff you otherwise simply wouldn’t. Today we went to Perchtoldsdorf, a place which is only about twenty minutes outside of Vienna, but which I of course have never been to. You see, sometimes I actually think about the fact that there are places outside of Vienna, and I then wonder what these places may look like and if they could warrant a twenty or thirty minute ride in public transportation. Usually these thoughts end up in total oblivion, and only trips organized by someone else and with something of a compulsory feel to it make it onto my travel schedule. So, there we are. Since I like to shoot pictures, I left the scene of academic mischief for a few minutes in order to be able to present a nice gallery of assorted Perchtoldsdorfian architecture and wonders:
Enjoy.
![Medienschelte.at [de]](http://stormgrass.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/medienscheltebutton.png)
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