Three of Nine Part 3 of 3

Rollyo

I have found that 1 is relatively decisive when 1 is actually running out of time. I am very behind in my blogging and a task……ah goes to show procrastination never pays. Still at least it is very enjoyable right???

Creating your own search engine sounded like a brilliant concept to me mostly because I am very addicted to Google. I can honestly say that I never use the internet without Google…..and to think that I would have never discovered my addiction if it wasn’t for my blogging.

So the obvious question to be asked was what is the best search engine to have which would of course increase the level of convenience in my life and let’s face it enable my laziness. I was going to just create one from the topics given but I it occurred to me that mixing gossip with news would not have the desired effect. Instead I was struck with inspiration (yeah it does happen occasionally) and I decided to make a search engine for all the video streaming sites out there (ok well not all) but a lot from DailyMotion to YouTube. Wikipedia of course was my source of information for this.

The downside to this I realise is that it will be very difficult if not impossible to use it from any work computers. Unfortunately this particular part of the inspiration did bump into me until much later when the damage had been done. I trialed it and well it seemed to work....

Anyway here goes

Select...Words of MiseryVideo StreamingSearch The Web

Well, maybe, they aren't small — maybe we're big

Three of Nine Part 2 of 3

Library Thing

It’s true this website seriously dislikes me.......so what else could I do but return the favour. What other conclusion can you possibly draw...... I sat for maybe more than 15 minutes waiting for it to load..........waiting .......waiting and waiting some more (wasn’t even using the work computers)....and it finally loaded.

On the upside it was very easy to join and once the initial page loaded it didn’t take loads of time for further navigation. Also it was easy to find books.

On the downside I think it seriously needs more colour (all the brown). I also found it slightly annoying to add books as it wouldn’t let me go back to the list of books for an author after I had selected one. I think that I can honestly say that I am not very likely to use the site often. I much prefer Google for searching for books and aside from that I don’t have time to finish all my reading let alone add it to a website. I also hate logging on....

Having said that however I can see its usefulness as long as they got rid of the brown.......Here is a link to my very anaemic catalogue...Enjoy
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/MiserylovesCompany

Three of Nine Part 1 of 3

Image and Text Generators

Ahh how did I ever get along without knowing about image and text generators? Well 1 thing is for sure I certainly did not know the extent of my problems....staff I work with take note

"I'm a cynical cranky pants with a highly suspicious nature!"

Yep doesn’t that just explain everything. This was of course curtsey of the “Name Generator Generator” from http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/ which diagnoses your problem using your name. How more specific can you get?

Since I was making such good progress I thought why not let’s try the image generators. I mean how can you argue with the logic?? if my name had managed to reveal my problems my picture might actually solve the rest of the mystery. I have only waited years for this.


Ok fine I chickened out but I did find the next best thing....A smiley shock surprise

Curtsey of imagechef at http://23things-swinburne.blogspot.com/2007/08/23-things.html

I have to say that i really enjoyed playing around with the text and image generators. Much more fun when you find a good website. One thing to note is that most websites don't allow direct linking and the picture has to be saved before being posted.

In case anyone is interested here is something else I discovered. 23 things to learn on the web is actually a widespread idea with many universities and libraries launching it some right here in blogger.... Doesn’t it just make you feel better that not only are all the Manukau libraries staff suffering through it with you but some of the rest of the world as well. Misery loves company

Two of Nine

Aha I conquered RSS. Ok well not true I am still RSS challenged but happy to note not as much as I was last week. If nothing else at least now I know of its existence and a little bit about its usage. It wasn’t exactly difficult however I have to admit that I had to read least one of the tutorials before I knew what was going on (what?? some of us are more tech challenged than others). Getting a bloglines account was easy enough sort of like getting an email account right down to selecting your topics of interest. Adding feeds was a bit more difficult. Since I had only just this week discovered the presence of feeds I decided to go with some from the top 1000. Not really certain whether I will actually be reading any of those to which I subscribed to.

Here is a link to my public blog on bloglines http://www.bloglines.com/blog/Misery. Ok not the most creative thing but at leat its up. Ahhh the accomplishment.

Personally for myself I think an account on bloglines would have limited usage. Fortunately the option of adding feeds is also available on internet explorer (better because no logins).

Searching for library related blogs and news feeds was a little bit more difficult. From the suggested search tools Technorati was possibly the best to use. And in saying this the search tool still wasn’t the easiest to use. I did manage to find several websites.... although I am not entirely certain that they are very library related. I did not like searching for feeds using the search tools because they were not specific. An easier way to do it I found is to go on the website of interest and let internet explorer 7 pick up all the RSS available.

I also managed to change my blog template. Now whatever I write is actually readable because it not quite so dark (not sure if this is a good thing).

So, tell me, my little one-eyed one... on what poor, pitiful, defenseless planet has my "monstrosity" been unleashed?

One of Nine

First sentence of my first blog

Strangely enough the hardest part of the setting up an account was deciding what name to identify myself by and what email address to use. I am part of a club of excessively normal people who actually chooses to name their email accounts after themselves. Not just the first name either but the full name (I have an excellent reason for this…now to just remember it). All things considered I had no idea what I was going to base my blog on so I wasn't exactly sure whether I wanted to have my name associated with whatever I was going to come up with. You have to understand that I have two terrible qualities which should not go hand in hand in a person. I am indecisive and I over think everything. This makes me actually reaching a decision next to impossible unless I absolutely have to. The actual username Misery is from the cartoon ‘Ruby Gloom’ …what I can say I like cartoon characters. I actually prefer the main character but I find Misery to be very mood defining.

Unfortunately the 1st post spent a couple of days in limbo because I had no idea what direction it was going to take. I considered several alternatives including writing in Lemony Snicket style to go with the name. Upon actual reading of the instructions for one of twenty three I realised that it wasn't a choice I had to make. So here we are…Now I have to register and done.

There is no charge for awesomeness or attractiveness