The End

I guess this is the end of this blog. The 20 things are done. I don't know if I have the energy or the imagination to keep this going without guidance. And besides, who really cares what I think or feel.

Reflections

Favorite Discoveries:
-On-line productivity tools. I like the idea of being able to access my documents anywhere I can access the Internet. On the other hand, not all computers have Internet access. I have one at home we don't connect to the Internet.
-YouTube. Tre Cool.
-Wikis. I really like wikis and know there is a way for me to use it professionally (and perhaps personally) but have yet to figure out how.

Affected Lifelong Learning Goals?:
More things for me to learn.

Surprises?:
Not really.

Improvements to Program:
I liked it. I didn't enjoy the time pressure but realize it was necessary in a work situation.

If Offered in Future:
I would definitely like "More to Explore".

Podcasting

I really need to play around with this when I have more time to explore it fully.

Games

I love the games. I've been computer gaming for over 20 years. Many of the games on the Yahoo site are a bit simplistic for my tastes. My all time favorite game is Civ III. Such gaming goodness. I do like the list of lessons from gaming.

Maps

...a song by the Ya Ya Yas.

Google maps is very cool. Google earth is even cooler. The clarity of the satellite photos is amazing. A little scary too. I could see the swing set in back of our old house. The mapping and direction features.

Avatars and Second Life

I don't use Second Life. I don't think I would. I don't have the time or see the use.

Avatars are kind of cool. The one that looks the most like me though is on my son's Wii.

Ms. Dewey is smokin'.

Online Apps

Once again it has been awhile since I was here but hey, I'm back.

I explored both Google Apps and Zoho. They both seem very similar to me. Zoho has more tools though. I like the idea of having access to any of my documents from any computer with internet access. This makes me nervous though. What if you don't have access to an internet capable computer? I know, it is a rare thing in this day and age but I have one at home. Also, what if the site goes down? Once again, computers can crash and documents can get corrupted. I am impressed with the compatibility. Not having to worry if one computer has the same version of the software you are using. I find this particularly annoying with Office 2007. Any new document is unreadable with the old versions. Bah, money grubbing software designers.

Search Engines

I have temporarily skipped the podcast thing because I would like to give more time to it than I actually have time at the moment.

So, search engines. I am a Google user. Every now and then I use Yahoo, but not often. I did the same search on Rollyo, Mamma, and Dogpile. I pretty much got the same results each time. I don't necessarily see the advantage of any of these over Google. Granted, I didn't mess around with the customizable feature in Rollyo. If I dug deeper in Mamma perhaps its special features would shine through also. So, to put it succinctly, I need to do more comparisons.

Playtime

...and it is. It was just plain fun making all these images. Here are a few samples. I would like to make more but don't have the time.

Overdrive

Yawn. I'm sorry. For whatever reason I am not particularly impressed with Overdrive. I think part of my issue is with selection. I couldn't find my favorite author and I've never been able to successfully listen to a history book on tape (or other media.) I think it has great potential though.

Del.icio.us

Again I need to explore this resource more for its usefulness to become completely apparent. I do like the idea of having one place to go for my bookmarks no matter what computer I am on.

A Wiki Here, a Wiki There

I rather like Wikipedia. Not that I totally trust it. When examining some entries on subjects I am familiar with I actually made some edits. But the sheer amount of information is almost intoxicating for someone like me. I could skip from entry to entry just reading. I'm not quite sure what to make of the other uses for a wiki. I need to explore the other types more and think about it. As for the various uses the library could put a wiki to: I don't know. People have already seemed to have thought about that and implemented them in other areas of the country.

YouTube et al

I've explored YouTube before on my own. I like to look up music videos from various bands that I like. It actually has clips and videos from 25/30 years ago. For this class I looked up videos on Esperanto. YouTube contains songs and lessons in and about Esperanto. If I get ambitious I may try to embed one into this blog. I had never heard of Fancast or Hulu. I really like Hulu though. The old TV series are killer and I might actually use it to watch an episode or two of some of my childhood favorites. I don't know how useful they would be for library use. Perhaps they could be used as a supplement to the various video collections.

Social Networks

I've played around with MySpace some in my private life so I wanted to explore something differnet for this lesson. I selected Library Thing and have started to explore it. I have placed a widget on my blog that shows a random book from my personal library. It is interesting to see how many other people own the same books that I do.

Flickr

Exploring and learning about Flickr was interesting. Sooooooo many photos. One could spend copious amounts of time looking through everything. Two photos in particular I found interesting.

The first was actually published in National Geographic in the 80's. It is the famous photo of the Afgan girl during the Soviet occupation. I have always found the photo beautiful and haunting.

I call the second photo I found: "So what did you do this weekend?" Just as there are Civil War reenactors in the U.S., in Europe they have Roman reenactors. This photo appears to be reenactors reprsenting the early imperial period, Julio-Claudian period.

Music

Ok, so I've been away for awhile. Its not as if anyone actually reads this thing but here goes.

I've been playing around with the streaming music. Tre cool. I like many different types of popular music. Some new, some old. It's nice to have access to it. I love being able to listen to music that I want to listen to when I want to listen to it. I also like the radio stations that stream their music.

RSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

What do you like about RSS and feed readers?
Access to the updates.

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life?
Frankly, in my position, I don't see much use for RSS at work. Personally, I may use it for those few websites I visit frequently.

How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?
I think this may be useful for librarians.

Which one do you use?
I haven't started using any in my personal life, although if I do I will probably use Google Reader. I discovered today that Outlook has an RSS function and if I can find a site of professional use I believe I would use it.

I am I.M.

I finally found a time and a person to chat with, my boss. I've done this a little before in my personal life when teaching myself about various aspects of the computer. I think it is an interesting tool with great potential for abuse in the work place. Not that I would do it. Nope, not me.

We are getting a puppy. Sigh...

Rome

I finished watching the second season of the HBO series Rome last night. I enjoyed it. Not as much as I enjoyed the first season but I still enjoyed it.

I have two problems with it overall. The first is that I found none of the characters sympathetic in the second season. Well, I take that back. I had some for Titus Pullo at certain times. It seemed odd that he was the voice of reason at certain points.

The second problem is that I spotted the historical inaccuracies much easier this time around. I don't know if it is because I wasn't as engaged or the mistakes were more glaring. For example, the historical Atia died shortly after Octavian returned to Rome with his army (and was never Mark Antony's lover). And that's another thing: Octavians name. He was born Gaius Octavius. When Caesar died and adopted him, his name became Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. He was never called Octavian Caesar.

On a positive note - Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo were real people. They were two centurions mentioned by Caesar in his commentaries on the Gallic war.

Anyway, I could ramble like this for a while but I shall stop now.

Testing Word

I am testing the automatic blog posting feature in Word 2007. I posted this to my blog directly from word. Kinda cool. I need to figure out how to use it to send images also.

Communications

Reading some of the other blogs, I find the various levels of buy-in interesting.

This 20 for 2.0 is about communication. Communication drives the entire world. I believe that a neutral language must be selected and used as an auxiliary language to facilitate communications. My current selection for such a language is Esperanto, the much derided constructed language. It is neutral (i.e. not connected to a certain nation and all that it can stand for. English and French are examples of this.), it is comparatively easy to learn, and pronunciation and spelling are regular. The green star is the symbol of Esperanto.

Think on it.

The First Post

So, I've created this blog. Now I must face one of my great fears: A blank page.

High school, college, work, personal life. It has never mattered. Needing or wanting to fill a blank page has always been a daunting task for me. I've always had an active internal dialog but to actually put it on "paper" is difficult. Sigh...Now I have to do it.