Week 5 continued Rollyo

Although I found it easy to set up my own Rollyo list, I did not find this system very good at providing explanations or information on how to place it into my Blog. In the 23 Things, we are instructed to link the Rollyo to our Blog, but the only instructions I could find in Rollyo were about adding a blog to your Rollyo Search. Maybe someone knows how to add the link to our blogs?
Now, with that perseverance for solving a problem that all reference librarians exhibit, I have discovered that you need to go into the Dashboard tab and then into tools while signed in. You will see the Rollyo search box on the right side of my blog and can go into My Profile and see my list Earth & Sky.
I hope that means I have completed the 5th week. I did find some of this week frustrating. Not all of this week's sites are very user friendly, and you really have to search to work things out.
As far as uses for Rollyo, I can see it would be good to focus searches to be more subject specific and to contain only the sites you know and that are trustworthy and reliable.

Week 5 Continued LibraryThing

Using LibraryThing in itself was easy, but I was very frustrated by the widget. I imported it onto my blog using HTML, but it did not seem to want to access My Library & kept coming up with some selection that was nothing to do with me. Actually getting it into my blog was not a problem and I liked the idea of it. It worked if I just wanted to search for an author or title, but on the webpage it says you can use it to access your own collection and this I could not do. In the end I deleted it all and went back to LibraryThing and just got the HTML code for the standard format, which you will now see on the right hand side of my Blog. This is OK, but takes up a lot of space. I could have reduced the number of books I wanted it to show, I suppose, but wanted to indicate a bit of variety.

Week 5. Playing Around with Image Generators and Creating an Avatar

Here is my Menu from ttp://www.generatorland.com/generators/froofroomenu_gl.php#

Microwaved Roebuck with a Browned Pasta
Julienned Mouse with a Foaming Pasta
Roasted Marten with a Bologna-infused Risotto
Flat Iron Toucan with a Filbert Confit
Fried Shrew with a Poached Egg Mousse

Use the Froo Froo Restaurant Menu Generator to discover those amazing dishes you never knew you wanted.

This Cat is from http://kscakes.com/LolCats/ Lolcat Generator
The Owl above is from http://wigflip.com/roflbot/ Roflbot Generator.
Roflbot is for generating image macros without using Photoshop. It's like the Lolcat Generator but not restricted to pictures of cats.

I thought some of the generators were great fun. Some of them were just stupid though, like the Gnome Name generator or the Cat Name generator.

Creating an Avatar is lots of fun. I did one first in my Yahoo account, but could find no way to export or copy it, and the information provided by Yahoo seems to suggest that their avatars are only to be used in Yahoo. (I asked Nette too, and she could find no way to export, copy or paste either - if anyone has done this, please leave a comment). I then created one in Meez. This was very easy and I exported it using the URL to my Blogger Profile. It is as large as I could get it and is not very easy to see, but it is a girl on a lounger on a city rooftop. Just to remind me to take things easy occasionally.

So far this week has been fun.

MERLIN & More

This is the second part of Week 4. I have subscribed to Merlin, looked at Social Networking, Avatars etc. I have looked at Feedster and some other Feed searchers & repositories. I found some weird stuff on Technorati that didn't seem relevant to my searches. While looking for Foodie blogs or gourmet eating, it came up with a lot of blogs on eating disorders - not really what I was looking for. I did not add more Feeds to my list in Bloglines, although I could have. I think it is possible to have too many, and I prefer to keep a select few, rather than overload on a lot of junk I will never look at. I would rather add sites as I find them and use them, so that I know they are what I want and what I will look at and use.
The actual process of adding feeds does not seem to be difficult. After all these people want your business. It's more the profusion or confusion of availability of stuff that can get overwhelming.
I get the point of using Second Life to create virtual libraries to meet other librarians etc, and of using it as an adjunct to work, but if I had a second life to invent would I really want to be a librarian? Why not an astronaut, a race car driver, a billionaire Hollywood star, a pulitzer prize winner, discoverer of the cure for cancer? Not that there's anything wrong with being a librarian of course, but that is the life I already have, wouldn't I want something different?
Some social networking sites have already suffered from their openness. My Space has sexual predators, and many parents are worried. Sometimes kids aren't any more wise to the virtual world than they are to the real world.
I like the idea of Avatars, they are fun, but you can really use up a lot of time playing with them.

Week 4 RSS Feeds and Bloglines and Challenge

Today I have set up my Bloglines account. I have chosen 13 feeds so far and am still working on adding a few more. Maurice, you cannot hide, I have you in my Bloglines now!

What shall I say about Bloglines. It is not hard to work with these. I hope I find time to actually look at some of the feeds I have chosen. It makes me wonder when everyone else does this? Do you look at these at home, at work, when you are out on the reference desks? I can see how it saves time to have your interests under one roof so to speak, but even so it's still possible to get carried away browsing these.

I also looked at the tutorials for RSS and Wikis by Common Craft on You Tube. I thought they were very helpful and clear.

Important note: Challenge!!! If you are in Week 4 #8 of the 23 Things, scroll down until you see the Discovery items. "3. Create a post in your blog about this exercise. Optional: If you're up to the challenge, you can provide the URL address to your public bloglines account." The item on the page tells you to click on the Share Tab in Bloglines. When you do this you will find the Public URL. You copy the Public URL from your Bloglines site, into your Participants Blog, so that other users can share see your feeds. What is not mentioned anywhere is how to get a USERNAME to add to the end of the Public URL. You need to go into the Blog tab on Bloglines and set up a blog there in order to get a username. Without this you cannot use the Public URL to share your Feeds. I was very confused by this whole section and Annette, through messing around and trial and error, finally figured out about the Blog username. You need never use the actual blog again, as long as you have the username. Note: To share your feeds, when you fill in the required information on the blog page, make sure you mark everything Public (not Private) or no one else will be able to see your feeds.

I don't know whether any of the people who already finished this section actually did this discovery activity. If you did and also had these problems let me know.

Anyway if you want to see what Feeds I have so far, check out this URL. I intend to add more feeds as time permits.

http://www.bloglines.com/public/JuliaM

Still on Week 3 Tech Fair Comments and other Fun

I really enjoyed the Tech Fair. I discovered I can play Wii tennis but apparently cannot bowl. This is funny as I have played in 10-pin bowling leagues and have a reasonable average, but haven't played tennis in years. I was interested in the IPOD & MP3 demos, as I don't have one. I learned what a Mashup was and have since investigated them online. Looking at all the links that I could follow and all the neat things I could do from the 'Flickr mashups and 3rd party sites' link was amazing. It is so cool that there is all this free stuff out there. I just don't know who has time for it all though. You could easily lose hours of your life playing with this stuff.

I did make a motivational poster on Flickr & emailed it to my friend.

The technology item I am into at the moment and am finding of real practical use, is the Garmin Nuvi GPS. My husband bought one of these and I thought it was just going to be another gadget, but we have already found it to be very useful. This weekend we were traveling from New Jersey through Philadelphia with a couple of friends. We decided that we wanted to get lunch somewhere before we reached home. We thought about stopping at Bayard House at Chesapeake City, but with it being Father's Day, wondered if it would be booked. Using the GPS, we got the phone number, used a cell phone to call, and with the GPS estimated time of arrival, booked our table for 1:30 pm. We arrived on time and without getting lost, spending time pouring over roadmaps, or getting into the usual family arguments over directions.

Do you think it's weird that men won't ask directions yet they will let a female digital voice tell them where to go???? RECALCULATING! Honestly I think this little piece of equipment could prevent some divorces - have you ever been on a road trip - with the whole family!!!???? Just think how much more pleasant it will be now.

Using Flickr

I have completed Week 2 and have set up a blog, obviously, and am tracking my progress.

I am now on Week 3 and have been exploring Flickr. This turned out to be quite a painless process. I got myself a Flickr account, took some photos on the branch digital camera and uploaded them to my computer and to Flickr. The photos are nothing fancy, just some odd shots around the branch. I then went into my Blogger account and am currently writing this post before adding one of the photos I took, that is now in Flickr, and bringing it into this Blog. Wow, isn't this fun? I love it, being allowed and encouraged to play with this stuff. Actually I am really doing it so I can be one up on my husband who thinks he knows everything - he tells me he is perfect and only thought he'd been wrong once, then he realized he was right all along!!! I don't think so!

Anyway to get back to the matter at hand. Here is a picture of part of our Story Time Collection. These are books for librarian use only. I tried using the Puppet book, Miss Moo Moo the Cow at a Dropin Storytime. It was fun to use, but probably a little long for a Dropin. Smaller groups would probably get more out of it. Our Dropins average 40-100 people!

Before the Technology Fair

I am excited that HCPL is having a Technology Fair and have already signed up to work through MLL 2.0. I'm interested in technology in general although I confess to having neither IPOD or MP3 player, video game consoles, blackberry or laptop. I do not text message because my friends and I all phone or email each other and I have no reason to do it. This does not mean, however, that I do not see any intrinsic worth in these things and it is necessary, not just for work, but also for one's own personal growth, to keep up with what is happening in the world of technology. Things move and change so fast and we all have such busy lives that I think it is wonderful that our Library systems are helping us do this.
I have completed Week #1 and listened to the 7.5 Habits and would say that my goal is to work through 2.0 in order to become more familiar with things I already can do (blogs) and to learn to do things I do not yet do. I don't want to be left behind as far as new technologies go and I think knowing more will help when I am asked questions in the branch (by customers or other staff).
I have to remember not to get frustrated by Problems, and just work through them.
I have to remember to Play (why do I feel guilty about playing at work & it not seeming I should be).
I think the hardest thing of all will be finding Time to do this program and finding actual time when I can Focus on it and not the million other things that seem to be demanding my attention.
In my toolbox I will have friends' & colleagues' expertise, the computer & internet, digital camera, and other technologies.