Rollyo gives you the ability to make your own customised search engine, which only searches specific websites chosen by you. I can see that this could be very useful - you can narrow your search down to a handful of websites, and then search them all at once. Quite handy, especially if you are searching across particular sites on a regular basis.
I created a searchroll called Spend money on books, a topic close to my heart :)
It works well, and searches across 8 bookseller websites. The main problem I have is that it searches a little too well - a search for a favourite author retrieved 1930 hits, and they don't seem to be listed in order of relevance. Rather, they appear to be listed mostly in order of the websites searched, so all the results for the first site are displayed, followed by all the results for the second site, and so on. I say mostly because the odd result from a later site popped up occasionally, just to keep things interesting. This would be ok, except that the first site it searched was Amazon.com, so there were pages of results linking to various customer reviews and peoples' wish lists, when I was actually interested in books for sale written by that author. Hmmm.
Change the order of the websites to be searched, to put favourites at the top so they're searched first? Did that - Amazon was listed third, but was displayed first. Change the display order of results, to list them in order of relevance? Doesn't appear to be possible (at least to my amateur eye).
So, ok, Rollyo has it's limitations. But for all that, it's a very handy tool and well worth knowing about.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
LibraryThing
I liked LibraryThing - it's simple, straightforward and easy to use. I had a lot of fun playing around in it, adding books, changing covers and reading other users reviews of books I loved. Some of the reviewers were genuises, but other obviously had no literary taste at all! You can find my library of highly recommended gems (i.e. books I scooped up from the pile next to the bed) here :)
Although I really liked LibraryThing, I'm not sure that I'd use it at home. We own quite literally a couple of thousand books, and they are piled up everywhere - on top of overflowing bookcases, on tables, next to beds, on footrests, on the roof of a dolls house - if the dogs stayed still for long enough, they'd be covered in books too. And more are coming in all the time - damn you, Book Depository! Adding all of those to my library would be a bit of a task, and, to be honest, I'm not sure why I would want to, other than to share them with others. Knowing what I own isn't my problem, it's trying to find the book I know that I have and want to read that causes me the greatest difficulty. Sadly, I don't think LibraryThing can help me with that.
I can see RFID tags and a little hand scanner coming to my house soon :) But I might add a few more books to LibraryThing, just in case.
Although I really liked LibraryThing, I'm not sure that I'd use it at home. We own quite literally a couple of thousand books, and they are piled up everywhere - on top of overflowing bookcases, on tables, next to beds, on footrests, on the roof of a dolls house - if the dogs stayed still for long enough, they'd be covered in books too. And more are coming in all the time - damn you, Book Depository! Adding all of those to my library would be a bit of a task, and, to be honest, I'm not sure why I would want to, other than to share them with others. Knowing what I own isn't my problem, it's trying to find the book I know that I have and want to read that causes me the greatest difficulty. Sadly, I don't think LibraryThing can help me with that.
I can see RFID tags and a little hand scanner coming to my house soon :) But I might add a few more books to LibraryThing, just in case.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Playing with pictures
Had lots of fun this week, playing with image generators. So many to choose from, so I ran them through their paces to see how they worked.
I played with quite a few, and was very taken with Miracle Maker, where you can put a miraculaous image onto a pancake, and Hockneyizer, which creates a polaroid collage from a single photo, but found that they really only work if you have the right photo. I didn't - at least not at work - but might come back and play again later.
My favourites, though, were Magazine and Poster, and I had endless fun with these. I also made myself a backstage pass with Badge Maker, but that's for my eyes only :) Well, my eyes and the eyes of the poor, hapless security guards who'll be helplessly taken in by its uncanny likeness to the real thing. They'll be putty in my hands!
Monday, May 11, 2009
Feeding frenzy
Week 3. Hmmmm, the hill was a little steeper this week. I'm a bit out of breath!
Opening a Bloglines account was easy, adding feeds was relatively simple but finding ten or more sites I wanted to subscribe to - now that was pretty hard. There are a couple of sites I follow, but not that many and none of them religiously, so hunting down other sites of interest to make up the numbers took a bit of time. I had to explore so many book sites, not to mention gardening, and architecture, and art, and maybe one or two others. Anything to oblige, however :)
I can see the usefulness of bringing all my feeds into one place, so I can monitor a whole lot of sites at once rather than jumping here, there and everywhere to check and see if something may have been updated. Makes everything a lot easier to manage. Having said that, for someone like me, who only looked at a couple of sites, jumping in and out and exploring was half the fun.
Now I have 15 sites to follow, my jumping days are behind me.
As an aside, I confess I'm starting to get a little worried about the number of accounts I'm opening as part of 23 things, with all their associated usernames, passwords and secret handshakes. So far I'm managing to juggle them but it's only a matter of time before they all come crashing down on my head and knock me out. And we all know what that means ..... two words, Incident Report. Can't be pretty :)
You can see my blogroll at Tamehandfeeding
Opening a Bloglines account was easy, adding feeds was relatively simple but finding ten or more sites I wanted to subscribe to - now that was pretty hard. There are a couple of sites I follow, but not that many and none of them religiously, so hunting down other sites of interest to make up the numbers took a bit of time. I had to explore so many book sites, not to mention gardening, and architecture, and art, and maybe one or two others. Anything to oblige, however :)
I can see the usefulness of bringing all my feeds into one place, so I can monitor a whole lot of sites at once rather than jumping here, there and everywhere to check and see if something may have been updated. Makes everything a lot easier to manage. Having said that, for someone like me, who only looked at a couple of sites, jumping in and out and exploring was half the fun.
Now I have 15 sites to follow, my jumping days are behind me.
As an aside, I confess I'm starting to get a little worried about the number of accounts I'm opening as part of 23 things, with all their associated usernames, passwords and secret handshakes. So far I'm managing to juggle them but it's only a matter of time before they all come crashing down on my head and knock me out. And we all know what that means ..... two words, Incident Report. Can't be pretty :)
You can see my blogroll at Tamehandfeeding
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Brave new world
Technology. A scary word where I come from. New technology. Really scary.
It's a good thing I like being a little bit scared sometimes :)
Once upon a time not all that very long ago, within the living memory of people who like to think they're still quite young, we lived in a world of cutting edge technology. We had transistor radios that you could carry around with you in your bag, and listen to 5KA (on the AM band) anywhere you wanted to. No 8-track tapes for us, we had superior cassettes, and portable cassette players. Everyone knew someone who had a colour television, so we could all visit when there was something exciting on that we wanted to see. When we wanted to write to someone, we could send them an airmail letter, and it would reach them in no time at all. And when we wanted to find something out, we could go to the Library and look it up in books and encyclopedias, and in vertical files. All the information we needed, neatly clipped and contained in a handy manila folder!
Computers did exist, but they were spoken about in hushed tones.
I look at my life now and the technology I take for granted, and it takes my breath away. PCs, digital cameras, video cameras, mp3 players, email, mobile phones, the web - all so ordinary and every day. Commonplace stuff. Now we have little tiny devices we can stick in our back pockets that do all of these things at once. You can take photos, shoot videos, make phone calls, text friends, send an email, listen to music, download TV shows and browse the wonders of the web from something you can hold in your hand. Extraordinary. Wonderful. Scary.
It's a great time to be alive. Especially if you like to be a little bit scared sometimes.
It's a good thing I like being a little bit scared sometimes :)
Once upon a time not all that very long ago, within the living memory of people who like to think they're still quite young, we lived in a world of cutting edge technology. We had transistor radios that you could carry around with you in your bag, and listen to 5KA (on the AM band) anywhere you wanted to. No 8-track tapes for us, we had superior cassettes, and portable cassette players. Everyone knew someone who had a colour television, so we could all visit when there was something exciting on that we wanted to see. When we wanted to write to someone, we could send them an airmail letter, and it would reach them in no time at all. And when we wanted to find something out, we could go to the Library and look it up in books and encyclopedias, and in vertical files. All the information we needed, neatly clipped and contained in a handy manila folder!
Computers did exist, but they were spoken about in hushed tones.
I look at my life now and the technology I take for granted, and it takes my breath away. PCs, digital cameras, video cameras, mp3 players, email, mobile phones, the web - all so ordinary and every day. Commonplace stuff. Now we have little tiny devices we can stick in our back pockets that do all of these things at once. You can take photos, shoot videos, make phone calls, text friends, send an email, listen to music, download TV shows and browse the wonders of the web from something you can hold in your hand. Extraordinary. Wonderful. Scary.
It's a great time to be alive. Especially if you like to be a little bit scared sometimes.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Warholizing
So many toys on flickr...
I had a lot of fun playing with Warholizer, and turned my dog Molly into a pop art icon. The hardest part was finding the right photo. Finally all those shots of her sticking her nose into the camera have come into their own!
I was sorely tempted by Motivator, which let's you create your own motivational posters, and Badge Maker, where you can make fake IDs (backstage pass, anyone?). Maybe I'll come back to them later.
http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/
I had a lot of fun playing with Warholizer, and turned my dog Molly into a pop art icon. The hardest part was finding the right photo. Finally all those shots of her sticking her nose into the camera have come into their own!
I was sorely tempted by Motivator, which let's you create your own motivational posters, and Badge Maker, where you can make fake IDs (backstage pass, anyone?). Maybe I'll come back to them later.
http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/
Flicking through flickr
Ok, so flickr is fun
So many photos - how to choose just one to post about? I started broadly, looking a very general tags, then thought I'd see if anyone had posted photos of Mawson Lakes. And there they were, happy students (well they were smiling in the photos) posing in the Library - relaxing in the sling chairs, leaning against the stacks, posing in the lounge area. From photos of the wilds of Iceland to the happy plant on Level 2 with one click.
After this I decided to get really local, and searched for photos taken in my postcode area. I love this one, the worn wood, the quietly rusting plate, the colour of the sea and sky. And all in my own backyard.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Away we go
And we're off!
I strongly suspect I may have used up my entire 23 hours setting this up, so this may be my only post. Which template, which font, hate that, I need an image in here - no, disastrous! - quick, choose another one, and so on and so on. Happy days.
This reinforced what I had already suspected, that the lifelong learning habit I find easiest to practice is play. Jump in, fiddle around, make a mess, have a laugh and learn as you go. It's always a lot easier to learn when you're enjoying yourself.
Which leads me to the habit I find the hardest to practice. After a bit of thought I must confess it's accept responsibility for your own learning. Seems a bit at odds with the one I find easiest really - if I'm happy to play and experiment, why do I find accepting responsibility for my own learning difficult? My main problem is getting around to things. There's a lot of things I'd love to learn but I always seem to have an excuse for why I haven't quite gotten around to them yet. Too busy, not enough time, just have to do this other thing first ... Hmmm, something to think about.
I strongly suspect I may have used up my entire 23 hours setting this up, so this may be my only post. Which template, which font, hate that, I need an image in here - no, disastrous! - quick, choose another one, and so on and so on. Happy days.
This reinforced what I had already suspected, that the lifelong learning habit I find easiest to practice is play. Jump in, fiddle around, make a mess, have a laugh and learn as you go. It's always a lot easier to learn when you're enjoying yourself.
Which leads me to the habit I find the hardest to practice. After a bit of thought I must confess it's accept responsibility for your own learning. Seems a bit at odds with the one I find easiest really - if I'm happy to play and experiment, why do I find accepting responsibility for my own learning difficult? My main problem is getting around to things. There's a lot of things I'd love to learn but I always seem to have an excuse for why I haven't quite gotten around to them yet. Too busy, not enough time, just have to do this other thing first ... Hmmm, something to think about.
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