Free knowledge, free pizza and $5.00 art!

Besides being another gray and rainy day, it was also super busy.

Free knowledge
I went to a TechShop (aka workshop) lecture on Camtasia Relay over at Wilson Library. Camtasia Relay is (according to the U Libraries handout) “designed to capture live workshops, presentations, training sessions, conferences or meetings and make them available to watch later.” It combines the computer screen and audio. Apparently it was created for instructors to record their lectures. The U has purchased it and is now promoting its ease of use. You download it to your desktop and then use Media Mill to store it on their server. The pro about using Camtasia Relay is its user friendly, but the con is that you cannot edit it. So if you make a mistake you would have to record everything over again. Viewing the demonstration, it does look pretty easy to use, but actually the Bio-Med (and other U libraries) were using something like it at least 4 years ago. So this product seems to be a dumb down version of that software, but “new” and improved and easy enough that even faculty can use it!

Free pizza
I received an email (from a U librarian list-serve I am on) today which had a coupon for a free pizza at Punch Pizza! So during supper, I hiked down to Punch in the drizzle and got my free pizza!

Five dollar art!
Also on my way out for supper I stopped over at Boyton Health Services to see if I could find their new Art-o-Mat vending machines (thanks Kristen for the Twitter post that it was there). It looks like a cigarette vending machine, but it sells original art and for only $5.00! The Chambers Hotel in Minneapolis also has one, which I have purchased art from. Its so original and exciting to pick out art and at only $5.00, who could resist. So I decided to pick the ‘Bar Code’ art. The ‘Bar Code’ art that came out was ‘Bar Code Marilyn.’ It contained a little flip book with an image of Marilyn Monroe created out of bar codes and was created by artist Scott Blake (his info and signature are on the flip book). Lots of little bar code stickers also come with the flip book. Boyton also has this great sign of the Mona Lisa washing her hands. Its a anti-germ poster!