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Archive for the ‘Reference’ Category

Writing a Thesis

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

It’s been a busy summer. In July, I attended the Centrum Writers’ Conference in Port Townsend, Washington. And I’ve just returned from my MFA residency and have begun preparing my thesis, along with a critical paper.

Many students are in the same situation as mine, except they are probably a whole lot younger than I am. Nevertheless, writing a thesis is tons of work, especially if one is lacking the proper tools. So I thought I would offer up several websites I believe take a credible shot at providing those tools.

The first two sites have to do with style. And while there are a number of others, MLA (Modern Language Association) and APA (American Psychological Association) are the better known. MLA style is typically used by liberal arts students, and APA by those in the social sciences. Both of these resources are found on the Online Writing Lab at Purdue (OWL), as well as the three that follow:

Two other resources are found on the University of Hartford’s website. They are Forming a Tentative Thesis, and Refining Your Thesis.

One site in particular, Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., has a very comprehensive site for thesis development: The Writing Index.

Okay, time to get writing. And good luck!

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Posted in Education, Reference

Keeping track of your library

Friday, July 24th, 2009

We’ve all done it. Loaned out a book to a friend or colleague only to have them fail to return it to us. What’s worse is we don’t always remember to whom we loaned a particular book. Or you have too many books (can you really have too many books?) and too few bookcases. So like me you can’t get the car in the garage you have so many book-filled cardboard boxes.

Enter bookTome. Unlike many of the reading utilities profiled in this blog bookTome is a free downloadable database for cataloging and organizing your books. So you don’t need to be connected to the Internet to use it. Uh Oh! Did he say database? Now just calm down a minute. It is a simple program with little or no learning curve.

I use the easy method of listing a book: I click the “Add Book” icon, enter the title and author, and choose to download the cover image and details from Amazon.com. You choose which details you want in the “Tools” panel (again easy to do). The first time I used bookTome I was able to add over 60 books in an hour.

The program also allows you to create categories, series, whether you’ve read the book or are still reading it. Once I have entered any number of books I can search by these similar parameters: author, series, categories, and so on. I’m headed into the garage to label each of my cardboard boxes with a magic maker. When I have the bucks to build floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on every wall I will know where to find any book in a matter of seconds.

And yes, you can note the name of the guy who borrowed a book. Best to pay him a visit right away. He’s probably got your lawnmower, too.

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Posted in Free Software, Reference, Utilities

Где мой словарь?

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

So. You don’t speak Russian, do you? Neither do I. The phrase you see in the subject line of this post is just a literary come-on. It’s my way of introducing a fine new online utility, Wordnik. It looks Russian, doesn’t it? You know, like Sputnik? Alright, alright!

Technically it is an online dictionary; yet so much more versatile than what you might expect. Yes, you can look up words; but Wordnik has one or two bells and whistles you might not find with other dictionaries. First, Wordnik polls a number of dictionaries when searching for a particular word. Once it has found that word it lists related words, and not just its synonyms.

You can choose to hear a recorded pronunciation of a word, and you can see how often the word is used. There’s even a feature for those of you who Twitter. But my favorite feature is the ability to view a word’s etymology, which is its history and evolution. But then I’m an exciting kind of guy!

Oh yeah, the subject line translates as “Where is my dictionary?” It’s at Wordnik.