Zamzar

Zamzar will convert your files from one format to another. For example, if you do you do your typing at home in Microsoft Works or Open Office, Zamzar will magically transform your papers into Office 2003 or Office 2007 documents that you can edit and print out at school. Zamzar also works with many music and video files and will also turn Word documents into PowerPoints, Microsoft Publisher documents, and even HTML.

The downside is that the process isn't necessarily instantaneous: you have to upload your document into Zamzar and then wait for the program to email you the converted document.

If you need a document converted right away, come ask for help in the library. We'll probably be able to help you find a computer that has the Office compatibility pack loaded on it, or we'll be able to find some other way of facilitating the conversion process.

Review: Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies

I was really excited to read the book Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies. And not just because of an attractive cover or prominent display. I saw a recommendation on NPR - other NPR recommendations have been very enjoyable. I have lived in Ohio my entire life and this memoir is set in Oberlin, Ohio; I try to seek out literature from or about Ohio. It is also a non-fiction book by a female author. I sort of knew what the book was about, and was expecting an uplifting story about a strong woman.

Here’s the gist of the book: Isabel Gillies and her husband have a very dramatic relationship. They get married and have two kids. Gillies moves from New England to Ohio with her husband who is a poetry professor. After a while, he meets and falls in love with one of the other professors at Oberlin. They separate. Don’t worry, I haven’t just given away the entire book, this is all mentioned at the beginning.

It sounds like I’m leaving out a lot, but I’m really not. When I got to page 17 of this 250+ page book, I set the book down and said to myself “How on earth will she manage to stretch this into a book length memoir?” The author must have wondered what type of information she ought to use as filler too. She seems to have settled on descriptions of designer apparel and home décor items, but she also includes repetitive memories of her privileged upbringing and expressions of amazement at the fact that Ohio is actually livable rather than being a barren wasteland.

I don’t know whether I could briefly sum up the aspects of this book that bothered me. The voice of the novel just really began to irritate me. She struck me as being a frantic, needy, hypersensitive woman who defined herself solely based on appearances and her husband’s status. But it may just be that I don’t relate well to woman and I’m not really the right audience for the book.

For a more enjoyable book about a philandering professor at a small Liberal Arts college, try Zadie Smith’s On Beauty. It isn’t non-fiction, but I found it much more interesting than Happens Every Day.

Picture Perfect Projects with Fotoflexor.com

I used to bemoan the fact that I do not have fancy image editing software on my personal computer, even though I could never justify such a thing. I’ve always made do with the basic image software on my computer when an editing need arose. Until I actually started using Fotoflexor.com (for free!), I didn’t realize how much I was missing.

To give you an idea of some of the things that Fotoflexor can be used for, I’m including a few pictures, an original and two that have been altered. As you can see, drastic changes have been made without sacrificing image quality. Usually, inexpesive image editors leave pictures looking grainy (in my opinion), but this is not the case here.

An example of something more practical that was achieved using Fotoflexor – the map featured on our Library Catalog page. I cut out and outlined the circle shape on an Ohio map, added star stickers to the map to identify Southwestern locations and converted the map to .png so the white areas would be transparent.

Some of the tasks that I frequently use Fotoflexor to accomplish:
Resizing images
Converting images from .jpg to .png (opaque to transparent)
Creating nice looking collages (this is easy to do in Paint as well, but the results are better with Fotoflexor)
Cutting out shapes and backgrounds


Although I use these features less frequently, Fotoflexor also allows you to:
Change shading/coloring of pictures
Add stickers, drawing and shapes
Retouch and Distort
And do many other useful things.

I’m sure I’ve really only begun to discover the possible uses for this free online system; there are so many potential uses that I’ve never had reason to investigate. But I imagine that there are many neat ways that altered images could be used in presentations and projects – rather than just copying an image directly from a search engine.