Raiméis

Dropped in to the library last night. They have good libraries in Finland, well stocked, staffed and maintained. We used to visit the library fairly regularly in the past, i’d always go straight for the computer section and take out a bunch of books which would sit on my shelf for 6 weeks gathering dust before they were returned along with a fine for being late. The last books I got out were graphic design related. I wanted to learn some drawing principles so I could get a better understanding of how the human form is put together. Surprisingly enough (to me anyway) if you want to create something in 3D, like the human head, it’s important to know how the features of the face & head all flow together. There’s very precise “flow lines” (my term) to the human head which must be replicated in 3D to achieve realistic results, or so I believe. Anyway, the graphic books were returned last night with about an inch of dust and €17 in fines.
I decided to check the computer section again and remembered the reason I didn’t visit it the last few times … the age of the books. Most of the HTML books cover HTML 4 (released as a recommendation in 1997, 4.0.1 released in 1999) and should be used for toilet paper as even the current recommendations XHTML 1.0 was released as a recommendation in 2000 and XHTML 1.1 in 2001. Some may argue that HTML 4 can still be used, I reckon it should be consigned to the code grave yard.
Other books I spotted included Dreamweaver 3 & 4 (current version is MX2004 ver 7) and a guidebook for IE5 … hello!! Even IE6 is about 4 years old, which in web years makes it as old Twenty Major. There were actually a few newer books there but mainly on XML which I am too lazy to learn.
Anyway, somehow I ended up in an arty farty section and spotted a huge book on the art of ancient Ireland. I considered borrowing it but decided it was too big to sit on my shelf for 6 weeks so left empty handed. At least i’ll save some money this month.
Sin é. Good thing I named this blog “ráiméis”, eh?