Favorite movie

Favorite movie
The thin man

Saturday, December 15, 2007

And last but not least #23 - Reflecting

I can sum up these last few weeks in a few thoughts. I experienced frustration, eagerness, laughter and more frustrated hair-pulling. But this can also be used to describe all learning experiences. I am a firm believer in learning new things, so I enjoyed the time I spent on this project and would welcome another opportunity.

I loved the opportunity to read through my co-workers postings, it gave an insight into their thoughts and humor. If I was able to figure out who was who, sometimes I would really laugh hard 'cause I'd have a known voice to go with the writings.

I really enjoyed learning about and playing with the mashups and the wikis. The newsreaders and rss' were confusing at first, but once figured out, gave me more than enough to keep track of - kinda feel guilty if I fall too far behind on the news, 'cause I know I won't read it. And I just do not see myself using rollyo in the future, unless I start a new career where I need to keep track of specific searches; or the online office applications, simply because I have office at home.

Now all I need to do is figure out which thing I learned that will give me the best chance of my family learning and using it to stay connected by adding pieces to it. Almost like a family blog with extras.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Thing #22 - LibriVox

Luckily it was easy to find the FAQ page. Because I had a question immediately about copyright and that stuff. I found my answer about half-way down the page. I had never paid attention to the information about "public domain". So I learned that "public domain" pertains to the literature whose copyright has expired - about everything printed before 1923.

So, a-browsing I went and found that they have Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, something that I will have to explore. What I did not find was an easy way to go from page 1 of the D's to page 2. After a little bit of playing around, I found that the "easy" way is to click on the next numbered page before the "..." and you're on the next page or 2 pages past what you wanted.

Because these are all public domain, there are a lot of the old classics listed - Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Stephen Crane, and a whole lot more that I've never heard of. So it's a good option if you cannot find a copy of a certain book that you absolutely need for english class to know about this resource. It was also nice to see that there are some readings in foreign languages, a nice way to get better at listening and hopefully speaking in French.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Thing #21 - Podcasts, Smodcasts!

I've heard about podcasts - that they're neat and informative and fun. I started looking at the 3 given directories. At podcast, I typed in library news and got 1 item about SirsiDynix Institute. Since I didn't feel like listening to that I tried another search this time book reviews. And it looks like I get a lot (100) of podcasts involving reviews on anything and everything. And the final keyword search "libraries" looks like it has turned something up.

If I was interested and I knew how to speak Italian, I could listen to a podcast on library news in Italian. Hmmmm, motivation there, but sadly no time. There were 2 other promising casts, the first one is teenlibrarian and the second is teleread (about e-books).

Both podcast and yahoo were just seach engines for the podcasts, didn't have a lot of excessive information on the screen. Might be nice for some, but I wanted a little help at first. Which is why I liked the looks and style of podcastalley. I had learned my lesson from the first searching, so I just typed in libraries and got 27 hits. It's so easy! You click on one and a short menu unfolds to give you a description and the option to get the podcast. I think I'll put any podcasts off to the sidebar. And then I shall explore more...

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

A review on the movie "The Golden Compass"

After hearing that certain Catholic heads had put this on their "Do Not Watch" list, I had to see the movie to find out what all of the fuss was about. I found that it was a delightful movie.

The movie is about a cheeky young girl, Lyra, who gets into the adventure of her life. She runs around all over the place. She has no interest in being labeled a lady, in fact she tells her best friend (paraphrasing: "...to take it back. I ain't no lady. Take it back or we're not best mates!"). Lyra's world is one where a person's soul lives in an animal form outside of their bodies, called demons.

Lyra is living at the university, while her guardian is off on expeditions. She is allowed a temporary holiday from learning at the university, to help a lady, Mrs. Colter; who appears like a breath of fresh air to a young lady confined within the stuffy atmosphere that she lives. Before she leaves, the headmaster visits Lyra and gives to her a golden compass, telling her that her uncle had given it to him for safe-keeping and he believes that it belongs to Lyra now, and he also told her not to show it to anyone, especially Mrs. Colton. When Lyra and Mrs. Colton head to town, Lyra finds that the rules of society with Mrs. Colton are even tighter. Mrs. Colter has a hidden agenda for Lyra and a secret life with the Magesterium, the ruler's of society. Lyra discovers that Mrs. Colter is behind that disappearance of the missing children and that her best friend's name is on the list. She runs from Mrs. Colter and falls in with the gypsums (sp?). And they are off, on to a rescue mission to find the missing children. Along the way, Lyra meets new friends and learns how to use the golden compass, which shows the truth to those who know how to ask.

After watching the movie, I still had no idea as to why the banning. The movie showcases the adventures of a girl out to rescue her friend. He was taken as part of a secret experiment of the Magesterium's to separate the children from something of their world called dust, which gave life to their souls/demons. Then they were going to raise these children to follow a certain way of thinking that did not disagree with the teachings of said Magesterium. They were going to subvert the "free will" of a new generation. The next day I talked to my sister-in-law and she said that it was because the ruling class was called the magesterium, which is also the name for the learning class of the Catholic church.

Flimsy much! Arrgg! I do not like those who ban a book "because"; makes me think of dictators, not a good image for the church in my opinion. But that's one opinion among many.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Interesting article

I was checking through my bloglines feeds and found this interesting article. I say interesting because of the fact that we were doing mashups not too long ago. The mashup is between MeeboMe and a library (who set it up), and it allows people the option to get additional help for finding an item when they hit the message "sorry, could not find...".

http://www.bloglines.com/preview?siteid=376&itemid=1548

Sorry, you'll have to copy and paste the address. I'm having technical difficulties.

Thing #20 - SPL's access to music libraries

I took this opportunity to play around and listen to a few songs from each site that SPL has on offer. Starting with the Classical Music Library, I browsed through their catagories on offer. I scrolled through the catagories of vocal & choral, nursery rhymes - listened to "Hey Diddle Diddle". Then I moved onto the stage & screen catagory, TV music - choosing a few from "The Sword in the Stone". There was a lot of music to choose. I tried to find things that I would recognize, so after seeing something from the "Fiddler on the Roof", I tried to find the artist Topol and came up with zilch. I also played around with the sound quality, changing it from 22kbps to the higher quality of 64kbps. The sound was a bit richer on 64kbps, but you could still hear the scratches from the recordings.

Next, I moved on and listened to the African American Song. Since I'm not a big jazz fan, I didn't recognize a lot of songs in that catagory. But I moved on and tried the stage and screen catagory. The sound quality between classican music library and the African American song were similiar. To me, the choices were a bit obscure because I had never listened to a lot of the genres. I did notice that they had 4 choices under the rock genre, and I didn't recognize them; but that could be explained because the timeline only goes up to 1970.

And finally, I moved onto Smithsonian Global Sound. I found that when I clicked on a catagory selection, that I had a huge list to scroll through, page by page. That got old, so I decided to try browsing by A-Z, in the genre area. There are over 3000 songs in the children's catagory! So, I scrolled and jumped through and listened to a few. There were some titles that I hadn't seen in years (A frog went a'courtin') and some that I had never seen because they're from another country.

This could be something fun to do if you had your computer in an area where you could play the music and actually get something accomplished (chore-wise), else I would spend a lot of time making a playlist and while that played I would be playing games or doing research on the computer. I'll have to remember to tell my husband about this feature, he's the one who listens to a variety of music.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Time to play again!!! #19 web tools

Ooohhh, books, I found the first site that I'm going to look at. BRB with an update. The top 3 catagories: LibraryThing, already done that, have the site bookmarked. The Biblio site has possibilites when I'm looking for a book for myself or as a gift. And the Lulu site is not for me, as I have no manuscripts that I want to publish. Onto the next selection. I've found a possible! It keeps track of events for you and lets you know what's coming up in your area. I've been looking for something like this, I'll have to play with it a bit more to see if I actually like it.

The cocktail builder site is a hoot! I just typed in a few kinds of the alcohols that I have in my cupboard and it gave me a list of drinks. From the list o'drinks to make with vodka, I'm tempted to try "Adam and Eve" and "Kiss of an angel", and I'm not a big vodka fan - the taste is blahg to me. Apparently there's a drink called the "black cat" and all you need is tequila and amaretto (or another almond liqueur).

Under the games selection, "guess the google" was fun. You had to be a fast typer and a good guesser. I had seen and played something similiar at flickr only they used between 4 and 10 pictures. Something mindless that gets your brain moving. The plus side to this game is that it has a pause button, while the other one does not.

Some of the tools that I viewed might possibly work in a library setting, the problem would be to go through each tool and see which ones would not work (downloads needed, registrations, etc.) and not everybody has the time to go through all of those sites.

I tried Zoho....

At first, Zoho looked like a fun new toy to play with and then I tried to publish something to my blog. How many times and ways can you say frustrating? I went to publish to my blog the post shown below, I followed the directions from the FAQ page on publishing to your blog, and EVERY time I tried to publish it gave me this little red sentence that said "blog not available". WHAT??!!! But I've got it open. So I exited and tried again. Same thing "blog not available". And so I copied and pasted to my blog what I had written in Zoho. But all is not lost, I put a link to my zoho-wiki on my blog.

I've played around with Zoho a little bit. I created a list of people to shop for before christmas. And I did to it what I would normally do when I type things up in word. Although the first time that I saved the piece, it pulled all the names together into one line after another instead of leaving it spaced like I had set. This app. seems like it could be an alright situation to use, if you are doing non-sensitive material. But that's just me, 'cause there is no way that I would put sensitive information out-there to hopefully be password safe and secure.



After I made the list I tried to share the document with my husband, in hopes that we would be able to add to it at anytime.

1) Before he can share, he has to be a member. So now he always shows up as offline.

2) He tried to join using his hotmail account. Zoho didn't like that. Hmm, I wonder if I should add his hotmail account as the one to share with.



So, I'm not happy right now with the thing. Next, I put together a wiki at Zoho. And now I have to see if there is a way to publish the wiki to my blog. Not seeing any big instructions so far, back to the FAQ's page. sigh...

Friday, November 23, 2007

Time to play with a wiki

Time to dive right in and play around to find out about wikis. When I first tried to log in, I didn't realize which email address was going to be needed. However the second time was a charm, when I used my blogs information.

I've managed to edit 2 pages and add my 2 cents into the topics of favorite pie and movies. Kinda fun to play with colors and fonts stuff. Next thing I am going to try is to make up a new page. Hmm...I wonder what my topic is going to be. More after break. :)

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Wiki??? - Thing #16

So, I took a look at a few of the options for wikis. I have to say it looks both scary and fun. Is there such a thing? Scary, because if you have it open for everyone to change, then who knows what you will end up with. The fun part was the idea of using it as a learning tool.

I took a look at Princeton's Book Lovers Wiki because I thought it would be fun. Anything with the words book lovers in it, I'm going to want to check it out. I looked and was sadly disappointed. It looks like they put a few things in there and then forgot about the site, last entries a year ago. :(

The Stephens County wiki had a lot of neat info. on it. I never knew how much they changed the county systems around way back when. I liked this wiki 'cause I learned about something that had happened. This is something to shoot for if you do a wiki.

The Bull Run wiki had a lot of information. I liked the part of the "All Fairfax Reads" blog. It lets a person write a review as well as reserving a copy of the book. It just had a lot of good information (research sites, medical resource, etc...) spelled out plainly with the links that go to the information.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

My thoughts on "Library 2.0"

For SPL, Library 2.0 has given staff the opportunity to learn new tools, and to interact with each other more than normal - in both fun and frustration. Which can be read in the blogs that are tracking the/our work. 2.0 has allowed staff who would normally not attempt this to expand their horizons and it has given them some new toys/tools to play with.

Learning about Library 2.0 has been both fun and frustrating. It's been fun to dip my toes into the technological wonders that are available out on the web, finding out how things work and what they stand for. I had a lot of fun using the image generators. It's been frustrating because some of them are real big time-eaters. You can lose yourself trying to find answers, as well as finding more questions and more places to explore. But hey, that's life! What follows is my interpretation and comments on two of the given articles from the exercise.

Article #1: "To a temporary time and place" byDr. Wendy Schultz

Dr. Schultz puts forth her ideas upon the directions (past & future) of the rolls of libraries . Firstly, she defines the role of the library's current incarnation - that they are communities. Then she uses the "chain of meaning" chart to compare and contrast the placement of the library in relation to of all things the evolution of coffee offered to the public: coffee beans, Maxwell House coffee, coffee sold at Dunkin Donuts, and finally the Starbucks experience.

Now, if I am judging her statements correctly, the library and 2.0 is right around the Maxwell House level. Everybody is giving their opinion and that opinion is being changed willy-nilly by anyone who cares to. The next level that we are supposed to be shooting towards (3.0) is the one where people using the web utilize it to pick up the information from a reliably great source that will tell them exactly what book or information to get that they would like. And the final stage, is where people come to enjoy the full experience (storage, data retrievel, and solicited commentory) of the library. Something that sounds almost like Star Trek's holo-deck.

It read to me like the library is an ever evolving constant that will allow people to return to the beginning. That the library will be a place to disconnect from the ever-busy and all-connected world, almost like an old-fashioned club. But I see that the library is pretty much at the edge of that step. The library is an experience where people have the option to gather to pick up information, where they gather to connect with friends in person or on-line and where they gather to learn and think over new ideas. We're just waiting for the technology to catch up.


Article #2: "To more powerful ways to cooperate" by Chip Nilges

It will be a nice tool to have, the ability to see what is available on WorldCat. What I read sounded almost like a concentrated search roll that will allow people to see if that required item is available in the world. Would the searcher then need to go to their libraries to send for the required material? Or would the searcher be able to directly request the material be sent to them or be viewed online? That question is never touched upon in the article.

Acquiring the "user intelligence" as an added bonus makes me shiver in my boots. Because I immediately started to think of Wikipedia and how anyone can change information on its pages. Will this added user intelligence be kept separate from the original entry and just seen as someone's blog-notes about the information? Or something not as nice? We shall see.

testing, 1, 2, 3, testing

Let's go right to the source.

http://rathergraphic.blogspot.com/

Link didn't work

Well, it looks like I need to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to get that blasted link ready! Or maybe, I can just get the picture to appear here. Hmmm...decisions, decisions.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Technorati - popular blog...

Explore popular blog, searches and tags. Is anything interesting or surprising in your results?
Create a blog post about your discoveries on this site.

Well, my first question was "what makes a blog popular". I found the answer as soon as I clicked "Top Favored Blogs" tab. According to which popular blogs become listed as popular when "... measured by the number of people who have made them a Favorite.". And then you are given the option to start a favorites list.

Hmmm, I wonder if this means that first you would of had to have heard of Technorati to make a favorites list that they can then sift thru to see which blog was pinged the most. Or do they use other methods?

My next thought was what do they mean when they use the word authority, followed by numbers. Alas, no easy answers and I am not that curious about it.

I clicked around on the movies and news tabs to see what was on the lists. People link to a lot of new movies and some older ones. Not too mention some weird news articles. That's it for now, the day is over.

Technorati - thing 14

I started this exercise first by looking for the 3 things that I needed: blog posts, tags, and the blog directory. I couldn't see them on the homepage, so I just typed "learning 2.0" into the search box. From the resulting search I found the tabs for post, blogs, videos and photos. The first look gave me a bunch of information on learning, 2.0, and learning 2.0. So I decided an advance search would be the best option to find the exact phrase (hopefully the blog about knowing your customer won't show up in my results).

The advance search with the exact phrase option gave me more accurate search results in the postings. I had a little bit of fun going thru and reading from some of the postings given. I found a mention of a blog called "Rather Graphic", from a blog by SoulSoup 2.0, that was kind of fun. As noted by SoulSoup, "Rather Graphic" uses hand-drawn graphics and maps about various topics. Here's a link to that blog page of SoulSoup's (finger's fully crossed this works).

http://incsub.org/soulsoup/?p=963

I took a look at the blogs tab. There's a lot of links to blogs there, but not much in the way of quick summaries. So, I would just be guessing if I said that there was the same information or not.

And I just could not find any tabs in regards to tags. Except for what I found on people's blogs, under I am assuming the blog directory "listed as blogs", because I did not find any tags under the posts tabs. Then I went back to the posts tab and saw this following note attached to the tab "Search in tags only of blogs with some authority in English [change]". But that note was not there when I first searched, it had said "search in posts...". Very confusing.

If I needed to use blogs as a source of information, then I would definitely be interested in holding onto the technorati web address. However, I really don't follow blogs a lot. So I will probably not use this feature in the future, but thanks (to the SPL2.0) for pointing the way to it.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Thing # 13 - part 1

Already I know that I am going to have to re-visit this thing. I tried to listen to the 8 minute Del.icio.us tutorial, but I couldn't really make out anything that was being said, the sound was too jerky. So, I'll listen/watch this part at home.

I looked around the PLCMCL2 account. There's a lot of stuff there that is very informational. I can see the reasonings behing this application. Of course, there's the obvious of being able to access your favorites from any place, rather than just trying to re-create and forgetting some of your favorites. But I also think it works in anyone's favor of keeping track of research sites, if you are a student or professional.

There's a lot on this account that is very useful. In fact I'm going to send the following piece to my sister, she has 2 teen-age boys and 1 pre-teen, once I figure out how to do that.

"about Youth Tech- MySpace handouts save this
My space handout for parents
to MySpace ... saved by 17 other people ... on oct 16, 2006"

But that's something for another day, for now I'm just going to make a note of the site. I shall re-visit this Thing once I have had a chance to view the tutorial (from home).

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Thing #12 - part 2

Well, I figured out how to add my rollyo search roll to my links, it's under my "linking to others" section. Of course this was after I figured out that I needed to refine my searchroll(s), at least for my benefit.

As to future uses for the rollyo function, I can say that at this point in time I have no specific need for it. But I can see the functionality of the searchroll, if you are repeatedly needing to go to certain websites.

And with rollyo, these sites will be available to you wherever you are; so if you are working at one branch one day and another library branch another day you do not have to re-create your favorites list on internet explorer.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Thing #12: Your own search engine

Last one from last week. So, I started to read a little bit about rollyo and by little bit I mean whatever is on the home page, which is not very illuminating. After the fog lifted, and I had tried exploring others, I saw this button to take me to the about page. Score!!! A lot more explanation.

I'm still a little bit confused about the whole thing and I don't know how much I will use this feature, but I've decided to dive in and start my account. Okay, account made. I've made a search roll of authors I read, but I'm still confused.

I'll do more on another day. And hopefully figure it out.

Thing #11

Yay! I finally figured out how to put the link in and get it to stay there.
I started trying at the end of the day last Saturday before giving up and trying something else.

I had found Library Thing this last summer. And I added a few books and then forgot to go back to add the rest (I thought I would do it at home). After taking another look around at Library Thing, I think that I want to try their reviewing books option. I took a look at the list that they put up, I'm in full greed mode 'cause there are some books I would love to read.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

More fun with Thing #10


I tried this one last night. Then saved it to the desktop since we were at closing time. Here's the website for it, you'll need to copy and paste the URL:

http://www.glassgiant.com/chocolate_bar/

Thing #10

My Christmas Elf Name is
Get your Christmas Elf Name at JokesUnlimited.com

There's a lot of fun things to play with at the image generators. An addition to my above elf name, here's a link that would go hand-in-hand.

http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/xmas_cnt.htm

Friday, November 2, 2007

Being sick puts one behind on things - THING #9

Sally was right when she said that this is one of the hardest things we would have to do on this project. I remember taking a quick look at the whole thing during our catch up week 3.5 and thinking "Oh my god - help". Then I got sick. So, now I'm trying again.

I took a look at the provided link to bloglines search tool. And thought "that's it?". I don't want to have to think at this point. In the end, I liked the directory better, which allows you to take a look at a bunch of feeds that they have on hand, to pick and choose.

When I selected the feedster link, it took me to the homepage and gave me the message "We're sorry, the content service timed out while communicating with this site. Please notify support@feedster.com." But I persevered and in the search box I typed in "chocolate". I got a whole bunch of random searches which I started to skim through. I looked at the one that said something about lasik eye surgery center, thinking "what?" and I clicked. It turns out it was a page with links to the Spokane Journal of Business (Eye Lasik) and the South Florida Business Journal (Winn-Dixie stores recall...). But I did get the option to make a widget. Hmm, maybe next time.

The next option was topix net. First thought, ooohhh, I like this. The page comes up with Spokane news. And it looks like the searching might (fingers fully crossed) be easier, searching is by topic, city, state, or postal code.

Okay, after looking at Syndic8 (too busy screen with too much information, then lots of scrolling when you choose the option news), I took a look at the last option, technorati. Interesting, but with it constantly updating, I missed a news article that I wanted to check out which I had noticed as I was clicking on another link.

While this activity could be construed as a useful learning tool, and I might try to use topix net some other time. I think that if I want to add more feeds to my bloglines account, it'll be because I am perusing some information that regularly updats and I want to keep track of the site.

Fixing an oops

Thanks to PAGE2PEON, I found out that the previous URL didn't work. So below is the correct link.

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

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Ok, I did some pre-reading up on RSS' and newsreaders. At first this was very confusing (my eyes were crossing), but I persevered by reading and reading and (yep, you guessed it) reading some more. Finally, I had had enough and decided to bite the bullet and sign up at bloglines, figuring I would learn more by doing than by just reading.

This is definitely an exercise where too much information just hurts the brain. I got my account and signed up for a few of their options. After a few days of reading, I got rid of some of the options previously chosen and I think that I kept about 3 of the original choices (About Literature, The Shifted Librarian, USAToday.com/books). At this point, I read a little more online, and then read what was required for SPL's 2.0 and decided to wing it. So, I'm just checking out sites that I regularly visit to see if they have a rss feed.

Gah, too much!!!

Luckily, I don't mind surfing the web. And I'm being optimistic in hoping that I find some really cool pools of information (fingers fully crossed). So, I would have to say that I like this tool in that it keeps everything that I regularly like to look at in one spot, instead of going to different sites all day long, and that I can just check to see if they've put out any new information.

As to using this at work, I'm finding that the site would best be used by keeping you up todate on incoming news, gathered all in one place. But I haven't yet explored the blogs, clippings and playlists portion of bloglines, so I don't know how they would interface with the workplace. Maybe that's something to play with on another day.

For those who would like to see it, my bloglines url follows. Hopefully done correctly.
http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Favorite movie of mine



I found this movie a few years ago. I loved it! It took the question of "what if...?" and followed the premise of how the character's life changed and strangely stayed the same. In the movie, Helen is living with her boyfriend of 2 1/2 years, a writer named Gerry. The week-end after her birthday she wakes up late and goes to work like normal and gets fired. Then she's heading home again and misses the train.
At this point, the movie does a rewind to her running and catching the train home. Now, we watch the two life paths of Helen unfold. In one view, Helen misses the train and has to catch a cab. And as she's waiting for the cab, someone comes up to mug her, or rather attempts to mug her. And on the other path where she has caught the train, Helen talks to an exuberant stranger (James Hammerton(picture is of Helen and James on the train)) she had run into earlier, gets home early and finds her boyfriend in bed with his ex-girlfriend.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Girls World


Girls World
Originally uploaded by ladycheleus

Ooohhh this is a fun thing to play with. I've got to remember to tell my sister about it.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Thing #7 - Technology

I like to think of technology as both a tool and a toy. I've learned that makes it easier to learn about it and not be afraid to play around with it and make mistakes. 'Cause while I might have learned a few things, there's still lots out there. So, I guess that means lots more playtime, hmmm?

I like the convience of web technology. It lets me keep track of my favorite authors and what they are putting out. I'll even head over to the publishers website to see what books they have coming out this month.

I have my very own geek who tries to keep me technology oriented. So far, he has gotten me to play around (a little bit) with an IPAQ - I've a list of all my dvd's on the storage card, along with my sci-fi collection. Now, he wants me to figure out the mp3 player. And yes, I've added a few songs to it and listened. But I'm now thinking of seeing if I can add an audiobook to it. Even more reading time (hehee)!

My creation - discovering Montagr


My creation
Originally uploaded by ladycheleus

After looking through the selection of mashups, I finally decided to play with Montagr (I think that's what this is). It took me a bit of trial and error to figure out what mosaic imaging that I wanted. Then the hard part came - to find 13 photos out of the millions out on flickr. The words I used to find these beautiful pictures were: cats, bridal bouquet, bozarth mansion, "beauty and the beast", roses, Ireland, fairy, castle in the mist, australia, lightning and red rose.

I think that the next time I play with this flickr toy that I need to go into it with a theme in mind.

Fairy tale


Fairy tale
Originally uploaded by Sameli

I was looking for something, but I didn't know what kind of picture I wanted to talk about. I looked at cats and lightning, then I decided to look for something whimsical, and so I typed in "fairy tale" to the search line.

This picture spoke to me of a story waiting to be told. I don't know if the story will be scary or if it will turn into a gothic romance. But the picture of a castle hidden in the mists on the other side of a dark woods does lend itself to a fanciful tale.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Flickr

This is a test post from flickr, a fancy photo sharing thing.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Thoughts on the Internet "Tips'

Just read the tips on internet safety. To me they are all common sense reminders. If you see something "yucky" - report it; if you don't want god and everyone to know about it - keep it to yourself (they're called secrets for a reason); and if someone suggests something that you are not comfortable with - say no and report it.

Anyhoo, onto the next discovery. Till next time, have lotsa fun!

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

I have just finished watching the 7 1/2 habits clip. The habits expressed in the clip are invigorating reminders to keep your brain lively, to play and to grow. The challenge is to decide which is the easiest and which is the hardest habit that expresses my learning curve.

For me the easiest habit would be number 1. It's easy to make a goal, such as saying I would like to learn more about photography with my camera. That's a nice broad statement.

The hard part would be making the list of how much and what I want to learn about my camera and photography; making and taking the time to learn, instead of just winging it. In short, focusing in on habit number 2.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Big ol' NEWBIE alert. So, PLEASE bear with me as I try to figure this out. And then I'll see how much and what I want to post.

If you want to try a totally irreverant comic, that is totally as "un-p.c." as you can get. Then you should take a look at "Least I could do". I'll make it easy, here's the comic's site for the first day: http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20030210

And the drawings get better.