27 Things Roundup

I enjoyed doing the 27 Things. I learned:

1. about SPL staff and that we have similarities and share similar experiences
2. that a blog is a user-friendly website
3. that there was a lot I didn't know, a lot that I knew, and a lot to still learn
4. that I still have questions about image-usage rights
5. that I can play a tennis tournament with a blog widget

And I'm done! Yeah!

Home Buying through SPL/Twitter

I found money.gov looking for money saving advice on the Sacramento Public website. Once there, I clicked on Home Ownership Resources, and ended up finding nine steps to buying a home. A facet of Step 1 was figuring out "How much home can you afford?" I did the form, quickly and haphazardly, and it indicated that I could afford a $180,000 home if I were married with two dependents.

My take on Twitter is summed up by the graphic on Harsimar's blog, http://elkgrovebranch.blogspot.com/

Thingfo and Mango

Thingfo

They're in the process of creating a new version, and I was not allowed to create a new account. I read its description, and for me it would be overkill.

Mango

Here at NHI there are a lot of Ukrainian and Russian patrons, so I learned some Russian. Mango is great for working on pronunciation; it is easy to listen to phrases repeatedly, and practice saying them. I feel like my pronunciation of "Hello. How are you?" is solid, and it's about time to practice with a community member.

Podcasts and I Robot

My instructor for LIS 451 Intro to Network Systems gave us podcast lectures in addition to the live lectures and labs. They served their purpose of filling us in on stuff that he didn't squeeze into the classes, and they were more fun than a handout.

I saw a Bollywood movie last night called Kambakkht Ishq (tame despite being produced by "Eros Entertainment"), so I looked for a podcast having to do with Bollywood and found one called Pod India : Bollywood - Indian News - Desi Celebrities - Hindi Cinema.

Speaking of cinema, I downloaded the e-audiobook, I Robot. (My first audiobook experience was listening to Grapes of Wrath on cassettes, a book that I didn't get through in physical form.) It started out with the president of US Robotics stepping down after 50 years. She was being interviewed by a reporter from the Intergalactic Press, and it was hard to differentiate her voice from the male voice she was interacting with! So I'm not listening to the rest of it, and I might look up the narrator of the Grapes of Wrath tapes, beacause he was great, and I still find myself quoting him/Steinbeck.

You Tube

This video takes place in a public library in Japan where comedians pull pranks on each other while attempting to stay quiet.

Music

There was a concert here a few nights ago in the meeting room featuring Aaron Curioca and his new band, Aaron 51 Project, as well as local musician Paul Laughlin. Aaron 51 Project led off with rock/metal, and then Paul sang and played acoustic with Aaron accompanying him.

When Aaron introduced Paul, he mentioned that Paul was in a band called Colma. The Web 2.0 award-winning site Last "...recommends music, video, and concerts based on what you listen to." So I typed in "Colma," which brought up some of their videos. The most similar band was Buckethead, listed as having "SUPER SIMILARITY to Colma" (opposed to medium similarity, or lower similarity).

Zoho

I thought that Zoho Writer was a Google-less alternate to Google Docs, but if you want to work offline with Zoho you have to install the Google Gears plug-in...more evidence that Google is planning to take over the world.

(This post was published to my blog through Zoho, and then I was able to edit it, adding this, with Blogger's composer.)

Wikis

I played in the wiki sandbox, and my topic was a group of raccoons that was padding around in the bushes by my apartment. Speaking of animals, a small dog visited the library alone today, and found his way into the staff area, unnoticed by those working within it. When the security guard walked in, he said, all calm and collected, "There's a dog in here."

Icebergs

Rick Anderson's article "Away from the icebergs" is written from his perspective as a director of resource acquisition at an academic library.

One of the three "icebergs" (traditional library aspects he thinks should be reconsidered) is the "just in case" collection (print collection), and he cites a 55-percent drop in circulation of the print collection at his library. I noticed a similar circulation trend when I returned to the University of Illinois for library school after a nine-year absence, but his statistic does not apply to public libraries.

Another iceberg mentioned is the "'come to us' model of library service.'" At Illinois last year, the students did most of their research in front of their laptops in dorms and apartments, and on-campus libraries that were teeming with students previously were nearly empty. It hurt the campus' atmosphere, and made for less walking and in-person interaction with other students and librarians.

Technorati

The first couple times I tried to get on Technorati, it was ironically down! I eventually got in, and claimed my blog, and favorited another librarian's blog, and added some tags to that librarian's blog. The "State of the Blogosphere" statistics on the Technorati site were interesting: 66% of global bloggers are male, and people who are 50+ represent 21% of the US bloggers, according to Technorati.

Delicious

My main general search tool has always been Yahoo...Delicious was a fun alternative. Looking at popular bookmarks, I found one on digital music trends, and it mentioned sites where you can mix popular music recordings, and add tracks. I've used the freely available recording/mixing program Audacity, which is good for personal leisurely recording, but editing a U2 song would be enjoyable, too.

When I looked at the recent bookmarks, I found Heroes Wiki. My sister loves the show, and has encouraged me to watch it, but I haven't. I clicked on "new user portal." Here's a quote from the first episode:

"Where does it come from—this quest, this need to solve life's mysteries when the simplest of questions can never be answered? Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream? Perhaps we'd be better off not looking at all. Not delving, not yearning. But that's not human nature. Not the human heart. That is not why we are here."

I'm interested in seeing the show now.

Searches

I searched for my Blogger handle using Yahoo and Google. Here's what came up:

Yahoo

Google

Rollyo and Library Thing

I'm in the middle of making a 27 things comeback, after some time off that ended yesterday.

Rollyo was fun. I made a tennis search that searched a few different sports sites for information on Marcos Baghdatis, an animated pro tennis player from Cyprus. Speaking of tennis, I have an old LibraryThing account called Grosjean (named after the player Sebastian Grosjean) that I started a couple years ago:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Grosjean

When I was in library school, I cataloged the books I had to read for a young adult lit class, and it was neat to see all the members on LibraryThing who had the same books; they must have taken the same class.

Wordle

I threw my last blog post into Wordle, and it came out like this:



Putting the code from the Wordle site directly into the Blogger composer and having the image pop up was pretty cool. (I tried clicking "Edit Html" at first, and copying the code into there, but it didn't like that.)

Technology

On Gizmodo.com I read that a recent survey showed that 90% of 15-year-olds have cell phones. Wow.

I went from going away to college in the midwest in 1995 where my friends didn't have cell phones, to living in Mexico in 1999 where cell phones were a status symbol and were owned by the upper-class, to living in Japan in 2001 where everybody had a cell phone and texting was the chief means of communication amongst the younger set and quite popular amongst older people, as well, to going back to the same old college in 2007 to find everybody with a cell phone.

I wonder if texting/IMing is going to continue to be employed more and more, or if there will soon be a revival of in-person and voice communcation. My fingers are crossed.

Web 2.0

OK. I've started working through SPL's 27 things. Things like blogs and Flickr frighten me because I feel like they reduce in-person contact. I'm going to learn more about Web 2.0 technologies so I can make well-informed judgements concerning them.