Challenge 10

Challenge: Play around with an online image generator.

I had fun with HeroMachine.

http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/heromachine2/heromachine2.asp


It was fun choosing different features, colors, and backgrounds. I could spend way too much time on this.



I then tried the Comic Strip Generator. These were fun to create....and so many options to choose from!

http://www.comicstripgenerator.com/






I really liked ImageChef.

http://www.imagechef.com/

9th Challenge

Challenge: Locate a few useful library related blogs and/or newsfeeds.

I listened to the podcast and then started reviewing Blogline's Search Tool and Feedster.

Ok...so I forgot about the part about the feeds needing to be library related.

For Blogline's Search Tool, I entered lomilomi to search for feeds relating to Hawaiian lomilomi massage. Of course, nothing came up.

I then entered "Zoo" and found the San Diego Zoo blogs. Wow....this is so cool! The post that caught my interest was "Breakfast with the Orangutans" by the senior mammal keeper. She begins her day by checking on the orangutans at 6:00am every day. Boy, I thought I was an early bird!

It turns out that the zoo blogs contain a plethora of entries from the San Diego Wild Animal Park and CRES (Conservation and Research for Endangered Species).

I then tried Feedster and searched Congo hippos. I found the blog for Wildlife Direct and made my way to the Gorilla Protection blog. Interestingly enough, today's post mentioned thanks to some of the recent donations that were made. I'm currently in the process of assisting a local fundraiser to raise funds to support the rangers protecting the Congo wildlife and it was very uplifting to see thanks being given to our organization's ringleader for our past assistance to the rangers.

Ok...so now I've started blogging and have actually read the directions, let's see if we can find library related news feeds.

I tried out Topix.net and found a library news feed as well as a library news forum. I read a very cute story about a man returning "The Prince of Egypt" along with a check for 47 years worth of late fees. He had checked out the book as a 9th grader and recently found it while looking through a box in the attic.


Now I've tried Syndic8.com and found a bunch of postings about libraries. I found librarian.net, a library weblog...which led me to LibraryThing.com/blog/ that had a cool entry about a bookpile contest they were holding in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The contest asked for bookpile photos to be posted on Flickr with the tag "LibraryThingBHM" for Black History Month.

Here's one of the photos:


Library Thing BHM 006
Originally uploaded by benhbleckley.

Last, but not least, I tried Technorati and found a blog about Learning 2.0 called LibraryCrunch. It appears that he's a veteran of Learning 2.0 starting in 2005. He even has a feed that included his blog on talkr.com...which has audio for every blog...in case you don't want to read.

Ok, so now I have a ton of feeds added to Bloglines. The question remains....when will I have time to read all of the new posts?

8th Challenge

Challenge: Learn about RSS feeds and set up a Bloglines account.

RSS Feeds....Really simple syndication.

I had some difficulty setting everything up. I hope it gets really simple from here on out.

The discovery resources provided by the Virtual Services team were extremely helpful. It did make it seem very easy.

However while trying to set up the Bloglines account, some of the screens are now very different than the screen shots in the "Using Bloglines Tutorial". Hmmm....perhaps Bloglines made some updates? It made following the directions more of a mystery.

The subscribe page on Bloglines is now missing the text entry boxes for Blogger, LiveJournal, and Xanga. There's only one text box now....which ought to seem simpler, but it sometimes rejected blog addresses that had the orange RSS box showing at the bottom of the Mozilla Firefox window. I had to fiddle with some of the addresses by removing the "http://" and could get some to work.

I found that I also wanted to rename some of the feeds, but had trouble with this, too. One of the feeds that I added has an address in html, rather than just a name. Another feed that I added has "++++" as the title, only because the feed has that text in as decoration for the layout on the blog page. I finally figured out how to change the name. Good, now everything looks much better.

The "Share" tab for Bloglines that was shown on the Learning 2.0 screenshot to find the public url was now listed as an "Additional Feature" in a different location.

After much trial and error, I have the public url and managed to make it a live link:

http://www.bloglines.com/public/Matchadragon


Now that all is in place, I think I'll be able to enjoy what RSS feeds are all about........tomorrow.

Whew!

7th Challenge

Challenge: Create a blog post about anything technology related that interests you this week.

Webcams have caught my attention.

Nurturing long distance relationships can be tough....but the idea of webcams has come up.

Having live face-to-face webcam sessions rather than just voice-to-voice over the phonelines truly blows my mind. It used to be something that only happened in the movies.

As of yet, I'm one of the few holdouts that has no internet access from home.....but folks are slowly talking me into coming out of the cave and joining the rest of the world.

If it does happen, you can be sure that it will be high-speed internet with a webcam.

6th Challenge

6th Challenge
Originally uploaded by MatchaDragon.

Challenge: Have some Flickr fun and discover some Flickr mashups and 3rd party sites.

I elected to use fd's flickr toys to create a magazine cover.

The easy part was selecting an image. The hardest part was trying to find a catchy title for the magazine....especially one that would fit on the page just right.

I couldn't figure out how to adjust the size of the font, so it was a little tricky trying a bunch of different layouts so the text wouldn't run off the page for the various entries.

Overall, I'm very please with the end result. I'd page through the magazine with interest.

5th Challenge

Manuel Antonio Beach V
Originally uploaded by No Fixed Abode.


Challenge: Explore Flickr and learn about this popular image hosting site.

A couple of years ago, I had the fortunate experience of vacationing here for a week on Manuel Antonio Beach in Costa Rica.

Friends of my boyfriend invited us to share a house with them near this beach. It was a 5 minute walk through a beautifully forested area to the private gate that led to this beach.

The sunsets would reflect in the wet sand turning everything into a stunning salmon color.

There were tiny hermit crabs walking around carrying their shell houses on their backs.

We could walk along the beach to the very end where the Manuel Antonio National Park was located. We spent all day combing the park trails for the endangered Central American squirrel monkey. There were fascinating sloths, colorful birds, huge iguanas, lightning-fast lizards, playful capuchin monkeys, and many scurrying red and purple crabs....but we didn't see a single squirrel monkey.

The next day, we were resting at the house....and an entire troupe of Central American squirrel monkeys came to visit the front yard of the house. It was amazing! A couple of mothers had tiny babies riding on their backs. The squirrel monkeys were so petite in size, compared to the capuchin monkeys....which eventually chased the squirrel monkeys from the yard.




It was a wonderful vacation.

4th Challenge

Challenge: Register blog and begin Learning 2.0 journey.

Completed registering and I'm on my way.

3rd Challenge

Challenge: Create a blog and add first post.

Been there, done that! Yay!

2nd Challenge

Challenge: Which of the 7.5 habits was the easiest? Which was hardest?

Probably the easiest is #7.5....Playing! I have no problem with playing. I love to tinker and try to figure things out by testing, trying, and having fun all at the same time.

The hardest will probably be #6...using technology to my advantage. Tackling learning new technologies will be very much like playing. However, my expertise in technology is lacking in some areas and I may not immediately employ using something technological that I haven't mastered yet.

We shall see....

1st Challenge

Challenge: Read Learning 2.0 blog and find out about the program.

I looked over the 23 challenges, things, exercises, etc. on the Learning 2.0 blog.....seems a little daunting and intimidating all at once.

It's not the destination that important....it's the journey....right?

Testing 2.0

Library Learning 2.0. I had always thought of myself as tech savvy. I started out with an Atari pong game. I used an Apple computer at school. I was always the person called on to set the clock on the vcr. I got left in the dust somewhere between cell phones and dvd players. I'm hoping this Learning 2.0 program will help to launch me back onto the cutting edge.