Spamalot

I'm a self-confessed Monty Python tragic and have just been to Melbourne to see Spamalot and loved it so I will see if I can embed a related video into my blog.
Here goes....

Videos, videos and more videos

When I started this module I thought 'Oh good, a nice short one...' Wrong!! There is so much to see on YouTube that I spent hours browsing one topic after another. (Just as well I was doing it at home.)
I found Google video to be a great way to search on a particular topic because the YouTube videos were always included in the list of hits. There were some great Lego videos and some great ones about our town as well. I briefly looked at Kogarah but then went local to see if there was anything there.
One thing I did discover was that there are some wonderful videos out there but there is an awful lot of rubbish as well. Sometimes it takes a while to sift the decent ones out -even with library related videos. There are so many possibilities for libraries to get their message out there but once again time is always a big factor in a smaller library. But who knows - one day we may even produce a 'speaking newsletter'!

RSS again - would you believe?

I know I wasn't all that wrapped in RSS. To me it was much the same as using bookmarks or favourites which I have to have time to remember to check regularly but by adding them to my blog which I am checking reasonably regularly - while I am participating in this course at least - I actually can see the point!
Our teen group is going to participate in the travelling pants project this year and an email arrived yesterday to say that info will be available on the Jean Genies Wiki. So I have added a feed to my blog which I will be wanting to check regularly.
I might even get around to practising a few Wiki skills as well......

Wikis - Wow!!

I thought I knew about wikis but this week I am certainly discovering how little I did know. Lots of possibilities there for a library I think. After week 2 and the discovery of blogs I thought my fledgling Teen group might be able to set up one but now I wonder whether a wiki would be the way to go. Perhaps both? There are so many new possibilities for us now.
I had a look at some of the recommended examples and was most impressed with the variety of uses for a wiki especially for a library.

The Book Lovers Wiki at the Princeton Public Library was a great example although I couldn't easily find my back to it from the library homepage. Perhaps we could have a reading group for any patrons who cannot come to the regular 'in-house' discussions but would still love to be a part of a group.
Maybe book-of-the month book reviews?

Local history and genealogy wikis would be ideal for a library. A great way for us to expand upon and utilise our small but popular local history collection.

I have 'fed' my blog - I think

Looks like it worked! The CousinConnect genealogy feed is there on my page. Still not sure how I did it. I've got the idea but the process is still a bit iffy.
I would like to have more time now to play around with this to explore the millions of possibilities it can open up. Time is always the big problem though so maybe on the weekend...

RSS again

I have had another go at the RSS thing and am now vaguely more conversant with what it is all about. I understand what it is and what it does but I am not too sure whether what I have done is correct. I now have my 5 feeds appearing near my favourites tab and listed as well as when I go into Bloglines. There seems to have been a bit of double handling somewhere!
The suggested feeds were the ones I chose - mainly because the whole process was a bit stressful and that was easier but today I managed to find a genealogy feed to add.
I do like the technology and can see how useful it would be to some people who need to spend a lot of time keeping up with the latest news in their field of work.
I don't think it will be a terribly useful tool for me at work, however, as I simply don't have the time to spend at my computer doing anything other than my work - which I am so far behind in that I will never catch up.

I found my photos..

My photos finally appeared on Flickr. So I must have done it correctly. It obviously takes a while for them to be loaded or something - it probably even says that somewhere. All part of the learning process I guess. It just takes patience!
Maybe I might even figure out Bloglines...

A bad case of Mondayitis???

Thought I would start first thing with my daily dose of Learning 2.0. Up to week 4 : RSS.
This one has got me stumped. I understood the video and the introductory stuff but the Discover section pulled me right up! I think I created a Bloglines account but then I hit a brick wall. It may have been in Chinese for all the sense I could make of the Bloglines page. I played around with the recommended feeds?? but have no idea what I did. I think I had better leave it and come back later - but I think this week's assignments will earn me a big fat 'F'.

Are they on Flickr?

I thought I had added some photos to Flickr - just a few from our very successful "Silly Moos" storytime. The cows jumping over the moon worked well.
I did get permission to use the photos of the couple of adults who may be recognised.
They weren't great shots. I am definitely a 'happy snapper' so there is never any great artistic merit in my photos but I did want to see if I could get them onto Flickr. It looked like it had worked but when I went back to check by searching for nswpln2008 they don't appear.
Oh well I tried.....

Adolorata Cemetery, Malta

Adolorata Cemetery, Malta
Originally uploaded by talors

Hopefully this will work. I have resorted to the Flickr blogging tool and will give this a try....
Another amazing photo from the cemetery in Malta. I really can't wait to get there. It will be wonderful to see all this beautiful architecture but there will be a sense of sadness there too for the great uncle we never knew who has lain here for over ninety years without any visits from his family.
As far as we know we will be the first of his relatives to have visited his grave but I have recently heard from a second cousin who is planning a trip to Malta the month after us. He also felt that it was time for some family to make the pigrimage to Uncle Jack's grave. So after ninety three years this beautiful place will be visited twice by members of our family.

So many pictures...

I could spend hours looking at the photos on Flickr. Trying to decide which one to post was difficult - there were just so many pictures I could relate to or just fabulous images I loved.

They got me dreaming about my big holiday later in the year so I settled on photos of Malta and found some great photos of the Adolorata Cemetery there. Two of my sisters and I are heading to Britain to visit my daughter ( the grandbunny's mother) and are stopping in Malta en route to find our great uncle's grave at that cemetery. He was wounded at Gallipoli and died and was buried in Malta in August 1915.

I did try to upload the actual photo but kept getting that horrible little red cross thing and no image. Don't know what I am doing wrong. So here is a link that should (hopefully) take you there.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10863952@N05/990163409/

I will have another go later to see if I can get an actual photo there.

reduce, reuse and recycle

A minor crisis today! It's Storytime tomorrow - the theme Silly moos (or just plain old cows if you like) and the craft activity wasn't ready. First problem was getting paper plates. There are lots of lovely plastic ones in the stores but not many plain old paper ones any more - especially in the small size.
Time ran out and we still needed something to help the cow jump over the moon. Then it struck me - apologies to the @ your library team but just what do you do with all those leftover bookmarks? That's right reduce their number by reusing and recycling them as turning mechanisms for our simple cow craft tomorrow. Worked well don't you think?