Wishes on a Wednesday

The sort of sign I'd LOVE to see at work...


see more Oddly Specific

Of course, non-smokers who don't whine are welcome...

Wednesday weirdness

Get out your pencils and draw a giraffe... and sent it to onemilliongiraffes.com.

me playing around

so what do you think? A little something I cooked up on wordle.net

The final (license to play) post

As requested - my thoughts on the journey (yes, I've done the survey, too)...
Of the tools explored, would any of them be of use to my customers?
Not really. I use other sources for book recommendations - I like Library booklists - most of the time, I'm looking for thematic material...
Animation - nope. Don't have computers with enough time for customers to play with any of the tools.
Family tree - don't get any granny-hunters in my area.
Social sites - nope...

For my work?...
As above re lit sites... social & family tree...
Animation - in my non-library working lives, maybe... but not goanimate or animoto...

For me, personally?...
Family tree might be fun
Animation - see above
Others - see above.

Of the programme overall... the sites were ok, but their irrelevance to my working life made it a bit pointless. I know the social sites - Digg, etc - are designed to filter your internet experience - but there's just too many hoops to go through to make them useful for me. Too many sites / log ons / passwords to remember.
I had enough time to complete the programme - but I also did parts at home. Some of my colleagues are struggling to finish. There's just not enough unrostered / free time in their working lives to complete the tasks. The situation isn't helped by the slowness of some of the sites - and the many steps you have to go through to complete the task. Yes, goanimate was fun - but if you really wanted to explore / play / exploit it - you needed a solid 2 hours time. And hardly any of us get that at work.
There's the embedding on the blog - an issue for some, too...

In my other working lives, it's a struggle to build a sense of community in a virtual world. Getting computer-literate people to use google docs, for example, is almost impossible. Getting them to visit a blog with info relevant for their jobs - nearly impossible. Sometimes - getting them to read emails is impossible... I think we're all just tech'd out. If you're a techie-inclined person (like I sorta am) then all well and good - but I'm reaching my limit, too. I don't want to spend any more time than I need on a computer. I'm happy visiting the sites I know about, discovering the occasional new one - but I like finding them myself, or having them recommended by a real friend - not some virtual one who thinks it might know what I like.

It was a nice diversion for me, and a chance to win stuff (assuming I haven't scuppered my chances by being honest...) - but I'd rather see our training time and budget spent on things that have a relevant to most staff's day-to-day working lives.

And now, I'm off to help a colleague try to complete the programme themselves...

Stumbling around

Off I set on my discovery - exploring bookmarking sites.
Did the typical librarian/Libran/anal-retentive/control-freak thing and played all the introduction thingies for each site... Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon & Newsvine...
I didn't dig Digg, Reddit was too simple for me, Newsvine was too newsy (& US-biased), so I subscribed to StumbleUpon... and stumbled upon an issue... to get the true value & experience of my subscription, I need to download the toolbar. Can't download & install at work - and I hardly stumble upon anything while I home, just use my favourites... I already have a google toolbar, and an internet security toolbar - any more and I'll only have toolbars, and no screen...Iin conclusion, none of these was right for me - so I haven't gone much farther. So my discovery is... I'm not using these sites.

Animated thinking...

As requested, my thoughts on week 4 of the programme...

For quick and flashy - but with hardly any info - animoto will work. But you need patience - and a good connection speed. To use to the greatest purpose, you'd need to join. 30 seconds is almost nothing.

For fun & silliness, but slow, too - goanimate will work - and you can add info, and change the speed of the slides, so people can read things

For different fun - and speed - and info - and, actually, ease of use, range of music and styles - onetruemedia.

That's it - my thoughts on this part.

When would I use it? You never know - a couple of these might end up being used for promotional purposes for AnyQuestions/UiaNgaPatai.

Onetruemedia

In the world of girly-swots, once I finished with animoto & goanimate - I played with onetruemedia, which I'd seen used in other places. I had a play there, and came up with this one...

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

GoAnimate

Here we go again...

GoAnimate.com: AnyQuestions users guide


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

My thoughts... it's slow. Very slow. I wanted my own backgrounds - and it took an age to upload, not helped by the fact they only have single file uploads. But it was fun - and time-wasting...

Animoto-d

Here we go... some fun and games!
Issues:
slooooownnnnnessss....
Posting to blogger - as soon as I went into the post to edit my comments, the html coding vanished... and the copy & paste embedding code didn't work, either...
black background - bloody hard to read...
But very cute...

Will play with other toy, I mean tool, later...

Animoto

Loving lit

As anyone who's read my blog knows, I read books, not Literature*. So exploring the Litlovers site was a bit difficult, given the task:

Think of a book that would be a good one to discuss in a book club. Check out the Litlovers site for resources about the title and tell us what you found.

So, after struggling to think of something I'd read that might be on the site - and I could remember - I actually found something! Of course, The Guernsey Literatary and potato peel pie society. And I wonder. Did I think about any of these questions while I read the book? Nope! Just enjoyed it. And that's the problem with book clubs and serious Literature - how the enjoyment of the book becomes secondary to reading things into it.

In my life with Storylines, I've been editing the year book. One of the articles is Wayne Mills' speech "Reading aloud is allowed" - and he questions the way we kill relationships with literature by questioning what we've read - making it a school exercise - that we advantage literacy at the expense of literature. [see Daniel Pennac The rights of the reader, and Waiting for a Jamie Oliver].

Yes, some books make me think - but that's not why I read them. Being told what to read, with an expectation that you will think x, and respond y, is enough to make me NOT read them. Have I read Austen? Bronte? Hemmingway? Nope! Yes, I've read Beowulf, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Frankenstein - and enough to write essays on them. But, I've read them for enjoyment - and re-read to answer my essay!

I don't read critically - so I will totally & utterly suck in a standard book club. And that's why I didn't take any of the litcourses...

*See Ranty McRanty #4 and Ranty McRanty #4 part 2


Moving on to Authors on the Web... visited authorsontheweb.com - very much a marketing tool - and no authors that I can raise the slightest bit of interest in, really. Again, Literature...


So I thought I'd try out Bookreporter.com - quick scan down the list, and my comfort read authors aren't there... I clicked on the link to Markus Zusak - and got an error message... so tried Bill Bryson - and it didn't show me much of anything!


Out of this family of sites - I would use Teenreads.com - and do use it. They have an active link for Markus Zusak. And, I've added a link to teenreads in my litlinks area...


Next new site - Bookjetty... between Goodreads and Librarything, my reading sites are quite well covered, thank you... but in the spirit of adventure & joining in - I have joined. I've added a few books. See their pretty covers all widget-ed down the bottom of the page...

My crazy-as family

Look down... can you see it? At the bottom of the page? A small snapshot of (a very small part of) my family tree...
As requested in Week 2 of our play & learn - I've been exploring genealogy sites... My thoughts, gathered through the hour or so spent on each:
Both let you have four (possibly more) marriages for a person - the family tree programme I bought doesn't. That's a plus for my family tree...
My heritage is a bit of an arse when you stuffed up some vital info at the beginning - tip! start from the top, really! I started from me - all well & good - but then that meant I couldn't change my mother's biological father...
Geni - navigating was a bit easier than My Heritage - and you could change the info, which was a bonus. What I didn't like was the limited options, in comparison to My heritage, for relationships - Married or Divorced...
My heritage let you choose things like 'single parent'...
But in my family-land I ask: what about separated? What about divorced, but got back together & didn't remarry? What about hushed up family 'secret'? My heritage, at least, gives you the option for 'single parent'...
What about adoption? Any space for that?
Our family & social dynamics are so fluid and variable that programmes like these need to take these things into account. We don't fit in 'Mum, Dad, 4.2 children...' any more.
I have 2 relatives with 4 marriages; 2 with 3. I have relatives with adopted children - in and out (as it were); and pretty-much-permanent-foster kids. I have relatives of 'different' genders (yes, My heritage adds that option - so I could try that...)
Oh, and they do let someone be married to more than one at a time...
Anyway - will keep me amused for a while - and my family too, I'm sure...
Now... does this explain why I'm poor - look how many people I buy presents for! And my memory - keeping them all straight is interesting, to say the least.
PS Family - feedback & details for tree welcome, especially all those names I forgot!!!

We're back playing online!

Well, my best beloved, many moons ago in blogland I began my life as a Mad Hamster in order to win free stuff from work (am currently using said free stuff to play background music in my otherwise, mercifully, quiet office) and now work has made more opportunities to win free stuff by playing on the web, and writing stuff up about it...
Note to self: be even more careful about what I rabbit on about...

Speaking of rabbits - bunnies all over the show this morning at Western Springs... bunnies, bunnies, bunnies... Maybe one fine morning (soon, because the sun is getting lazier these days!) I'll catch the 6am bus, get off at Western Springs & take bunny photos, then climb on the next bus heading to town... Maybe...

what did I learn...

What have I learnt from the 23 tasks?

1. That I know more than I thought
2. Conversely, that I have more to learn
3. That I've been using web 2.0 technology without realising it
4. That it's quicker and easier uploading photos to facebook than to flickr or bebo, or even burning to CD
5. That I love google docs - and, if the others come on board, it will make some of my tasks easier
6. That I have to carry on with this blog...
7. That I'm happy using technology that does what I want it to do
8. That I'm not really interesting in exploring things I don't have an obvious use for
9. That I need reasonably instant gratification or I just get frustrated and don't bother continuing with something

It's these last three points that I will take with me into customer interactions (or helping fellow staff). We, as staff, need to sell the usefulness and relevancy of any new thing and it needs to work well and quickly, or it's never going to work for our customers.

Photo from my garden

Get (Irish) jiggy with it...

Listen to author Kate Thompson play music mentioned in her book The New Policeman. Thanks, once again, to NZBookgirl!

you tubing - part 1

You Tube!

How could I choose which video! I couldn't choose just one... I will admit most of these I've heard about from friends. But I did have to search for the specific video later...

How about the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain performing 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly'. I think I might be a ukulele convert... They're performing at the 08 New Zealand International Arts Festival in Wellington

Then there's performancing poet, Taylor Mali, on 'The Impotence of Proofreading' - be careful who you play this around (and, maybe don't have a mouthful of coffee at the time). This was send to me by a friend. Both of us edit and proofread things, so it seems so very appropriate!

What does this say about me?

I looked through the list of Web 2.0 awards nominees and what does it say about me that the one I focussed on was cocktail builder...
I liked the simplicity of cocktail builder and, in many ways, it's like the recipe finders I've been using for ages. Allyson Gofton's eCook has a recipe finder, which is very helpful when you have strange ingredients you want to figure out, or you know you've seen a recipe for something... and the Taste magazine site has a very similar search, too. Of course, the benefits are - they're both NZ sites!
I've tried Google maps before - unfortunately the satellite doesn't go in close enough so I could see our beautiful new deck, or if the 'new' owners of the old family home have done anything. And it really can't get anywhere near the family bach - search for Whakapirau and you'll see.
I

goggle at google

Google Docs...

Well, how spectacularly easy! I saved some meeting minutes from an organisation I'm involved with, invited collaborators as a test. They all logged in, invited their other gmail selves, made changes... and you can then export anything into word...
I'm a convert! So much easier than emailing documents around! Like a worldwide shared drive, but cheaper and easier.
If only I can convince the rest in the organisation....

The rise of Cyberdyne?

On library 2.0 and web 2.0
On a quick skim of the articles... I think I might be figuring out how to use technolust and technoworship in a conversation - although not indulging in it myself, of course! We Librarians 2.0 don't!
I like the emphasis web 2.0 puts on customers - and making sure we're connecting with them, and doing things for them, instead of pre/post guessing.
I like the possibilities of making our catalogues more user friendly, more amazon-y. Some of the possibilities in the future are intriguing - must keep my cyberdyne fears at bay, though. Read/watched too many things about systems becoming self-aware... WarGames was ahead of its time.
The video is fascinating (even without sound... wee bit of technolust - want working speakers) - but, see, scary 'we're teaching the machines' comments...
But I do like - the web is us. Not sure about rethinking privacy, though.

Image that!

Online image generators
What a randomly weird thing - sorta similar to mashups. I was struggling a bit to figure out what to do - not wanting to replicate other (damn you ACL Learning for using the coffee!) - so I came up with making an awareness ribbon for Storylines, my charity of choice, using Imagechef. I didn't like the fact that the font is a default - Storylines has an official font, so it would have been nice to be able to change it.

Then I sort of got carried away and decide to make myself an avatar. The site linked from the Generator Blog was all in Spanish, and even with my friendly Spanish workmate, it didn't let you download - only print... how old fashioned! So I had to go with something less me... from DoppelMe. It was hard finding a site that didn't require you register to get anywhere. I have enough difficulty keeping my real social life going, let alone that of an avatar! So, the more-friendly, less cool avatar of me...

Generator Blog was interesting... didn't really register that all those Name Generators were sort of the same thing. We used to link to a lot of name generators on the teens pages, but some changed, and some led into quite the wrong sort of site!