Thing #23 Drum roll, please ...

I'm at the finish!  

Although I am a slow starter, once I got going, 23 things really pulled me along.  I like the way it is set up.  Had I gone through it with the group last summer, the experience might have been enhanced, but I rather liked doing it on my own.  I did periodically check out other completed blogs to see what other people had thought about various "things."  Interesting how differently each person reacts, with opinions ranging from "love it" to "hate it" to "yawn."  

I would definitely participate in a similar program, although I might wish for one that was a little shorter: a dozen things?  Yes, I know that there is that 43 things list ...

As with everything, there were the good, the bad and the ugly.  Let's focus on the good, shall we?

Flickr is ok, Librarything is ok (I can see that it's fabulous for hard core bibliophiles).  I really liked Rollyo and Del.icio.us.  I will use them and promote their use.

I enjoyed the learning, and particularly learning that my belief that my ability to learn was still intact, was not unwarranted.  (How's that for a murky sentence?)  A little creaky, a little flaky at the edges, but intact.

Thanks for the run; could we do just a 5K next time?  ;-)

Thing #22 Audiobooks

Since our library has Overdrive, I looked at that first.  In watching the tutorial, I became alarmed that it might not be available for Mac users, but in going to Maryland's Digital eLibrary Consortium, I was pleased to see "Announcing OverDrive Media Console for Mac!"  Apparently the tutorial was created a while back and the Mac development is quite recent.

I also discovered that there are now titles, both audio and video, that are always available!

No limit on the number of copies.  How cool is that.  I guess they may be ones in the public domain?

I checked out Project Gutenberg and thought the computer generated audiobooks quite odd.  That technology is miraculous for those who cannot speak but not appealing to one who loves words, written and spoken aloud.

What really drew me in, or perhaps sent me off, were the links  to LiteralSystems.org and Librivox.org.  They're looking for volunteers to proofread and also to read/record, and of course, donations to keep going in the quest to make everything in the public domain available to everyone.

As someone who loves to be read aloud to, (I used to show up in my sons' third grade classrooms when Mr. Jeff came to read), I love audiobooks.

Thing #21 Podcasts

Ask a Ninja was less than helpful, with his whales and apple pies.  Wow.

Of the directories, only the Podcastalley.com one worked.  (Server not found, yada, yada)  I don't think it's because I'm at home on my Mac and using Safari.  In poking around in the alley, I didn't find any that grabbed me enough to listen to it and I did not want to sign up anyway.  

Through Merlin I checked out how libraries are using it and then tried to subscribe to the Denver Public Library's Stories for Kids RSS feed.  (Which, by the way, seems to be the natural evolution from the dial-a-story services of some years back.  Oh OK, you're not that young that you can't remember those ... are you?)

Not only could Bloglines not find that, but then, when I decided to try again to subscribe to the Merlin RSS feed, it couldn't find that one either.  And no, I don't want to install the "easy subscribe button"!

Gr-rumph.

Thing #20 Do you tube too?

I could definitely waste a lot of time on YouTube.  I decided to look for video clips of Borzois in action and found "about" 667.  And watched all of them.   Not.  I settled on the one from Animal Planet, Breed All About It - Borzois.  I'm going to try to embed it but may have to settle for a link.

Borzois  

Of course, as I look again at the YouTube page for my chosen video, I see that embedding has been disabled by request.  Alas, you'll have to click the link.

Spaces between sentences

Today I learned that I am archaic, an anachronism, a dinosaur, a throw back (and redundant too).

Apparently, my use of two spaces between sentences is now wrong, wrong, wrong.  And bad mommy, I've taught my children to do the same.

A site that explains this quite clearly and firmly is Typography for Lawyers:  www.typographyforlawyers.com/?p=12

I, however, remain defiant and will continue to use two spaces until the spaces police come for me.  Buh wa ha ha!

Thing #19 the Web 2.0 Award goes tooo ....

nobody.  Well, maybe somebody.

I checked out most of the first place winners for 2008 from the short list.  I find it noteworthy that Del.icio.us won in two categories, since it was one of the of the "things" that I liked the most so far in this 23 things trek.  I looked at Craigslist first since I'd heard so much about it for so long now, but if you're not in a major market (which Hagerstown is not) then it isn't terribly useful.  Unless you want to buy something and are willing to go fetch or ship.  I suppose if you are wanting to relocate it would be good for finding an apartment and maybe even a job.

The music one, Last (www.last.fm/) was pretty cool; I could see using it to find music to give as gifts, like a reader's advisory for music.

Backpack would be very useful for those who do not have helpful computer dudes or dudettes to build intranets for them.

Color me blue: ColorBlender never did load.  Zimdesk is unavailable because they're building V.2; why V.1 is down in the meantime?  The rationale is a cosmic mystery.

Mostly, I yawned.  My attention strayed.  I didn't care.  Perhaps if I had a specific task I needed one of these tools for ... but then I didn't find the fun stuff much fun either.

Sorry.

The Sandbox, revisited.

I decided to give the "add a page" thing another try - and it worked! I have to give some credit to Liz, who, btw, dislikes PBwiki.

My page is titled Favorite Way to Re-center; here's the link: