Pot Luck #55

Ok, so it's been a while. Hopefully, I can get to a few of these this year.

So, Facebook. I've been on it for while and it has its good moments and it has it's bad moments. I like being able to keep up my friends and family and to find people I've lost touch with. So commenting on stuff people post, the status bar and messaging back and forth are what I like to do.

I really never got into the whole "poking" phenomanon or keeping virtual pets or plants. It's just not me. I'd much rather have someone write me a more personal note than to just send me what equates to a form letter to a friend.

For kicks this time around, I added my librarything reads to my facebook account. The only thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't show the covers of the books, only the titles. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough into the application.

"Here It Goes Again" - the 24th thing

So, we took a little break, but "Here It Goes Again". The next chapter in the iHCPL online learning module. This time we're talking about sound or more specifically, music.

There are a lot of both free and pay music sites out there. I personally have really gotten into Amazon's mp3 downloads. And of course there is always iTunes as well as others. But what if you don't want to spend a lot of, or any, money?

If you're looking simply to listen to music, not to download onto an mp3 player, then I highly, HIGHLY recommend Radio Paradise. This is a free internet based radio station that offers a wonderfully eclectic range of music all woven together masterfully by the DJ, Bill Goldsmith.

If, on the other hand, you're looking to add stuff to your player, then I recommend the Complete Guide to Free Music Online, as I found on the Librarian in Black blog.

Well...It's 2008

Time for the annual thought...."In what ways will I improve my life, career, diet, or anything else that relates to me in the upcoming new year?"

The obvious ones:
diet,
exercise,
maybe seeing that financial planner we've always wanted to

The not so obvious:
keeping up better with blogging
advancing in my career (so many paths for this one)
learning how to use the new digital SLR we got for Christmas

In any case, now that iHCPL is over with, this blog will itself have to go through some changes. Not sure yet how it will do so yet, but we're only 2 days into the new year. I got some time.

Did You Know

Here's a little video I created with Animoto to Promote the Library

Cooking the Books

Who says print media is dead? I think you simply have to come up with innovative ways to make it more interesting.

Like this food company in Croatia who released their annual report in a book that has to be baked in the oven for 25 minutes before the text will appear. Genius!

Link to article on Boing Boing.

More thoughts...a bit of a breather.

Last week our automated system had a bit of a meltdown. We have all been busy trying to recover from that, but it was interesting to see how technology has really become vital to our daily activities.

Everything we do, from working to playing, is now so utterly dependent on computers and techology that the world seems lost when the technology is down. It's kind of sad when you think about it. I know it's a little crazy, but I'd love to have all the computers all over the world go down for one day. Unfortunately societies would crumble, lives would be lost...but maybe we'd actually start talking to each other in real life again; an art that is quickly becoming obsolete.

It's all coming becoming clear.

We're only into the forth week and the 23 things are becoming common in our library. I was discussing an idea for a mashup between Flickr and Google Maps with several librarians and they all followed the converstation and one even exclaimed with much glee "Hey, I actually understand what you are talking about!"

We all got a great laugh out of that but then came to realize that this whole initiative is really paying off. Many are realizing the ways that the techonolgies that we're learning can come into play with not only our personal lives but our professional ones as well.