The Last Post ... The Final Frontier!

I finished! Yay!!! OMG!!! It's done! Dusted! Finito! Auf Wiedersehn!!! Bon Voyage!!! And all that stuff (I think I managed to get a Star Trek reference in there too and I don't even like Star Trek ... just goes to show how something like that can influence our everyday language).

So this experience has been exhausting, hellish, entertaining in parts and I learned a couple of new things, such as the online word processor and image editor, etc. I was already well-informed on most of the things we had to do, but chose not to use any of them because they didn't interest me. That's pretty much how I still feel. I think for those people where the internet seems like a scary place this is a good thing because it will give them confidence to explore the internet and just try everything without worrying about stuffing things up.

It's time for me to say goodbye ... unless I can think of anything else to say and if you read my blog you'll know that I can say a lot without actually saying anything.

I'm off down the road to nowhere ...

And catching a train into the distance.

Project Gutenberg or Steve Gutenberg?

I'll admit, when I first heard of Project Gutenberg many years ago, the first thing that popped into my head was Steve Gutenberg (you know, the one from Three Men and a Baby). Sad, I know, and it dates me too. I was still at uni at the time and desperately needed to read one of Plato's dialogues or something for classical studies and I came across Project Gutenberg. Back then it didn't look so pretty!

I hadn't heard of the wonderful world of ebooks back then, but I quickly discovered how great they were. There's still nothing like holding a book in your hands, but if you really need a fix of your favourite author and still have to wait for their newest book to be published in New Zealand, then finding an ebook online and paying in US dollars is often a good way to go.

Back to Project Gutenberg though. I love the fact that you can get hold of the classics ... and on audiobook too! I've always had some form of ebook reader on my computer, whether it be Microsoft Reader or the ebook reader from Ebook.com and I wish I had a palm pilot so I could use their Plucker software, but I'll take text or html too! I just think it's fantastic that it's all free.

Experiments in Podcasting

Sadly, the very first Podcast directory listed went to a dead link. This is not looking like a promising start because the Yahoo one didn't seem to work either. But I will plod/pod on! Get it? Oh, dear, yet another late night post from Digger Chic.

I used PodcastAlley in the end and it was very easy to search for podcasts based on subject area or keyword. The only worrying thing was a keyword search for "library" also managed to come up with a podcast called "Erotic Xpressions from The Lusty Library: Gay Cocktales"!!! I didn't want to know, so I went with "Library Geeks" instead - "Welcome to Library Geeks, where librarians, geeks, and geek librarians geek out about libraries". I clicked on "Get Podcast" and discovered I needed software! Ok. Try again. I clicked on "Details" and then it gave me the option to listen to it and opened a little player. It's basically just like talkback radio! But one you can listen to at any time.

You Can't Lose if you YouTube

I've often had a look at the videos available on YouTube. I went hunting one day to see if I could find an old British TV commercial for Coco Pops, but sadly only found other adverts. This was basically an attempt to tell my husband that I wasn't crazy and there had been an ad with Coco the monkey singing a funny little song.

I instead get my revenge with this video. It's from the TV show Man Stroke Woman and about something that all of us women can relate to ... the Man Cold! I figured it was rather appropriate too, considering the weather lately. Enjoy!

A Picnik with Web 2.0

Following on from Zoho, on online word processor, I decided to look at Picnik, an online image editor. I have a pretty good, free, one on my computer called IrfanView, which I find suits most of my needs because it even has the ability to resize images without losing quality, but I thought I'd see if Picnik had the same, or more, functionality. That, and I just like posting pretty pictures to my blog.

Picnik is pretty good because you don't need to register to enjoy most of its benefits, although I did notice it had a subscription charge if you wanted to do more with it. It was also good because it worked in conjunction with Flickr and Facebook. There were loads of cool effects (even a "shine begone" one!) and things you could do to pictures, a few were very cool like gooify and doodle, but I like my photo of the Phantom Ship rock formation at Crater Lake, Oregon too much to wreck it much. So here are the effects I chose: Orton-ish, Cinemascope, and 1960s.

My Adventures in Alturas

This is a story about a girl from New Zealand who travelled to the far side of the world to a small town called Alturas (a few years back, but I won't say how many).

City of Alturas Sign

Now, Alturas is a small town in North eastern California in Modoc County (I believe it's called the municipal capital) with a population of about three thousand people. The scenery around there is absolutely stunning, filled with mountains and wide open spaces where you can see for miles.

Goose Lake, Modoc County

I lived there for a little over six months, working for the Forest Service doing archaeological survey work and finding cool lithic scatters and arrowheads, along with a few spear heads and knives.

Arrowhead

I even worked with a few characters like Larry who's a bit of a mountain man, shaman, psychic and just all-around cool guy.

Larry's T-Shirt

The work was hot, tiring, completely frustrating at times, but I had the best time of my life there and met some friends for life.

Laura's Snowman in June, Sugar Hill, Modoc National Forest

Zoho Boho

Now I'm not sure who came up with the name Zoho but I certainly wouldn't associate the name with an online word processor. I find it very interesting that there's this switch from hard drive based software, that you often have to buy, to web based applications that are free and appear to have the same functionality as the aforementioned. Web based applications do come with their limitations, especially if the user has a slow internet connection that is unreliable. I have broadband at home but even then, give it a storm and the thing shuts down. There's still something to be said about hard drive based software.

Having said all that, I did like that Zoho let you use emoticons and my next post is going to be an attempt at using their publishing tool.

Week 7 ... Thing 17 ... Bebo bebop, MySpace Mutiny, and Facebook Surprise

I'm already well-acquainted with social networking sites. I've been a member of Facebook for all of a month or so after all. I'm a veritable expert! So I looked at the Auckland City Library person's Bebo page and found it was a slightly cooler looking Facebook.

I looked at MySpace and decided I was either far too tired or far too confused to do anything with it. I did do a search for my favourite band but their page had a picture at the back that made anything on top of it hard to see, so I gave up.

As I mentioned before, I'm already a member of Facebook. I use it to keep in touch with relatives and friends overseas and to play Scrabble with my cousin in Christchurch. I looked at the Hennepin County Library page too and in terms of a good profile, it's got the physical address, website, catalogue search tool, pretty pictures that make it seem like a warm, inviting place, and people have actually posted some comments too! Bonus.

Week 7 ... Thing 17 ... Star date 29072008

Oops, that's a Star Trek reference ... haven't watched that since I was a kid and it was the original Star Trek with rubber monsters.

I'm supposed to blog about what I did this week. Ok. Are you ready? It's truly fascinating stuff. Really.

So let's start with the beginning of the week ... that being Saturday (it's how they get around people working six days in a row if they start the week on a Saturday ... sneaky). I got up at 6.45am, got showered, dressed, ate my Vogels and Vegemite, made my coffee and drove into work for 8am. You still want to read this? This just happened to be the day that the "storm of the decade" was supposed to hit so we at work were all prepared for a nice quiet Saturday (in contrast to the previous Saturday I worked where all the computer systems crashed). But no ... the public had ideas clearly not aligned with my own. Needless to say I didn't get my nice quiet Saturday.

Sunday consisted of shopping and cleaning and ironing ... you know, all those things you normally do on a weekend but I cram into one day because that's all I have ... and it was back to work on Monday! And then work on Tuesday where I worked, worked, helped some people on their blogs, worked some more and generally it was all just a very ordinary day. Tomorrow though, now that's going to be interesting because we're going on our team day to TVNZ!

A Library 2.0 we go ....

When reading these perspectives on Library 2.0 I felt a bit like I was back at school being forced into something I wasn't particularly interested in. I've hated many a book in the past for just this reason. I did, however, read with interest Rick Anderson's view on libraries and the future and how he saw less and less emphasis on our written, physical collection due to greater demand and ease of use and access to digital resources. His comment that libraries have stock-piled collections for "just in case" needs, which were always changing, could be reversed, however, in terms of the sheer labour, time and money involved in creating digital collections. Yes, when done once, they'll never need to be done again, but we need to remember that technology is ever changing and by relying too much on digital resources we run the risk of losing it all if something catastrophic were to occur to our access to these.

The next perspective was from Michael Stephens whose ideas about the librarian meeting the patron at their choice of location (meaning through online chat etc. rather than face to face) could work very well in most environments and in fact Manukau Libraries has something along these lines with their involvement in Any Questions. I do worry about his desire to see the librarians of the future actively involved in the creation of technology ... I'm not I'd want to do an IT degree too! I'm sure learning institutions would inevitably move with these advancements though.

Dr Wendy Schultz seemed to have a view that, whatever form the library would take, it would always need tour guides who have the knowledge and experience to guide users to the information they require. It's all just packaging at the end of the day. I loved her idea of Library 3D where we had a virtual presence in places like Second Life ... can you imagine your local librarian as an avatar with wings and pointy teeth? Anything is possible. Dr Schultz takes everything full circle, however, with Library 4.0. Suddenly we're back where we started with bricks and mortar, physical texts, quiet spaces, and friendly people. There's still something to be said for tradition.

Teching Tagging Technorati

Okay. Keyword search for "Learning 2.0" in Blog posts, tags and Blog Directory ... DONE! The results? Different. Just as I'd suspected ol' fellow bloggers.

Explore popular blog, searches and tags ... DONE! Was there anything interesting? Not particularly, although a blog called Boing Boing made me curious for all of two seconds and there seemed to be a disproportionate number of blogs on technology, making money and something called "life hacks" (not sure I want to know what that is ... probably something to do with life coaching but termed better).

Blog about my discoveries ... DONE!

I've been watching too much Gordon Ramsay.

Call me a trad.ition.alist ...

Yes, do. My cynical nature is kicking in here (although that could be due to the fact it's past 10pm). I don't see the point in tags and bookmarks if there is no uniformity between them! In my previous life, I was used to dealing with data that couldn't be worked with if there was no commonality between terms used. It made life incredibly difficult to go back and change the data in order to perform any kind of analysis or useful research. So from that perspective I found del.icio.us to be just another place for people to expose their life for all to see. I don't want to perve into other people's filing cabinets!

I'm still Wiki-ing

Yep, still in this. It felt very weird to be able to go into the wiki and change whatever I like! If I was feeling particularly mischievous I could've made Trendy Gran's favourite movies Coyote Ugly and The Blob (a horror classic). I resisted though. I just posted my favourites instead so feel free to look. I also dutifully posted my blog to the favourite blogs in order to complete this exercise.

I've felt a bit lost throughout this week, so I would suggest for the future a complete redo of the instructions. I really wasn't sure what was expected of me!

It's a Wicked Wiki World

I think that wikis are something, like RSS, that I've known existed for a while now and even use on occasion (Wikipedia anyone?) but have never had the desire to pursue beyond that. So it was actually with great trepidation (and a little confusion as to what was being asked of me) that I entered into this exercise.

Out of the three suggested wikis I found the Book Lovers Wiki to be the ... nicest to use I suppose you could say. The other two I found a little confusing over the information available within them as there was no clear introduction, while Book Lovers was small and purely for reviews of books. I could definitely see a possibility for something like this within Manukau Libraries, especially when it comes to readers advisory. The subject areas could be divided into headings similar to those in our libraries (crime, adventure, thriller, sci-fi, NZ fiction, YA fiction, children's fiction, history, cooking, etc.) for easy navigation and patrons and staff can have access to add to it. I think there needs to be some level of moderation.

Just my thoughts on wikis.

Anything technology related?

Really? Anything? Okay. I guess that shouldn't be too difficult. Let's see ...

I have a digital camera and it's the greatest thing in the world because I can delete any hideous photo. It's the biggest pain in the world because it takes forever to auto-focus and by the time it's ready to take the photo, the object that I'm photographing has often moved away. I have also failed to print out any of the hundreds of photos that are currently sitting on my computer. So yes, it's fantastic, but it seems this little piece of technology comes with its issues.

I love my laptop because it's small, portable and a pretty blue colour. I hate my laptop because it's four years old, cannot be unplugged because the battery has died and the technology within it is now completely outdated so it won't run any new programmes (read, games). This basically means I'll eventually have to fork out another small fortune to get a new laptop or computer. Again, amazing technology and tool, but many many issues.

I might need to find a techno-psychologist after all this soul-searching!

Now, the Playstation 3 it must be said is a fairly remarkable piece of technology. It plays the most amazing games, absolutely visually stunning stuff, doubles as a DVD player and apparently (if you listened to the news a few nights ago) goes through electricity at a most disgusting rate. So much for power-saving in my household!

In a post about technology I can't forget my cellphone. It's cute, pink, has a camera that takes the most grainy photos and has a cellphone charm that really complements the phone's colour. It's also expensive to make a phone call (and I thought pre-pay would be cheaper) and anyone can get hold of you at any time! There was a time when I hardly turned my phone on because "it's for emergencies" but now the thing is never off, even when it's charging.

I think after all this talk I would have to say that technology has given us some amazing advancements, but it comes with many drawbacks that may have been forgotten about in the hype and excitement of new things.

A Flickr-ing good time!

I had a bit of a play with the tools and mashups suggested and must say I was rather taken with both the Flickr Montager and the Color Field Colr Pickr. The Color Field Colr Pickr was much more fun to play with and came up with some fascinating and beautiful photographs. I liked the fact that you could scale the colours from light to dark too. I probably wouldn't use it again, but it was pretty to look at.

I tried my hardest to create a trading card, but I couldn't be very original and the website didn't seem to like me doing it at work at all! But it seemed to work, so here is my trading card.

A clickr and a Flickr gave me this ...

Modoc County Courthouse
Originally uploaded by spicoli_drives_a_bus

Isn't this a stunning building? I can't take credit for this photo, although I do have a photo of it. It's the Modoc County Courthouse in Alturas, California, where I spent many hours pouring over their land registers from the 1800s looking at land sales and homesteaders. Fascinating stuff.

I'm just playing with this Flickr stuff right now, maybe when I'm a bit braver I'll take a few compromising photos of staff at my branch, but for now this will do.

Rolling your own on Rollyo

I didn't see the purpose in Rollyo since all the websites I added to it were quite happily residing in my Bookmarks waiting patiently for me to click on them when I had a mind to. I don't feel happy having them all squished into a tiny search engine. I feel like all these fantastic websites on archaeology and heritage that I've nurtured and added to over the years (sometimes taking away from) have now become someone else's property by being put into Rollyo. As you can tell, I'm very attached to my carefully collected websites (god forbid I put my family tree research ones in it!).

I have, however, faithfully pursued this lesson and put my Rollyo search box here in my blog post for all to enjoy. Enjoy!

Select...Archaeology StuffSearch The Web

Zwinky ... something Facebook conned me into

Yes, I'm on Facebook. And it has those little ads that are just so tempting! So I clicked on the Zwinky one, downloaded something (still not quite sure what, must make sure I uninstall it) and created this little Zwinky! Cool huh?

Ok, I admit. I cheated. I really didn't want to be part of the Zwinky world, so I went all complicated, signed up to Zwinky.com, created my little avatar, did a screen dump of it, cut it out using Paint, saved it, then pasted it into this post. The real Zwinky-linked one does cute things like blink, but it's pretty much the same.

LibraryThing Hmmmm ....

I suppose if you really had the desire to catalogue everything you've ever read and everything on your bookshelf, then LibraryThing would be a useful website. Me? I have a tendency to read books (particularly in a series) until I've hit the end of the series and have to wait for more and then forget about them at which point I usually go off in search of new books to read and generally don't feel like I've lost out on anything by not keeping track of the books I've read. Whew! When I do happen across a book that I'd forgotten about but now found again, it's like a little "Yippee!" in my head because I've discovered an old friend.

Enough about me though. LibraryThing was fairly user-friendly although my one gripe would be that you couldn't select multiple books at one time in the search list. I basically gave up entering loads of books because I have so many from the same author. I became frustrated with having to type that author's name in again and again and click on each of their books and cycle through the pages again. It would be much easier to have a little tick box and add them all in at once.

That said, here's my LibraryThing catalogue. It's not complete and far from interesting, but then again, is anything??

Digger Chic's Library Thing Catalogue

Blogging and Image Generating, Oh My!

I think I had a bit too much fun with this one. There are so many image generators out there! It's also a bit too much fun playing with photos. I found The Generator Blog to be the most useful site for finding image generators, probably because they gave a quick review and showed what you could do with them. The humungous list of other websites at the side could've done with some brief explanations and cleaning up though ... a few links sent me to dead websites, but that's okay.

So here are a few of the things I created when I went exploring, the first being a tombstone, which I created straight after completing the RSS stuff, so I take no responsibility for it.

This can be found at: http://www.jjchandler.com/tombstone/

This one makes new photos look like old ones http://labs.wanokoto.jp/olds


And here is my avatar (with a new hairstyle), courtesy of http://www.doppelme.com

The Confusing Hell of RSS, Part Two

I tried. I really did. I signed up to feeds, even searched for some using the suggested websites, but I must just have a mind block against RSS, a prejudice even.

I. Just. Don't. Like. Them.

The only vaguely useful/user friendly website out of the three was Syndic8 because it had the immediate gratification of a search field staring right at you. The rest just looked like normal news websites ... not very useful for someone like myself who already had a dislike of RSS. So I'm going to admit defeat, close this sad chapter of Web 2.0 and move on.

The Confusing Hell of RSS

I thought I was fairly computer savvy. I mean, I can work the hell out of the internet, I'm scary at Excel, I'm pretty good at Word, Publisher even Access ... I'm a whiz at ArcGIS, MapInfo, ARC's CHI and JDE (can I use anymore abbreviations?!) ... but I must admit, Bloglines nearly got the better of me.

I guess the first clue was when I tried to subscribe to several feeds and they never showed up on the left hand side (guess it didn't like Firefox), so I moved onto Internet Explorer at work (worked somewhat better I suppose). Then there was the hell of copying and pasting people's blogs into the subscribe field - not at all user-friendly. So, really, the only conclusion I can draw from this exercise is that I didn't like RSS feeds before and this hasn't endeared me to them now.

After all that, if anyone's interested, here are my feeds:

http://www.bloglines.com/public/diggerchic

Ah Ha! Success!

Yay! I've mastered the art of uploading a picture (as you can see to your left). Rather appropriate don't you think?

Testing testing 1 2 3

Okay, so this is my first blog through the Manukau Libraries Web 2.0 training. I've successfully set up the blog (although choosing a name, title etc. was most painful - who would've thought that coming up with something that wasn't entirely lame would be so hard?!), and I'm now successfully posting (hence the title). On to the next challenge, whatever that may be ... I might attempt to upload a photo/picture or two.