Monday, November 30, 2009

Moved to Wordpress

Having had trouble with a personal blogger site (it was flagged as a spam blog by their alogarithms on or before 9th Nov and still - 30 November - hasn't been reinstated) I investigated WordPress. Again. I'd looked at WordPress when doing the Library 2.0 course but was well-ensconsed as a Blogger user but this recent problem has galvanised me into action. I found out how easy it is to export your Blogger posts and import them to WordPress so I gave it a try and now have a not very excitingly named Heidi's Test Blog over at WordPress and will be posting the rest of my Library 2.1 findings over there so you might like to redo your links, RSS feeds, etc.

Signing out of here

Heidi

Monday, November 16, 2009

Library 2.1 Week 4 - Evaluation


Google Alerts and Feedburner. I've done them for Readers in the Mist but am not sure why I have done so - my evaluation of this module will have to wait until there is something to report.


I don't think this was a very well explained module.

Library 2.1 Week 3 - Delicious

You can't make me use the Delicious thing! I'm feeling very naughty and defiant here but am going to skip this lesson (I can always revisit at a later date, can't I?). I did set up an account when doing Library 2.0 and put a whole load of sites on there which I then deleted them from my Favourites - and haven't used them since.

As with Twitter I can see they are potentially really useful, especially for RA or Reference work, but you'd need to get a large no. of staff on board so one person is not the only one doing all the work and our staff -especially the branch staff who are the ones who know best what customers want - just don't have the time.

Library 2.1 Week 2 - Twitter


I'm not keen to do the Twitter thing on a personal basis. I've got a blog and Facebook and feel that that's enough. In fact, I've not been in the Facebook thing for a while and posted anything for a while - I'm getting bored with it I think and can't think of anything interesting to say. And that's the trouble with Twitter as I see it, for individuals; who, except your nearest and dearest, wants to know all the ins and outs of your life - going for a cuppa now, phew got the vaccuming done at last . . . And so much time could be spent updating blogs, twitter, Facebook, etc. (especially on the really slow connection I have at home) that you don't spend time face to face with your nearest and dearest which is ALWAYS nicer.

However, I can see that for Libraries it is a very useful tool - a quick way of getting a message out and, with links back to the blog which may have more information, an idea to pursue . . .

Monday, November 2, 2009

Done it!

Things not going well this afternoon. I had kept a screen dump of my old template but didn't save it and I've lost it now.

This is my second attempt and my second choice for a template. I was going to use Blogy-Styleicious because, as well as liking the colour, it has several tabs; I'd really like to have more than one front page to my blog. But the tabs link to something else entirely and I don't know how to make them link to stuff created by me - can anyone help?

Anyway, this is nice for now.

Phew! Thought I'd lost it

I've decided I'm going to give the next SLNSW 2.1 thingy a go. I've read the first couple of posts about blogging but I've ground to a bit of a halt . . . for the moment.

I've been blogging for some time now and love it. I do most of the blogging for the Blue Mountains Library blog, Readers in the Mist, and really enjoy myself with it. I get most of my blog post subjects from other blogs I read via the Bloglines RSS feeder or from the LISNews emails I get via my inbox. There are a couple of regular contributors who send stuff to me to re-jig for the blog and I email other staff each month for What library staff are reading . . . chocolate bribes get me contributions for that one. There are one or two other authors but they don't post often. I wish others would do more, it would make it all the more interesting for our readers. And there have been over 10,000 since February 2008 when we started the blog. Really pleasing that.

I also blog privately with a blog for sharing stuff with family and friends overseas and here in Australia and one for one of the two book groups I belong to - again I have yet to convince the others to have a go contributing much to that one. Blogs are a great way to review meetings and keep each other informed about next meeting venue, reading lists, good booky websites and other blogs. My other book group uses Yahoo groups for this kind of thing - it works quite well too although is less visually appealing and links and photos within posts are not possible.

Today I thought I'd give the adventure bit a go and download a new template for my blog. I've followed the instructions but am not sure I'm doing it right - either that or our IT restrictions are stopping me. Anyway, I have taken enough time on this today and am resolved to give it another go at home.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Any reaction to Reactions

Do you see I have little Reactions buttons you can choose at the bottom of the post?

They are dead easy to do. Just log in and click on Layout then on Page Elements. Click on Edit in the Blog Posts page element bit and open the blog post configuration tool. If you then click in the box next to Reactions you can edit the list that's already there. Click on Save in the Blog Posts page element and then again Save the Layout and it's done.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Future Vision Montage

In this article from Microsoft there is a fascinating video of some future technology we could perhaps maybe one day be using . . . fascinating.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Tweeting and twittering


The comic strip, Unshelved, which is set in a library, is doing a series of cartoons about Twitter at the moment. It's all good fun.

Monday, March 2, 2009

We all need a superhero

This is a fun site where you can make yourself a superhero. Here's one I whipped up earlier:

It's all about a mild-mannered, cardigan-wearing, booky type who ends up in the wrong telephone booth one day . . .

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website

From Digital Inspiration here's an article on how to embed almost anything in your website.

Go on, have a ball!

And just clicking on a random link from the same page . . . recommended websites.

Just look at the BEAUTIFUL way this information is presented. Awesome.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Be Prepared!


Because I know this will affect so many of us in our line of work, I include here a link to the Oscars night speech generator - cut out hours of agonising over the right words and use this to cobble together something succinct yet meaningful.


Here's my speech for tonight - Best Supporting Lilbrarian

"Thank you so much. But really, it's just an honor to be nominated alongside so many other gallus actors. I want to thank my agent, who stuck with me after I was found jinking that Tattie scone. I'd like to also thank my champit family, and jings Barra boy. I better stop now before I say something eejit. Thank you, and hoots mon!! "

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Tales from the bedroom

Here is a little video of what happened in my bedroom last night (no need to get excited; it's clean).

Usually the cat is locked in the garage overnight and the dogs in the laundry. Somehow last night Abigail must have eluded capture and the Camp Commandant hadn't done a proper headcount. I ended up at 2am, with Abi on my chest reading Dear Fatty (Dawn French's book) with me. She must be enjoying it coz she was purring.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Now here's a movement I can go with


Uproar in the UK as Apostrophes abolished by council - Birmingham council has banned the use of apostrophes in street signs because its staff spend too much time dealing with complaints about grammar. (It seems being forced to spend extended periods indoors with a blizzard raging outside has been all too much!)

This is a move that has deeply upset John Richards, the founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society. Mr Richards suggested the move could prove to be the first step towards linguistic anarchy. "If you don't have apostrophes," he said, "is there any point in full stops, or semi-colons, or question marks? Is there any point in punctuation at all?" As a chronically confused user of apostrophes, I applaud the decision. And as for the rest of the punctuation, my granny managed just fine without punctuation in her letters - she wrote as she spoke, no room for a breath in, she seemed to be on intravenous oxygen. (It could take quite a while to get away as we waited for her to take a breath in so we could say, "got to go now Gran.") What do others think?

Do check out the comments at the bottom of the article and some of the related stories in the links to the right such as Council bans jargon and orders staff to return to 'common sense speaking' and Primary school drops word school from name as 'too negative'. Hooray for political correctness gone mad!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Our house - a peek inside

Every week the Zits comic strip features in our Sunday paper. The comic strip features an adolescent boy, Jeremy, and his parents. It is often spot on where our boys are concerned.

Here is the one from last Sunday which those of you who have met the boys, or who are parents of boys might be able to relate to:


To be able to read it properly you might be better clicking here.

For those of you unable to follow the link here's what it says.

Jeremy : I'm home.
Jeremy then empties the contents of the fridge into his mouth.
Jeremy : I'm going out again.
Dad : Along about the sixteenth year, the pitter-patter of little feet gives way to the ransacking of the refridgerator.
Mum : I'd better not find any chicken bones in the shrubbery again!