Task 12 del.icio.us

Please see the link in the sidebar for my del.icio.us bookmarks.

I wish someone would mush Bloglines and del.icio.us together. Playlists, tags, updated feed notifications, links. I know that technically playlists and tags serve the same purpose, but I have strong visual preferences and I'd prefer to have both options.

Task 10 Labels Everywhere

I've tagged my flickr photos, my librarything books, my posts to this blog, etc. The item I tagged for flickr won't show up for a few days pending review of my flickr account. (I have to remember to check back and be sure I did it correctly.)

For me I have to say that the most difficult things about all this tech stuff are remembering to do it, remembering which parts I've done, trying to focus when there are so many new things to investigate, and trying to see how to use it in the library. I can see personal uses easily enough but am less sure how it would prove useful in the library. I really liked that article about library-specific applications for flickr for that very reason.

Task 9

My creation
Originally uploaded by av71.

Here's a product of my exploration of flickr toys. The photo shows my mom & dad on their vacation in Cape Cod in 2005.

Back to Task 8

You can now see my photos at flickr.com. Just click on the sidebar link. The photos are from 2003 & 2005 mostly. If I get a chance to borrow the library's camera soon then I'll snap a few more shots.

Task 11

See the sidebar for my librarything link. It amazes me how much talk people have in them that they can spend all that time online typing about books. I'm obviously more of a reader than a writer because that just wouldn't suit me; it feels like English class all over again.

I've listed some of my favorite cookbooks and the few fiction books I've read lately. I haven't tried to go back too far in time because I just don't remember titles very well. I own some of the titles I listed, but I've borrowed the others from our library.

Panda Sneezing

Back to the Remaining Half of Task 5 & Task 6

OK, I tried to listen to one of the French lessons by podcast. Unfortunately, dial-up is such a slow connection that if I try to download the podcast in mp3 format, the pop-up download info says it will take an hour. If I try to listen to it from the Internet without downloading, then the speaker's voice is interrupted every few seconds while the computer is "fetching" more information from the server ("buffering"). ANNOYING! So much for that idea for now. I did listen long enough to know that I can do it, but that's all I could stand.

I had a similar problem with task 6. I can't watch a video without pauses interrupting continuously. On my break at work, the pictures streamed in, but without speakers and headphones, there was no sound. Another problem: I find a lot of the videos on YouTube crude and offensive (even just the titles), so I'll put the panda one on my blog too despite the lack of originality. At least it will be good practice.

Conclusion: Technology is not for the poor.

Skipped Ahead to Task 7

Creating the avatar was fun & easy. I could spend way too much time on something that's not exactly crucial!

Half Finished Task 5

I found the feeds for some podcasts and added them to Bloglines so that they show up in the sidebar on my blog. All three of the ones I chose were French lessons. I'd like to learn the basics of French pronunciation and a simple vocabulary so I can understand phrases I come across in my reading. However, I haven't listened to any of the podcasts yet via Windows Media; that will be the real test!!!

I didn't know that podcasts were available to people without iPods. That's pretty nifty.