iHCPL: Week 10: #23 Is this really the end? Or just the beginning...

What, in addition to the how to do it skills, did I learn during these weeks? I learned that:

• I was unable to keep my vow of “If I don’t have anything nice to say I shall remain silent on the subject”
• Wikis are wonderful!!!
• I love LOL cats.
  

moar funny pictures

• Aggregators and RSS and newsreaders have given me more news than I can keep up with.
• Wired magazine is still more fun in print than online.
• I am ready to devote much time to the delights of LibraryThing, but I remain a tagging agnostic.
• Flickr is a pain in the aperture, and online photo editing tools don’t do much.
• Online document apps are sloooooooooooooooooooow.
• I do not fit the Technorati market profile, and Avatars don’t have anything in my size.
• YouTube was a wonderful treasure trove of helpful video bits. I am still inspired by the piano playing cat.
• Podcasting, however, hasn't won me over yet.
• I discovered my learning style: I learn by compulsive reading followed by mutterings and grumblings rising in pitch to expletives as my attempts to operate the machinery do not produce the desired results. After giving myself a helpful time-out for therapeutic sulking, I return to the task and the software performs exactly as anticipated.

The surprise from this program was how much camaraderie the program engendered among the members of the staff as they worked together and taught each other.

What I have yet to discover is:

• Will I find Facebook a useful way to keep up with friends and colleagues ?
• When my downloaded file of Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters, read by Susan O’Malley expires will the CDs that I copied it onto so I could listen to it in the car also self-destruct? Will I have to clean messy melted petrochemical mess out of my car?

iHCPL: Week 9: #22 Downloadable Media

I visited HCPL's OverDrive site and explored the eBooks, the audio eAudioBooks and the movies. Then I went browsing for an audio that I could burn to a CD so the family could listen to it as we went over the river and through the woods for Thanksgiving. There were plenty of golden oldies classics available, but darn few mysteries. Not only were there very few mysteries that could be copied to a CD, but most of the titles had holds on them already. Obviously, the library must be giving the customers what they want.

I selected Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters, read by Susan O’Malley. I also downloaded Kidnapped and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. All three were narrated by Fredrick Davidson. As soon as I played the first track of David Copperfield I recognized Mr. Davidson’s voice: a dry bored upper class English that should be a delightful for Dickens, but a disaster for Scots adventure stories. I deleted the Stevenson titles right away. I wonder, should I have turned them back in to the library?

The science fiction selection was quirky but interesting, but then science fiction is quirky but interesting. No disrespect intended. I’m a fan. The children’s selection was so-so, but the romance selection was good.

The catalog browse by title only was odd. I can’t help but wonder how many people want to browse by the title of a book?

From Wowio I downloaded On the Immortality of the Soul by David Hume.

12 pages (2007/1777)
WOWIO Books; ISBN: WOWIO-00183
List Price: $3.00 WOWIO Price: Free

The Wowio's business model is to make money from advertising rather than bookselling. So, the free essay in PDF format came with telephone company advertisement at the front and end of the document. Free also means a “Limited Nonexclusive License. WOWIO grants to you, and you accept, a nonexclusive, nontransferable license to use this eText.”


The site for audio freebees, LibriVox, has a very, how shall I put it, interesting mode of operation. “LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books. “ Knowing from experience how much a good reader means to a book and how a bad reader can obliterate the impact of a good book, I wonder how consistent a reading that has a different volunteer reader for each chapter can be.

Consider this example from their catalog:

Chapter 01 - 00:15:06 Read by: Denny Sayers
Chapter 02 - 00:28:32 Read by: miette
Chapter 03 - 00:23:15 Read by: Nocturna
Chapter 04 - 00:31:22 Read by: Nocturna
Chapter 05 - 00:41:14 Read by: Jemma Blythe

Just before Thanksgiving, I didn’t have the courage to experiment with what appears to be the literary equivalent of a recipe for lumpy gravy. Maybe after the holiday I'll feel braver about a download from LibriVox.

iHCPL: Week 9: #21 Podcasts, Smodcasts!

On the assumption that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, I poked about in all four podcast directories. I first looked for library related podcasts. Then I was asked by the cat-who-must-not-be-named, since I was already out scooting about cyberspace, to search for cat related podcasts. And this is what I found:

• iTunes and the iTunes Store:

Using the search term “library” I found many examples of why public libraries should not start their own podcasts. Using the search term “books” I found lots of Harry Potter podcasts.

Using the directory turned out to be a better search strategy. I was able to drill down to Podcasts>Literature> and then to a number of library related sites, like this from the Seattle Public Library:
Cats produced this:

• Podcast.net:

SirsiDynix Institute
Home > Search > SirsiDynix Institute

This was the feed I selected for my Bloglines account. At first, I wasn’t sure that I did it right. I’m sure the Bloglines instructions were completely intuitive for people who already knew how to do it. Happily, the feeds started to come in after about twenty minutes or so.

Cat Lovers Podcast: http://www.podcast.net/show/54520

• Podcastalley.com

Library Podcast: 10. The Library Channel The Library Channel is your source for Arizona State University Libraries news. We periodically post news about events and what is new at the libraries as well as info...


Cat Lovers Podcast: The Lure of Catnip

Recent Episodes for Animals Aloud
The Lure of Catnip
Catnip has long been a useful icebreaker in the human-feline relationship. Its hypnotic powers have made it one of the key ingredients in cat paraphernalia… including toys… cat bedding.. and scratching posts. It comes in nearly as many different varieties as coffee beans…. With northern climes like Canada and Alaska boasting the highest quality. The catnip farming and retailing business has become a multi-million dollar industry of its own. While catnip has an intoxicating… some say erotic affect on many cat species from Tigers to tabbies… not all cats succumb. Cat expert Dr. Arnold Plotnick has some theories on the subject. He has an exclusive feline-only practice in New York City, called Manhattan Cat Specialists. In fact, he’s the only board certified Cat Expert in the Big Apple and a regular contributor to several cat publications, including Cat Fancy. He filed this commentary about the favorite feline herb.

• I found Yahoo podcasts to be the most user-hostile of the three. Pursuing “cats,” I entered the keyword into the search field. I got nothing but music, songs with cats in the title or name of the band.
  

http://www.mycathatesyou.com/cats/

Polly and the pirates

Polly and the pirates : volume one / Ted Naifeh.— Portland : Oni Press, 2006.

[176] p. : ill, ; 19 cm.
ISBN: 1-932664-46-7

1. Pirates -- Comic books, strips, etc.

2. Girls -- Comic books, strips, etc.

DDC: 741.5973

Polly Pringle is the most well-behaved and unadventurous young lady at Mistress Lovejoy’s boarding school until she’s Shanghaied by pirates. They don’t want to hold her hostage or even put her to work . They want a captain, and they figure that the daughter of Med Malloy, the Pirate Queen has the right bloodline for the job.

There’s plenty of swashbuckling, swinging from the yardarms, pitched sea battles and treasure map hunting in this adventure to keep the story exciting, but there’s also the depiction of the setting: huge vessels that are an imaginative cross between Victorian mansions and tall sailing ships sailing to and from a port city of houseboats and wharfs, surrounded by towering cliffs. And there’s Naifeh’s vivid characters drawn in pencil and ink as sharply as in his dialog and plot.

iHCPL Week 9 #20 Discover YouTube and other video sharing sites

Words fail me when I contemplate the piano playing cat.
The dancing human was quite amusing. The librarian career
video was refreshingly up-to-date;it was almost as good as
one of my all-time favorites, the Gorilla Librarian.


I watched the talking cats on Yahoo! Videos and the very strange
assortment on MSN videos. Google videos just sent me right back
to YouTube. 

I tried to find a video to embed that would satisfy the high standards
of the cat vacuuming video and the piano playing cat, but I couldn't
decide between:

LOL Cats (language safe)



OR

funny cat who has just discovered his bliss and will be enrolling in plumbing school in the morning:

So, I posted both.

My animoto

A new stereotype buster

This should make up for the shushing action on the librarian action figures. The original is at http://www.mcphee.com/items/11696.html

iHCPL: Week 8: #19 Web-based Apps: They're not just for desktops

Beware: symptoms of malignant bad attitude below, tune in next time for a more positive report.

I like Helene Blowers’s document about its features, the welcome document from Zoho looks swell, but I can’t get the @#$%^& thing to work for me.

I signed up for Zoho. But, at first I couldn’t figure out how to create a new document. Then I saw the New button in the upper left hand corner of my screen.

I clicked on it, but nothing happened.

Then I tried to import a document, but when I tried to open it, this is what I got:

So, I @#$%^&* some more and poked about, and then five minutes or so later the title of the document showed up as well as something called “Untitled,” which I took to be my new blank document. So I opened my imported document and the title was there --- but none of the rest of it!

So I tried to paste what I’d done on Word to the blank document. The text made it but none of the pictures. So I used the Zoho tool to import the picture. Then I tried to format it, but was unable to discover if this was possible or not. I went back to Microsoft on my desktop and did the modification and imported it. That worked. Then I added another picture. Then I tried to reposition some text. Big mistake – everything went away.

I clicked on the other document, and once again got the “Sorry, the page you requested was not found…” message again. So, I clicked on the “Untitled document” and then back on the titled document it had reappeared with my most recent editing deleted.

At this point I decided to go back to Microsoft on my desktop, Zoho, no matter how swell its hype may be, is too slow and too unreliable. I expect the speed, and perhaps the unreliability is because it has to travel the web and back before it can perform, which are just about the last things you need when typing or editing.

iHCPL: Week 8: #18 Social Networking: Making friends in the comfort of your own home

I watched the video -- Social Networking in Plain English; I took the Facebook tour, and I read the Newsweek article on the growth of Facebook. Then I looked around:

MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/ I just don't get it. When I read People magazine at least I don't have to deal with the pop-up ads.

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/ I took the tour but I still can't answer the question, why? Why would I want to do this? Is it like an ongoing once a year Christmas letter? I also can't figure out what to do with it. If I want to stay in touch with people, I call them on the phone, or write them a letter, or send them an e-mail. I have an account because a colleague invited me to join the Urban Public Library Group, but I seldom check it, and when I do there's nothing new there. (Cheese to go with the whine may be found below)

Nevertheless, I am determined to crack the esoteric group known as Harris County Public Library, and I shall persevere until successful. And I’m sending an invitation to my kids – they’ll know how this thing works.

• Ning - http://www.ning.com/ It's nice there are so many social networks, I guess.
  Yahoo!360 - http://360.yahoo.com/ Is this any different from having a blog?
  Xanga - http://www.xanga.com/ The same thing with videos
  LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com/ I joined this when I was test driving search engines. I was looking for a friend who had moved to Seattle. I didn’t find him.
• Rate My Space - http://ratemyspace.hgtv.com/ But there are no libraries! Who cares about people who don’t hoard books? Well, maybe if they have snarky cats.
• MyOpera - http://my.opera.com/ huh?
• Infield Parking - http://www.infieldparking.com/ social networking for piston heads
• Dogster, Catster - http://www.dogster.com/ , http://www.catster.com/
• OMG! Cat vacuum videos:
  
  

  
  
  Still, I prefer the LOL cats on http://icanhascheezburger.com/page/6/