Image is Everything: Thing 10

© 2008 Jonathan Feinberg


I love how the instructions for Thing #10 urge us to "be tasteful." But it's so harrrrrrrrrrrrd with image generating. So here' s me in a valiant attempt to remain tasteful while exploring the links one can find on The Generator Blog.

Generators I played with other than the one used above include:



Cheese Rating! Apparently my is "Neufchâtel."


My Chuck Norris Random Fact is "Chuck Norris sleeps with a night light. Not because Chuck Norris is afraid of the dark, but the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris "

And my pagan name is Callista Emerald Bard (which is funny because my last name is already actually "Pagan" so....yeah).

Feed Me! Thing 8

So for Thing #8, I subscribed to Bloglines. After going berserk and subscribing to about a zillion different feeds, I received a nasty awakening: I was NEVER going to read all this. I started frantically deleting them, like junk mail -- or really, like email newsletters that I never intended to read.

So I scaled it back to six feeds: NYT Book Review, Publisher's Weekly, the Shifted Librarian, Yarn Harlot, Word of the Day, library.net and Tulsa Weather (careful readers will notice that's actually seven feeds -- I added one while typing this).

My initial reaction? Great idea. But I'm not thrilled with the application. Bloglines was constantly logging me out, or shoving me into their Beta version which wasn't communicating with the previous version. To find the "1000 most popular" feeds button, I had to log out and log back in. Yuck.

I've had RSS feeds before and, much like my Martha Stewart Craft A Day email, most got deleted before I read them. But not all. We'll see what survives.

Oh, and in the spirit of Thing 8, I've added an RSS feed for this page. So click the thingy on the left if you want me to feed you.

Overacheiver

I told you I was the geek in the front row. Please note my Shelfari shelf on the left side of the page. Um, ah, do I get extra credit for this? (waves hand wildly from the front row)

One of the teens at the Broken Arrow branch showed Shefari to me. Now we can swap reading recommendations, even when I'm not subbing there. The obsessive-compulsive part of me loves adding books and shuffling them around. I do the same thing at home, but the online version annoys my husband less.

Oh, OK. If I don't get extra credit, I guess this is my blog for Thing #7. So here's my favorite quote about technology:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961

I try to keep that in mind when teaching the Really Basic Computer Class. And it reminds me of the first time I logged onto the Internet in college. The Microsoft butterfly, batting it's wings, looked so cool to me. How old does that make me? I also remember when web pages would just deadend. End of page -- no link out. Too funny.

Pictured: Not really me.

Picasa Day

So today is Picasa Day. My first impression is that it is a cross between National Geographic, Facebook college-student postings and Blair-Witch leftovers -- but most of it is of the National Geographic sort, like this, this and this.

I was very happy to find the Yup'ik tribal mask. That's the tribal area where I lived in the Southwestern Bush of Alaska.

I played Where in the World with a final (dismal) score of 617. But on the up side, apparently I know Texas -- even when the photo only shows tree tops and clouds. How odd is that? I must have spent a lot of my time in Texas looking to the skies, hopefull for an alien abduction. (And if you believe in that sort of thing, this was written about the neighborhood I lived in while in high school. And the author was spoofed in the episode of the X-Files which featured Alex Trebek).

7 1/2 Habits

As someone who will be starting a MLIS program soon, I can't see any of the 7 1/2 Habits as "difficult." I've always been a lifelong learner (only I think I have always described myself as The Geek in the Front Row of Class Waving My Hand Wildly In a Pick-Me-I-Know-The-Answer-Way). And I have been chomping at the bit to get my Master's for quite some time.

Oddly enough, the only time I thought it was "too late" and I was too old to go to grad school was a year or so after I had graduated from college (yes, I was ancient in my early 20s).

So if I had to choose a "most difficult" I would say it would have to be "Play," as going to grad school and working at the same time (and reading, and knitting) will more than likely leave little room for "Play."

I see all the other Habits as easy, but I guess I'm most excited about Teach/Mentor Others. As I've said before, I luuuuuuuve to teach people. It gives me endless joy to see the Oh-I-Get-It-Now-Look shine on someone's face.


Pictured: the hands of my teen Knit Wits

Confession of a blogger

So this isn't my first blog -- it's one of many. My most active being KnottyLady, my knitting blog that has morphed into my knitting-and-life blog. As a life-long writer, I find making metaphors of things suits me, and I'm able to find a connection to knitting with most things in my life.

I'm not a permanent library person (yet) but I did have the pleasure of having a long-term sub situation at Broken Arrow recently and was able to start a knitting and reading club for teens. I've always encouraged my knitting students to teach others to knit and so on. In that sense, it's easy to tie our connections visually, imagining them as a long scarf that goes on and on and on through generations, sort of like the blanket Aunt Tita makes in Like Water for Chocolate. It's a cliche', but it makes me happy.

I'm looking forward to learning new tech tricks with 23 Things and figuring out how to weave them into my library work.

First post

This is my first Con Ed course with the Library. And since I'm a sub, I'm not gettting "credit" for it, per say, but I am looking forward to learning a few new things!