Blooming Carpenter

Web 2.0, you're costing me $59.00 per month, but who's counting...

2008-07-17T13:24:00.000-07:00

Like any love/hate relationship, once you know it is ending, it is hard to let it go. I think most everyone complained (okay, whined) at one time or another over the past 4 months of surfing, but I challenge anyone to say that they didn't learn something that they will use in the future.

My favorite discoveries and the ones I use alot now, are Earthgoogle, blogs, Flickr, on line applications and tools, gaming and PANDORA PANDORA PANDORA. I LOVE having my 60's folk music streaming over the computer while I work on reports or other tasks.

Other Web 2.0 training that will assist my lifelong learning goals in the areas of gardening, carpentry and watercolor include RSS and News Feeders, Wikis, search engines, tagging, photos and images and on and on.

Now that we are familiar with this style of self taught learning, it would be great if we had the topics available so that we could work ahead when we had time and not get frustrated when work interfered with completing our weekly task. It would have been easier to talk in a group setting about our struggles and successes with web 2.0 if PSA 1s could have participated, even on a voluntary basis. They also work with the public in helping them on the public PCs.

I would certainly participate in this type of self-paced learning in the future, even if I have to be dragged kicking and screaming at times.

Now, if you are wondering why this exercise is now costing me $59 per month, here is why. If you read my earlier blogs, I mentioned (whined) several times that I only have access to dialup internet service where I live so I can't use Pandora, downloadable media, podcasting, YouTube and most gaming. So... I visited my local wireless cell phone store recently and subscribed to one of their broadband plans with a usb modem for my laptop. Now I access Peter Paul and Mary wherever I go, for only $59 a month.

Gaming cleanses my mind

2008-07-10T16:03:00.001-07:00

I'll have to admit that gaming is my personal addiction. Ever since my daughter gave me a handheld Sudoku gaming device (2 years ago), I can never go to sleep at night without playing a few games. The beauty of handheld devices is that they are backlit, eliminating the need for turning on a light.

Now if only my computer was small enough to tuck under the covers, I could play jewelquest to the wee hours too.

As far as implications for our workforce, gaming can be very relaxing and stress relieving, if only because you are concentrating on playing the game and forgetting about all those other things that seem to run our lives far too often. Gaming is also a way to connect with kids and teens, or at least understand some of their language.

It is always fun to turn a patron, be they young or old, onto playing games on the computer. Especially for newbies, since they are learning how to manipulate the mouse, keyboard and reading the screen.

Research does show that playing games or working puzzles helps stave off Alzheimers and I need all the help I can get!

Bigfoot was my neighbor

2008-07-09T16:56:00.000-07:00

For once, I followed all the directions, downloaded Google Earth and then typed in my address. It was fun to watch it zoom all the way in to my house, just like it does on the network news. I then started looking around my neighborhood and discovered a small orange round dot on the map.

Imagine my surprise when I clicked on it discovered that there had been a Bigfoot siting on October 20, 1973, about 500 yards from my house. This was only three months after I had moved here.

There have been no sitings since.

hmmmmmmm......Did I scare him off?

Avatars Abound

2008-07-08T17:21:00.000-07:00

What did you think? It was easy and fun to create the avatar, however when I tried to copy it to this posting is when I ran into difficulty... That is, until I remembered the "add image" on the posting site. I will take it on faith that the gibberish that is on the screen as I type this, will become a real live (fake) person.
I suppose if I needed to have an image of myself on a website, I would rather it be a virtual self, just for privacy reasons especially if I were a young kid. Those photos posted on line are too easy to manipulate and could cause irreparable harm.

Answer these questions in your post as well.

Do you already live in Second Life? No.
If you don’t already live in SL, would you like to live in Second Life? Not at this time.
Why or why not? Not enough time to do it justice.

Online applications and Tools

2008-07-08T14:01:00.000-07:00

I've been introduced to Zoho and google document before, and I do recommend them to patrons who are using our computers, so that they can save their documents before timing out. Personally, I am on overload so I am sticking with Microsoft word etc for now.

Searching, Searching......

2008-06-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

I'll admit, I'm too comfortable in using google, since it is right there on my screen, but now that I've tried dogpile, mamma and rollyo, I'm ready to check out other search engines.

For my search string, I used "Free Potting Bench Plans". I've done this search in Google,in the past, but there were too many hits that weren't actually free.
So, with Rollyo, I struck paydirt. The first page of hits had so many free plans for potting benches that I didn't need to go further.
I tried Mamma next and had more sponsered sites that wanted me to buy plans. I did find a few that were also on Rollyo.
Dogpile was the least effective for this particular search. Not only did it have lots of sites that were not free, it also seemed to generate several "Netflix" popup ads.

Interestingly, the potting bench I plan on building (pictured here) came up on Rollyo and Dogpile. I was able to download working blueprints right from the Rollyo's link. But Dogpile's link sent me to a site where I would have had to pay money and order the plans. Go figure.

Doesn't this look cool!!!! I'll be building this while I'm waiting for the library addition to be built this summer.

Podcasting

2008-06-06T15:20:00.000-07:00

Which library podcasts did you listen to?
I listened to and subscribed to Book talks quick & simple. I also subscribed to a basic French podcast, where I supposedly will learn to speak fluid French just listening 15 minutes a day. peut etre...

Do you see podcasting as a useful tool for Sno-Isle Libraries?
Perhaps this would be a way to have virtual workshops so staff don't have to travel to SRV for training.

Any ideas about which topics our patrons might be interested in hearing?
I don't know what patron might be interested in, but I did come across the "Famous Speeched podcast list which would be very helpful for students. Now if I could only remember how I found it.

Do you have any experience with listening to, or creating podcasts?
No, and I am unable to use it on my home computer at this point.

On line image generators

2008-05-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

Overdrive

2008-05-27T14:22:00.000-07:00

This was the first time I've been able to successfully access and download from this site, since high speed is not available where I live. It appeared difficult to download the program on this computer since I kept getting the message that I had to close out everything before completing the download. Finally I just tried to download a book and it worked. Frankly, I didn't find my favorite authors nor subjects (gardening and carpentry.) However, on a whim, I checked out my most favorite book, "What Do You Care what Other People Think? by Richard Feynman and it had just been added today!
I'm not a personal fan of audio books, since I tend to read much faster than just listening so I won't be downloading books in the near future. However, at least I can now explain to people how it works, at least patrons who live where they have high speed Internet access. I didn't download any videos or music, but I assume it would be similar. One of our elementary school teachers tells me that he downloads some of the children's books to play in class occasionally. He is very pleased with the service.

Delicious

2008-05-27T13:37:00.000-07:00

I rediscovered my del.icio.us account that I had created after a workshop over 1 1/2 years ago and never looked at again. I had set up tags for various woodworking plans and projects and it was great to take another look at them. http://del.icio.us/lindalee
I also added the bookmark and tag buttons to my toolbar so it won't be another 2 years before I use it.
I can see where this would be a great way to keep track of research, especially for students who utilize lots of websites. I haven't figured out yet how to delete the bookmarked sites, but I am sure it is probably not too hard. Otherwise this will just be another site that gets too cluttered. At this point I use the favorites with folders for sites I use regularly and I can access them from any SI computer. The big advantage with tagging is that I could also use it from home. (if I had high speed service available.)

Wikiing around

2008-05-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

What did you find interesting?
That there are so many different wikis. I had played with pbwiki for the past year, but I never did set it up as a way to network with other people.

What types of applications within libraries might work well with a wiki?
It would be interesting to try to set up staff meeting agendas, especially in larger buildings where staff don't see each other very often. It would be fun to set up a quasi book discussion wiki for either our own book groups or for those of us who facilitate book discussions in our branches. We would be able to get some fresh perspectives on the books we have already discussed or are thinking about discussing, expecially those titles which we personally didn't like.

YouTube, Hulu and Fancast

2008-05-06T14:35:00.000-07:00

Youtube
Look for videos about libraries. - I watched a video from Calgary Public Library.
I looked up Darrington and found a video taken from a motorcycle traveling 530 to Darrington. Now I'll just tell people to watch that when they want to know how far it is.

Hulu and Fancast.
Would you use either or both of these sites? Why? No. I have only dialup at home and I don't have time to watch tv shows or movies at work.
Would either of these sites be useful for libraries? I'm sure that patrons would be interested in watching movies at the library. Some patrons are probably already utilizing these sites.

I tried to embed a video from YouTube in this post.

Eons

2008-05-05T17:38:00.000-07:00

I subscribed to Eons, because I had not heard of it before, and, let's face it, it's for my generation.
I'm not keen on having personal information floating around the internet, so I probably will not use it much if any. I did enter the name of my home town and only got 7 hits. None of the 7 people had any personal information about them either, so I couldn't identify any of them by their screen name. I also searched for former college classmates, but found none.

As you can see, I'm not a fan of online socializing. I prefer to do my socializing in real time with real people. For me, being a friend is more than just communicating over the net or even phone.
For some people, that is what they only want, prefering to be incognito so to speak.
I would probably have used this alot when I was in college was still searching for the meaning of life. But now I live life instead of talking about it.

Flikring

2008-04-16T10:16:00.001-07:00

It took me over an hour to download one photo into flikr. I recently returned from vacation so when I read this task I though I would download all my (300+) digital pictures into flikr. Wrong. I kept crashing the system, when I tried to do a block download. Finally, I decided to just download one photo and saw that it took up about 5% of my alloted space. So at that rate, I can only add 20 photos a month to my flikr account. I think I will stick to cd's and flashdrives at this point. I am sure it will take less time now that I've done one, and perhaps I will use this to send pictures to others in the future.

However when I tried to attach the photo directly to this post from flikr, I ended up with the entire page. So I finally just saved the photo in flickr to my computer and then transfered it to here. There must be an easier way....

My own personal Hootenanny

2008-04-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

Okay, I am now a convert to Web 2.0. With Pandora and streaming music, I was able to find all the songs and artists from the early 60's folk music that is my fave and #1 music.

They are not easy to find and NEVER on any radio station nowadays. Glenn Yarbrough, the Seekers, the Brothers Four, PP&M, Joan Baez, the list goes on....

This was the easiest and most enjoyable task so far. While working on my 2009 budget, I was able to concentrate on finishing it while listening to my favorite music streaming by, oblivious to all the teens in the library on Friday.

RSS, Science and the Mariners

2008-04-10T10:13:00.000-07:00

This has been a frustrating excercise and taking longer than the 1 hour. I signed up with bloglines and went to the sites that I wanted to get the RSS for, I ended up with their RSS's added to my Microsoft Office Outlook and they immediately filled up with unread mail. The next day, I finally figured out how to get them through the bloglines.com, but unless they were on the suggested sites, I would get the message "No feeds were found. Please verify that the website publishes and RSS feed." I checked the site and it did have an RSS feed, and when I clicked on it, you guessed it, it was added to my Office Outlook.
I also discovered, that on closing out, I had several popup screens with advertisement.

However, I did subscribe to the Scientific American suggested site and it made it all worthwhile. The first article that came up was January 9, 2008. Science 2.0: Great New Tool, or Great Risk?
Wikis, blogs and other collaborative web technologies could usher in a new era of science. Or not.
By M. Mitchell Waldrop

As a former research scientist in my past lives, I was very interested on how this may be transforming the scientific research fields, in particular, the "Publish or Perish" syndrome and possible effects of plagiarism. They even had a spirited blog developing, with younger vs older scientists.

So far, I would rather scan entire sites periodically, rather than have it "fed" to me, but this task has been interesting venture.

Instant messaging

2008-04-09T14:54:00.000-07:00

I've been on vacation, so not only have I fallen behind but now it's hard to find time to catch up. I'm glad we have a few extra weeks to complete all the tasks by the end of the 20.

I have used IM with my msn.com email account for several years. But I've found that my family, friends and I would rather pick up the phone and talk to each other rather than wasting time trying to type everything out.

At the most we will just IM "Is this a good time to call you?"

Since I don't use my gmail account except for these exercises, I probably won't use this IM service either. BUT at least I do know how to use it and can assist patrons on getting to this function. I am glad I learned how to access it through gmail, gmail is a little different from my msn.com account.

It isn't getting any easier.

2008-03-15T15:59:00.000-07:00

I'm not finding this to be very intuitive at this point. I thought I had posted something earlier, only to find out it was a reply to a previous post. I does help to read the directions though. I looked everywhere on the intranet for the progress log before going back to the your posting and found the link there. Is it not available by going through the intranet?

So now I had to learn ANOTHER THING!

2008-03-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

Office 2007 was installed on my computer when I came in this morning. Everything Kandy taught me went right out the window when my email icon didn't work. Then I realized I couldn't hurt anything by exploring around and voila', I felt empowered. Plus I knew that my two tech liaisons would quickly straighten me (and my computer) out when they arrived at work today.

Spring has Sprung

2008-03-10T17:26:00.000-07:00

With the start of daylight savings time, I have an extra hour, right?
Naa, a patron just told me I lost an hour, but I prefer to think it is just "banked" and waiting for me to retrieve it when I need it the most. R
ight now, I'll pretend that I did get that extra hour and can spend it catching up on this 20 for 20. I hate to admit that I am already a week behind, but then so is Spring.