Thing 10

OK, these generators are just plain silly. But strangely compelling...

My random German name is : Tatjana Sahm.

My homespun analogy for the day is : He's as jumpy as a holy bumble-bee in the cow shed.

And I still don't really enjoy image generators but here is a custom road sign just to prove I am paying attention to the lessons:

Thing 9

These are my current favorite work related feeds: Slashdot, Shifted Librarian, USA Today book news. Between the three of them I feel much more up to date. I also love The Onion, but struggle to connect it to work (perhaps keeping morale up?) And I enjoy following some of my colleagues' blogs - but Nancy Pearl seems to have fallen silent!

Thing 8

I would love to post a link to my Bloglines account, but I can't work it out. As far as I know my username is my email address, however when I create the following link http://www.bloglines.com/public/keziah.singleton@aucklandcity.govt.nz , it doesn't work - I get the message 'incorrect username'. I don't know what my username is and I can't work out how to find out. So someone will have to tell me? I notice that the link given in the training blog has the same construction as my attempt ie. http://www.bloglines.com/public/acl.elgar@gmail.com, and that doesn't work either!

Update: have battled my way to a username so here is the link as requested:

http://www.bloglines.com/public/Wilberforce

Thing 7 (Wot I like about Technology)

I like:

MP3 files, in the specific form of my ipod. Oh I do love my ipod. 768 songs awaiting my listening pleasure. Or the same song over and over again. Playlists of stuff the kids will like. Playlists of stuff I like. Little pictures of album cover art. Itunes for every piece of music I have thought of wanting so far (and I do not doubt there will be more). And I can play it through the radio in the car.

Email. I know it has been around for a while but every so often it still blows my mind. We can contact anyone, anywhere just like that. It has made the world so much smaller.

Mobile phones. How did we survive?

Thing 6

I neglected to mention third party applications in my previous Flickr post... probably because I didn't really like any I tried. I made a Warhol print with a picture of my son - but Warhol did it before me and frankly, did it better. I made a mosaic thingy - the first one didn't have enough pictures and just looked like a bunch of tiles, the second one had too many and I couldn't focus on it. Then I tried retrievr, in which you draw a sketch and it searches flickr for similar images. I drew an amulet, and got lots of pictures of kids. I drew a mouse, and got lots of pictures of kids. I drew a cat's ears, and got lots of pictures of kids. At which point I decided that manipulating images just isn't my thing and the results don't justify the bother. But one third party app which I do like is the uploading tool, as mentioned before.

Week 4, RSS feeds

Well, I've just spent an hour reading book reviews and other people's blogs. It has been great fun - and I don't even have to promise to be anyone's friend! It's like secretly reading someone's diary, but without the moral queasiness. There are some great posts out there - I'm especially indebted to the lovely Nancy Pearl of ACL for the porcupine. My question now is this: can I spend an hour reading feeds every day, and call it working?

Week 3 (but a bit late)

Flickr is one of my favourite sites as my family is insatiable for photos of my children! By posting them on Flickr I can keep a dozen people happy with one upload. Sure beats emailing enormous files around the world.

Accessing it for this training has proven a bit of a challenge... I couldn't remember the password for my account (my computer at home kindly remembers it for me). I requested a reminder which got sent to an old (dead) email address. So I have had to go home, update the account on Flickr from the machine which knows the password (although it won't tell it to me...) then come back into work and request another reminder. At long last I have access and have been able to post a picture of my lovely children for your viewing pleasure.

The best Flickr tool ever as far as I am concerned is the Mac photo uploader I found some time ago. Suddenly uploading photos went from fiddly and time consuming to a one-click effort. Now the hardest part of the process is remembering where I put the camera!