CheckoutThemes.com

Evidently the themes will likely disappear from Sequoya in a day or two, so I'm hurriedly attempting to get a "Hi From Germany" farewell theme up. It may never make it live, but thanks for all the memories Sequoya and Sequoya patrons. And I'm glad we were able to bring some smiles to patrons.

I think it's safe to post, now -- Happy belated Ninja Day! The holiday so stealthy people generally completely miss it. It was on December 5th.

(And, of course, most of the checkouts at Sequoya had a Ninja theme on them to celebrate the holiday. The ninjas have since disappeared into the ether, though. When will they return?)

Happy (early) Thanksgiving! Starting tomorrow, three of the checkouts at Sequoya will have the Thanksturkey theme up to celebrate the holiday.

After the fact, but hopefully Sequoya people noticed that the themes shifted to "Pirate" on International Talk Like a Pirate Day. It's nice to be able to easily shift the machines to appropriate holidays like that with the autoinstaller working.

Fingers crossed, but the theme autoinstaller is working on my test machine (e.g., a really old laptop that runs WinXP that's the closest thing I have to the self-check machines). The companion web page seems to work as well, so hopefully I'll be able to swing by Sequoya on Thursday and see if it really works.

Theme autoinstalling!

Using my newly-gained knowledge from going to Computer Science classes, I now have a working version of a theme autoinstaller.

E.g., set this up on a self-checkout, and it'll automatically install a specified theme whenever it's run. General idea being that I can change the themes on a machine by changing a line of text on the website.

It still has a lot of rough edges, but I'm excited about the concept.

The themes made by West High School students are now up at Sequoya Library, though there's still lots of work to be done. The students managed to come up with a lot of neat ideas. Do stop by and check them out.

I took a trip to West High School (in Madison, Wisconsin) today, where a class of students was working on new themes for Sequoya's machines.

They're coming up with neat stuff, and I look forward to seeing them on Sequoya Library's self-checkouts, soon. Maybe some day at other branches of Madison Public Library, or even beyond.

There are now checkout themes at the Hawthorne branch of the Madison Public Library, with Gameshow, Irish Andy, and Zombie being the first to make an appearance.

I hope your patrons love them, Hawthorne!

Hawthorne Branch | Madison Public Library Branch Phone: 608-246-4548Branch Email: mplhawthorne at gmail.comBranch Supervisor Marc Gartler608-246-4548mgartler at cityofmadison.com

The original picture was taken in Ireland yesterday, and appears as the "Bad card" (i.e., the screen that shows up when the patron is unable to checkout for one reason or another) picture today as part of the Irish Andy and Irish Clay themes.

Thanks to Megan Fleischman for letting me use it.

The Irish themes are live, now, at Sequoya. While it's an appropriate theme for St. Patrick's Day, it's generic enough that it'll work for more than just today and tomorrow. Hopefully other libraries will try it out. Send a message if you see it, or would like help / specific install files for your library.

The Irish theme has been completed. Here's a taste, with the "Take Receipt" music:

http://www.checkoutthemes.com/samples/IrishAndyClayTakeReceipt.wav

More to come, and expect to see the theme live in Sequoya on Saturday.