This is a copied post from the Infomancy blog.
It talks about a great program to take notes on the web:

WebNotes annotates and shares in a new way
Posted on Wednesday 10 December 2008
Sure, you are reading this now, but will you remember the immensely important key points I might be about to make? There are a number of online applications that help users make notes about information they find on the web, but some of the additions to newcomer WebNotes are quite intriguing.
Being able to highlight and annotate pages is nothing new, but the ease with which this and other tasks is accomplished using the WebNotes extension for Firefox is quite refreshing. After a bit of playing around thanks to an invitation from ReadWriteWeb this morning, the most notable thing about WebNotes is their attention to small details. I must confess that my favorite feature so far - and the one that will probably lead to my leaving this installed for easy access on the occasions where it would be a very useful tool - is the ability to show or hide the extension/toolbar with a single click of the icon in the navigation toolbar area. Other sites (*cough* Diigo *cough*) just get to be so annoying with a toolbar that takes over after every update despite my constantly turning it off. I appreciate WebNotes giving me an easy way to access their toolbar during those times when it will be needed, and then easily hide it when I am not annotating.
So what else does the tool do? The standard mixture of sticky notes, highlighting, and organization are supplemented by a few ideas that make WebNotes especially nice for schools and libraries. After annotating an article or other content, a teacher could use WebNotes to create a permanent link to the marked-up page that could be shared with students. Or, students could use WebNotes accounts to annotate pages and share them with the teacher as an assessment of note taking skills (hint: highlighting the whole page is a fail).
Another way to share is the WebNotes daily report tool. Users can create PDF or HTML renditions of their sticky notes and highlights from around the web collected onto a single page. Since you can generate reports by folder, librarians could create a new folder for a reference session and then send a customer an annotated report at the end of the research help session.

been awhile ...

Hey Lindsay,

It's been awhile and I need to touch base with you via this blog and let you know that my thoughts, which often wander, like these subordinate clauses that populate my sentences, need to disciplined and documented currently because they tend to dissipate and disappear in the neuronal network of "mon cerveau".

Traveled to Columbia, SC for an onsite in my Young Adult Literature class. We had to present our booktalks ... ours were done on the front steps of Davis College on a brilliant, mildly cool day if not in the sunshine. My talk, which was mostly extemporaneous (others had written theirs out word for word and had memorized them), was on the theme of racial/cultural divides. The books: Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli; I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou; Snow Falling On Cedars by David Guterson; and We Are The Ship: The story of the Negro Baseball League by artist and author Kadir Nelson. It went well even though I left out some significant information in Maya Angelou's autobiography, but the other students (5 in all) liked my use of gestures and my talking voice. It has been a fun class and I have enjoyed actually becoming a reader, at least for most of the books.

Work has been great ... mainly because I'm not behind the cash register, a definite liability for Barnes & Noble, but in the information booth. Love helping people find books and engaging with them as we search. A youthful Baptist minister was literally aghast when I informed him of the members in the UU Church (Are you a church? You don't believe in God?) and my agnosticism. In evangelistic zeal he promised to bring me a CD of one of his sermons and advertised his radio spot on local FM radio at 7:30 a.m. on Sundays. Thirty minutes of a sermon I have edited from the previous week. No way he'd last in our church ... it's 60 minutes for the whole shabang, including sermon.

Speaking of which, Margaret Beard talked about gratitude yesterday. A simple gesture, your hand (normally your right) over your heart and then swept outward toward another person. It's saying thank you to that person. I've been spreading it around ... reminds me of the sign for love but simpler. And now that I've mentioned that noun of connectedness and joy, I want to send all my love to you and that I'm looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with you and Uncle Doug, Aunt Norma, and Norma Virginia.

In loving humankindness and joy ... je t'aime beaucoup,
ton père

A polylingual trio at B & N

I'm always intrigued and attentive to foreign languages spoken in the workplace, particularly within a book store like Barnes & Noble. Saturday night was an enlightening interaction with a trio of middle aged women speaking in a tongue that sounded like Arabic of Turkish (have no idea what the language sounds like in Turkey, just guessing). I asked in a jocund, satiric sentence: "Do you ladies understand what you're saying to each other?"

They were amused and when on to tell me "Hebrew". Naturally, a further query ensued: "Did you live in Israel?" All had, some years ago. As you can deduce, they all spoke English, but it did not stop there. One woman was from Morocco and spoke Spanish, French, and Arabic, too. Another, born close to France, spoke, you guessed it, French, Spanish, a smattering of Arabic and probably a few others. She introduced me to her erudite and engaging husband, Maurice, who provided me with a few lessons on French ... "ans" or years is pronounce "ohn" with a long "o" rather than "ahn" with a more "a" sound. It was a delight to try to understand the couple when they spoke to one another. He greet me with a phrase "je dois souvien" ... "Enchantez-vous". What I could learn if I spent some time in French immersion.

Well, that's about it kiddo (straight "o" sound). Had to get that experience out before it faded in the neuronal webbing of my depleting brain cells. Oh, one other thing. Margaret Beard's sermon on Sunday, 11.16.08 was about gardens. She started with a story to the kids, "The Secret Garden", then went on to use the metaphor of a growing a vegetable garden to one of a spiritual garden amongst the congregation. Several metaphors that stood out for me were:


"We are the plants and the gardeners in our spirit garden."

and

"Our sprinkler system (or watering cans) must reach out."


There was a work day at the church on Saturday a.m. and we dug a drainage ditch for water to flow next to the steps to the kitchen, and placed rocks (we had a huge pile of them in the corner of the church parking lot) to hold back the soil. The plan is now to create a "rockery" where herbal plants can reside and send out their soil-holding roots. I brought Dancer with me and she had a ball. Took the plastic cord that I now use to restrain her wandering and she continued finding places to wrap it around becoming trip and then looking pitiful. One hilarious encounter involved a woman and her two black (totally) dogs. On either side of a fence it appeared that Dancer wanted to play; however, once inside the fence, the dogs chased her and she ran right back to the fence and literally dove under the fence (a narrow opening, but this dog can really flatten out her body). Back on Kemp Street, Lexi and Dancer bared their teeth at each other -- Mom said that it was to establish dominance -- and I had to take my dog back to the car. It was an exciting day for her. She rarely gets to ride in the car but she's getting used to it.

Adieu ma jeune fille merveilleuse (sic), bonne chance et je t'aime beaucoup.
ton pere

I'm "Dancer" in the rain ...

How to explain the title of this post ... well, it has to do with, you guessed it, precipitation. In this case,a h@#* of a lot of it. There was no rain Friday a.m. as I moved out the door to meet my dancin' dog, as usual, upright on his back legs just beggin' to be released to scamper and maraud about the forested area \, which is rife with deer and other assorted smells. Well, the forecast changed in mid-walk. The soon-to-be, let's call it a few shades less than a downpour, perhaps a miserably steady, soakin' rain, started and Dancer and I proceeded onward, undaunted by our progress toward complete sogginess. Now, don't get me wrong, I like to walk in the rain and this was no exception. It's exhilarating and you don't sweat, really, although you display a good impression of having endured a severe workout. And, by gosh (don't ever remember using the previous word in a written post), we needed the rain.

Today, Saturday, skies were clear and a beautiful sunrise peeked through the clouds to the east over the Savannah River. Windy, the leaves moved diagonally like a meteor shower across the Greeneway's walkway as Dancer ran and pirouetted over puddles in the woods to the side. He really is a gas to watch, so full of vibrancy and aplomb, I need to get Lexi and her together. They'd be quite a steeplechase pair together.

Well, my lovely and talented daughter, I wish you all the best on this beautiful weekend. Make time to smell autumn outside in between all your studying.

dad

An amalgam ... an afternnon at B & N

Idris, Eeyong Goh, Qur'an, Hadith, Little Nemo in Slumberland. and Hoo-vah Pah-ee-vah (phonetic spelling). I'll explain and list the previous terms. They represent an afternoon's interactions during my noon to 7 p.m. shift at Barnes & Noble on Wednesday, Nov. 12th, 2008 in the Augusta Mall.

1. Idris, 3rd generation Lebanese, sat at a table reading a microscopically-lettered small book. I had to engage him and ask him about its size and how he read the type (he was young and did have narrow glasses on). It was the Qur'an and had English on the left and Arabic on the right. To the right of this text was a larger book with, naturally, larger text. This he called the Hadith. He said that the Hadith was the more detailed book about the holy book of the Qur'an and it was written in classical Arabic, a style that is not used today. He went on to show me some of the lettering of Arabic and how each figure was a sound. (They have about as many as our alphabet, 28 in the Wikipedia link above.)
   
   
2. Tattoo shop owner, Eeyong Goh, who called the store, when she spelled her first name I commented that it was like the poet, e. e. cummings, and she concurred. She wanted me to hold a tattoo book, located on the bargain table, for her, which I did. Oh, and she is Chinese.
   
   
3. A marvelously engaging, middle aged African-American, is an avid drawer of cartoon characters, and I had mentioned a large book in Reese Library that had a comic strip that ran in the first decade of the 20th century by the artist, Winsor McCay, entitled "Little Nemo in Slumberland." It really is an amazing strip with incredible dialogue. It's truly a masterpiece of the medium and Mccay is consider one of the greatest and earliest in the field.
   
   
4. And finally, bet you're glad about that, the phonetic words - "Hoo-vah pah-ee-vah", which are a greeting in Finland. I have been badgering our young and vibrant community manager at B & N, Maggie, for several months, to repeat the greeting in Finnish (she stayed with a family in Finland during her college years as well as France -- any thoughts of studying overseas?). Well, I finally think that I've nailed it down.
   

I enjoy writing these missives to you and my hope is that you find them entertaining and perhaps educational, too.

Keep up the hard work, I'm incredibly proud of you and often boast to acquaintances that my daughter is an honors student at UGA.

In loving and perpetual humankindness,
dad

Faun & Soldier - a return home on Veterans Day

Needed to tell you, Lindsay, about this incredibly cathartic experience I had last evening driving home about 10:30 p.m. up Alta Vista Drive, one left turn from my place on Pershing. A form was on the side of the road, seated, head up and alert: a faun (male or female??). Got out of the car, still running, and went to its side and reservedly stroked its back. My thought being that the deer might rear its head suddenly back and plunge its fangs into my arm. No such doing, the animal was quiet, its legs folded under its body.

My initial thought was whether it was injured. A broken leg, an open wound, I didn't know. I did see some matting that might be blood but it was not, then I thought she had injured her leg. I considered transporting her to a vet but at that late time, no luck, and there's no emergency vet hospital that I know of on the SC side of the Savannah River. So, I carefully lifted her to her hooves (feet?) and she stood, shakily, and then walked across the road, a little wobbly and made it to the woods beyond. I followed her and listened whether she collapsed in the brush. No sound. My hope is that she'll mend, perhaps with her mother's attention and have a great deer life.

On a Veterans Day note, I listened to an incredible piece by a Vietnam veteran who served in the country from 1970-71 and detailed his return visit. He kept hearing the Largo movement of Dvorak's New World Symphony (a haunting melody played by the English horn) and that's when it hit me. All it takes is music of great empathy and connectedness to turn on the lacrimal ducts, but the words were also so moving. He was sad, troubled and a stewardess saw his melancholia and sat beside him and hugged him. It truly was a gesture he treasured. The music that accompanies this piece is the Largo movement of Dvorak's Symphony #9 From the New World, a piece he wrote in the United States and based a lot on Negro spirituals.

Love you young lady, keep up the good work. Hope the calculus test went well.

dad

Brain plasticity, life's moments to expand

Dear Lindsay - this is a blog, named in your honor, that came about because I'm just too penurious and lethargic (although that might change) to write letters and this medium, the Age of Web 2.0, is just better suited to letting my thoughts, which can come at inopportune times, be expressed by the expansiveness of the Internet. I can give you those links to what I've experienced and let you share in them, too.

The title of this blog includes "brain plasticity" and the link I'm providing is for a neuroanatomist, Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. (this is TED -- Teaching, Entertainment and Design -- video), who detailed in her book, "My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey", her stroke experience and her 8-year recovery from the damage caused by this cerebral injury.

I have to close now but I love you and I think you're the greatest!!!!