Tips for working for home

Tips for working for home from someone who works this way on a regular bases:

• Don't worry about being distracted, it happens in the office too. If you get too distracted you can always do extra work to "make up for lost time", as you settle into working from home, you will find yourself being distracted less.  
• When you start your workday, use an environment on your computer that is distraction-free, so shutdown any messaging programs you have, only keep the email up you use for work or ignore all none-work messages. Turn off your cell phone, unless your boss needs you to have it on. 
• Take breaks every so often and walk around your house. 
• Give yourself enough time for your computer to startup, it's easy to think "I am at home, so I can get to work fast" but this is a mistake even I make. It takes time for your computer to start. 
• Freel free to listen to music, so long as this does not distract anyone, you have to try and see how well it works for you. Unlike in the office, you can listen to anything you want and you won't disturb others. 
• Close your door, if they are other people in the house that might distract you. 
• Work in whatever space is most comfortable  
• Some people work better when they wear work cloaths but this is not the case for me. You have to try it and see what works for you. 
• Of course, talk to your boss and see what advice or requirements he/she might have. 
• Service like Zoom/Skype/Google Hangouts is glitchy even when everything is open. 
• You might feel some agoraphobia or fear of large spaces, so it's important to get outside from time to time. Virtual Reality is a good cure and if you don't have it yourself I am sure the library will be running VR programs in the Summer and Fall. 
• Your boss can't see what your up too, or if your delayed, so make sure you check in often. I write my boss a progress email at least once a day and an "I understand this" ever time he gives me new instructions. 
• Make sure you and your team are on the same page about things. There is nothing worse then doing the wrong thing cause your not on the same page. 

How to send better email

Since I can't drive and do a lot of remote work, I send a lot of emails, so here is some advice:

• 90% of communication is none-veribale, so you have to speak differently when writing than when talking face-to-face. Imagine you are writing part of a book, not necessarily a textbook, it can be informal but the important thing is to think of the way you read text and how this differs from how you speak.
• I have found giving context to questions often helps, for example*:
• "What VR games do you have for people to play?" is not as good as
  "What VR games do you have for people to play? I want to decide what I and my friend when to play when we book VR, this season."  The longer question helps the answer "zero in".
  I would suggest Beat Saber in the first case. In the second, the asker, mentions a friend, I would mention "Stop Talking and Nobody Explodes" stating that it's a multiplayer game. In the second case the follow-up question  "and which ones are multiplayer?" is avoided.
• Explain context with parentheses, if they are things confusing you want to explain them but never treat your audience like their a dumb. "Can I book a Librarian over the phone when you are closed?" may make sense to you but probably not it to your audience,  "Can I book a Librarian over the phone when you are closed? (do to COVID)" makes sense and brings me to my next point.
• Email can be slow, so depending on when I sent the previous email, I may not get a response till the library reopens. so it's important to give context to these things. 
• Know your audience, Libary staff may not be able to easily answer "What are the system specs for the Creativity Center computers?" but you can go in and find out for yourself. 
• If you need something fast, call, email is slow. 
• Try and sort things out on your own before emailing someone, this is because it's slow.
• People can re-read every word of an email(unlike speech in life) so be careful not to say something that could sound hurtful. Having said that, I try not to get too hung up on it, example "What VR games do you have for people to play? I want to decide what I and my friend when to play when we book VR, this season". This is the way I would write that email but now that I think about I could just say "what multiplayer VR games do you have?" but to error is human, so I expect people to be understanding when I do make a mistake like this. 
• Stick to one subject per email, I don't think anybody has any limit on the number of emails they can send/receive
• If you do have to talk about more the one subject, make sure it's clear what your doing, separate your subjects by paragraph or by writing the senders questions, one at a time and answering them one at a time. 
• Make templates or drafts that you reuse if you keep answering the same question over and over. 
• Know when to use "To", "Cc" and "Bcc". If you don't know:
  -> To: is the person you are sending the message to.
  -> If you are sending a message to more then one person use "Cc", you can use "To" for the first(main) person but the rest should be Cc. Technically their should  only be one "To" but most people probably don't know the difference between "To" and "Cc" so MOST mail servers allow more than one "To"
  -> Bcc sends an email to someone without others knowing, it's useful when you want to email a bunch of people who don't know each other. (a privacy thing) 
• Know about email priorities, you can set the priory when you send an email, it ranges from "lowest" to "highest" with the default being "normal". The higher priority message will show up first or be marked as such. I am not sure but I suspect that some mail servers ignore them. Beware that if your message is not a high priority to the sending, it might come across as rude. I leave it on default, most of the time, the only time I changed it was when I sent an email to the library that they did not have to read till they reopened, so I set it to lowest, to reinforce the idea. UPDATE: In these unprecedented times I have set emails to height but that's because I don't know if the phone systems are being monitored and I need a response in a timely manner.  
• The phone is better if you want a response in a timely manner. 
• Know about Return Recipients(AKA Read Recipients), like the ones you can send in the physical mail, requesting a "Return Recipient", means when the person opens your email, they will be asked to send a "Return Recipient" before replying. This can come across as rude, people see it like a winy kid saying "are we their yet?", email is like a car trip, we will be there when we are there. Still, they are rare cases in which you want to do this, for example, you keep emailing someone and get no response.
• You probably know this but just be aware that people often don't like attachments or links in email cause of spam/scammers.
• A "Devery Status Notification" asks the mail sever to tell you when a message is delivered, it's the less rude version of a "Return Recipient", it's done completely automatically but does not tell you if the email has been read, only delivered. Some mail systems do ignore them(not sure if they should but they do). 
• Do not worry about encoding or plan text vs HTML in this day and age, people will tell you if you have to worry about them. 
• You don't have to write an email to yourself to use "Bcc" everyone can be "Bcc" and the message will be too "undisclosed recipients" 

* Yes I know the Libary is closed at the time of writing, it's just an example. I will probably keep this guide when this COVID stuff is done.

Things to do while the library is closed

Things to do when the library is closed because of the quantnane...

1. The things on this list: https://www.hhpl.on.ca/en/research-and-support/library-from-home.aspx
2. And this one: https://www.hhpl.on.ca/en/programs-and-clubs/things-to-do.aspx
3. Take a course on Linda.com
4. Make lists
5. Place holds- don't do this too much, you don't want the staff to have to work too hard when they reopen and you can only make 50 so, Make lists if you need them. 
   Don't do this often cause you only get 50, but the library does not mind if you make lots of holds(I emailed about this). NOTE: They will probably all come at around the same time, be aware of that. 
6. Suggest purchases and make website suggestions using "askus@haltonhills.ca" 
7.  Look at the online local history If you get a 404, the staff knows about it and you have to wait for them to reopen and use the Microfilm. 
8. Enter this contest, I won the last one, do you think you can beat a Sonic/Myst/Kindom Hearts fan? (closes May 30th) 
9. Finish the winter reading challenge. maybe the contest will be extended and you can always do it for fun. Unofrchently it's not available online so if you don't already have a ballet they is not much you can do.  This is an S-rank library, so it is online now(here and here)and the date will be extended. Email them at askus@haltonhills.ca if you have questions. 
10. If you're like me you can always look at your old photos of adventures at the library!
11. Read articles(login and click on "articles" on the top by "catalog") 
12. Review materials in the catalog, if you don't see "review this item" it's a bug the staff are aware of.
13. Interact with the library on social media(Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) for all kinds of fun 
14. "Visit" the Frank Black Gallery. 
15. You can place Intery Libary Loans by emailing them to askus@haltonhills.ca. At the time of writing this address is answered weekdays 10 - 3You can no longer do this? I am getting mixed signals. 
16. The library is now running some of their programs online, see here for details. NOTE: most of the programs are found "in" Georgetown, as confusing as it is.  
17. Get the staff to phone you twice a week - more info here

YouTube videos are available if you need help

Year End Blog

Me and the Libary 

Last November I started becoming enthusiastic about the Libary but it was this year that I made that part of my persona. Here are some of the highlights of this journey:

The Libary is a community centre - embraces the library 

R. David Lankes(don't know how noteworthy he is) who wrote on Twitter: "Bad libraries build collections, good libraries build services, great libraries build communities. " this was reposted by the library. Before reading this I thought VR, Murder Mystery Night, Boardgame Afternoon, where just coincidences but afterwards it made me think "what if the Libary were not a Libary? (in the traditional sense) what if the Libary were a sort of community centre? Then all these things they have been running would not be coincidences but exactly what they should be doing! If the Libary is a community centre then no wonder I find it so thrilling! It the sort of thing I have been looking for". I then correctly predicted the Libary would run an event like FanFest(a Fandom Celebration) and what I thought then become the basis for my speech to the board.

My speech to the board 

My friend suggested that I give a speech to the board, since they normally only hear bad news from people, so I did. They loved it! We are given 10 minutes to present to the board and after 30 minutes(most of which was QnA) I said: "sorry I have to go to my club" and left! Also after my speech, they sent me this letter. A few weeks later I walked in and was enthusiastically called over by Staff member Beverly King(She and some other Staff were at the Board Speach) to Get my photo in the paper. 

Being featured 
I was featured in the Halton Hills Camera Club newsletter in which I talked about my desire to capture the buitey of the world through photography. 

A story about how much I have changed 

It's funny, I really have changed a lot, at the begging of the year I said on Facebook "... but don't worry physical books are not going anywhere anytime soon" and a Libary volunteer replied "The library is way more than a collection of books!" and I was thinking "ok, if you say so" but now if someone said the first thing to me I would say what She said, maybe followed by "but we must not forget the collection of books" 

Eunuastic Patron/Unofficial Volunteer 

A family member called me an "Unofficial Volunteer" after I told her about how I promote the library all the time! The name stuck and now "Enthusiastic Patron/Unofficial Volunteer" appears in my email signature when I email the library!

Converting others to "Libary" 

If you own a bookstore you have a wide variety of books that you can take home(at the price of not selling them) if you want.  So Tom of White Rabbit Books has little need of the Libary but I was able to convince him to get a Libary Card (mainly so he can borrow WiFi to Go) and have converted him to Libary(his words). 

Library Thrills 

They is an Instagram tag "#librarythrills" which the Libary(and sometimes other people) used to use. It inspired me to use it as an expression and now I  have a few "Libary Thrills" 3D bookmarks. They use a purple filament since that is the library's colour.  

Things I did this year 

Now I'll tell you some other highlights of the year, which may or may not involve the library. These are not really in any order, just the order I found/remembered them in. 

Clubs 

As usual I am still involved in many clubs. We did some monthly meetups a Nox Church where we performed improv. As is always the case, clubs and social event at the library are a great way to make new friends, which I did this year.

Winter Reading Challange 

read more here

VR

Here are all my VR experiences(2019 and other years), at the time of writing most of these took place in 2019. 

Escape Rooms 

I did a couple of these with my friends at the library, they are fun and like the Adventure games that I love.  

Improve at The Macking Box 

Read here



Fan Fest 

Basically "Libary Trhills" with another helping of "Libary Thrills" ontop! They were VR. boardgames. carnival events(like beanbag toss), Spiderman and Batman where they and I won a FanFic contest for this Sonic FanFic I wrote. 

3D Printing 

It takes a lot of time but you get custom 3D objects, so I love the result. More info about the Libary's 3D printer can be found here. 

The Fox 

Read about it here. 

Culture Days 

Read about it.

Scanned Newspaper Archives

During the year I found old newspaper clippings that I had saved and scanned them. They are now on Facebook and if you don't have Facebook contact me and I'll send you the ones that might interest you. I also found some others in the Newspaper Archives one of which I printed from Microfilm(Microslide?) and scanned in.

Pathfinder 

I got to play some Pathfinder this year and it was fun. Fyi I don't want to spread myself too thin(with other things) so I don't play anymore.

Year-End Photo 

The receipt is from a restaurant when I had my existing trip in Acton. 

New Years Resolution 

Because people might ask, my NYR is personal, something I only will talk to close friends about but it is a way I will improve myself. 

OTAM

I will be doing cool things next year but without the OTAM rules, it was fun writing this blog, so I will write about them here. The reason I am not doing OTAM is that it can be too restrictive .

Thank you for reading this and 

Happy New Year! 

OTAM Note

For October I don't think I did anything really "new" for both parts of OTAM, so I will either try and find 2 this month or discover something when doing my year in review.

Encore: The Missing Manual Chapter 2: Search

This info will be out of date for HHPL users on October 22nd, 2025.  

NOTE: This info could become outdated and I may not notice.

Got someone on library staff to compile some info about "Encore" searches. This first part talks about "Filters" you can find them on the right side after you do a search. The bottom part of this talks about "advanced search" and you will find the link to this under the search box on the right side. She got her info here, https://elmhurstpubliclibrary.org/encore-catalog/catalog-tips/, so you might want to check it out as well. Thanks, and enjoy! 

ENCORE SEARCHING GUIDE

Filters/Facets

Availability

• Limits search results to items on shelf in the library (both Georgetown and Acton), as well as online. It will also hide/eliminate items checked out by other patrons.

Found In

• You can choose only to see items that cover your search terms: in the title, subject, or author fields.

Format

• Limits to a specific format- e.g. Print, eBook, Large Print, Audiobook, DVD, and more.

Collection

• You can narrow your search results to items found in different collections: adult, children, Georgetown or Acton Branch.

Language

• Allows you to search for materials in English, or French (we do have some Spanish) depending your search.

Tag

• Allows you to look through specific keywords that you can use to browse through additional items in the collection. (e.g. if searching Margaret Atwood, you may see tags such as “women,” “misogyny,” “Canadian fiction”) which are all themes associated with Margaret Atwood books.

Publish Date

• Allows you to limit your results to a specific year. You can limit the range of publishing dates using Advanced Search.

Place

• You can limit your results to items that are about, take place in, or published in a specific location (city, state, country). The place usually comes from subject headings that are generated once you search for the item.

Related Searches

• The catalog offers additional items that are relevant to your search. It helps with consistency in organizing materials- e.g. if you search for ‘ghost’ you might not find all the relevant resources. But you might find the word ‘spirit’ under related searches to represent all related items with ‘ghost.’

Additional Suggestions

• Similar to tags
• Offer more keywords (helpful)

Advanced Searching

Advanced search helps you search across many fields at once. You can combine different requirements for your search.

• For example: You can look for the subject “Women” and format “Print” and language “French” and publication dates “2010-2019” all at once.

Boolean Searches and Why They Are Helpful

When you perform a regular search, such as “art” if you are books about art, you will get a wide range of hits. A Boolean search will be useful if you are looking for a specific type of art-or a specific artist or if you are not interested in books about a specific type of art.

Instead of just going through all the different art books, you can use the NOT operator to exclude specific types of art you do not want to see.

Helpful tip:

After running an initial search, you might get a lot of results that relate to the words you entered but you don’t actually find what you are looking for. By using Boolean operators, you can remove some of those results or add specific words.

For example, consider the art example I just gave: you see lots of art books, so you add +sculpture to see sculpture art. And if you want to remove results that have crafts, you can add –crafts. This will narrow your search.

WILDCARDS (advanced search technique)

• Used to represent one or more other characters
• Most commonly used one is the asterisk (*) typically used at the end of a root word (for example, searching for educat” would tell the database to look for all endings to that root- such as educate, educated, education, etc.
• A question mark (?) may be used to represent a single character. Useful when there are multiple different spellings of a word (for example, colo?r would give you results for both color and colour).

(Not all library databases use these wildcards, so I’m not sure if Georgetown does- you can try, but I didn’t have any luck).

She got here info here form this website and said I should include a link with what She typed up: 

https://elmhurstpubliclibrary.org/encore-catalog/catalog-tips/

Sonic Unleashed Review

Sonic Unleashed Review 

It's no secret that I love the Library but I also love Sonic so  today I am going to talk about Sonic Unleashed 

Story 

The world has been torn apart by forces more powerful than Dr.Eggman, Dark Gia, I never play Sonic games for the story, having said that cutscenes in the story in this game are enjoyable, even if the character "Chip" is  a bit annoying at times.  I'll get back to the story in a bit...

Sonic The Wearhog Gameplay(night) 

Yes, this is "a thing", at night Sonic becomes a "monster" with stretchy arms and legs which he does some challenging platforming. At night he also fights Dark Gia monsters and robots beat-em-up style complete with lots of optional and mandatory(against bosses)  quick time events :P. What do I think about this gameplay? It's not bad but it's not great, read the Boost Gameplay section to find out how this game shines!

Story continued... 

So it seems the story was constructed so that Sega could merge Sonic with the where hog gameplay with the boost gameplay and make it make sense.

Boost Gameplay(daytime) 

In the day Sonic is normal and you can experience the boost gameplay. It is 9/10 - 10/10, he moves fast like a car but is manoeuvrable like a fly. So you end up having to move quickly and puch the correct button to jump/dodge/homeing attack/stomp at the correct time. It can only be described as thrilling! 

Some people complain that modern Sonic has too many "rollcoster" parts where you don't really do much but I love these.

The daytime bosses are "on rails" segments where you have to find "the opening" and defeat the boss while dodging his attacks. (and maybe some other things).

These levels are great and I like to play them over and over again to collect secrets and get a better rank.(ranks in this game go S, A - E, a ranking system which I have adapted and use to rate other things)

Other gameplay 

Town exploration 

Regardless of the time of day, you get to explorer the towns in the game and it's fun to do so, it reminds me of Sonic Adventure. Some characters will give you quests, some of these allow you to play the same levels with some sort of alternative requirement and slight changes. (more enemies which you must beat within a time limit for example).

Other quests require you to travel the world to talk to people or gather things like tea or buying food*. Theses never feel old and sometimes townfolk will have new things to say if you talk to the later, even when you think they were not programmed with additional dialogue.

* With the rings, you end the level with.

To show how interesting townsfolk can be, there is a fortune teller that gives you(not Sonic) a personality quiz and then tells you what thinks of your(not Sonic's) personality. Another woman gives(Sonic or you) quizzes in each town you visit. You gain bonuses for doing some of these things but you get nothing for the personality quiz.

They are also a store where you can purchase extras such as music, cutscenes and concept art. These are also found lying around town and in the levels. You can also buy food to feed to you(Sonic)* or your friend Chip.

* Darn the fact that I mentioned the personality quiz testing your personality is throwing me off. 

The plane levels 
Daytime Sonic and his friend Tails take off in an aeroplane. The whole thing is then controlled by timed button pushes(well, you can hold R2 + L2 if you have been pushing the wrong buttons too fast and run low on energy). I don't like these but you only have to do them twice.

Sun/Moon medals 
You need these to proceed and they are sometimes hard to collect, this is especially annoying at the end of the game. I take a point off the total score due to how annoying it is to collect thes at the end of the game.

Chip's Challange Puzzle 
You get a PS3 trophy(and probably an Xbox 360 achievement) for finding foods that chip likes. Feed him enough of that type of food to get the "prize". If you feed him the wrong foods he gets angry at you and starts calling you(Sonic) names which are actually entertaining to see because of how childish Chip can be at times.

DLC 

Is not required to progress the story(they are not even Sun/Moon medals), the DLC gives new stages to play. I really like them even the ones where "troll" you with spikes you can't see until you approach them. (yes that sound like something made by lazy fans but I actually really enjoy them). 

The Wii/PS2 Version 

Has different(not worse) levels but is missing quite a bit of content(including full town* exploraston and whole citys) and I don't recommend it if you have a PS3 or 360. They also are more night levels on Wii and they are not as fun. 

* You get 2D "slides" you can do a minimum of interaction with on Wii/PS2. 

Graphics 

Are really nice, it's a nice change to see cartoony graphics over the realistic graphics we often see on modern hardware.  

I've heard the Xbox 360 version has a steady 30 FPS. The PS3 version can go up too 60 FPS but frame dips bellow 30 FPS are common on some levels with few making it too 60 FPS. The gameplay is enjoyable in spite of this. 

Sound/Music 

Sound is wonderful and the surround sound is excellent, music is upbeat and fun. 

Overall 

But is it fun? That's what matters. I give the wherehog 7.0/10 and Boost 10/10, I take off points for the "Sun/Moon medals" thing, so that puts things around the middle of 7.0 and 9.0 at 8/10, I highly recommend it!