It's a good thing that it is finally Friday - somehow, this week feels like it's been chock-full of activities of all different sorts.

Which it probably does because yes, it was chock-full of activities. Remember that to-do-list thingie I posted about last week? (In case you did not, here's a blogpost elsewhere that nicely explains it.) I'm still using it, and for the first time in ages I am not feeling only daunted by a very long list of things I have to keep track of and have to keep care of. Instead, I have been getting a sense of achievement by getting stuff done - some (relatively few, though) of my to-dos from the huge list have been dealt with (though most have led to more items being added in turn). What, to me, is even better: I have managed very well to get my "dailies" done. Dailies are small tasks that you set yourself for daily repetition, such as "sort books on shelf for 10 min".

Which means there has been noticeable progress in the sorting of the library (aka the bookshelf behind me). Noticeable progress in looking through a very old bookmark list. And very noticeable progress in me sticking to doing at least some shoulder and neck exercises to keep those computer-work tensions at bay. Keeping track of these little things and motivating myself to do a small bit every day, nibbling away at very large and time-consuming tasks, is something that I have been remarkably bad at in the past. Sticking with doing ten minutes of book sorting (and entering book titles into the database) for more than one week? That, for me, is really very good.

So this little to-do list tool has really done something for my productivity, and it has passed the first test: it has been in use for one week (actually more than that) and I haven't fallen off yet. In fact, I'm still very happy with it. And feeling very motivated. (And I have a goodly list of tasks to take over for the current daily tasks once those books and bookmarks have been sorted. Like going through my main bookmark list... which is, regrettably, not really organised at all.)

Oh, and by the way, here is one of my favourite at-your-desk exercise videos:

I have two very different links for reading material to share with you - first of all, the work-type one:

JSTOR (which is an electronic journal archive) has introduced a new programme "Register and Read" with a limited amount of free journal papers for everyone. You can read up to three papers online, for free, at once; and after 14 days you can choose a new paper to substitute the old one. More information and an Excel list with the journals in that scheme (which I cannot open since it's .xlsx format) are on their info page, here.

And reading pdf texts as well but completely different: Neil Gaiman has made a writing-and-illustration art project together with Blackberry that is currently still running. Apart from having several stories available for download, for free, there's also the possibility to hand in artwork illustrating these stories. And here's the link for your delectation.

A few days ago, someone pointed out another sciency search engine on the web in one of the comments: Scirus. Meanwhile, I have managed to try it, and it might be a good additional way to find things - articles, books, pdf files - regarding a research topic.

Like usually, it is a bit biased towards both patent applications or natural science articles (because more of that is on the net than, say, scientific articles about the performance of a 16.5 g spindle whorl on different spindle sticks), but it's nice to have a second place to look in addition to Google Scholar.

Speaking of alternative search engines - I have been trying to get a little more independent of Google search recently. Because, you know, monopoly is not good, usually - and total dependency is not good either. So I have given DuckDuckGo a go.

DuckDuckGo searches stuff but does not rank it by hits like Google does by default; they have a very, very good privacy policy (that is so good it will havoc stat tracking functions for webmasters, since you will not hear about search terms used to find your site); there's goodies like instant calculator and password generator, and no ads except from a very unobtrusive sponsored link.

I have, by way of testing, put it into my browser as the default search engine. It is very interesting to see how different search results can look, and quite impressive how much Google "tunes" the results. I'm not totally convinced I will stay with it forever, though - and I still use Google for some stuff. I have noticed that in quite a few cases, I have a much easier time finding the site I am looking for with Google, thanks to their sorting algos. And the Duck has no image search (something that I need not too infrequently).

However, I like their policy. Go give them a try - maybe it's just the (additional) search engine you were looking for.

It's monday again. I got up way too early (well, in comparison to my usual time). I have a crazy-long list of things to do (yes, still). The cat is sleeping on a chair across the room, and I am getting jealous of her.

But on the other hand... there's progress on several different things on that list, and there are quite a few exciting prospects for stuff that will hopefully all happen later on this year. So. Now? Motivational coffee. And then? Bouts of frenzy actionism.

For you, in the meantime, from my long-overdue link list overhaul, a link to the Historical Needlework Resources Website. Have fun.

If you are involved with open-air museums, chances are that you have heard of EXARC. If you are not, EXARC is an organisation for open-air museums (or individual archaeologists) with an emphasis on experimental archaeology.

They have published a journal, EuroREA, since 2004, and recently made the transition to an online-only journal. Now that the hardcopies have sold out (or almost), the archives have been made open and public in form of .pdfs. You can delve into it from here.

And this, I believe, is also the place to express my total appreciation of and joy over that choice - it can be really (nastily) hard to get hold of an article that is behind a high, well-defended paywall or not on the 'net at all, and only available in some very few copies in some select libraries.

So: Thank you so much, EXARC! I hope that many other journals will follow suit.

Or... wait... maybe they don't. After all, it's not really weird to do a reconstruction of a Bronze Age structure and then test if it's possible to use it for making beer, right?

And completely unrelated but pretty (and both pretty cool that this is possible and pretty intimidating that we produce so much light-smog): A picture of the earth at night, with all the lights on.

Also? I now have a twitter account which I intend to use (occasionally, as in when I feel like it) provided I get some people that are interested in that (which means followers). You find me under the handle @katrinkania (yes, not very creative, I know). And if I manage to find out how, I will try to get a last tweets thingie onto this blog.

And finally, I found a new search portal searching a group of libraries, archives and museums, called BAM (only in German). I have not tested it thoroughly yet, but portals like this are usually a good thing - at least knowing about them does not hurt!

There are more and more libraries that have digitised manuscripts, in a very decent quality, and they can be leafed through for free on the Internet. (I love the Internet.)

One example that I recently stumbled across: The Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart. (The link will take you directly to the list of manuscripts; there are other categories on the left-hand side. The page is only German, though.) When you click on one of the manuscript titles, it opens in a viewer and you can look your way through the entire book.

Speaking of books, there is new software out - it's called Booksorber and is supposed to turn your camera into a high-speed, high-quality scanning device. I have already downloaded the demo, but not tested it yet. If this works as well as the demonstration pictures on the homepage promise... I will definitely buy it and be a very happy woman.

Speaking even more of books, my library database sorting and ordering is coming along - there are much less unaccounted books in there now than were before, though it is still a sizable heap. Real-life ordering and sorting of books has also taken place and lead to me realising I have quite a few duplicate copies of journals (Experimentelle Archäologie and Zeitschrift für Waffen- und Kostümkunde, mostly). So a new item on my to-do list: make a list (ha!) and offer those for sale...