23 Things Assignment #5

I did find the "video" to add the my.del.icio.us buttons a little insulting. They could have just said "add as a Link under Favourites and put on your toolbar". It wasn't rocket science.

However there are 2 of us at this branch doing the assignments, so my opposite will have to do this assignment on a different computer or the link will send her to my del.icio.us list. Obviously this site is not meant for shared workstations.

I looked in my Favourites and found "Daily dose imagery" which I had added when I was doing the first 23Things assigment. To my surprise, this blog had a del.icio.us button on its front page. I posted it and checked some similar sites. I found a nice also-Canadian photoblog called WatchThisSpace so I added that one.

I tried a search next and looked up "Doctor Who". I found an interesting Fanfiction Archive but noticed that the Canadian Fan Club wasn't in the list so I added DWIN.org. It's odd but the stats on my.del.icio.us page seemed to suggest that 5 or 6 people added the 2 Canadian sites almost as soon as I posted them with the tags. I suspect there must be an automatic tag alert option.

This is an interesting concept but again the use is limited as a reference tool. It has a little more "peer review" cachet than google hits but it is time consuming. I hadn't been aware of it so I might take more time -- when I have it-- to explore what is available.

23 Things Assignment #4 Part 2

Generating fun.

I'd actually used generators before. I found my Elvish name at The Elvish name Generator. Apparently I'm Alatariel Seregon in Middle Earth. I'd also tried the Mary Sue generator which is a parody of fan fiction's worst problem and monthly the section of KidsSpace I check has a grammatical story generator -- give some nouns, verbs, etc. and the story is written for you. It can be quite hilarious with "broccoli crashing the angry blue boot".

For this assignment, I tried the complaint generator. I would have liked more control over the rant's content for it to be truly amusing. Too long, too.

Then I simply could not resist the generator featured on the recommended generator blog -- the Harry Potter Doll generator. Shocking, giving my past posts, I know. I -- surprise surprise -- tried making a Snape doll. See above.

23 Things Assignment #4Part 1

Photoshopping Fun

I decided to try the fake magazine cover option. It was fun but did not allow much editing of the uploaded picture, as you can see from the results. Snape is a little pixelated in the second shopped picture. The first fitted better.

23 Things Assigment #3

I tried both Bloglines Feed Search option and Google's list of the top 100 RSS feeds to choose the feeds I would add, besides the Library Journal one.

I added National Geographic News and read all about the Crow Cam (cameras on crows' legs to follow their daily activities). I'm not sure I'm ready to know the secrets of the Tasmanian Devil.

I added Dictionary.com's Word of the Day feed and was pleased that I knew today's word Paroxysm (though not it's pronunciation) but was stumped by past word Boulereversement.

I added Boing Boing, which features the latest gadget-y thing in the world of technology. Some of the tidbits were quite bizarre. These three RSS feeds are all in the top 50 feeds according to Google.

Last, but not of least interest to me, I added ComiPress-Manga News and Information, found by searching "Manga" in Bloglines' search. It mentioned ADV Presses' revived interest in Manga and talked about what is sure to be the next big thing: Blue Dragon, based on a video game by one of the creators of Final Fantasy and drawn by the creator of Dragon Ball Z. Sure to be a top request here in the library, although I'll be avoiding reading it myself -- I don't like that artist's work.

The news feeds are interesting. Boing Boing, Word of the Day and NG are good time wasters but not really relevant to work. The manga one I am quite happy to find. I'm afraid that the Library Journal one is rather snoozeworthy and so full of the organization's news that it provides more irrelevant news to wade through to get to anything useful. A filter would make it more useful.

It makes little sense to me to use Bloglines. Unless you have 100 RSS you want to check, you could just as easily Bookmark the homepage of the news provider and access it daily. Most of these feeds allow email alerts which would be just as convenient.