techno-rant 2

I doubt anyone reads this blog, except by accident, but it's satisfying to throw out these posts into the ether.
As I suggested last time, I'm experiencing a growing aversion to subscribing to more and more sites, which this project seems to require. Two reasons - first it's a hassle to manage and remember various usernames and passwords, or conversely, a security risk to use the same ones over and over. Which leads to reason two - do we really (as web users) want to be casting a larger "virtual footprint" by having online accounts for Flikr, Amazon, etc. (including banking and medical and school information), and even this blog? Part of the original attraction of the web is the anonymity of web browsing; now inreasingly it's necessary to "sign in" before getting any meaningful content. I don't like using store cards, even though Petco is willing to give me twelve cents off on dog food, because I don't feel the need to let marketers know my every purchase. Same thing here...

rollin' away from Rollyo

maybe I'm getting burned out on this project, but I don't WANT to subscribe to any more websites - I'll try it out and post about it, but I'm tired of signing up. That said, Rollyo doesn't seem to offer that much that I can use - Bookfinder works well as a meta-searcher for used books, and Google Image for pix, and I don't need to limit sites before the search. Maybe something will come up...

LibraryThing

This is kind of fun - although anyone who's into books (like me - occupational hazard of being a librarian), is going to have a lot more than they have time to "catalog" through LibraryThing, as easy as it is. So I entered in the top shelf of my bookshelf, where I keep the nicer hardback books and sets, here. The others in various bookshelves around the house will have to wait.

addendum (2/29) - well, this is proving more addicting than I thought; my LibraryThing "shelf" looked kind of thin, so I went back and included a good chunk of the upstairs books, close to a hundred (still more in the basement). In addition to the covers, I can see how many other people have listed a particular book (my guess is "Harry Potter" will come out on top; some of the more obscure academic stuff, only a few). A lot of philosophy that I haven't read since grad school, but there's something comforting in having Plato looking down...

fooling around with image generators

OK, assignment #10 is to learn about image generators. It's a bit of a stretch to see how this will help in my job, but you never know. Here is a picture of the Statue of Liberty done in bead art...





And here's my little dog's face, run through the "Warholizer" (ie made to look like Andy Warhol's Marilyn and Elizabeth Taylor pix.



Just wondering - if anyone who is not a co-worker stumbles upon this blog, bear with me. It's all part of a library staff project to learn about cool new web tools. About half-way through...

For "thing #11", I'm going to need to go home and look at what's on my bookshelf.

finding RSS feeds

Feedster is not connecting, but I've used the Google Blog search to track down some more blogs. I apparently can't share my blogline because the site never sent the e-mail to my hotmail account, despite several attempts. But for some reason, I'm able to happily subscribe and read my various feeds, so all is well...

Time to move on to "thing #10" (why does this remind me of The Cat in the Hat?)

will this blogging madness never stop?

I never realized there were so many things I needed to stay informed about. I subscribed to Bloglines, somewhat grudgingly, as part of the library assignment and started adding RSS feeds that looked interesting (some library-related, some book reviews, some news, and a few fun ones like Dilbert). It works like this - Bloglines pulls up 10 or so items (articles) from each source in a capsule window, I scan them and read them if I'm interested and then move on. Next time there's brand new stuff. Wow!

RSS feeds

Thing # 8 is RSS feeds, something totally new to me (I sort of knew about blogs and photo-sharing, but we're in uncharted territory now). Yet another registration - I'm using my personal e-mail, since my hotmail account is already clogged with spam, and this will keep my work email clean, for now.

so far, Bloglines hasn't send me my e-mail, so we're in limbo...

an hour later and I think it works (though I never did get that e-mail) - I've subscribed to 10 "feeds" - not quite sure what I'm doing, but it's all part of the process.

blogging and privacy

an interesting conversation with a co-worker today - she is resisting investing much time in the blogosphere because of privacy concerns. A valid viewpoint, perhaps, since all our musings and pictures and whatnot are open to, potentially, everyone. But what is really out there? Not my real name or pictures of me or anyone I know. And what would anyone learn if they bothered to read this? That I'm a middle-aged librarian who likes dogs and triathlon and cheesy sci-fi movies and traveled to Japan. I'm OK with that. And considering that nothing shows up without my consciously puting it here, well - "Cavaet lector" - let the reader beware.

techno-rant

Our assignment for "thing #7" is to blog about something technologically related - so I mention that I recently replaced our dying DVD player. I researched (somewhat) the latest high-def options, puzzled over the competing options of Blu-ray vs. HD, and decided instead to get a $40 plain vanilla model to last us until we upgrade at some point in the future. In theory, the competing formats will have sorted out by the time broadcast TV requires HD in 2009. We don't currently get cable or satelite and use our aging low-def TV with "rabbit ears" mostly for football (which means we can pick up the SuperBowl this Sunday, while cable-users can't), and play Netflix and library DVD's. And when we find the pot of leprechaun gold, we can but the whole wall-sized high-def TV/DVD combo deal, and never leave the house...

real-world application

Regarding that nagging feeling that what I've been doing here is fun, but not particularly applicable to my job -- I recently had a library patron ask "do you know anything about BLOGS?" Well, yes, now that you mention it...

messing around with photos

I agree with Evil like a Hobbit that the Flikr stuff is not as interesting as BigHugeLabs, so I played around with that site for awhile. Making jigsaw puzzles is amusing if I was inclined to actually buy the finished puzzle, but for immediate gratification, I tried "Hockneyizing" a picture from Takayama, Japan.

More stuff saved on the network; I hope the IT folks don't mind.

is this spam?

This blog was down for a few days because Blogger had flagged it for potential violation of their policy against spam, which Blogger defines as "irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site." Well, the first part sounds about right...

photo sharing

The exercise this time is to check out photo sharing sites, specifically Flickr. I've had an account with Smugmug for several years, since we got a digital camara and I discovered it was a lot easier to share a URL than to print off (or email) individual pictures. Since the sample SPL 2.0 picture was a picture in a Japanese coffee house, I decided to paste in a picture from our 2004 trip to Japan. Yumm!

This is actually copied from Smugmug onto the network. I haven't figured out how to link to a photo on the site yet.

day 2

I can see how blogging can absorb all your free time (an observation made by several of my colleagues). Setting up the blog itself is easy and quick - but playing with templates, colors, pictures and fonts can lead to endless tweaking. Must resist the temptation...

Welcome

First entry in the new blog - I'm doing this after everyone else is done, since I just started the new job and will be working through the SPL 2.o exercises. But even if no one else reads this, it will still be fun.