Week #10

I will probably use my MP3 player to download audiobooks since my iPod won't. It's been a good while since I listened to The Lord of the Rings by Rob Inglis but NetLibrary doesn't have it. I'm sure I can find something else to listen to. Maybe "Mists of Avalon" or a good Western. I also like Old Time Radio programs so I might be able to find a podcast of that. I am already subscribed to The Onion's podcast and Ask A Ninja's as well. I also have a subscription to a syndicated radio program out of Texas that only plays in Orlando at night.

I'm happy to know I can search Yahoo for podcasts. I don't really like the one I was using very much.

Week #9

Digital Rights - Personally, I totally get Metallica wanting to make sure they are paid for their work. I'm not a musician but I think that most people would like to receive credit for their creations. So yeah, they should get paid. I think that doing so might have killed their careers/fan-base but I feel sure they have a bit of money squirreled away somewhere. What the music industry needs to keep focusing on is ways to allow people to get access to music in an affordable way. I feel, as many people do, that CDs are way overpriced. At OCLS, we sell blank discs for $1.00. Yet if I go to Best Buy, many CDs are in the neighborhood of $14.00 and up. Obviously, the companies are running businesses and their 1st and only priority is making money (as it is with all companies, always; it's not just a friendly endeavour to enrich the world's cultures as their marketing departments would have you think. But, these days, I can't buy a CD from an up-and-coming band and even enjoy 2 or 3 songs off it. You get one 2min song you enjoy for $14. That's one reason people steal music. Should Metallica get paid what they're worth? Absolutely! It's just too bad I didn't like St. Anger. Fortunately, their DVD documentary (Some Kind of Monster) about the making of the album was pretty interesting. I'll buy CDs again (or whatever the appropriate format is) when I actually have a decent chance of liking more than two of the 14-20 songs on the disc. Maybe the concept of an "album" is dead; iPod killed it... or maybe we did. Maybe musicians just need to release a song as soon as they finish making it.

One last thing (as quoted from the 2.0 week 9 assignment):
"Disclaimer: this is an awareness session only. None of us are lawyers, nor do we play one on TV. If you have a question, take it to your supervisor and get some help before you act, waiting until after the fact is waiting too long."
Ben Matlock actually is a lawyer. Zombie Matlock is too. They do play lawyers on TV when they're not being real lawyers. They are Matlock; they do what they want, when they want.

Week #8

Firstly:

• tsimpson's flickr profile


• I did a flickr search for "Matlock" (apparently, some sensible people in the Derbyshire area of England thought it would be a good idea to name some things after old Ben).


• The Flickr picture I posted.

Secondly:

I've taken online courses before and they are fine. If you are responsible enough to keep up with them on your own, they can really save your time, effort and money (no gas needed). If you aren't able to keep up with them, it can be very easy to get behind. Creating a schedule to work on your online homework can be the one of the most important steps to success.

I have offered to assist people at my location and also have a partner that I team up with every week to work on assignments. So far, it is working very well.

My Book Worm High Score

Check it!:

Week #7

Well, I'm not a cat person or a beer person or a wine person; I'm a dog person... but I'm not a dog person that feels the need to have a communal dog appreciation experience. So I signed-up for the YouPlay account. Personally, I like Yahoo Games more though. Check my Bookworm score above! I've totally owned (or pwned) your pathetic Bookworm score!

Week #6

My favorite library technology is probably Amazon. Why? Because Amazon (and some of its users) have gone to the trouble of putting in Gigs & Gigs of info on all manner of books, DVDs, videos, CDs, etc ,etc etc, etc. I also like Books in Print. It's great for those books that have been out-of-print for a good long while. Novelist and What Do I Read Next? are also good resources.

I've visited the Book Mooch site before but never used it myself. One of my friends has used it though and she likes it a lot. If I go to the effort of buying a book, I keep it; I don't think I'd pass it on to anyone else. I can definitely see how others (non-collectors) would love it though.

Wikimapia is interesting. I use Google Earth a lot and LOVE it. This seems like a global community version Google Earth; letting users mark landmarks they (and others) find interesting.

Week #5

I have posted my Meez avatar to my profile page.

Week #4

I browsed the SEOmoz site and ran across some interesting stuff. I even found the pbwiki website that OCLS uses a bit. It is rated #2 under the Hosted Wikis category. I created a test wiki for myself (which was very easy). Now I just need to think of something useful I can do with it. Maybe I'll put codes for my personal video games on it so I can keep them all in one easy-to-find location, no matter where I am. I also browsed the Photos and Digital Images area for a new place to possibly host my photo albums (as I find Yahoo! Photos keeps getting worse as time goes on). I looked around YourMinis for blog related things (widgets) but found that I needed to download various things in order to do that (which I didn't have time for).

As far as Myspace & Youtube goes, I already knew OCLS had material on both of them and had already seen it. I'm actually in the Youtube video I just linked.

The web 2.0 video was interesting but I kept having flashbacks from the Terminator movies (1, 2 and 3). In the movies, the computers (Skynet) eventually became sentient and decided the human race was a virus.

Week #3

I subscribed to a variety of RSS feeds using Bloglines (one of which was OCLS Announcements and Technology @OCLS). I registered for Shifted Librarian, BBC News, Slashdot, Librarian's Internet Index among others. I even found my favorite RSS feed from http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/ that I already had on my computer at home. It gives me the latest news on what TV shows are coming to DVD.

I didn't find Grokker particularly exciting, personally. I think I'd rather just use Yahoo or Wikipedia in the first place since I'm familiar with them already. People new to both of those websites may find Grokker handy though. To me, searching visually or otherwise felt cramped with to many windows/frames and thus more confusing than if i had just gone directly to Wikipedia and searched.... and it's not like searching Wikipedia is a overly challenging endeavor. The most exciting thing is that they named it from Robert Heinlein's term "Grok" from Stranger in a Strange Land. It means to drink. But, I'm not sure if I'm going to be thinking or drinking-in Grokker too much in my spare time.

Adventure #2

I was able to discover Hartford County Public Library's Teenspace Blog. It gives info about their teen-centric programming.

Week #2

-------Original Entry Begins---------

The question ISN'T:

How can I be better informed about emerging technology and existing technology (like blogging) in order to better help the public at large?

The real question is:

How can blogging keep me (and you; if you pay attention and don't straggle) out of the clutches of the countless zombie hordes?

The answer:

It can't.

Fools, if this is your first glimpse of the reality that the impending Zombie Armageddon is only days away; you're done. Oh yeah, hotshot, i got your number. You're all:

"My friend Todd is totally a doctor and he says zombies are impossible for countless reasons, the least of which is the simple factor of the deterioration of the locomotive capabilities of a non-living body."

Todd is an idiot and so are you for listening to him. He's a psychiatrist for crying out loud!! What's he gonna know about zombies? Jack, that's what. But most importantly, Todd doesn't know Ben. Yeah, THAT Ben. We, who are in his inner circle, simply call him: Matlock. At least, we did until last month, when he went missing. We searched high and low, far and wide; Sweet & Low even. No sign of the greatest lawyer/zombie-hunter-killer of all time (even more adept at sniffing out the zombie cadres than Ralph Macchio and Lawrence Welk before him). So here we are, our hero gone, our futures laid waste. As you well know, or should know if you weren't such a zombie noob, Undead sightings have been growing by leaps and bounds since his absence. Not worried? The government is. Check it:

Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared For Full-Scale Zombie Attack

PITTSBURGH—A zombie-preparedness study, commissioned by Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy and released Monday, indicates that the city could easily succumb to a devastating zombie attack.

Don't worry though, the zombie's have their own washington insiders spreading propaganda. They're just softening us up for the big surge coming in the next week; telling us how great zombie-life will be and all that clap-trap:

Live Every Day As If You're Dying Of A Contagious Disease That Turns People You Bite Into Zombies

Wake up, people! Life is not a spectator sport. It could all end tomorrow, and there are no second chances, unless of course you're bitten by...

Not that it will make much difference, but just to give you a fighting chance, you might as well go ahead and get educated about defending yourself (not that it'll do any good this late in the game).

So yeah, excuse me if I'm a little freaked about the whole thing. Not about blogging, that's easy; about having my brain eaten by the recently reanimated. Sorry if I'm a little terse and my outlook a little bleak; I've got zombies on my mind (no pun intended). So take whatever you want from this blog; but I'm telling you now, Zombie Armageddon is officially coming.

Z minus 7 and counting.

--------Original Entry END-----------------


I am working with a co-worker on the Learn 2.0 project. I helped her with her blog and then made mine. The hardest part was switching between the website and my email... so pretty easy so far. There are a number of customization that Blogger has to help people make their blog have a unique visual appeal (such as font colors, adding pictures, adding links, etc). As far as I can tell though, it does not go to the lengths that MySpace goes to creating completely unique (and often atrocious & confusing looking) personal pages.