Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Monday, February 26, 2007

Thing 8 (not actually week 4)

RSS is pretty cool, it can make using the computer much more convenient. I even found RSS on a friend's website and subscribed to it. This exercise has definitely been the most tedious so far. I am wondering if I will actually complete the 23 things. Creating the bloglines account was pretty painless, I even found some good feeds. Here is the link to my bloglines stuff:
http://www.bloglines.com/blog/andysbloglines
RSS can be useful to libraries in many ways. One is by providing current information about new books and book reviews. There are too many useful library-related RSS applications to list here; besides, I don't want to take any work away from the library computer people.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Thing #7: technology related blog

So, one piece of technology that has been of interest to me in the last week has been my newest musical instrument. It is called a Unisynth, a bit of both synthesizer and guitar. It is also the type of guitar I would imagine unicorns to use if they were a little better with their hooves. The frets are made of rubber with sensors underneath so it can tell where your fingers are. It has portions of real strings, which are used as triggers when strummed to let it know when to make sound. It features the latest technology (as of 1984) including several voices such as "vibes," "vibes 2," "guitar," "guitar 2," "brass," and "synth." It also has a whammy bar. Here is a picture of one like mine (below).
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Thing 6: exploring mashups and 3rd party sites

One of my best friends recently told me the word mashup is his least favorite word of 2006. I don't really understand why, I enjoyed the mashups I found. Check out this magazine cover I "found" below.
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Saturday, February 10, 2007

jerdawgpipejam


jerdawgpipejam
Originally uploaded by andypaul.
Thing 5 (continued)
This is a picture of my friend Jeremiah. He was in town recently from New York.

Thing 5: exploring flickr

This has been the most enjoyable part of my learning 2.0 journey so far. I seen pictures my friends have posted on flickr before but never really had an opportunity to browse the site. I appreciate good photographs and am glad to see so many in one place. It's always nice to find a new way to kill time on the internet. I posted 8 pictures on flickr but none seem to show up when I search for them. Two of my co-workers seem to be having the same problem. I am now going to try to add a picture to this blog.

-Andy

Things 3 and 4

Setting up my blog was pretty easy. The hardest part so far seems to be navigating the pages. I am glad I am learning about this blogging stuff, I never really had a reason to check it out before. Posting the first blog was very easy, coming up with something interesting to say was the hard part.

Registering the blog for thing #4 was also easy. I even got a friendly email thanking me for doing so. I'm glad I am learning new things while getting paid to do so!

Thursday, February 1, 2007

Thing 2: "The Seven and a Half Habits of Learning."

I enjoyed this exercise. I am definitely a lifelong learner. I agree that it is important to remember that we learn in other places than the classroom. I have learned the most valuable life lessons on the mean streets and while traveling. I especially agree with the habits of accepting responsibility for your own learning, teaching others, beginning with the end in mind, and using technology to your advantage. This part of the program had me concerned that library people might be plagarizing a little (From wikipedia.org: "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, first published in 1989, is a self-help book written by Stephen R. Covey").