Oscar Weekend and TV Online from Around the World and Movie in the Library

For Oscar weekend: this is the most important database for anyone who has any interest in movies, actors, directors, gaffers, best boys, caterers and all those others listed in the never ending credits. The International Movie DataBase or imdb.com. The answers to most movie trivia can be found here.

BeelineTV.com
This site provides links to a selection of "free online TV channels from around the world." Organized by language. Listings link directly to the programming, and indicate which media player is necessary to view the content. Provided by a software company.
URL: http://beelinetv.com
(from Librarian's Internet Index's weekly update)

This came from Mary Ann Graham in Library Circulation Dept:
Join Us in Celebrating Black History Month at the University of South Alabama Library

Date: Sunday, February 25, 2007
Time: 7:00pm
Place: University of South Alabama Library Auditorium
Movie: The Bingo Long Travaling All-Stars & Motor Kings
Directed by: John Badham

Tired of being treated like a slave by team owner Sallison Potter (Ted Ross), charismatic star pitcher Bingo Long (Billy Dee Williams) steals a bunch of Negro League players away from their teams, including catcher/slugger Leon Carter (James Earl Jones) and Charlies Snow( aka "Carlos Nevada" and "Chief Takahoma", played by Richard Pryor, as a player forever trying to break into the segregated Major League baseball of the 1930's by masquerading as first a Cuban, than a Native American). They take to the road, barnstorming through small Midwestern towns, playing the local teams to make ends meet. One of the opposing players, 'Esquire' Joe Callaway (Stan Shaw), is so good that the recruit him.

Bingo's team becomes so outlandishly entertaining and successful, it begins to cut into the attendance of the established Negro League teams. Finally, Bingo's nemesis Potter is forced to propose a winner-take-all game: if Bingo's team can beat a bunch of all-stars, it can join the league, but if it loses, the players will return to their old teams.

Ironically, there is a Major League scout in the audience. After the game, he offers Esquire Joe (a thinly-veiled Jackie Robinson) the chance to break the color barrier; with Bingo's permission he accepts.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia.

Laissez le Bon Temps Roulez

Topicalizer
For writers who want to be humbled [yeah, right] this web app is the one to do it. It's from this week's Research Buzz. Enter a URL to a piece of writing or cut and paste a piece of text into its box and it will analyze it in weird ways. What are your favorite 3 word clichés? What is the reading level of your writing? Other bizarre info. "Word, sentence and paragraph count, collocations, syllable structure, lexical density, keywords, readability and a short abstract on what the given text is about." It can be humbling; take my word.

Glory, the movie, is going to be shown on Sunday night at 7:00 P.M. in the Library Auditorium in a series sponsored by the folks at the Circulation Desk for Black History Month. Free and open to anyone. This came from Mary Ann Graham of the wonderful Circulation staff.


I'll be back after the good times have rolled by--next week. Have a great Mardi Gras.

P.S. If you have an advanced reader copies or review copies of books appropriate for kids and juveniles [alleged delinquent-type] read this article. I have been going to New Orleans fairly frequently and will be glad to deliver any new books you might wish to donate. js

Top 100 Alternative Search Engines

This is from Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff and ExLibris (Subscribe here)
I'm working my way through them. but you have to try the Ms Dewey Search Engine for an experience you have never had with a search engine or a librarian before. Very Interesting! Be patient, it takes a minute to load and retrieve results, but the wait is not like any other you've experienced. Now we need a male version.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_100_alternative_search_engines.php

Academic Research Center aka Computer Lab in the Univ. Library

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"--a computer lab in the Library! Room 128, just inside the west[lakeside] doors opened today as the Academic Research Center [ARC] with 14 computers loaded with Word, Powerpoint, Excel, CD/DVD read-only drives, Quicktime, Flash, Windows Media Player. Bring your own headphones if you want audio. Thank Dr. Covey & Library Systems & Admin. for now being able to finish and print your papers in the Library, or print your instructor's ppt slides, or use your text's DVD to study. "He chortled in his joy."

"Beware the Jabberwock": it is only for USA students with a student ID. Two hour limit. No food or drink. Rebooting erases everything. All printing goes to the TRACcard printers in "the pit" and cost 10¢ a page. js

Photoshop Envy?

I got this tip from Poynteronline's Web Tips. Photoshop is great if you can afford it. The web has some free utilities that let you do many of the things you can do in Photoshop--adjust contrast, saturation, reduce red eye, crop, etc. -- AND they are free.
I tried the first one on this list, Picnik.com and it works really well. I upload my photo; 'shopped it; saved it back to my desktop quickly. Try it with your digital photos and voila! You might have banished your Photoshop envy forever.
<http://www.picnik.com/>Picnik.com
<http://www.snipshot.com/>Snipshot.com
<http://www.pixer.us/>Pixer.us
<http://www.fauxto.com/>Fauxto.com

If you want to get these kinds of tip in your own email, go here http://www.poynter.org/profile/subscribe_info.asp js

Feb. Government Docs and Spring Newsletter

HOT DOCS for a cold Feb. Day
Vickey Baggott, in the Documents Dept., invites you to check out the new HOT DOCS at USA page and discover newly acquired documents for perusing on a cold winter's day."

And Jan Sauer invites you to peruse the latest University Library Newsletter.

Multimedia for the Weekend

two from the weekly Scout Reports

Independent Short films
Independent Lens Online Shorts Festival [Macromedia Flash Player]
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/insideindies/shortsfest/index.html

"Included are a film that explores a Parisian secret from 1951, a meditation of growing old, and an artist who created a monument out of mud, old paint, and adobe. After viewing the films, visitors are also welcome to leave their comments in the "Talkback" section, submit a film or find out more about the members of the jury for this online film festival."


StoryCorps [Quick Time, Real Player]
http://www.storycorps.net/

"Drawing inspiration from the wide-ranging projects of the Works Progress Administration, the StoryCorps project was created "to instruct and inspire
people to record each others' stories in sound."