Finished - ahahahahahah!

So, in this last post from Prof M's garden, I have to look to the following questions posed by the the 23 things team:

How could you draw on what you have learned in 23 Things to help you in your work?
As already pointed out, I think there is a use for some of these technologies on things like the Infolinks page.

How could the library use the technologies featured in 23 Things to improve its service?
We could make the library web site more Web 2.0 savvy - enter Encore!

How do you think the 23 Things program could be improved in the future?
Done in smaller chunks (ten things) but every 6 months.

Do you think you'll keep blogging or keep using any of the other tools you learned about?
Many of them I was using already. I may do a blog on my next OS cycling trip It should be fun.

This is Prof M, signing off - oh dear - there appear to be a number of bulldozers converging on the garden and what are those large suspiciously brick-like objects descending through the atmosphere..?

Oh bollocks...

MSN - The Devil Incarnate!

I used to use MSN all the time, but I found that it used to really slow the performance of my PC. I also found all the popups coming up whilst I was working on something to be quite annoying. Still i does help while away time that might be otherwise spent actually talking to people. Something I sill have to contend with when I use my partners PC. Arrggghhh!! How dare he talk to anyone other than me! :P

I've also been dealing with Meebo a lot of late. We've been actively investigating its use as a reference tool (after the Law Library started using it). In fact, when I run my classes on Infolinks, we've been actively encouraging its use as an online query service.

Prof M

Podcast

I subscribe to several podcasts through iTunes. I regularly listen to the Nova and Vega podcasts.

I also watch the The Movie Show podcast.

I also listen to a great UK podcast called Cadmium2 - the podcast of British cult TV, film and radio.

I recently created VU libraries first podcast for Library Events which is also available on iTunes!

Needless to say, me and my iPod and iPhone are inseparable.

Prof M

YouTube

I've been using YouTube for ages. Mainly to catch up on my fave overseas soaps.

It's great, I have some fave sites, and those sites have all their vids sorted according to category.

I also receive alerts telling me when new vids are available.

I've embedded a little video that examines the future view of librarians! :-)

My New Pet

This is my new pet.

I bought it Sunday.

We are going to be very happy together!

I've added it to the VU Pets Blog.

It was interesting using a wiki. It assumes a high level of user trust, something that is not always borne out in this age of computer viruses, Trojan horses and malware.

Still it works for wikipedia!

Prof M.

Library 2.0

Since I'm one of the lucky people implementing Encore, I've had an ongoing 2.0 experience for quite some time.

In fact I just delivered a paper at the AIUG where I got up on a metaphoric soapbox and extolled that Web 2.0 was the future and that libraries and librarians had to adapt to this new paradigm. We have to move away from the more linear (and outdated) models of the past and embrace new Web 2.0 experiences.

Reporting from the ground
Prof M.

Delicious

I've watched the video and signed up to delicious.

I even did some tagging. and added a tag roll to my blog.

Yum yum.

:-)

iGoogle - is it the end of the Universe as we know it

I set up my iGoogle account during our very first 23 Things session.

I set up links for Wikipedia, You Tube, Amazon, the weather and a lot of other nifty stuff.

I find it far preferable to My Space or Facebook (yawn).

But of course, one day Google will stop existing and then what will I do?????

Answers on the back of an email please.

Anyways
Prof M

Google Books & Scholar

I had a look at Google Books - I looked up a few books and managed to find the full-text for Pride and Prejudice. Good old Jane Austen - alive and well in the public domain.

If only I could download the full PDf to my iPhone (yes, it's all about my iPhone!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I also had a look at Google Scholar, which I had previously done some work on setting up the VU Library profile.

Oh dear, Im rather afraid that might give away who I am...

Prof M.

Why the Professor LOVES Google Maps but HATES Google Docs

I love Google Maps.

I've been using it for years. It was a nifty tool that helped me get about in life.

Then I got an iPhone and Google Maps became essential. As a cyclist, I loved having Google Maps at my fingertips and as a result, there is barely a day that goes by when I don't use it.

Long live Google Maps!

I hate Google Docs.

I just used it for the first time today and I got all excited about it's networking possibilities. And I thought, I've got the perfect real-world project to use it for. Then I tried to upload my life. You know what - it didn't upload. The reason. It's TOO big. Why are the file sise limitations so bloody scungy? Any real project is going to be a lot bigger than 500KB.

So I went back to dreary old not real-world uploading. Ho hum.

Death to Google Docs.

Prof M.

Facebook Apps - Boredom personified

As if I wasn't wasting enough time on my PC, now Facebook has boring little apps to brighten up their page.

Whoopdy do!

I have looked at Library profiles on MySpace (mostly amateurish garbage) and set up a Facebook profile, invited a few friends and supposedly set up an app or two.

My life is now complete. I can die a happy person without a care in the world.

You may detect sarcasm throughout this post (please feel free to ignore it).

Sigh

Prof M

RSS II: The Wrath of the Subscriptions

I've just had a look at Dig and added it to my feeds.

I've also used Technorati to look up some library sites and added in the British Museum Library and the Library Mistress (they had a nice pic of the librarian in Star Trek: Insurrection). :)

RSS Feeds

I've been using RSS for a while now - I have quite a few of them set up in my Internet Explorer Feeds section.

I have just set up a Google Reader and added in a few of my favourites.

Possible applications for the Library - Library News! But it could also be used by Librarians to promote classes like GoogleSmart, and lunchtime database sessions.

Prof M

My Favourite Books

The Target Book
Originally uploaded by johnp2001

As a big Doctor Who fan and a fan of the Target Doctor Who books, I fell in love with a series of articles published in Doctor Who Magazine a few years back that chronicled the rise and fall of the Target Doctor Who books, which were an essential part of my childhood.

So I was delighted when the author of these articles decided to turn them into a book with LOTS and LOTS of nice piccies included.

I've read it 3 times now and it won an award as the most-popular non-fiction book in a recent DWM poll - even beating out all that new series crap pushed on poor unsuspecting kiddies by BBC Books.

This was when books were real books and Terance Dicks was king!

It's just a pity that so many of the books bearing his name are utter shite!

Sigh.

Prof M.

My New Range of Skin Care Products

The beta range is our now - made from fresh Ebola berries!

My New Album

Just a quick note that my new album is out next week.

We've decided to go all retro and bring it out on CASSETTE!

Here's a sneak peak!

Prof. M

DO NOT Pass Go and DO NOT Collect $200

The other day I was strolling around the enclosure when I saw a tresspasser climbing over the wall. For a moment I thought I might have had something to worry about but then I realised that he was less climbing and more falling over - he'd been electrocuted and their several razor-sharp spikes from atop the wall embedded in his chest.

What little that remained of him after he was pulled out of the Horda pit was fed to my pet Audrey II.

Security breaches are an all too common occurence nowadays. As the fame of my Garden spreads, so too does the number of wierdos who feel the need to try and liberate some of my less successful experiments.

Have these people not seen 28 Days Later? Don't they know that if they succeed it could mean the END OF CIVILISATION AS WE KNOW IT? I've got things brewing in a bucket down by the back fence that make the bubonic plague look like a case of the measles.

However, I recently had a Intruderlator 10000 installed (a custom job straight from SkyNet labs) which now oversees all my security needs. It slices, it dices, it mashes and minces. As you can imagine when I'm not using it to turn snoopy neighbours into garden-kill it's real handy in the kitchen.

So as I pass along the ranks of Ripley clones and caged mutant leaders with magnet fetishes I feel safe in the knowledge that there is only one pass to my garden and I'm wearing it. No ones gonna get their hands on this baby, not unless they get past the Manbots first. Heh heh.

I have nothing to fear except fear itself.

Now excuse me, I have to go break up a fight between the Triffids and the Audrey IIIs. And if they wake up Arnold the Krynoid, God help us all.

Sigh

Prof. M

flickr101 or another reason why I'm last on the bus

Don't get me wrong, I like flickr. I also like eating icing sugar out of the bag, but that isn't necessarily good for me.


As you can see to my left (or is that your left - I feel virtually confused) I've managed to plug in a few photosets from my flickr account. An account that has been languishing for the last year or so with little more than a handful of Dr Who audiobook covers on it because I wanted to showboat about them on a forum.

The reason I was doing this is that I love Doctor Who. I also love audiobooks. So of course, a couple of years ago when they started bringing out audiobooks of the original Target novels I was in fanboy heaven. They were even using the original Target covers - well most of the time anyways.

And therein lay the problem, sometimes they were using the cover from the first edition, sometimes the second. Also in the transition from book cover to audiobook cover, a few things were getting tweaked. Size, layout, font colours... Now most of the time this worked, but occasionally it didn't - and after a while it really began to bug me.

I'd be walking along listening to an audiobook on my iPod/iPhone, and every time I pulled the iGadget out to change something, there would be this cover I didn't quite like staring up at me.

So I decided to change it.

I scoured the net (although not too hard as I already had a good site in mind), got up the original artwork, used some existing covers to rough up a template in Photoshop and went to work. I don't know what it is but it was fun. The end result may not look too different to you but it makes all the difference in the world to my sad feeble little mind.

The only question is... should I be able to do it?

Conclusion - I just don't know.

And then there's Superman II...

Sigh.

Prof M

Red Bluff, Black Rock

Red Bluff, Black Rock
Originally uploaded by johnp2001

I love Red Bluff. This craggy bluff overlooks Half Moon Bay and the wreck of H.M.V.S Cerberus.

I've picnicked up here. Spent the night up here. And more than once climbed up to the top of the bluff from the beach.

I hadn't been back in many years, but recently dragged a friend to the spot when we went to Sandringham for the day so that he could take photos whilst I perved on the cyclists.

Whilst the bluff and the beach remained almost identical I could not say the same for the foreshore. Now cleaned up with most of the surrounding bushland cleared away, it has been turned from a pokey delight into a well-traversed picnic spot.

Thus evaporated a bagful of happy memories from my youth.

Sigh.

Prof. M

Perving on the Blog Next Door

One of my fave films is Rear Window. A fascinating examination of voyeurism and its consequences. The moral of which seems to be, that if you're gonna perv on your neighbours, make sure you turn the lights off first!

It used to be if I wanted to know anything about my next door neighbours, I could pop around for a cup of tea or stick a glass against the wall. Hours could be spent watching the hot guy in the flat opposite while he cooked dinner in his underwear or some such.

A furtive thrill to finish off the day.

Now along comes blogging - not only are we encouraged to write our own blogs, but it's expected that other people will read ours. I now know so much about my neighbours I need to enter counselling. Why peak furtively through the blinds when I can watch them full-frontal on their blog?

If Leonardo da Vinci had had a blog we'd prpobably know what that eyebrowless freak was smiling about and she'd probably be hanging on the wall in somebody's garage as a result.

I want the mystique back. This is my comment on other people's blogs.

Sigh

Prof. M

Days Off and Digital Cameras

This is what happens when you have a day off.

You end up down the pier with your best friend and his ultra-expensive camera. He takes the sort of pics that end up in Good Weekending and you end up taking happy snaps with your iPhone.

And am I the only person who still loves film in a camera? Where's the thrill of discovery in seeing exactly what you shot just a few seconds later? What's happened to getting your photos developed and getting them back and realising that your thumb is obscuring half of Horse Guards Parade during the Changing of the Guard?

Sigh.

Prof. M.