Just need to rant...

I am beyond frustrated at this point. I tried to put a couple of posts up today (things 21 and 22), and for whatever reason, after I typed them up and hit publish post, they wouldn't appear in my blog. About an hour later, they finally showed up, but in the meantime, my YouTube post and video that I put up Thursday night was gone. Now, this was extremely aggravating because that took almost an hour to get it posted and formatted the way I wanted. Now, I cannot embed the text at all to get the video to appear. I did learn from all this that you can post to your blog straight from YouTube, rather than trying to embed the html text. However, the text I posted underneath the video doesn't look the way I want, and when I try to change the date and time to back to when I actually did it Thursday night, the video disappears. Grrr...

Thing #22

I checked out both NetLibrary's list of e-books and PLYMC's list of audio books. When I worked at Carngie Mellon, I used to read a few different e-books form their million book project, but I've never been a big fan of reading books on my computer. It gives me a headache to stare at a screen for too long. Pretty much the only time I've read books on line was on Sunday nights at the CMU arts reference desk and I was REALLY bored.

As for audio books, I love to listen to books on cd in my car, but I have this wierd thing about being able to concentrate on listening to someone else read, so I always have to have read the book first, so there isn't a whole lot for me to choose from on the list - I haven't read most of the titles available. Plus, I've thought about downloading an audio book before, but I get all freaked out when it tells me I have to download software, so I end up not doing it. But, with a new mp3 player, perhaps I'll give it a shot!

Podcasting (Thing #21)

Ok, I've gotten some podcasts on my bloglines account. I'm finding Podcast.net to be very frustrating. The titles of podcasts don't necessarily give any indication of what it's really about, so I quit using that one. Using Podcastalley.com, and picking from their top podcasts list I found a podcast from the Harry Potter fansite Mugglenet.com. I also found a "Movies you should see" podcast that I fed to my bloglines account. Using the search tool and searching libraries, I found a podcast called "Uncontrolled Vocabulary" about current events in the library world. Now of course, when will I find the time to listen to them, because unfortunately while I was doing some sample listening out here at Springfield at the librarians desk, there was some vulgar and offensive language being used on one of the podcasts that I thought would be safe.

7Up - vending machine

This is a commercial from YouTube that I always thought was so funny. I went searching for it because a couple of years ago I was trying to find it on-line and couldn't, but it never occurred to me to check YouTube when it became popular. I also put this on here for my daddy because this commercial use to crack him up!

I've messed around with YouTube before, but not much because a lot of it is crap that I could care less about. I did, however, go searching and find the videos of "Extras" with Orlando Bloom and Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter to you Muggles). (Thanks to Megan for telling me about this show - hilarious!)

#19 - the end is in sight

I've been playing around with the Web 2.0 awards since yesterday, and these are really fun. I know it says just pick one, but that's so boring. I've played around with Zillow before, but I find it wildly inaccurate. If it manages to zero in on the right house with the aerial photos, it usually has the specs wrong - but still it's fun to see your house from the sky! I played around a bit yesterday with the free online games - Penguin Push was particularly amusing, and actually requires a little thinking - I'm currently stumped on level 9. If anyone figures this out, let me know. The best one I found so far: Cocktail Builder! It gives you drink recipes for whatever liquor you've got hanging around the house. Always good fun in my book!

One more Wiki Thing...

I thought I would just throw this out there - while searching for on how long to cook a potato in the microwave to make a "baked" potato, I found this neat wiki for how-to stuff: WikiHow

Check it out if you're bored!

more #18

Ok, I'm doing a separate post for #18, because I didn't want to mess with what I had typed in Zoho writer. That was so cool! So, so easy to type in Zoho word processer and then publish to the blog - scarily easy!

Thing #18

Here I am typing along in Zoho writer. This is pretty nifty actually - and quite frankly I'm all for any applications that could take away from the Microsoft monopoly. Especially now with the release of Vista, some of whose applications will not be compatible with older office versions. So nice that there are these easy ways around it.

Thing #17

My blog is officially linked to from the PLCMC Learning 2.0 wiki under favorite blogs. I also posted to the Favorite Book and Favorite Movie pages. However, I was getting extremely frustrated trying to italicize my book title. Whenever I attempted, it italicized all the entries before mine, but not my title. I restorted to using quotes, then when I posted to the Movie page, I just used old html code, and wonderously, everything was fine, sigh...

Thing #16

Ok, first, if I have to read what are supposed to be intelligent, intellectual articles about the technology we are supposed to be learning, is it too much to ask that someone use proper English? I know when we're blogging, it's not a bit deal, and I could care less about people's grammar, but in the article on wikis called "Using Wikis to Create Online Communities," I found this sentence that just irked me to my core: "And if someone don’t like what I wrote, they can make their own changes." Seriously?

Now that I got that off my chest, I'll move on. I think wikis are great. Even though it's not always the most reliable, I love Wikipedia, and I'm always looking at it for stupid little trivia things. I also really like that there's a way for people to contribute to the information on the Internet without have to know HTML or CSS languages. That they can just go in and type (like with these blogs), and presto, they've contributed to the knowledge of others.

As a side note: did anyone notice on the St. Joseph County Public Library's wiki, that they offer computer classes for the public for free (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more).

Here he is!

Finally! Here's a picture of my cousin's beautiful little boy, Drayden. Isn't he adorable!

Thing #15

So, I read most of the different articles people have posted about 2.0. I think the stuff we have been learning is fun and I am enjoying learning some of the new technologies, but I struggled with these articles. I don't know if it was the way they were written, but I just wasn't really comprehending the gist. I guess this is because I still don't understand the whole 2.0 thing. I get how to use the different technologies, it's the concept that I can't wrap my brain around. I know that everyone feels that the Web 2.0 and the Library 2.0 are important to know and to keep up with the emerging technologies - but we have patrons who struggle with just using a mouse - so it's difficult to see how something like getting RSS feeds is going to be useful or comprehensible to some the patrons, but then there are others who would love to learn about it - so I'm glad we are learning.

Harry Potter Mania

Since I haven't had time to read for number 15, I thought I would just post a fun blog today. This is me as Ginny Weasley at Barnes & Noble this morning around 12:30 a.m. Yes I was crazy enough to be at the bookstore to pick up my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at midnight - but then so was Cindy Beach and Deb Liptak. It was a little crazy and not nearly as fun as the library's Harry Potter party, but since I'm an obsessive fan, I just had to be there. Can't wait to keep reading!

I did it!!!!

originally uploaded by noms78


Ok, I'm very excited because I went to Cedar Point on Saturday, and I was FINALLY brave enough to ride Millennium Force and it was so cool! 300 foot first hill, 80 degree drop and 90 mph! I swore when they built it no one would ever get me on it, but my mom and I were both feeling brave, and my brother convinced us we would love it, so ride we did! Best ride I have ever been on! I will now be riding this coaster every time I go to Cedar Point.

rolling right along to thing #14

have now claimed myself on Technorati and am feeling very important. Technorati's cool I guess. just not sure I'm really into reading posts of total strangers. i like reading posts from the library folk here at YPL, because i like reading stuff from people i know, and trying to guess who is who (cause i'm really a detective at heart). i did the library 2.0 search, and got vastly different results, which wasn't all that surprising. so far so good, some of this stuff has been very interesting, some of it's just ok.

Thing #13

ok, I did the del.icio.us social network thing (am I the only one that thinks this is a really stupid name). moving on - it's cool that all the sites are together in one place that i can access from anywhere, but I just don't really feel the need to use it that much. The only place that I'm on a computer when I'm not at home is when I'm at work - and these aren't sites I would be using whilst i'm working (no, not me, i'm a good little employee). ok, I might use imdb.com if someone had a movie question, but really, how hard is it to remember a 4 letter website address. anyway, it's up, I learned, 1/2 way to my MP3!

Thing #12

After much trial and error and growling under my breath, I finally have figured out the point of Rollyo and have finally gotten my own search roll started and posted to my blog. See to the right.

I did a search roll on movies, called Everything Movies, and now that I figured out the point, it's actually pretty cool. I love to watch movies then look for trivia and other information about it, and now it's one stop shopping, so to speak! Now I can get back to the other things I was doing. Deep calming breaths... this technology will not lick me...

I'm an Auntie! (sort of)

This is completely library un-related, but I'm very excited and thought I would share that my cousin and his wife had a baby at 2:00 Monday morning! Yeah! I say I'm sort-of an auntie because our moms are sisters and our dads are identical twin brothers, so we are all very close.

He sent me a picture on my cell phone, and if I can ever figure out how to get it to my e-mail or my flickr account, I will post it here.

Congrats to Donald and Laura!

Welcome to the world Drayden Alekzander!

One more Flickr thing...

Here is a direct link to my flickr page: Click Here!

LibraryThing

Well, I'm glad this is one of our things to do, because I've been wanting to try it out, but I hadn't quite got around to it. I've only got two books in right now, but I wanted to try to post the link to from my blog to my LibraryThing account to see if it's gonna work...

Look to the right under my profile... Success!

Sketch generator

I'm still playing around with the image generators, but I stumbled on this very cool sketch generator. It takes any picture you have and turns it into a pencil sketch! This is a photo I took in Sugarcreek last year (that's me standing by the car), and it turned it into this sketch in just a few seconds. You can then upload the photo to your Flickr account, and it also gives you the text to embed in your blog.

Check it out for yourself: http://www.dumpr.net/sketch.php

Grrr... those bloglines

Ok, frustration waning. I had no trouble figuring out how to set up my bloglines account. Easily done, as was picking up some cool news feeds - Slate, New York Times Home Page, Librarian's Internet Index, and the always funny Unshelved. However, trying to figure out how to get the little bloglines button that would directly link me to my bloglines account was supremely aggravating. But, I figured it out and all is right with the world again.

I really liked Feedster at first and thought "Great, I can search a topic and then just get updated news items." I read the "Using Bloglines" tutorial, felt pretty confident, went to Feedster, then discovered that it doesn't look anything like the screen shots in the tutorial. "Well, that's ok," I thought, so I did my search, got some articles, then went back to look at the tutorial to see how to get the feed on my blog. It told me to look for the XML button. Nowhere on my results screen was there an XML button for the search. There were several RSS buttons for the individual blogs, but I couldn't get the RSS for the search like the tutorial told me I could. So Feedster is on my list.

On the plus side, I thought Syndic8 was great, super easy to use, and I got exactly what I wanted. Now, no one needs to get hurt.

Thing #5

Ah, what fun Flickr is! I was able to upload a few photos and I loved the Spell with Flickr as you can see from my Peace banner above. If you haven't tried it - I recommend checking it out - lots of mindless fun. See for yourself: http://metaatem.net/words/

Of the 7 1/2 Habits

I think I find Habit # 6 the easiest (using technology to your advantage). I love gadgets! I don't always know what to do with them, but I love them! I have lots of different gadgets, most of them hand-me-downs from my tech-geek brother who gives them to me when he upgrades to better models (it's also how I've gotten all my Nintendo and Playstation systems and games!).

I think Habit #7 is the hardest, because I do not teach or mentor well. I think it's a lack of patience for trying to explain to someone what is going on in my wacked-out, crazy brain, and getting frustrated when they don't understand. Of course, everyone should be able to read my mind...

So there's completion of another "thing." I'm well on my way to getting my grubby little paws another gadget!

First time...

Ok, this is my first time posting a blog. Decidedly easy to do, not so easy to come up with things to say. I'll post my thoughts later on the 7 1/2 tips.