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