Week 7 - Social Networking

Anyone who does not understand why this is funny (and clever) is missing out on a great website and I'm not going to tell you which. Ha Ha!!!

Social networking. What can I say. I looked at Bebo and FaceBook, also My Space.

Of the three My Space was by far the best from a 'lurker' point of view. The viewer was allowed to move about in the site without having to register much more than either of the others.

My favourite bit was the find a friend stuff. Just register your heart's desire and up he/she popped complete with photo. (Yes, of course I did! And the only bloke who looked at all interesting wrote that he was gay!) You really can't win.

All that aside. I don't have any use for such sites but can see the value for families who are spread about the world. An easy way to show off the latest grandchild etc.

To sum up - Social Networking has it's place in the world but should not take the place of talking to real live breathing smelly feet and all people.

Inspirational thought for the week

"Jesus is coming!" look busy!!!

Week 6 - Tagging etc

An interesting concept, tagging. Around here more commonly associated with Vivid markers, spray cans or little square sticky things with electronics in them.

Once I realised "tagging" was just another name for "keyword" - as in keyword searching - the whole concept began to have personal uses to recommend it.

My enormous file of photocopied recipes for example. Instead of searching for ever for just where did I put Jo Seagar's Beer bread recipe I could simply tag it. "Bread" would do but Bread and Beer would bring it up at once. Of course I would either have to scan them in to a database or maybe, and this appeals more, allocate each a code number (call number).

The same thing applies to my CD collection although that needs more thought.

To my mind the real trick to tagging would be to remember the tags used.

And I never found the Beer Bread recipe either!

Thought for this lesson (although not quite true)

"I like learning stuff like that. It's precise, pleasing and quite without use" (Joe Bennett)

Week Five - Wired World of Wiki

OK. Wikis. What can I say. The three Library blogs we were asked to look at were interesting. One is now just an archive, another is staff only password protected for updates, and the third, Library Success, requires permission to add to the blog.

Blogs where anyone can add or delete stuff will always be unreliable as reference tools. Unfortunately many people using internet believe everything they read on the theory that if some clever person has put the info into a blog it must be true. I suspect these are the same people who 'win' the Spanish lottery and happy send away their bank details!

Of the three library blogs looked at Library Success was the best for me. I may well revisit this site in the future.

Just had a quick look at weeh 6 - looks good. Must go now as this is all happening on the Learn.net.

Sammy and Bungy

Sammy and Bungy
Originally uploaded by grizabella2008

Two of my favourite people. This photo uploaded to the blog thanks to the magic of Flickr. What a cool site. When I have finished my Desk duty (yes, they do make me work) I shall have a play with the editing stuff. Catch you later.

Much, much later.

I had a go at loading PicNic, several goes in fact, but the site was so slow I gave up in frustration. I'm sure there are faster and better photo editing sites out there in cyberspace.

Week Three continues!

I finally got back into LibraryThing - Here is the link : http://www.librarything.com/home/grizabella2008

Now, please excuse me, I must Flickr off.

Week Three continues -

Playtime week. Not really my thing, playing on computers but Some of this was fun. I liked the lolcat generator thing. The cat in the planter is (was) Sammy, a much loved family member for many years.
Other entertaining stuff-
The acronym generator, where you put in a word and it generates the full title.(Acronym)
Alphabet soup word
Automatic poetry - every bit as good as the real thing! Makes you wonder, really.
The best so far by miles would be - Blackadder quote.
I'm sure there are many more, I have only got to the Bs as you can see.

LibraryThing

This is more like it!
I used LibraryThing to make a short list of some of the many books I would like to read but haven't as yet got round to.
At this point I was going to add the link to my LibraryThing but LT has come over all coy and refuses to let me sign in.

Thought for the week (last week of school holidays)

"Hell is empty and all it's devils are here" (Will S.) of course

Week Three - Playtime

Lesson Two - The RSS Thing

One of my friends -

I have decided each post will start with an amusing picture and end with an inspirational thought.

RSS - OK. At the beginning RSS gave me GBH of the brain and OOS (that's RSI for you older SSRs) of the fingers (just love these TLAs).
Thinking of TLAs. The human brain will always try to make sense of nonsensical stuff, we attempt to make a word out of letters. Which is why RSS is just crying out to be pronounced as arsss.

However, back to RSS. Once I finally got my head around it this turned out to be easier and more fun than I had anticipated. The ability to send to email is handy indeed.

I don't see myself personally using the blog bit but RSS - YES.

Thought for the week: -

"When you're up to your RSS in alligators it's hard to remember your primary function is to drain the swamp" (with thanks to my nephew Justin)

Read in reverse order

I have just discovered these posts are newest first. To make any sense of the following start with the oldest post and read up. You graphic novel nuts should have no trouble with that concept.

ICL 1900 series

This is a photo from the internet of a 1905 model. Bigger and flasher and no doubt, faster than I used to know and love. The keyboard was used for the computer to send messages and request information not the other way round!

This is an ICT 1301 series computer developed early to mid sixties (it wasn't all swinging 'stuff')
The two white shirted gentlemen are playing with the then equivalent version of a keyboard.

My very first blog! Times have certainly changed since computers had valves and 80 column punch cards. Yes, I kid you not, valves! Mind you, to be fair, the second computer I worked with had transistors, punched paper tapes and enormous reels of magnetic tape. It also had the 'on board' computing power of $2 dollar shop calculator.