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Common Computer Myths

Fri, 04/20/2012 - 11:00 | Chuck Gray
in
Common Computer Myths

Part of my job at the library is helping individuals with computers through our free Training on Demand program.  I help patrons learn how to use their computers, how to surf the Web, how to use Microsoft Office, and even help them optimize their computers.  In the six years I’ve been doing this, I’ve noticed that there is a lot of misinformation regarding computers floating around.  Here are just a few of the misconceptions I’ve encountered: 

My computer is running slowly; it must have a virus.
That is a possibility, especially if you’re not running any Internet security software or you haven’t updated it in a long time.  If this is the case, you need to fix the situation as soon as possible!  However, it is just as likely that you’ve got too many background programs running at once.  Computer manufacturers and retailers like to treat new computers as advertising space for software that you don’t need; all that excess is probably clogging up your system. 

Help from SeniorNavigator and the Library

Wed, 02/22/2012 - 16:55 | Chuck Gray
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Senior Navigator Logo

Senior citizens, their families, and caregivers looking for accurate healthcare information on the Internet will probably tell you it’s a mess.  There are a tangle of sites for the various federal, state, and local government healthcare agencies, not to mention sites for hospitals, private care facilities, medical information sites like WebMD, and a quagmire of others floating around out there.  Each site has its own navigation scheme and design that  will make even the savviest of the web-savvy shake a fist skyward in frustration when trying to figure them out.  SeniorNavigator.org seeks to make the information gathering experience for senior citizens easy and anxiety-free. At the Central Rappahannock Regional Library, we want to help you use this tool to find the best information and advice to make your lives easier. 

CRRL Presents: Clayton Ray, A Man of Many Interests

Mon, 11/28/2011 - 15:25
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This interview airs beginning November 30.
Clayton Ray has the impressive title of Curator Emeritus in the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian Institution. He also studies, collects, and writes about wagons. Debby Klein meets with this fascinating man to explore his many interests.
Find out more about CRRL Presents.

Stargazing

Tue, 08/16/2011 - 15:18 | Virginia Johnson
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Great stars above!

From our place beneath the heavens, the stars seem to be tiny pinpoints of light. People have seen patterns in the stars for thousands of years. In the storytellers' imaginations, warriors and princesses, flying horses and laughing coyotes all found their way to the stars. Some soothsayers still tell fortunes based on the mysteries of astrology, or the alignment of the planets.

Astronomers know that the real mysteries of space are much greater than the accidental alignments of the stars. Stars, in all their blazing glory of red, blue, green, yellow, and more, are pulsing and moving, swirling around in their galaxies which, in turn, move around the Universe. The stars themselves may be ages old, but we continue to learn more about them all the time. Recently, scientists discovered ten new planets--one of which is orbiting a very young star.

Media Ownership in the 21st Century

Wed, 05/11/2011 - 11:53 | Chuck Gray
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Image of music CD with locks on it.

Media ownership in the 21st century is a trickier concept than ever before. In light of the growing percentage of our books, music, movies, and software that is purely digital, that is to say, downloaded directly from the Internet, how is ownership defined? When music came on CDs and other physical formats, it was pretty easy to say, “This is my CD. I bought it. I do with it as I please.” Of course, the recording industry would disagree, to the extent that while you might have purchased the medium, you only licensed the media. Now that the medium is largely ephemeral, so too is ownership. Add onto that digital rights management (DRM) that locks down and controls what you do with your “licensed” goods and ownership becomes a ghost of its former self. But do we really care?

Car Science: An Under-the-Hood, Behind-the-Dash Look at How Cars Work by Richard Hammond

Thu, 02/03/2011 - 10:02 | Virginia Johnson
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Car Science by Richard Hammond

Kids who like car books soon outgrow the ones with nice pictures and simple diagrams—and then what? What do you give a car-crazy kid who – might – be drawn into the fascinating world of science and engineering if he had the right teacher? Most car books for older kids are chock full of dull details and have no excitement whatsoever. They drone. They drag. They discourage with their very verbiage. We’ve got a cure for that.  Richard Hammond, star of the BBC’s Top Gear and past host of Brainiac: Science Abuse, has teamed with picture-mad DK publishing to bring off Car Science: An Under-the-Hood, Behind-the-Dash Look at How Cars Work.

The book is divided into four very fun, very illustrated sections: Power, Speed, Handling, and Technology. There’s never a dull moment as Mr. Hammond divulges details of “…everything you need to know to be a real driving expert. How a turbocharger works, how gasoline is made; we’ll look inside gearboxes and learn why a Formula 1 car’s brakes glow pink when it’s stopping. And, at the end, we’ll look at the kind of cars that we might be driving in the future.”

It's Elementary! Geometry for Grade School Students

Tue, 01/18/2011 - 16:24 | Virginia Johnson
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Girl learning geometry

Circles, squares, pentagons, octagons, polygons, angles, rays, points, and lines, there are so many names to learn in geometry. They may sound strange and new, but geometry is all around you. Your computer monitor's surface is more or less a rectangle, your pencil is roughly a cylinder, and, viewed from the top, the cable from your mouse to the computer, is a line segment.  Once you start thinking about geometric shapes, you'll find them everywhere.

Donating Your Computer's Time

Wed, 06/16/2010 - 01:11 | Chuck Gray
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Modern computers are many times more powerful than they need to be for most of the things we use them for.  Simply writing papers, surfing the Web, watching videos, playing games, etc. . . such tasks don't take full advantage of these machines' potential and when they're not in use, well . . . they're not in use.  They could be doing so much more. 

Creeps from the Deep

Thu, 05/27/2010 - 15:54 | Caroline Parr
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          The Gulf oil spill, terrible though it is, has focused attention on one of the least-known environments on earth. Scientists used to believe that the deep ocean was uninhabited. As scientist Tim Flannery explains, “The eternal dark, the almost inconceivable pressure, and the extreme cold that exist below one thousand meters were, [scientists] thought, so forbidding as to have all but extinguished life. The reverse is in fact true....(Below 200 meters) lies the largest habitat on earth.”
 
          While less than 10% of this area has been explored by humans, what we have discovered to date has found its way into children’s books filled with tantalizing glimpses of ten-foot-long red worms and the enormous clams, crabs and tube worms that thrive around deep hydrothermal vents. 

Two new free iPhone apps include CRRL listings

Wed, 05/26/2010 - 16:45 | Samantha Thomason
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If you love to try out new iPhone apps (and who doesn’t, when they’re free?), you’ll want to download two new apps that now include CRRL’s results. Called pic2shop and Book Bazaar, the apps are free and help you find library books when you’re out shopping. For example, if you’re at a bookstore and wondering if we have a title, scan the barcode with your phone and pic2shop will tell you if we have it. (Pic2shop is also great for comparison shopping for other items.) With Book Bazaar you can type in the title, author, keyword or ISBN. Either way, both apps are free and downloadable through Apple’s iTunes App Store.

This short video shows Pic2shop in action at a Border's book store.

If you've already purchased the RedLaser app ($0.99 in iTunes App Store) you can also get results from our library.