Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Trading card--finally!

Ha! There's more than one way to skin a cat! I went to Flickr and saved the card on my USB drive, then uploaded it here.

Trading cards

Still playing. Now here's my first trading card.

. . .

Oh, well, it's supposed to be my trading card. Somehow I now have two copies of this on Flickr and just a blank here. I'll keep trying.


My first trading card

I'm still having a great time playing. Here's my trading card.

. . .

Well, it's supposed to be a trading card. Back to the drawing board!

So much is happening in the online world

I've spent the last few days having a great time playing. I've cataloged some books on LibraryThing (a very slow process with a dial-up connection), uploaded pictures to my blog and to Flickr (where I also joined a group and organized some of my photos into sets), created a chiclet for LibraryThing on my blog, and a widget for it as well. Of course, when I was in library school, I cataloged some of my books for practice, and I do cataloging and classification at school all the time (and filing--tons of filing!). The problem with cataloging my books at home is that I have to drag them to the computer in order to do it. Plus, we have all these boxes of books in the attic that wouldn't fit into the new (17 years old) house when we moved into it. I don't think this would be too useful for cataloging at school--at least, no more useful than what I currently do, which is searching LC for their numbers and subject headings. And for fiction, you don't even need to find a number, so it would actually take more time to use LibraryThing to catalog them.

However, I found it interesting that you can converse with others on various literate (and not so) subjects, as well as seeing who else has the books you have. Sometimes you feel you want to discuss a book and have no one to talk to about it. I plan to do more exploring on LibraryThing.

Web 2.0 is all about the social aspect of the Internet--and it is very social. But did you ever notice that whenever you visit a site, you set up an account that is your own private account? Everyone in your family may have his or her own private account (yes, I know there are people who have joint email accounts, and most families will share something like Flickr--but still . . .). So we're all in our private accounts, interacting with people we don't really know and probably will never see--instead of interacting with the people around us. And it is all-encompassing, this Web 2.0 journey. It draws you in deeper and deeper as you search out ever more pictures, groups, blogs, and conversations. And of course, you have to check your RSS feeds. Yikes! How many did I sign up for? I must have been crazed.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Still teaching myself about photos and blogs


I have noticed that other bloggers have pictures right in their text, not just alongside. When I mentioned it at work today, two colleagues said, "Oh, yes, we've done that!" And they told me to go back and look to see how to do it. So at work, I didn't see it (although I did change the looks of my blog; much nicer now, I think). When I got home and looked at it again, the "aha!" light went on in my brain. So here's a better picture of college son, although he is still somewhat disguised with sunglasses. I think this was at a lacrosse game this spring. He's all settled in his house at college now, with his new bed and all the stuff he brought from home.

Still working on the photos and Flickr

Last night, filled with energy from an extended session with 23 Things in the morning, I decided to try to get pictures onto my blog. There they are! I know the one of my son is blurry--but he liked that smeary quality. (We do have better pictures of him.)

Son and husband are off to Pittsburgh with a vanload of furniture and various things son needs for the house he is renting with three friends (Pity the poor landlord! Four college boys sharing a house?), so I will have time to myself tonight to get some pictures onto Flickr. It did take a while to upload them to my blog, but not as long as I had been led to believe.

Friday, August 17, 2007

23 Things, Number 12

So now I've done Rollyo. This is a fun sort of thing, but I don't think it's something I would use a great deal. I put my Rollyo here, but it's very short. I think bookmarks would do it for me. I do see that it ties into the social aspect of the Internet, but I really rely on real people and face-to-face interaction for my social life. Yes, it's great to find like-minded people, but you can't spend your whole life on line.

I put the word game Boggler on my Rollyo because how can you resist a word game that uses "concatenating" in its instructions?

Looking forward to more Things and exploring more of the old Things!

Avatars!

So how come Yahoo avatars don't have gray hair? Mine can't really look like me with that dark brown hair. But I did manage to put it on the blog. It was truly amazing to see how many different outfits and backgrounds you can choose from--so why couldn't I have gray hair?

23 Things, Week 4

Well, no pictures yet--although I did take some. I just haven't uploaded them. My son, the complete tech ignoramus, says it takes a long time to upload pictures with our antiquated dial-in Internet connection at home. I have looked at the photos on our computer. This weekend, I promise, I'm going to do something with them.

Flash: Yesterday my husband and I bought a new digital camera. He's a Pentax man from way back, so, of course, a Pentax is what we've bought. We're both looking forward to playing with it. My first pictures will be of the cookbook I made for my son, who is returning to college tomorrow. He has rented a house with some friends and asked us to teach him how to cook. Well, that was in May. I think he's cooked two or three things this summer. But I organized a cookbook for him anyway. A friend gave me the blank book, so I want to have pictures so I can show her how it turned out. (I can't show her because I just finished it this morning, and tomorrow it's leaving home with its new owner. Talk about last minuting!)

RSS feeds! I've known about them, but haven't seen any need to have one. Now I needed to subscribe for 23 Things, so I visited Bloglines and subscribed to several things that look interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing something good in my e-mail now.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Flickr

So now I've gone onto Flickr and created an account. Problem? No pictures to add! I've always used a film camera. I love it because it needs no batteries and I've never taken a bad picture with it. I saw no need for a new camera. However, my husband really likes photography, so several years ago I gave him a Nikon digital camera; he hasn't used in it quite a while. Reason? The same kinds of problems that always come with early adoption of technology: the batteries wear out quickly; there's no viewfinder and you can't see what you're taking a picture of when you're outside because of the glare; we didn't have a printer that could print out good pictures and it was too expensive to buy a new one at that time (son in pricy private school); older computer made uploading photos take a long time.

So now I'm really going to learn how to do this. We got batteries for the camera. This morning I went out and took a couple of pictures of my garden--at least, I hope it's my garden. It is nearly impossible to see what you're pointing the camera at when the sun is shining. Tonight I want to get them off the camera and onto Flickr. Wish me luck.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Maryland 23 Things

It must be just that I'm old, but the quotation by Confucius was so hackneyed. The pictures were great, though. The 7 1/2 things are sort of self-evident, but sometimes it's good to see things written down so you can be reminded.

I could not get headphones to work on any computer, so I had to read the slide show--which makes for a bit of dead time, since reading is faster than speaking.