Thing #23: IT IS DONE

AND THE RUNE COMPLETED THE TWENTY THIRD TASK SET BEFORE HIM, AND BEHOLD THE END WAS GLORIOUS!!!!!

Well I am done with all 23things. Been interesting and I might or may not post anymore to this blog, but we shall see what we shall see.


hmmm..... If typing in all caps in net speak is like yelling is typing in all lowercase whispering?

Rune Nighthawk

Thing #22: Staying current

well now how far have I come since thing one? What have I learned and what will I continue to make use of?

Perhaps because I was born in the 80s and have always been around computers I have been able to adapt to the new stuff on the internet.... and I will have to continue this at a later date, the end of my work day is swiftly approaching and I must get ready for it. will continue more later.

Ok time is short again but I wanted to work some more so that I can finish this before the end of the week.

I guess the most I have come is I have learned about the existence of some of the different applications people use in their day to day internet use. Very few of them are actually useful to me personally. RSS is the main one that I am sure I will continue to use, though for the very nonprofessional reason of keeping track of web comics.

The basics of signing up for online services of different types I was previously familiar with, and a majority of the applications, (like the slide show creators) there are non internet versions that provide you with almost every function that the internet versions do.

Will i keep up with my blog? I very much doubt that I will keep up on this particular one, but I may end up making a few for my different hobbies...

My resolution for 23things: to be a consumer of the internet, I will scour it for the information I need and want (and I have found a few things to help me in this while using the 23 things) but I do not think I will have much use for the interactive part.


Have a good day..




Rune Nighthawk

Thing #21: Student 2.0 tools

Some of these tools may have been useful to me personally few years ago, but as of now I have no more research projects, or any type of big presentations related to my job so they are not useful to me directly. Can I tell a student about them? sure I can, and if they are not horrible procrastinators they may actually use it on the schedule and get things done. If i worked in more direct contact with the public i would recommend both the student and teacher sections of the sites to their respective individuals.

These applications might also be useful to professional individuals that have deadlines for presentations or the like. It would give you set deadlines to follow for putting together something you have to show your boss or board of directors. other than that i feel i'm at the limit of what i gained from this thing.

good luck and we shall end it all soon!
Rune Nighthawk

Thing #20: Books 2.0

Warning this will be a short post and I will fill in more later as I am able.

Books on your phones:

I have to say this section really had little that interested me. I am still using an older cell phone that does not have a camera, and it can't even receive pictures in messages.

and now work calls be back later....

All right now I am back, as I was saying I don't have much use for a book on my phone because my phone cannot receive one if i wanted. I also enjoy the tactile feel of having a book in my hands, and the various ways I can hold the book to reduce fatigue. Now true it would be nice to have a computer text version of a book if i was doing research and wanted an easy way to search the book for a key phrase or section.
oh yeah, the site i visited for this section was BooksinMyPhone.


Reader's Advisory:

This section actually held a great deal of use for me. I visited Book Lamp, Pandora.com (yes i know that is music not books but still), "What should I read next?", and What's next?

Book Lamp: Definitely looks interesting and i am planning to set up an account there and try to figure out what types of books i really like. Always have been interested in analyzing myself and how my mind works.

Pandora.com: Music and Free. plus set up for the songs i like. what more can i say. This is definitely one thing from the 23things i will be making use of for a very long time to come..... maybe for a whole month! Not being sarcastic but it's true, it takes a lot to hold my attention.

What should i read next: was a interesting little thing, though i tend to flip between fiction and non fiction, ect when i read. So not always will one book necessarily follow the next in any relation.

What's next: going to be very very nice to figure out the order of many different series from just one site. Especially for really long series like the Xanth series which i plan to start reading again.


Online book communities: Don't remember which of these I actually visited, but i was not overly thrilled with any of them. while True a good book is something to be shared, i feel so much better sharing it while with friends in real life not online. I also like doing my reading totally alone, so i don't often share what i'm reading with other and have no desire to do so.


Book group resource: I visited LitLovers from this group of items. The only feature of note that i found was the Litguides, by looking in them you can find out some interesting facts about the book that may not be apparent to anyone who is not a history major.

Audio books: I half heartedly tried looking at the items in this section, but in truth I cannot listen to audio books. They put me to sleep and i do not retain any of the book, so there is no point for me to listen to them.

Book rental: But you can get many books for free from your library!!!!!!!! that is all i have to say on that.. lol.

Think that is about it for this thing, it's getting close to closing time for me and i am falling asleep, and looking forward to getting supper at home.... mmmmm foood.......

good night, good luck, and we have three things left!@!@!!@!!!!!!!1!!!

Rune Nighthawk

Thing #19: other social networks

Am I a member of any online communities? sad to say yes I am. I have an account on Deviant Art where when I am actually making use of my hobbies I post what I do there. If you want an idea of my hobbies just look at my profile picture, a vast majority of that costume was made by myself. That is about the extent of how I use social networking. I'm not really all too interested in getting to know people online.

I did look at Fuzzster because I was curious. That is about it though, i have no plans of joining this group, or really any others that showed up on this thing. And with that I really guess I took care of most of the blog prompts.

Next post to hopefully come soon!

Rune Nighthawk

Thing #18: Facebook and MySpace

Well lets see i am just about to start my finishing tasks but let me say I have used facebook before so i might speak some from that point of view. But I decided to talk on MySpace. and i will have to do that tomorrow after i do my spell checking on this quick horrible little post....

All right I am back, and its the start of a new day, so before the mail shows up I am going to try and talk about MySpace some. I decided to take a look at a my own libraries MySpace account, and found out that a few of our departments had my space pages as well.

My Library District

One of our branches

Adult services

Youth services

and something I never knew about Manga Services!

And I must say I am most impressed by the fact that we have the Manga MySpace page. People can subscribe to watch this blog and recieve info about thier favorite type of books and when they come in at thier local library so they do not have to check back constantly to see if anything new has come in.

And now a quick asside about Facebook:

I have used it before, and might still go back and resurect my old account. I have selected friends, some I have known in real life others are little more than electronic messages to me. I have posted on peoples walls, and my own, joined groups and even formed a group at one time. My problem is that I never seem to have the motivation to keep up on a site like that, I usually end up with other things occupying my time that Facebook took such a low priority for me that i let it go.

As for using either of these as a social network to meet people, I guess just call me old fashined I like to meet my friends face to face, and then if I meet thier friend and we get along I get a new friend.

thank you and good night (yes i know it's morning but i'm very very sleepy...)


Rune Nighthawk

Thing #17: Podcasts

I have had very limited experience with podcasts in the past. using I tunes i have previously signed up for the podcast my church offers of the sunday services. I did this so that even if i missed church i could watch the service. However i found this so disconnected that i could not get much out of it. I decided to sign up for it again on my bloglines feed, and i used podcast.com and the other recomended sites to try and find another podcast that interested me. The only one i found is a Tampa based big cat rescue center that ocasionally does podcasts. I have yet to watch one but it is in my bloglines rss feed now.

i found all the directories a little difficult to use. podcast.com was very specific on it's serch engine where the difference of mask and masks produced completely different results, it did offere a nice interface where you could see what the podcast was about. Podcastalley.com seemed more leniant with it's search criteria but did not offer an easy way to review what the podcasts were about. Also the list of 5 featured podcasts all seem to have direct refrences to explicit material. Something i was not expecting to run across while working on something at work.

Like many other things in the 23 things podcasts can be used to keep people updated on what ever it may be that is going on in the library at the time.

well that's all for now, see you next week.



Rune Nighthawk

Thing #16 You Tube

Ok Lets see if this works. I found this video called Leopard and Tiger Play Together by ounca on youTube. I decided to post this video because 1. it is cute, 2. tigers are awesome, and three um..... well i don't know but i'm sure there is another reason in there somewhere.

I liked the similar too list on the side of the screen when viewing a video, this allows an easy way to find other video's that may be what you want to see. However I found the initial search results screen to be a little confusing. But perhaps if i was to use it more often it would make more sense to me.

As for use on a library's web site, it may be that you tube could be an easy place to upload a video showing how search the libraries database, and when posted to the frontpage of the library, if played my help patron's figure out how to look up things.
Rune Nighthawk

Thing #15: Rollyo

grrrrr........

Little upset with myself had done this thing two weeks ago but have not sat down and typed it up yet, am mad at myself because now i will have to review it again just to post it.

here goes:

This is the search list I made:
Places to get books

hopefully it shows up right.

Now I am not sure how this thing would work too well, but i was thinking it might be helpful for the acquisitions department in the library. they can search all of the places they typically buy their books with one search engine, and thus might be able to save some time. It could also be used in a genealogy department to search some commonly used resources. A third idea is that a library may set up a search with recommended web pages linked to their homepage, and this may allow for patrons to get a little assistance with locally relevant information when there are no librarians available to assist.

And that is about all i have, not too hard of a thing i guess. hopefully i will be able to catch up this week with the rest of the things.



Rune Nighthawk

Thing #14: online productivity tools

Start page: I tried igoogle because i have a google account for one of the other things i have done. there are some interesting little gadgets you can add, and i had fun playing around with the settings and personalizing it some, i may even use it at home. yet i found no tools that would help me in my job, all i found would serve more to be distractions when i work. the closest thing to a usefull tool that i found was the countdown to the end of the 23things.

Online calanders: I started out trying the Google Calander, but was having great difficulty getting regular holidays to show up on the calander without having to go in and set it up by hand. So i tried the Yahoo calander, where at least i was able to find more options for personalization, but it was also easy to get lost in the large amount of options and set up for the other yahoo items that it got to be frustrating very quickly. It seems that they do not want me to use just one thing they offer, but to innidate my life in the entire yahoo experiance. no thanks, call me old fashioned but i do not like having all of my life on and run by a computer, not because i feel like i lose control. I will still have control for it will be me puting the info in. It is more so related to a fear of identity theft.

To Do lists: For the most part these tools are only good for you if you can get online wherever you are. True you can print off things and take it with you, but then that leaves you with the same thing if you had just written it down. I feel that just writing what you need on a list can be so much faster than turning on your computer, sitting down, going to your list web page, logging in, adding something to your list in so many point and clicks, and then finally printing it. So in other words too much work, would much rather carry a pen and pad of paper with me everywhere.

I also took a look at backpack without bothering to get an account, but i did not see too much in thier tour that made it all that much special from many other sites that offer calanders lists, and contacts.

It almost seems that Web 2.0 gives you so many options on how to do the same thing it becomes a "web" of confusion.

that is all for now, hopefully will keep up on getting these things done.

Rune Nighthawk


EDIT: fixed where i had the wrong number originally posted. this is thing 14 no thing 13. thanks!

Thing #13: Library thing

I have had an account on Library thing for quite a while now: Library thing

and i will post more on it later.

And now it is later and i can post some on what i have done.

I was introduced to library thing by a friend at the library. I was hooked for a bit and started loading all of my books onto it. That is about as far as i have gotten. I have tried putting tags on my books, but that has all been after the fact of loading them and so i have not gotten very far, and so far have seen little need for them in only organizing my personal library. perhaps if i started using library thing more so as a recommendation service, where i look for items that have similar tags as the books i have uploaded then it would be more useful to me.

For a small library i can see library thing operating as an alternative to a catalog system, at least in the respect of a patron being able to look up what books the library owns, problems could arise in finding out if a book has been checked out or not. Also a library may be able to use library thing to help refer books to an individual based upon the tags. The patron may say i like sci fi, but only time travel sci fi, and from this the librarian may be able to narrow down some books the patron might like and have access to reviews right there.

Library thing local might be useful in advertising different events the library does, as well as bookmobile stops and friends of the library book sales.

That's all for now!
Rune Nighthawk

Thing #12: Wikis

Well what do you know this thing really only took me 15 minutes to do! Well wiki's, hmm as far as things go I trust Wikipedia just about as much as i do any web site, so i have to base the information i get off of it against my current knowledge, and what i see elsewhere during my online searches.

In general the idea of more specific wiki's sounds like a good idea, you would hope that the people that are editing specific wiki's are more likely to be knowledgeable in their posts. I do like that it is a conglomerate of knowledge, so that where one person may be wrong there are others out there who can correct them. however just because a large group of people may accept something as fact does not mean it is necessarily true.

I edited the 23things wiki at: http://neflins23things.pbwiki.com/ i added a page titled "time"

got to go, big work load about to hit!

Rune Nighthawk

Thing #11: Social media

Wow, been about a week since I have last posted, I'm falling behind.

Well this thing was the social media(as it says above). I reviewed the four different recommended sites and decided to set up an account with reddit.com . The reason I chose this site over the others was that in the tour it indicated that as I rate different articles it will bring ones that it thinks I will enjoy to my attention. Now the other sites may offer similar services but they did not seem to indicate them on their tours.

The article I tried to submit was: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7907570.stm

it turned out that the article had actually been submitted to reddit yesterday and so I simply voted on it. How many articles i have to vote on before it starts recomending topics for me i do not know.

Again I can see how this may be usefull to the library in many different areas, tracking local news, areas that are know to interest the patrons at that library ect. However in my job and the minimal amout of patron interaction i have, this tool will only be usefull to me if i use it at home.

and i have looked at some articles that i have found through reddit, one was on the front page about an amputee that now has a mermaid tail prosthetic: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10171471-1.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Crave

and the other was just one i searched for.

well got to go, might be able to work some on the next thing today if it is a slow day.

Rune Nighthawk

Thing #10: Tagging and Delicious

I have been doing the 23things mostly from my work computer because at home i didn't have all of the web addresses i needed to work on the 23thing. So I uploaded all of my Bookmarks from work onto my Delicious account. There were not really a large number of bookmarks, but because of delicious i can now work on 23things at home (should the urge ever hit me). However I decided to try something else this morning before work. I uploaded all of my home bookmarks onto Delicious. I just finished looking at it, and dang, i thought my bookmark menu was bad, but this is worse. I have almost 400 bookmarks that uploaded, and many of them i do not even remember having. Perhaps once i go through all the bookmarks and reorganize them, giving them more and better tags it might be useful to me, but the editing of a bookmark is so time consuming i am not sure that it is worth it.

In short: Delicious might work better if someone is just starting out making bookmarks, but the initial set up time for a person who has many bookmarks may take a very long time.

One suggestion i would make to delicious is to add an easier to edit set up for the bookmarks.

I do like the ability to have some bookmarks public and other private.

There does seem to be potential for delicious to be used in a research situation. For example a student may put all of the sites that are used in writing a research paper and share them with fellows students and visa versa so that all the students may benefit from useful sites found.

One aspect that might be useful in my job would be if the department had a delicious account and used it to keep track of hard to find library addresses, having it on delicious would allow any individual to have access to it, and not locked on one computer.

that is all for now!



Rune Nighthawk

Thing #9: the slideshow

made a slide show with Zoho show, time to see if it worked.





looks like it should be working, will post on my experiences later by editing this post, and may accept the challenge by making one of each item.



EDIT:

Thank you for your patience. Now as i think i said in the slide show that the program is very similar to power point, i find the ease of use for power point to be greater. I have not yet found the functions for changing how the slides progress from one to another, or setting up a timing option to the slide show. the only real benefit i see to this type of program is you can post it directly onto a blog or web site. otherwise there are multiple ways you can take a powerpoint presentation from your home computer or office to a large meeting. Typically when I had a presentation in school to do I would have the file on a cd rom, a flash drive, and i would have emailed myself another copy of the presentation so that I would be very unlikely not to have access to my files.

I have looked briefly at the database sharing server, but have not yet made a database with it. mostly for the moment i cannot think of any information i would want in a database and accessable to the public. Though i can think it may be usefull for making and maintaining a group reading list for a library or school group.

and now i must go the department sign just fell off the door and i've got to fix it up.

if i do decide to take the challange i will just make a new post, but i am not sure if i will find something worthwhile to make a share.

Rune Nighthawk

Thing #8: communication

Ah yes, communication. So any people talking to one another in so many different ways, I think we should ask, is anyone really listening? Just kidding, though I do think there is often too much talking and not enough listening in the world today, I'm not here to talk about that. up next we have IM, Texting, and conferences.

One real problem with IM and Texting is that it can very easily grow to obsess a person's life, though the same could be said of email and even the telephone. Is it worse than these forms of communication? I can't say that for sure or not. For the use of them, well for people who hate talking on the phone, like myself, IM can be a very good thing, though I usually end up chatting with someone who is talking with several other people and web surfing at the same time making responses slow, and somewhat annoying.

As for use inside of a library, i am not sure of the use of IM or text, at least not in my job. Some days I am near a computer and some days i am not, and when i am at a computer i don't always have time to check my email. And i have seen email's come and go very quickly, getting rid of the need for text messaging in my opinion. Now this may be different in positions where you are constantly on a computer, though i do agree this would add temptation for a worker to chat and socialize while working. Texting i have limited use with, and i can see where it is usefull in situations where it is not acceptable to be talking.

On web conferencing i have very little to say, the link to the pdf article was not working so i could not read that part of the thing, and when i went to OPAL i found some items i thought might be interesting but the only thing i got to work was the audio recording side of the conference. All the visualizations either did not open, or the entire link brought up a page that did not function. This may be something i am doing wrong, or it could be a problem with my library i'm not sure.

a quick word on the optional challange i have used pidgin (sp?) which is similar to Meebo, and i did enjoy having access to all my im accounts at the same time. Unfortionaly i am not one to heavily use any IM, so it has fallen the way of dusty unused computer programs on my hardrive. But for a person that uses alot of differnt IMs such a program would be very good to make use of.

Rune Nighthawk

Thing #7 - online image generators

well for fun I decided to dedicate all the fun things I did to my kitty....

ЗVIL КITTУ ЯЦLЭS ШФЯLD!!!!

fake cyrillic generator at: http://www.theworldofstuff.com/other/cyrillic.html



Fake id badge from : http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/
(had some other things there that looked like fun but the connection didn't seem to work right.)

aha i take it back, got another one to work.



and that's all i'm doing for now, it's time for my break and more work. not sure what these things could be used for. again not much for my position in my library, i can see where some things would be good with kids, some group meetings, and just about anything graphical you would likely find it out there some where. guess you just need to patience to look for things that you might need, if you have an idea ahead of time what you want to look for.

Rune Nighthawk

Thing #6: Flickr mashups

Ok step one, placing my name into letter from Flickr, actually liked this set as they came up so not much changes needed.

and the day is almost done so i will be back to edit the post next week and finish it up.


and the old one didn't work, so let me try that again:





ok, good got it working for that part of it.

In truth I do not know how any of these items would be useful in a library situation, though they are fun to play with. As far as how i feel about posting things online, i might allow landscapes and unidentifiable items be posted as public, but i don't like the idea of having a lot of identifiable images of myself posted online.

That's all for now. try to do the next thing soon.

Rune

Thing # 5: Flickr

Rune halloween 2008
Originally uploaded by strangerthings9999

Well lets see if i did this right. That is me, if you haven't guessed. And the picture is of my Halloween costume for 2008 that I wore for the costume contest at my library. it is now on flickr. yeah!

onto the blog prompts:

This is the first time i have used a general photo sharing type site, however i have used Deviant art before to display some of my projects like sculpting pics. the uploading system for flickr is interesting in that you can upload multiple pictures at the same time. I am very likely to use this system for uploading all of my pictures i have taken so that they are backed up.

On the issue of private vs public, i think the only thing i will have public are pictures that do not identify me directly as to who i am or where i live.

as for uses for the library, i am not sure because i don't work in that area, but from the tour it looks like the pictures can be put on a wide variety of products or pamphlets that might be useful.

that's all for now.
Rune Nighthawk

hmm need to look into seeing if the blog allows for a signature to be automatically added to posts

Thing #4: now this might be usefull

Well surprisingly RSSs might actually end up being useful to me. Not in work situations mind you but at home. At work I have no reason to be online except to occasionally look up an address. So there is not that much need to keep up to date on anything in that respect. However at home I am an avid follower of several on line comics. The problem with following many different online comics is they often have different schedules of how they are updated and checking them frequently can be a pain. I was quite happy to find that many of the comics I read have RSS feeds, so this may be something I make use of at home.

So I would say adding an item when you already know the web page is easy, as for the searching for feeds feature. that is a little harder. Sadly an individual can name their blog or web page whatever they want and it may have very little to do with the content of the page, making it harder to find what you want.

People who have to keep up to date on certain current information sites may find this useful for work purposes, but seeing as how I don't do that type of work I just don't know.

That's about all for now, time to move on to thing five.

Thing #3: search the blog find the blog

Well I can happily say that went a lot faster than thing two. Searching the two sites is pretty much like searching with many of the internet search engines now a days. I find that most all of them have similar features with only one or two that have unique features. Blog searching did not seem that much different. I did a search for white tigers, and for thrown pottery in both the Technorati and IceRocket pages and found a variety of posts, very few actually relative to what I was thinking of. If I use the advanced setting to look up the exact phrase I get an overall greater amount of relivent information.

The amount of blog posts out there is impressive. though I am not sure how wise is it to give a level of authority based upon the number of other web sites link to it. It is just a online popularity contest of who has the most convincing post wether it is a lie or truth.

that's it for now, I will see about getting thing four done in a day or two and might get back on track.

Thing #2 (about time)

Wow talk about painfully time consuming. I have been working on trying to get thing two done for the better part of a week and a half. For one the written material is incredibly dense and takes thought to get through. Now I am not against this or learning complex things, but while I am at work I do not have time to sit, process and digest so much information that is not relevant to the job I am actively doing. It in fact makes me laugh when I think back to the six minute long video that I had to watch, in three separate segments because of time, the gentleman in the video mentioned if he can find time for several cigarette breaks during the day someone should have time to set aside 15 minutes out of work to do the 23 things. Smoking a cigarette does not take up too much mental processing and if you leave a cigarette and come back to it you do not have to remember where you left off.

Ok, I feel better now got my little rant out of the way, now I suppose I should get down to the business at hand of talking about the second thing and not just complaining.

Well will you look at that I actually ranted on the first suggested question without realizing it, well almost. I can say I will find the time between my regular duties of books, mail, magazines, and old patrons. and speaking of not having time, i have to go work some more and find time later to finish this......

from this point on is an edit:

And back to the grind and trying to finish this thing. Why am I participating in the 23 things? For one there is the chance of a prize at the end, I have an excuse to use one of the computers as much as I can, and though I will likely never use the things I learn about here I love trying out new things.

What do I hope to learn. anything.

and speaking of learning something I am off to thing three to try and learn something new.


;} hopefully it won't take me quite as long to do as thing two did.

Thing #1: a blog is born

Well look at that I just created a blog. Not too difficult to do, though I'm not all too sure that I will have use for this after the 23 things is finished. I guess we shall see if this program changes my mind at all.