I'm back.

I've decided, a little late, to participate in 2.1. I'd like to learn a little more about open source software and what's new out there on the web that I might find useful. I like things that don't take a lot of typing, though. As I think I've said before, I'm more of a lurker than an active participant. I don't have an iPhone and I barely use my iPod and I absolutely do not text. So my main use of the web is on the computer (a laptop) but my dream is to find the perfect handheld device that's not necessarily a phone (I don't use my cell a lot, either) that I can use the internet on. Any ideas?

Last Lesson

I downloaded an audiobook called Maelstrom by Anne McCaffrey. I thought of her because I had just reordered a bunch of her books for the library. I listened to it a little bit but wasn't crazy about the reader. He sounded like a creaky old man. The reader obviously makes a big difference. I tried to listen to The Elegant Universe and just gave up because the narrator was awful. Anyway, I had a really good time doing this course and appreciate the opportunity to try all these different applications out. I will now try to figure out how I might use some of them on an ongoing basis. I may even keep up this journal...

Thanks.

Music police

All I've done to try and avoid the RIAA police knocking at my door is to stop downloading music from all the various illegal downloading sources. My first experience was with Napster back before this all became a to do. I moved on to Kazaa and then to another one of which I forget the name. But, then, I got "wimpy" (a friend's word who still downloads this way). I remember reading about a mother from New York, I think, who got notice from RIAA that her daughter was downloading N'SYNC music illegally and they were fining her like $1200. I thought to myself, if they are going to go after a little girl they're going after everybody. I stopped cold turkey. I did manage to get some good music first, though. I personally, always used these downloads as a preview (I can't always tell in 30 seconds) and if I liked the band, which I could tell after a few songs, I would go and buy the whole CD anyway. I'm kind of old-fashioned that way and slow to latch on to the next new thing. It took me awhile to start on CD's back when my whole music collection was on cassettes and vinyl. To sum up, I wish this wasn't a big deal and I'm not above getting CD's from my friend (the illegal downloader).
I really liked upto11. The layout was nice, sort of encyclopedic which seems to be popular. I looked up some bands and while a lot of people had dissimilar tastes more had the same interests as me. Liveplasma was okay.

Lesson 8

Okay, so my department teamed together to create a flickr account. We uploaded the pictures today. I guess they'll be available sometime next week. We tagged some of our pictures collection development and when we searched that term we were very perplexed as to why our pictures did not show. After we solved that mystery we looked at the other pictures with that tag. It was very interesting what people consider collection development. There were beach scenes. I wish! No, actually I don't as I'm not overly fond of laying out in the sun or being exposed to the amount of sun you're exposed to on the beach. Anyway, there were relevant pictures as well. Some were from a library (or libraries?) in Morocco.
I created a protopage. Again, I am overwhelmed. There is so much there. All I managed to do was rename a few tabs, change some colors, and put in my zip so I could get the local weather. One thing about all this 2.0 stuff is you need a lot of time to sort it all out much less participate. I tend to get caught up in the big picture and then panic at it's size and depth and bail. This happens a lot when I want to clean my house. I shall try to overcome this shortcoming.

Wire

I never really listened to this group back then but they were pretty cool.


Oh yeah, I'll be catching up soon. I promise.

2170

That was my score on Blufr. I did pretty well, I think, although, the top scores blew mine away. I could have kept going but knew I had to stop sometime or I'd be there for half an hour.
I joined YouPlay but as of press time I had not gotten an email confirmation yet. I think they're out of Australia because it looks like it's winter where they are. That threw me for a minute because as we all know it's getting up to the nineties here. Yuck!
I have both a cat and a dog and I love them very much but I guess not enough to join either petster sites. I can barely keep up with blogging about myself, gosh!
I liked Chugged. Someone had just rated my favorite beer, Newcastle, and gave it 4 stars. That's pretty fair. The sissy, non-English side of me (although I do have English and Welsh ancestors)likes my beer veeerrrry cold. Brrr.
As for hobbies, well, my hobby is surfing (is this term lame now?) the internet. Lame, I know. I've got to find something a little more worthy. I don't even contribute much to the internet. I just read and watch, as I've said before. Maybe I can think up a really cool mashup.
Well, as I've posted about before, I was all set to see Bloc Party because I love their music and they were so great when I saw them before. Then...I got Strep Throat! I had even gotten my hair cut that afternoon but was too sick after that to go. My husband went over to Park Ave CD's (the band was making an appearance there) and sold one ticket and left the other with the staff of the store and they sold it for us. So, at least I got my money back.

I'm so far behind but I'm going to try and catch up in the next few days. I have gone through all the links in lesson 5. I joined Library Thing and put a few books onto the shelf. I'll explore it more a little later and maybe get some ideas about what to read. I'm really at a loss about what to read. Nothing is capturing my attention. All those mashups were okay. It's fun to explore for awhile. I looked up Nassau on Wikimapia because that is where some of my family lives and I found Oprah's mansion. Someone listed it there and called it Oprah's sick *** mansion! My car make and model is not for sale on eBay anywhere close to me according to MotorMapUSA. Elf is a neat idea. What Do I Read Next was not very helpful. It brought up some crazy things. I have already used Del.icio.us extensively and really like it. You can really get lost in there. But! I really like PopUrls. I went in there and it was like an internet website candy store. Some of the websites I've subcribed to on Bloglines are right there. One thing I found right off the bat was this What the World Eats slideshow. Very interesting. Here is the link: What The World Eats