Remembrance of Christmas Past

and Present ...

With apologies to Marcel Proust and Charles Dickens (not necessarily in that order).


My 'fondest' Christmas memories as a child

• my favourite dolls mysteriously going missing just before Christmas and then magically reappearing under the Christmas tree with the new clothes my Mum had spent that last month(s) sewing & knitting
• the Christmas my brother got a new two wheeler bike (complete with banana seat, ape hangers and sissy bar) which meant that I got his old metallic gold Raleigh 20.
• leaving the bucket of water out for Santa's reindeer and then marvelling at the heavy dewfall on the garden on Christmas morning
• realising that being 'allowed' to stay up and go to midnight mass was not becuase I had been a good girl - but was a cunning ploy on the part of our parents to tire us out enough so we didn't wake up at 5am on Christmas morning.
• those wonderful 'auntie' presents you got as a small girl - nice soap, lace-covered coathangers, stationery sets and scented drawer liners.

... and as an adult

• a small child running into the library and breaking the sound barrier by screaming at the top of his voice "MUM, THERE'S A CHRISTMAS TREE IN THE LIBRARY!!!!!!"
• having the sort of job where the wearing of reindeer antlers at work is considered de rigeur
• still getting those wonderful 'auntie' presents - nice soap, lace-covered coathangers, stationery sets and scented drawer liners.

Can I still be cool ...

• if my MP3 player has black headphones instead of white ones?


• if my idea of a Big Day Out is having coffee with friends and seeing a movie on the same day?


• if I have more friends on my Goodreads page than my Facebook page?


• if I prefer books with words instead of pictures - unless they're cookbooks, then it should be the other way around?


• if I don't (and hope to never have to) speak bebo?


• if I prefer Unshelved to manga?

Just when you thought you'd heard everything ...

... the interweb surprises you yet again.

I mean, I'm a serious person. I read books with long words in them (and no pictures even!) I've watched An Inconvenient Truth. And I'm desperately looking for someone to give a goat to this Christmas (my sister-in-law's getting three ducks ... a real bargain at $15 I reckon).

So why am I so tickled to find this podcast?

And why am I not surprised at this website .... or this one?



Maybe it's the lighter things in life that make it possible to do all of the above?

Enough philosophy for now - after all, it's only Monday!

Yo ho ho ho ho ho!

And now for what you've all been waiting for (drum roll please) ...

The Great Mt Roskill Christmas Techtraining Quiz of 2007

And what's more, it's gone all Web 2.0 on us:) Here's the link

Once you submit your completed quiz, it will wing its way through cyberspace and end up on Zoho where I can 'mark' it and send you your completion certificate (no MP3 players sorry!)

The layout is a little strange - so remember to scroll right to see the second column of questions.

You can use whatever method you prefer to find the answers - google, fitch, wikipedia, library resources or leaning over library colleagues' shoulder(s). Collaboration is encouraged.

If you would prefer to do the quiz in a non-cyber format, printed copies are available on request.

The judge's decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into - although bribes are accepted.

Is there life after blobs ... sorry, blogs

I should hope so ... imagine if all this hard work and fun disappears into the ethos once this is over. Facebook profiles decaying on the roadside, rollyo search engines gathering moss, librarything accounts withering away.

All these web2.0 tricks and treats will go the way of that pasta machine and waffle maker you bought eons ago. You know, those must have appliances currently gathering dust in the dim dark recesses of your cupboards. (Apologies for the tautology - who ever heard of a light bright recess?) I blame the Briscoes ads myself - for the pasta maker that is, not the tautology.

Perhaps the proof of the web2.0 pudding will be in the longevity of its toys (whups, sorry ... tools). But I have a nasty suspicion it will have more to do with the attention span of its audience - scary thought that that is:)

Ease of use could ensure that some last longer than others - they could even transmogrify into standard usage. I'm sure that pasta machine would see the light of day far more often if you didn't have to take a day off work just to whip up a round of tortellini.

Mind you, some of those forgotten appliances could be a good way to minimise the old carbon footprint (why is it that I always think of a large dinosaur with dirty feet then I hear that phrase?) No trip to the supermarket, no plastic packaging - and fresh pasta takes a little lest time to cook so down goes the electricity bill!

Web 2.0 can stick its oar into the climate change debate too. What is it about computer stuff that needs more packaging than a 5th century chinese vase? By using web-supported tools, you don't have to buy that new version of software flown in from Seattle with its polystyrene packaging, plastic wrap, installation CDs and 500 page manual in 15 languages. That must be worth at least a small pine tree

So ... web 2.0 - being clean, green and geeky

And now the end is near ...

... can't find any curtains so it'll just have to be a blog post. I guess this is where I look back and wax philosophical about what I've learnt and how this is going to improve my life, and mind. and soul, and general wellbeing ... or not.

Perhaps best way of working this, is to think about which of these delightful and occasionally mind numbing little exercises I might revisit in the future ...

1. Read introduction - probably won't do this again:)


2. Set up own blog - done burger


3. See above


4. Social networking ... highly unlikely to keep this up - I prefer the non-flat screen version of people (you know - real life?)


5. Flickr - I love Flickr - currently doing major family photo project - will revisit far too often:)


6. Mashups - can be hired for mashups on demand for staff leaving pressies, etc


7. See #2


8. Have found bloglines great for keeping up with other ACL bloggers - and Unshelved. Whether I manage to keep this up is in the "still to be determined" category.


9. See #2 again:)


10. Hmmmm ... as previously posted, I prefer the creativity aspect of mashups - but at least I know where to find a Klingon sign generator the next time I need one


11. A rather large no on this one I'm afraid. Thanks to the Mad Hamster I'm a Goodreads convert - maybe it's my Scottish heritage (och aye) but I like that it's free


12. Set up Rollyo, complained about Rollyo, used Rollyo and then forgot about it ... I think that answers that one sufficiently?


13. Still sitting on the fence about del.icio.us (until they hire a web designer that knows what the word font means and get a web address with a little less punctuation)


14. My feelings about technorati are somewhat similar to my feelings about brussel sprouts. Does that answer your question?


15. Will probably try and keep tabs on how various libraries are using web2.0 and stuff - or not


16. The weird wide world of wikis - love the principle, may have a play now and again


17. See # 2 once more


18. Put this into the "will use again and recommend to others" category


19. Nope, nein, non, I don't think so - I have enough weirdness in my life already


20. Keep this one for the days when the sky is cloudy and the patrons are being patronising and you just need something to make you realise that this world we live in is a strange, strange place (oh, and bookmark this video for when you need to smile)


21. Maybe, possibly, potentially ... but probably not


22. Seeing as I love reading in bed or curled up on the couch - it's just takes too much effort to lug my computer around the house and lying in bed with your old 15" monitor on your knees just doesn't cut it I'm afraid. Still will use for locating Aristophanes The Frogs


23. If you're already reading this, then I probably won't have to do this one again. That said who knows what actually happens to all these bizarre ramblings once they are fired out of my computer and into the distant realm of cyberspace.

I would like to thank my parents, the Academy and all those unseen, unthanked (and most probably underpaid) ACL Learning 2.0 blogreaders who have waded through my dross week after week, leaving their witty little comments behind (sort of like modern day tooth fairies ... awww).

I have wandered the wonderul world of web2.0 and be enlightened, enfuriated, entertained, enamoured, enchanted, engaged, enraged, enriched, and enthused. What more could a geeky, cat-loving, knit-happy, computer-addicted librarian want?

And the final word goes to ...

Book book book - as the chicken said

I'm the kind of person that enjoys the tactile nature of books and just the sheer beauty of the binding, cover, typography etc, so prospect of e-books and Netlibrary don't thrill this gal a whole heap.

Could you imagine curling up in bed with an e-book? I don't think so somehow.

That said, I think things like Project Gutenberg, Google Books etc are a damn fine idea - for those rare, hard to find volumes particularly.

The New Zealand equivalent the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre rocks big time. Read the original of Buller's fantastic bird book (and fondly remember the exquisite paintings which used to grace the fronts of school exercise books, Darwin's journal from the Beagle voyage and a facsimile edition of the very first Edmonds Cookbook.

As a 'user friendly' web 2.0-ish database, Netlibrary needs to get with it ... the search is so basic as to be retarded, there is no browse feature and once you start reading a book, the only way to 'bookmark' where you're up to is to remember/write down the page number and re-enter it the next time you sign in .... grump.

That said, the 'search within' feature is slightly more user friendly than google books - which is a bit like saying that a pissed off grizzly bear is slightly less dangerous than a pissed off leopard.

I'll stick to my 'real' books for now - unless I need to dig up a copy of Aristophanes' The Frogs when it will be, hi ho, hi ho, off to Net-Library I go ...

I pod, you pod, we all pod ...

Who knew there was so much gibberish and vague rambling in the world. You never realise. And then you meet podcasts ... blogs for people who can't spell or type, but can still talk.

I suppose it is a lot like blogs - some great ones out there (check out the BBC podcasts here - but I cheated and already knew they were there) and some for which the word dross would be kind.

There are lots of cool audio book podcasts - but if I ramble on about them here, I won't have enough material to write about when I actually have to write about audiobooks ... so I won't.

So the good bits

• being able to listen (and download) unreleased (i.e. not on CD) recordings of Pavarotti from the 1970's.
• brilliant Celtic music
• learn a language

So a lot is not free and most of it is hard to find and get to - each site seems to have a different way of listening, downloading, saving etc.

But still a damn fine way of listening to weird stuff ...

If a picture's worth ...

... a thousand words? Then it should be easier to whack a Youtube vid on your blog:)

I found a way of adding a link to the Youtube page so you can go there and view this cool ad. But then you've got to navigate away from this blog - possibly not the best solution.

I found the html code and stuck it into a variety of page elements - none of which worked very well. The add html/java one worked best - but the element window was too large to fit the right hand column so you only saw half the video.

So I tried moving the page element and stuck it above the blog posts on the template menu. Which was Ok but it meant that that page element would always be at the top of my blog - not what I wanted to do.

I then tried pasting the code into a post - but that didn't work either ... until I pasted into the blog using the edit html tab. Doh! Doh! And Double Doh!




Maybe this will work ... maybe it won't? Oh ... it did!

Not sure how to get rid of the bit at the end - but it doesn mean that you, the reader (all 1 of you!) can copy the url or copy the html or view other cool Dove ads or just ignore them all together.

Time for a cup of tea and a lie down I think ....

Where do they come up with these names?

Zoho, Blogger, Wufoo, Rollyo, wiki ... even Google. It's starting to sound like a Dr Seuss book. Maybe that should be a Weird Name category in the next Web 2.0 awards? Either that or one for the most useless Web 2.0 waste of time site? Just kidding folks, I really like most of this Web 2.0 stuff - but honestly - have you looked at some of the award winners. If those sites won, what the heck must the rest of them been like. Yikes ...

That said, at first wade through Wufoo does look interesting and possibly useful. If you want to set up a database and categorise your CDs or knitting patterns or dinky toys ... which may not be such a bad thing if you have to spend longer than 5 minutes trying to find your copy of Rust Never Sleeps and you're the sort of person that likes categorising things ... like a librarian? I will have a bigger play with it one day and see whether the proof is in the pudding ... whatever that means.

But it is all a way of just sucking your further and further into The Machine? To use a lot of the most interesting/useful/less naff Web 2.0 stuff, you suddenly find you need a better computer, broadband, a webcam, a new MP3 player (that one's sorted!), a new graphics card, etc etc etc ...

One day, will we all wake up and find some ghastly megalomaniac is behind it all?

Or maybe one day, the internet will implode upon itself due to a surfeit of online image generators and the world will go back to the way it was before and we'll all walk around saying "Do you remember the World Wide Web?"

Oh my, a blog post from Zoho!

So, writing a blog post in Zoho and then flicking it onto blogspot ... how very web 2.0! As someone who has laboured through various word processing programmes (and had to shell out the shekels for every time you need to 'update' the bloody thing), I love the idea of 'community' software.

It gets over the problem of emailing docs to people but them not being able to open it because you sent it in Word and they're still using Works or whatever.

It don't cost a bean (except for internet access - but hey, that's free in the library!)

You want to add something to your magnum opus but don't have a laptop so you can't carry it around with you 24/7? No problem, whack it on zoho or google docs and the latest Great New Zealand Novel can be accessed anywhere.

Okay, it may not have all the various whizz bang features of office and such like - but you don't use most of them anyway and - and this does have cool stuff like tags and comments and a whole bunch of other kit and caboodle that I haven't found yet:)

So I'm a convert and am already thinking of various projects and stuff I can use this for ...

Now I've just got to work out how to upload this --- eeeeek! If you see this post, it worked ...

A great Blog

Found a needle in the haystack and thought I would share it with you

WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier
This blog is made up of transcripts of Harry Lamin's letters from the first World War. The letters will be posted exactly 90 years after they were written. To find out Harry's fate, follow the blog!

http://wwar1.blogspot.com/

If only Harry could imagine where his letters would end up ....

Wee Willie Wiki

It's been a long time since this old girl was in a sandbox ... but I have duly added my blog to the star picks on the ACL wiki (and stuck a naff little 'new' logo next to it - courtesy of trademe icons) and added my favourite book to the wiki book page. And gosh, wasn't that easy! Much much easier than a real sandbox - no wind blowing the sand up your knickers and anxiety about your sandcastle being smaller/rattier/not as fancy as everyone else's sandcastle.

I will confess to being slightly reactionary and adding my favourite Dr Suess book to offset the seeming predomination of weightier tomes on the books' page - you know the ones, that are called Literature with a capital L.

I do love the idea of wiki based writing and co-operation but also see it as yet another thing to 'keep up with' which means it will probably fall by the wayside unless I find it really useful and really interesting. The fitch being a case in point - great way to collaborate and share reference information and stuff - but when was the last time you looked at it and/or used it?

To get deep and meaningful in a political sense, I think wikis and such things rock the world as tools that everyone with computer access gets to use without having to go out and buy x video card or y software program and z hardware add-on and spend time learning html and such like. Bill Gates must hate them ... which is not such a bad thing:) Plus all those people that did go out and buy x y and z and learn html ... bugger!

Sticky Wikis

So the Mad Hamster strikes again and says pretty much exactly what I was going to say about wikis ... what is good about wikis is also bad about wikis.

And for everyone that thinks I should hush my mouth and that wikis are damn fine ideas and the best thing since the Spice Girls' reunion (see above post) - check out Conservapedia, a wiki encyclopedia based on "good Christian values" ... reading their commandments and then their entry on the origin of kangaroos is particularly enlightening.

That said, I do like the idea of a community space that allows everyone to participate without attending a 14 week course on writing computer language and general programming. It's all so, like, free and radical man!

• Patrons could post reviews (as well as ratings) on the OPAC
• Patron interest groups (book groups etc) could set up wikis on our website - posting what they're up to
• Patron could add their own tags to catalogue records, especially self-designing their own OPAC
• Answers and links to resources for commonly asked reference questions could be posted in one place so all library staff could access it .... and we could call it something really cool like the fitch or something!

Never eat anything bigger than your head

So what is Library 2.0? I've read all the proscribed guff and I'm not sure whether I'm any the wiser ... I get that the 'new' library will give patrons the chance of interacting with the library like doing book review wikis or adding reviews/ratings/comments to catalogue records. Does the fact that we already can add ratings on the OPAC mean that ACL is Library2.0? Or even Library1.999?

Maybe it's Monday, maybe it's me ... maybe it's because no-one (and in this I include the guy who first used the term) knows exactly what Library 2.0 is. Maybe it's "all things to all people" ... whatever you want it to be, it is.

I can see the whole interactive, contributive environment going off like gangbusters in some places/libraries and I can also see it doing a very good interpretation of a balloon of the leaden variety in others.

Disagree? How many people have returned an emphatic 'no!' to you when asked if they would like to learn how to use the new self-check machines? And we're offering prizes with that!

So maybe we need to look at offering ways for our patrons to contribute more and have more interaction with the library - but I think we also need to make sure we're not offering customers 23 new toys to play with that they can see no use for and have no interest in using/learning to use.

Just because it's there or it can be done, doesn't mean it's a good idea - I mean to say who on this blessed earth thought the Spice Girls were a good idea the first time around?????

Web 2.0D

So now a post about an online image generator that I found using the RSS feed from one of my bloglines subscriptions and that I've added to a search roll on rollyo and tagged it on deli.c.ious and am now writing in my blog about after I've uploaded the picture to flickr and put it on my facebook page and it's about a really cool book that I must put on my Librarything page (or maybe Goodreads, I'm not sure) and I can't forget to add lots of tags to it so people can find it on technorati ... and after I've done all this web 2.0 stuff I have no time left to actually read the book ... bugger!

Pooh sticks

So I feel like a bear with very little brain today - and meandering around Technorati has not helped. Can someone please explain the point of it all? I get that it ...

• helps you search through some of the 50 million blogs in the world
• allows to to add the 'coolest' blogs to your favourites
• enables you to check the 'ranking' of your own blog(s)
• see how many people are writing blogs about Paris Hilton

And my question to all of that is, why would you want to? Maybe I spend too much of my time reading books and not reading blogs? I don't think so.

Don't get me wrong, I mean, I love the idea that anyone can write their heart out and 'publish' it without going through some critical, opinionated, judgemental editorial/publishing process. But I know that these general ramblings of mine are just that - ramblings and probably of little or no interest to the general reading public or even the general non-reading public (maybe that's why I put pictures in?). I know that there are probably some major gems out there in blogland - really great, interesting writers who choose the blog as their medium - but the amount of dross means that even with Technorati and its brethren, you have about as much chance of finding them as winning lotto and the Booker Prize in the same week.

I did the required searched for Library 2.0 and my conclusion is that some people are cataloguers, some people can learn to be cataloguers and some people wouldn't know what a catalogue was if the entire AACR compendium dropped onto their foot.

Maybe if there was an easier way of finding out what tags you should use or that other people have used or whatever ... it justed seemed too random.

Maybe I should go into cataloguing ....

Delicious but ugly

If it's Thursday then it must be blog time ... and del.icio.us. Whoever designed this website needs to be taken out to the back paddock and given a good talking to. It has to be one of the most hideous websites out there. How much effort would it have taken to make it just a little more visually appealing? I'm not talking uber-stylely here ... just the odd bit of thought given to typography and AWS (aka aesthetic white space).

Any who (as a certain Mt Roskill librarian would say), I like that idea of tagging your bookmarks and being able to locate them linearly rather than using the strict standard hierarchical system. But then again, I'm a closet bookmarker from way back. I did set up my own del.icio.us account and imported my bookmarks into it. It said it may take "a while". I have just found out that "a while" in cyber terms means enough time to do a desk shift, have a cup of coffee, section part of the reference section and rearrange the pens in my top drawer. Told you I had a few bookmarks.

Found this tagging thing very useful for stuff like my family history sites - you're not limited to 'filing' (and therefore finding) a site under just one topic but can tag it all sorts of ways to locate it. So I can find the Cille Choirill churchyard site (picture above - last resting place of my g-g-g-g-grandfather) under scotland, lochaber, cemeteries, cameron, and lots of other tags.

Having a library background and being semi- au fait with subject headings does help though - as I found out when I saw some of the more 'interesting' ways other people had tagged some of my favourite websites. Either they didn't read or understand the instructions or the tagging concept did not reach the requisite part of their cerebral cortext.

BUT it takes one heck of a lot of work to 're-tag' all your bookmarks if you have a whole bunch to start with ... and I'm not sure when/if I'll run out of steam and go back to the old way.

Humble Pie & Raglan Cardigans?

This is a raglan cardigan ...




And this is a pie ...

because, of course, I ended up finding a great use for my rollyo knitting pattern search engine to locate a pattern for a knitted raglan sleeved cardigan for a one-year old girl.

Don't you hate it when that happens ...

Roll, roll, roll your search

Task #12 ... which means that if I do half of this, I've halfway through the 23 things:) Just to be pedantic.


I had a good play with Rollyo - and thought it was the best thing since sliced bread to start with. I mean, how cool is it to be able to make your own search engine!

I found a couple of 'pre-rolled' knitting pattern search engines and edited them to add my own stuff and delete the pages that I didn't like. I also put together another engine which put a whole lot of New Zealand shipping list sites together.

Well, the knitting pattern one worked OK - if you ignore (and it is a tad difficult considering the number of them!) all the ads sprinkled through the results. However there didn't seem to be much rhyme or reason about what went first or last and many of the results on the list were the same pattern from different sites (which you would probably get on google as well, but, natch, I'm having a moan here!).


The shipping list one was a total bust - as most of the list pages have a separate search engine to search the list on that particular site - so the rollyo list only searched the main pages - not the embedded data. If I had read all the instructions maybe I would have found that out before I tried it ... but I thought this would be really great if this works and it didn't ... (and I never read all the instructions before I start anything ...which is why I once knitted a jersey with three sleeves)


As for browsing 'celebrity' search rolls ... I'm sorry but no.


So only 5/10 for Rollyo so far - although I like the principle and I'm sure I could find it useful in the future for particular tasks/searches. However, I'm more than happy to stick with Google for now - if it's not broke, then why fix it?

Styley Learning from Unshelved

Just had to share the latest Unshelved strip - for all of you out there who did the the On the Job training workshop and are still wondering about learning styles

If a picture's worth ...

OK - so task #10 - online image generators. Hmmmm. Had a play ... some worked, a lot didn't. I tried the Che Guevara generator - and the instructions were in French. My French is pretty bad - only time I've ever used it was to direct a taxi in Noumea and I ended up in the wrong place.

So I flipped onto the Delft plate generator. It worked but I couldn't save the image - just order a plate. I will admit to trying the fart generator but it didn't have an image I could put on my blog and my workmates kept giving me funny looks (I think the computer volume may have been a little on the loud side maybe?).

Ended up with the Dumbledore generator ... results below.

On the grand scale of things, I probably wouldn't use any of this again. Maybe OK to waste a few idle moments if you've got nothing better to do ...

Liked the mash-ups better as there was more creativity involved and they were generally easier to use.

So I came, I saw, I played ... and if a picture is worth a thousand words then I suppose an online image generator may have its uses ... I suppose it really depends of what the thousand words say.

Wild thing

Task #11 - Library Thing. I've been a good little blogger (that sounds ruder than it is probably) and set up my Librarything account and added my books and played around with the tags and added some ratings ... and thought that this rocked ... and then I read the bit about once you have 200 books on your shelf, they want your moola before you can add any more.

Arghhhhh. Sites like this annoy me. They tantalise and tease you, get you excited with all their cool widgets and stuff ... and then once you are really really hooked - they hit you with "Sorry it's not free anymore" but you can carry on for $$$$$! They have names for people that do things like that.




So the above picture sort of sums up my feelings about Librarything a little. It is a good idea and I like the way you can see what other people have thought of books and you can categorise what you've read and look for suggestions for future reading ... but, after you've invested a lot of time and effort and interest - it can be a tad on the peevish side to them realise that you must pay (a yearly sum) to carry on.

And mucho thanks to the Mad Hamster for the Good reads suggestion ... I'll give that one a try ...

Rock on with Roskill Rocks!

Introducing Roskill Rocks to the world at large.

You see, we're all a kind, caring, sharing bunch at our library and were wondering how to pool our ideas, talent & braincells to help each other out with this Learning 2.0 gamut - which can be a tod on the tricky side when we all work different day etc etc...

And so Roskill Rocks was born ... to spread the joy so to speak ....

And we're not partisan about it ... you are all welcome to add, comment, use (and abuse, as long as you do it nicely)

Oh my ... a blog about blogging ... whatever will the world come to?

Blogging on ...

Task #9 - subscribed to Unshelved and Internet Index and Techessense Info and The Shifted Librarian ...

Found it a bit difficult to find NZ library blogs - mainly due to the overabundance of US material and other totally unrelated stuff whenever you search. Not the most user friendly of search interfaces on Bloglines if you ask me. Mind you, I rather quickly passed over the zillions of other librarians' blogs. I don't really see myself being that interested in the inner ramblings of some semi-incoherent library person I wouldn't recognise if I fell over them in the street. News yes ... ramblings, no.

Found it easier to search for interesting related websites on google and them locate their feeds that way ... possibly not the most efficient way of doing things but it worked for me:)

So have subscribed to a couple of the National Library blogs - including Create Reads which I already knew about but it still counts ... doesn't it?

And ... just because I hope that someone out in Blog World will want to read the incoherent ramblings of a random librarian, I've added a cool Bloglines subscribe button onto my blog - very cool.

And just to show you what my cat Bentley thinks of blogs in general ....

Cabbages

The time has come, the walrus said
to speak of many things
of ships and sacks and sealing wax
of cabbages and kings

Just thought I'd start the week with a bit of poetry - adds a bit o'class like?

Have been mashing-up with a vengeance (or should that mash-upping - which sounds more like a small Somerset village?) and uploading a bunch more photos to the family flickr album.

And have succumbed and bought a scanner/printer finally which does make life a little easier - particularly as it means I don't have to spend the major part of my lunchhour using the library scanner which uses a programme similar to Windows 3.1:)

It also means I get to play around with my photos a bit more - like cropping photos down to make them look better and enlarging some of the older B&W photos. Some family photos are on prints the size of postage stamps - so it is rather cool to be able to re-scan them and have them so normal people can see them without a microscope! Like this rather cool photo of my mum aged three - which was the size of an old 50c piece and really overexposed:)

The wonders of modern technology ... except , of course, I revert back to the Dark Ages at the flick of a whatever, and have carefully cleaned, catalogued, copied and named all the original photos and stuck them into a real, honest to goodness, non-cyber photo album!

Only problem ... (and you can try this at home too!) try going into a stationery shop and asking for photo or stamp hinges - the blank looks you get are quite priceless - particularly from anyone who was born anytime after the last time the All Blacks got past the semi fianls of the World Cup (and that's all I'm going to say about rugby ... so there)

Haere ra

And so to bed ...

So it's the end of my week (ya boo to all those that work Tues - Sat!) - so perhaps time for a little introspective retrospection about the first week (well, official week) of this Web 2.0 thingamigig.

What have I learnt?

• That I'm actually not as much of a web geek as I had thought (Phew!).
• That learning new web stuff is quite fun once the computer starts behaving itself.
• That most instructions for Web 2.0 stuff are not written in the English language as we know it
• That making mash-up magazine covers of all your workmates does not qualify as shelving according to the roster
• That I'm much more of a web geek than most people I know (bugger!)

Farewell, good night and amen

Feed your mind!

Hint: If you only check your bloglines feeds on a daily (or bi-daily) basis, don't subscribe to feeds that refresh hourly (like RadioNZ) otherwise you can be confronted with a rather large number of items to trawl through:) Just a suggestion ...

A few interesting library feeds out there (Go Unshelved! - I really want one of those 'Frequently Asked Questions' T-shirts) If you have not experienced Unshelved yet, check it out! That is an order:) http://www.unshelved.com/ A rather dry comic strip - but also some rather other worldly events like the "Pimp my Bookcart" competition (only in America)

The Librarian's Internet index is rather interesting if very US biased. Maybe, just maybe, once we are all Web 2.0'ed, we could set up our own Internet Index - adding interesting sites, the latest fitches, new books, good reads, study suggestions ... could be a very interesting reference tool n'est ce pas?

Think about it ....

Green Minis

Isn't it strange that when you become aware of something, you suddenly see them everywhere. Try it yourself at home! Think of green Minis. And then you'll see them everywhere and wonder why you never noticed the plethora of leaf-hued small cars before?

Feels like that with this RSS thing - read the latest Web 2.0 assignment, set up my bloglines account and, wham bam, suddenly that little orange logo is everywhere! I open up any website and there is is - lurking in all its orange glory.

So I've subscribed to a few interesting feeds (and found that a lot of the rest of them are entirely strange and wonder why people would feel the necessity of being notified everytime they changed/updated).

Not sure whether I'll be able maintain this. I sort of like the idea of having all the stuff I'm interested in delivered direct without me having to remember to check up on it. Like getting the latest Unshelved strip delivered direct - wahoo! But then again, it could be a huge time waster:)

Mind you, I suppose that this customising and information delivery is all the thing now and what this whole Web 2.0 shebang is all about. I will confess to setting up an iGoogle home page with a few widgets on it - so I suppose a rss feed account is pretty standard operating procedure as well.

Next thing I'll be doing the grocery shopping online and having that delivered as well .... yikes!

Spring is sprung

So now do we have to change the first day of spring until Oct 1? The tree outside the workroom window here at Mt Roskill is covered with beautiful white blossoms, the tuis are singing in the trees and the teenagers are haggling over bebo:) Spring is sprung.

Have been having lots of fun adding comments to other people's blogs and poking people on facebook and other such stuff.

However, I heartily agree with Ms Mad Hamster that technology is very cool when it helps you do something that you wanted to do anyway. It's when it intrudes and interferes and puts wiggly lines under things and pops things up and suggests and tries to predict what I want that I get a tad on the snarly side.

I mean, we would all get rather hacked off if other appliances around the house started suggesting things to us!

Imagine waking up on a sunny weekend morning - nothing to do except peer at the underside of the duvet - and you hear the dull whine of your vacuum cleaner suggesting that you might just want to give the lounge a once over?

Put the bread in the toaster and the toaster suggests that you might want to have crumpets instead?

Open the fridge to get the milk - and five pieces of junk mail pop out of the butter conditioner and hit you on the nose.

Nuff said ...

Mish-mash

So now I know what a mash is and have made one. Nice of those wonderful souls to provide this sort of free service - although I'm sure the mighty dollar is at the bottom of it all rather than artistic altruism. As long as you don't get carried away and push the order button - you're OK. After all, I'm sure the family don't really want mouse mats with your baby photos on them for Xmas. Or maybe they do ... depends on your family I guess!

Love that fact that we've all probably been 'mashing' way before this web 2.0 had a name for it - back then we just called it pirating or copy and pasting ... the more things change the more they stay the same.

Haere ra.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Flickring away

Ah, Flickr - I have the wonderful Kate from St Heliers to thank for my current Flickr obsession. I mean, not only can you spend far too much time looking at cool (and sometimes rather weird) photos from around the world - you can take revenge on your brothers by posting all their yucky baby photos!

Like this one! But seriously folks, I'm actually in the middle of a huge family project of uploading all the 'historic' family photos onto Flickr - damn fine thing when the cuzzies and rellies are spread hither and yon and much easier that trying to email photos using a dial up connection.

So Flickr does rock - although remembering to put all the photos in chronological order before you upload all 60 of them might be a good idea. Now I just have to convince the aforesaid mentioned cuzzies and rellies to break out their shoes boxes and delve into their cupboards for more old photos.

And not just photos either ... I've also uploaded some of my genealogy scans - though the Internet might not be the most safe/secure/long lasting place in the universe - it does mean I cam access said scans from anywhere with an Internet connection.

Now I just have to find out about mash-ups - like a good mash - 'specially with mashed ptotato with lots of pepper

Seen any carbon paper recently?

If it's week 2, it must be a social networking. Which means trawling around various sites like Bebo, My Space and Facebook. And here was I thinking that was a chance to spend some time at the pub with my friends and/or work colleagues. Doh!

That is one of the most bizarre things about the English language and the Internet/Computer age - take a perfectly good English word/phrase/idiom and apply it to a computer process or action and make it mean something TOTALLY different! Or just not quite what you'd expect it to mean. Close enough but not really, if you know what I mean. Just enough to confuse the heck out of you when you try and apply the usually rules of English entomology and semantics and come up with general gibberish.

Like carbon copy .... yes, that is what cc. actually means. Those of us that can remember seeing, typing, writing the odd cc. at the bottom of a page recognise that immediately. We probably all go misty eyed remembering the slightly metallic inky scent of carbon paper and the havoc it could wreck on your hands, skin, clothes and other surfaces. The crinkly, crispness of black carbon paper or the heavier smudginess of the blue sheets. The fact that one little mistake miraculously replicated itself indeibily on the sheet(s) below. Judiciously application of twink might, just might eradicate your error on the top page ... but stuck out like the proverbial dogs' bollocks on the carbon copy underneath.

So anyway, back to this social networking bizzo - had a trawl through MySpace - very cool - like the idea of the Comedy area. Avoided Bebo like the plague (you work at our library and you;ll understand the aversion) and set up a Facebook page. All in a day's work really:)

Trading faces

And I get to blog in different places too. Here I am at the Central Library. Not so styley as my wee bro - whose travel blog currently includes Mockba, Roma, Glastonbury and Estonia. I reckon then there is less scope for inserting wee google maps to show the location of the best gelati bar in walking distance of the Vatican. Perhaps a google earth view of the library itself? Now that would be cool.

So here it is ...

Spelung missteaks can be fixed

Did you know that if you really embarrass yourself by spelling something wrong in your blog title, you can go to the customize link (I hate american spelling!) and edit what you've done - so it more closely approximates and conforms to the rigid mores that control this corpus that is the English language. And I'm really not being verbose just so I get up to the 50 word count ... honest. And you can stick in pictures and other things as well - so if the text don't grab you, the cute kitties might, right?

I will admit I'm not entirely sure about this web 2.0 thing - but then again, I can remember Commodore 64 computers and screens that were black with bright green letters. And yes, I learnt to type on a typewriter - an Olivetti Lettera 32 - with a typeface that mostly resembled Courier - but only if you took the time to poke the little wire brush into all the keys and get all the fluff out on a regular basis.

And this was a portable typewriter! The super dooper computer of its day. Speed wasn't really the issue - the musculature of the human hand and capacity of the human brain not being particularly well designed as high speed processors. Storage? Ummmmm ... it did come in a handy case where you could keep a few sheets of black paper and the aforesaid mentioned wire brush tingy. Lightweight? Not really, on the global scale of things ... but there was a chance that you'd only break half the bones in your foot you dropped the thing on it. (want a comparison, try dropping an Imperial 66 (the 'desktop' model) on the floor ... and see if there is still a floor left)

So that puts this whole blog thing into perspective a bit doesn't it?

Yikes - it's a blog

One day in the not too distant future there will be a movie called "Revenge of the blogs" where all the blogs in the world rise up against their evil oppressive writers and declare themselves as sentient beings and take over the planet(s).

So, until then, be careful out there

Fi