Closest book meme

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water ...

A challenge from Eleanor - the closest book meme. Here's how it works:

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next seven sentences in your journal along with these instructions.

* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

I've had a look around my desk and the closest book to me is Good omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I've had this verified by two independent observers.

"I mean d'you know what eternity is? There's this big mountain, see, a mile high, at the end of the universe, and once every thousand years there's this little bird-"

"What little bird?" said Aziraphale suspiciously.

"This little bird I'm talking about. And every thousand years-"

"The same bird every thousand years?"

Crowley hesitated.

If you want to know what happens next, you'll have to read the book :)

Parting is such sweet sorrow

So. The end is nigh.

In the past, there have been mutterings about the length of my posts. How to summarize the entirety of this experience without drowning others in a sea of words - now there's a challenge. I think the Japanese do it best ...

Iceberg tip glistens

Calling me to jewelled depths

Whole worlds to explore

Thanks 23 things. It's been fun.

Talking books

I like talking books. I like listening to them in the car, during long journeys. To me, audiobooks mean road trips. Happy memories.

Books that I can download to my mp3 player to listen to in the car? No more changing CDs or - heaven help me - rewinding cassettes? This is a concept I'm willing to embrace!

Unfortunately the PLCMC NetLibrary link appears to have vanished, but I set up a NetLibrary account anyway. I browsed the list of e-audiobooks but only one was available for download, a catchy little number with the title The Morning After, a romantic suspense novel about a serial killer in Savannah. Not something I would have ordinarily been overly interested in but beggars can't be choosers. Sadly however The Morning After, despite saying it was available for download, was not available for download, so now we'll never know who did it, or indeed what, in fact, they did in the first place to have dunnit at all.

My first foray into e-audiobooks wasn't completely successful, but I think I'll be back. Next big trip, it'll be me and Savannah serial killers. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Sounds unlimited

It's a pity there isn't a YouTube equivalent for podcasts. One giant podcast site. There are so many out there, but they're spread far and wide, so it can be a bit tricky to find what you're looking for. Or maybe that's just me.

So I was really interested in trying out a few podcast directories, to see what's out there waiting for me to listen to it. Sadly two of the three suggested - Podcast.net and Yahoo Podcasts - no longer seem to exist, but Podcast Alley does so I had a hunt through there. There's a few to choose from. The site's statistics list 63,458 different podcasts comprised of 4,231,676 episodes, a small sample of what's available on the web but possibly enough to be going along with.

I played around with listing podcasts by genre and had a bit of fun exploring with that, and then I began the serious business of finding a podcast to blog about. I'm sure it will surprise no-one to learn that I found more than one.

Survivalphrases is a series of podcasts, which teaches a few basic phrases in a variety of languages; Spanish, Arabic, Swedish, Bulgarian, Italian, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese and French. Each specific language podcast has a number of episodes, which concentrate on useful phrases for specific situations, and they're simple and easy to follow. I listened to the Arabic "Thank you" episode and will now be able to thank library clients in faulty but sincere Arabic. Not that they'll be able to understand my accent. Now I need to master it in all the other languages available to me.

I really like these podcasts. I've often thought that everyone should know a few basic phrases in other languages. Hello, goodbye, please, thank you, you're welcome and I'm sorry will take you a long way.

YouTube MeTube UsTube

I love YouTube. Of all the Web 2.0 tools available to us, I think it's the most valuable. A microcosm of society and all we deem of value and interest. Late 20th century and early 21st century life, captured on camera, uploaded and available to anyone with an internet connection. An immeasurably important archive of huge significance that we take completely for granted.

Think about it. What's on YouTube? Old TV shows, yes. Nostalgic ads, music videos, blooper reels, funny videos about animals, strange Japanese quiz shows. We've all seen them, enjoyed them, laughed at them. But what else is on YouTube? Home movies, breaking news, video blogs, pieces to camera. Everyday people filming what they see, what they think and what they regard as important. And let's be honest, most of it is rubbish. It's ephemera - video junk mail, if you like. But, as librarians, we know the value of ephemera. Yesterday's pamphlets, bill posts and scribbled on scraps of paper are today's invaluable primary sources for social historians and anthropologists. YouTube is a primary source gold mine.

I'm supposed to post a video and blog about it. There's millions out there. Here's a couple.

I can't embed this, because it's a channel, but have a look at citizentube.

And here's a natural history documentary about that strange and elusive creature, the librarian.



Finally, an honourable mention for one of my favourite videos, the Death Star Canteen. Warning, strong language ahead :)

Centre of the universe

This week's challenge was to select any site from the list of Web 2.o Awards nominees, explore it and then blog about it. Sounds simple, but with 147 sites to choose from picking just one took a bit of deciding.

I was already familiar with many sites - VuFind, Facebook, flickr, del.icio.us, Bloglines - so I didn't bother with those. Others looked interesting, like Biblio.com (look for out of print books), Cocktail Builder (what cocktails can you make with the bar ingredients you have) and urbanspoon (look for restaurants in your area) but were a bit limited once I went into them and looked around. Still others I liked a lot, but were costing me money - thanks Threadless!

I finally settled on Galaxiki, a virtual galaxy with over a million stars, along with their planets, moons and other orbital objects. What I really liked about it is that the galaxy is created along scientific lines, and there were discussions around such things as what is the maximum percentage of oxygen you can have in the atmosphere before it is spontaneously ignited by lightning (apparently this depends on the gravity of each planet and the resulting atmospheric pressure, for those who are interested). Yes, I confess, I'm a bit of a science nerd.

Solar systems can be claimed and edited by community members, who can then name their system, create lifeforms, and describe their history. Members can participate as much, or as little, as they like. You can edit a system and leave it at that. Others create complex histories for their systems, and write stories based around them which they can post on a community blog. I kept things very simple and claimed a solar system for 23 things.

The star is, of course, named Eleanor, around whom we all rotate :) You can find out which planet is named after you, along with a description of it and how many moons you have, by clicking on the image. Celine's planet is named after her username. Apparently there's already a celestial body called Celine out there somewhere :)

Would this application be useful in libraries? Hmmmm. I think not, really. But another application on the list - .dotstock - would be. It's a really interesting site which lists over 3 million public documents and could potentially be very useful. It just wasn't quite as much fun.

Zo ho ho and away we go

This week, I've been exploring two web-based word processing applications, Zoho Writer and Google Docs. They're both not bad and allow you to create and save documents, format your text, spell check, insert tables and images, email your document, publish to a blog - in fact there's not a lot you can't do.

Zoho Writer has the most tools and looks and feels very similar to Microsoft Word, so it's an easy transition to make between the two. Unlike Word, Zoho Writer is freely available (no software buying required), doesn't require downloading, and isn't restricted to living on your PC. It lives on the web, so you can access your documents from anywhere. It would probably be wise to keep a backup of them on your PC, or to email a copy of them to yourself, just in case Zoho writer 'disappears' in the time honoured fashion of web based tools, but taht's standard practice.

Google Docs has less tools, and is more similar in looks and feel to older versions of Word, but it has the benefit of hanging off your Google account so it's very, very convenient.

I couldn't add anything to last week's favourites blog in the sandbox, so here one of my favourite poems, created and published using Zoho Writer. Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

The down side of Zoho Writer is that it appears to strip out all of my formatting in my blog post. True to my previous form of making sure my posts are as long as possible, I did originally post this with paragraphs. I've edited it numerous times to put the paragraphs back in, but they keep being stripped on posting. Don't know what is is about publishing using Zoho Writer that's causing this, as the paragraphs are in both the draft and the original pre-published document, but it's an interesting problem.

Wiki week

Hmmm. What to say about wikis?

I like the democratic aspect of them, the notion of collective knowledge, contributed and built on by many. People with particular interests contribute their expertise, and the quality of entries is determined by peer editing, so blatant errors and misinformation are (mostly) weeded out. It’s a nice idea. Yes, we all know of instances where people pre-eminent in their field have contributed detailed, thoughtful and lengthy entries, only to have them edited and overwritten the next day by an entry full of errors and outdated information, but that’s how democracies work. And by and large, I think wikis work well.

The down side of wikis is they are a collaborative effort, so they really need to have a number of contributors to work effectively. Despite the number of readers, if only one or two people ever contribute, are they still a wiki? Or are they just a bulletin board with a Hawaiian name?

They also need to be current to maintain relevance, and I think that this comes back to the number of contributors. Once you reach a “critical mass” of enthusiastic authors, they seem to gather momentum and take on a life of their own. But too few authors, and the posts get fewer and further apart, and they eventually run out of steam. I suppose it’s democracy again, people will vote for the ones they like.

The lesson for libraries is that wikis are a great tool for encouraging interaction with patrons and can work really well, but they need to be kept up to date and relevant by a group of enthusiastic people. An vibrant wiki community is a wonderful thing, but a sad and tired wiki makes your library appear, well ...sad and tired.

Library 2.0

I've been thinking about Library 2.0 - what it means to me and the best way to express it. Here's what I came up with. Sometimes simple is better

Trouble at Technorati?

I've been trying to explore Technorati, but I'm having a few problems.

I tried setting up an account: Oops, something went wrong. The account section isn't working properly at the moment. Please try back again later.

I tried searching by tags, then clicking on interesting looking blogs: Sorry, we can’t find that blog
We’re sorry…we don't have a blog by that name. But you suggested that blog to me, Technorati, I didn't make it up.

Ok, I'll look at the most popular blogs. The top 100.

Breaking News and Opinion on the Huffington Post
TechCrunch
Engadget
Boing Boing
Mashable!

Let's try Mashable - Sorry, we can’t find that blog. We’re sorry…we don't have a blog by that name. Hmmm. Boing Boing? Sorry, we can’t find that blog. We’re sorry…we don't have a blog by that name.

I thought, ok, site's having problems, I'll try again later. Then I noticed something a bit suspicious ... the top ten searches ...

1) taskbar 2) news 3) environment 4) jennifer garner 5) men 6) cheat-codes 7) google 8) paris hilton 9) jennifer aniston 10) vanessa minnillo

Strange things people search on, I thought, what could possibly be so interesting about taskbars? And then I realized - I've seen this list before. 23 Magic Moments mused about the same top ten a couple of weeks ago. ET's Other Blog wondered about the very same top ten back in October last year.

I think Technorati is a little bit broken. But on the plus side, maybe the world isn't quite as obsessed with Jennifer Garner as we thought it was.

Getting a taste for del.icio.us

First, a confession. After the fun of playing around last time, I dragged my heels a bit this week. The topics seemed a little like hard work. Now I don't mind a bit of hard work, but I like to see an outcome and I wasn't really sure how much value I'd get from this week. "Learn about tagging"- not really very enticing after last week's "Play around with!". Did I really want to learn about tagging? It's winter, I'm cold, and can't we play with pretty pictures some more?

But now the good news. I girded my loins, gritted my teeth, did other things beginning with g, and set up a del.icio.us account. And it was ok! I'm floating around here in a happy sea of tags - come on in, everyone else - the water's warm! :)

I wasn't sure initially what use del.icio.us would be to me - yes, I can tag sites, but isn't that what my favourites are for? Well yes, it is, but del.icio.us does it better. The initial setting up is a bit tedious, as with anything new. Add site, add tags, add site, add tags, add site, and so on and so forth. But once you've got a few tags in there, then del.icio.us really works. No more plowing through a list to find the website you want. Just go to your tags, click on the one you want and there are all the sites relevant to that tag - too easy!

But wait, there's more. As del.icio.us lives on the web, that's where all your tags are too. No longer do your favourites reside on your hard-drive, uncontactable out of business hours. They're out there in the world, and you can get in touch with them anytime you like, from anywhere you like.

So the lesson for me this week has been, give it a go. You never know what you might learn.

Coming soon

Movie poster for Ella's latest's blockbuster

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!

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

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.