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 ...