Is Your Cat trying to Kill You?

http://www.catswhothrowupgrass.com/kill.php

Online Gaming

This is the avatar I created in Gaia Online. I tried to do some of the interactive games on there, but there's a bit of a learning curve. So I still haven't quite figured out what all I can do there. Once I discovered Bejeweled on my cell phone, I was hooked on it. I have played it online and had to download it to my new cell phone. I sometimes even use it pass they time while waiting for the Doctor to show up. I tried Lexulous it was fun and easy to use. I also played checkers on Myspace. Boy it's hard to do well when you don't remember the rules. Again, I can see how people could spend all day doing some of this.

MySpace

I'll admit I'm not the most social person, but I did create a MySpace profile around this time last year to see what all the teens were so interested in. I find that I like MySpace for the band pages mostly, because I can visit my favorites and hear the whole song instead of a snippet. It also lets me try some other bands and get a feel for their kind of music. Here's the link to my profile, but I set it up so only my friends can view it. http://www.myspace.com/blinn_820. Here is the link to my blog post. I did add an app that lets me post an anime poster to myspace page. I also tried the new profile editor. It's actually really nice, and lets you set what modules are on your page and who can view what parts of your profile.

Chat and Instant Messaging

Trying to figure out how to add someone to your chat list in Google Talk was a little bit difficult, but once my coworker and I figured out how to do that, the chat part was easy to use.

#9 Finding Feeds

I discovered that I prefer to go to a site of a journal to pick up a feed. Most of the discovery tools bring back way to many feeds unless your topic is very narrowly defined. Sydic8 is a very slow site. Of the listed tools, I liked Technorati best, because it gave some kind of description of what the blog was about. After playing around with Google Reader some more, I still find that I like bloglines better.

Google Reader

I must admit that I've got a bloglines account and at the moment I prefer it over Google Reader. I'm still trying to figure out Google Reader. It seems to always try to pull back all the posts instead of only showing you the stuff you haven't seen. Bloglines just pulls the new stuff and provides a way for you to pull back more stuff if you want. My only grump about Bloglines is that they need more servers (which I think they got), because sometimes I can't get in. Help on Google also isn't very informative.

Final image generation

So I told you I got carried away with the image generators. http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/heromachine2/heroMachine2.asp

More image generator fun

LOLCat image generator

My creation,
originally uploaded by blinn_820.

For Kam, who thinks my brothers should be lolcats. http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/lolcat.php

Fun with image generators Christmas Ornament

Christmas Ornament,
originally uploaded by blinn_820.

So I got carried away with the image generators, but it sure is a fun way to waste some time. Now I know where some of those funny pictures in my email come from. Being the season I found this image generator on Dumpr and used one of my flickr photos.
http://www.dumpr.net/christmas-ornament.php

More fun with Flickr/Thoughts

More fun with Flickr,
originally uploaded by blinn_820.

I found a caption toy on fd's toys and made this picture. I found that a lot of things you can do with the mashups, apps, don't seem to be very useful for libraries. They do however provide some amusement value. Granted I didn't look at a lot of them. I'll probably try the trading card toy on fd's later.

As for Flickr, its fun to post the pics for others to see, but I still haven't been able to find my photos in search. Apparently, they review them before your account is allowed to be searchable by everyone and they are very behind in review. I found that a lot of people were also having the same problem.

Flickr 1.1 Toby and Willy

Toby and Willy,
originally uploaded by blinn_820.

These are my "brothers". You can see more photos of them on Flickr.

Flickr 1

circdesk,
originally uploaded by blinn_820.

Flickr makes it very easy to create and add/edit photos. It was a little harder to figure out how to use it to create this post, but in the end I figured it out. This is a pic I took of the reference desk for a pc hardware class. The monitor at the first checkout station has been very tricky to get started in the morning so I worked with it and finally had IT order us a new one.

Rock that Mangatar look

Mangatar was fun, but it still doesn't let you get as wild a look as some of the manga characters. I love my yahoo avatar except that I can't see it in my email anymore, so I haven't messed with it in a long time. I wish that they would let you pick pants and shoes separately though.

Google Who Knew?

Who knew that all those interesting apps hide behind that simple screen. Google maps was something I was interested in playing with since I read an article in LJ about a library that used it to do a location map, a road construction map, and a landmarks/historical interest map. Its fairly easy to use, so I am going to make one to map our system's locations.

I am also interested in downloading Google Earth so I can check out the new Ancient Rome 3d model.

There are still somethings, I wouldn't do. Its nice to see a health care tracker, but even when they claim its secure, I wouldn't trust it.

Igoogle is also a really neat feature I hadn't seen before.

I am still going to have to play with some more of the apps.

71/2 Life Long Learning Habits

The hardest habits for me are teaching/mentoring others and have confidence in yourself as a comptent, effective learner. I find teaching others difficult because I tend to become impatient with slow learners. And while I have confidence in my ability to learn most of the time, I sometimes have problems having a positive confident attitude about what I know when I am out of my comfort zone.

The easiest thing probably is viewing problems as challenges. I like to know how things work, so if something doesn't work I try to find out how to fix it or if it is something that really needs an expert then I know, but I try to learn from them as they fix it.

Life Long Learning

"... we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson."

"The Humanity of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan from Dune

I included part of this quote in my yearbook. It spoke to me then and it still does today. Part of the fun of being a librarian is learning new things as I respond to patrons' requests.

For a wannabe geek, this is a great chance for me to learn about using the Web 2.0 tools, I normally wouldn't use on my own. I am looking forward to learning about these tools and seeing how I can use them at our library.