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

Break time is over...

I guess I'd better get up and start on the new lesson. Although, maybe I'll give it a few more days. This nasty looking couch is pretty comfy.

Dedication

Here I am diligently posting about this course while these people behind me are having fun. I'm about to go over to the tiki-hut soon and get a Mojito.

Web 2.0

I already have a myspace page. So that was nothing new really although I hardly ever use it. Awhile back when all the talk was about who was stalking myspace, be it creepy people or employers, I took down a lot of the information I had up there about myself. I think it's pretty cool that the library has a page. So far I haven't really been an active participant in Web 2.0. I like to lurk as I think I may have mentioned in an earlier post. I see the potential of all this stuff but I never think it pertains to me. I guess I'm too lazy. Like posting to this blog. I have to almost force myself. I'm the same way about sending emails. I'm pretty much a reader and a watcher of the internet, not a doer. I'm getting better. I think this course is helping. Anyway, I checked out all the assigned reading and viewing. I enjoyed the Web 2.0 clip, it was nicely done and a little eerie. I liked the articles about the YouTube guys. They sound really down to earth. I read the entry in wikipedia about lonelygirl15 but didn't look at any of the videos. I saw the Law and Order episode that was "ripped from the headlines" about it, though. The video ninja was so funny. I love the poet Emily Quikenson, she's so dark and violent. And, finally, I went throught the Web 2.0 awards and out of all of it the only thing I came away with (at least at this point. I must take some time and absorb.) is that my house is worth a good amount of money according to zillow.com ( www.zillow.com) and guess-the-google ( grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google) is a lot of fun and I'm not too great at it.

Grokker and my learning style

At first I was kind of like what's the point of Grokker? But, in looking at it again and with other people I decided that I found the point and at least with me it's the outline. I like that I can filter through all those unnecessary sites and go for the ones important to my search. So if I was searching for Volkswagens and I have a Golf I can just click on the entry that deals with Golfs:
German (4)
Golf (4)
Larger Passat for the Segment (4)
and leave all that other stuff alone. I can also look at all that other stuff in its nicely organized way and see other topics I might be interested in regarding my Volkswagen:
Volkswagens Pictures (11)
World (11)
Online (9)
Photos (8)
Who else in the world like Volkswagens? Lots of people, I know!

Regarding my learning style, I knew I was a kinesthetic learner but I didn't realize I kind of expected other people (everyone?) to be the same way. I came to this realization as I was helping a co-worker subscribe to feeds and thought, wow, not everyone learns the way I do!

And, by the way, as an update to my post about the Bloc Party show I see from their website that they are now playing at the Club at Firestone (not the UCF Arena as first reported by Ticketmaster. Yay!) on the 28th but, the Club at Firestone's site says the 29th. The ongoing saga continues...actually I think they are selling tickets at Park Ave CD's. I'll check there.

Press play

I came across this video while searching for The Postal Service on YouTube.

rss

These are the feeds I subscribed to:
Boing Boing
Idolator
Insound New Releases
Library Leader
stereogum
Yahoo! News: Top Stories
Bloglines was just there as a default, I guess. I went with Yahoo! News because that's where I get all the important news stories in one go. I went with insound because I check their site all the time anyway and stereogum said they were the #1 music blog. Idolator just looked like some funny reading. I'm thinking of adding one called bestweekever.tv because it's based on the show from VH1 which I enjoy from time to time as another place to pick up imortant news stories.
This process was a little tricky, but I caught on after awhile. I'm trying to figure out if there is some way to put the rss button on my blog so I don't have to sign into yet another site. I'd like a one-stop shop, so to speak.
I'll post about grokker later.

New layout

I've been experimenting with new layouts. It's complicated because a lot of the templates out there don't translate well to blogger. There's always something wrong with the html code and I'm just not familiar enough with html to make the correct edits. Oh well. I decided to just get a picture off the internet (hopefully I won't get in trouble for using it). It's a Bloc Party image and I'm not sure if someone made it or if it's an official picture. Speaking of Bloc Party, they are coming to Orlando in May and I'm trying to decide if I want to go (if tickets are still available. I need to check.) because they are playing the UCF Arena. I've never been there. I saw them in a very small venue down in Ft. Lauderdale last year and that was great. Is the UCF Arena big? I'll have to check it out. I like seeing bands in small clubs and bars. I love it when they come to the House Of Blues. That place is great in my opinion. Quite a few come to the Social but that is maybe a little too small. I saw South there and the little stage was so small one of the guys tripped over a wire and unplugged an instrument! They recovered well, though. That was a good show. Okay, I've rambled on enough about this.

Hi

I'm Christina and I work in Collection Development. I have used blogs before, mainly Livejournal, and mainly as a lurker. I'm an expert lurker. So that's one thing I will not have to learn.