happy 2007, Project Players

Thanks to the genius information that I gleaned from reading other Project Players' blogs, I have been having the time of my life playing around with dogster. I was able to create a free FREE Free 2008 calendar from Shutterfly courtesy of dogster. Joining dogster was definitely one of the best things I have done in 2007 and my free calendar is actually worth $19.98 (I did have to pay for shipping and handling, but that was totally worth it.)
You can visit Taffy's dogster page here:

Join the Dogster community

reflections

It is hard to believe that Semester 1 is coming to a close. Project Play has been a lot of fun for me for a couple of different reasons. I have learned so much (1), and discovered how pleasant it is to write blog entries that are not so content driven (2). The blog entries that I write for work are so dry - city recycling or new books on soup. My Project Play blog is a bit looser. It is highly entertaining to be able to offer polls about new television shows (Pushing Daisies is still my favorite - I nearly cried when the Aunts got their flippers wet at the end of the last episode - they desperately needed to get back in the water! closely followed by Chuck, a show that I hadn't watched until someone recommended it in the survey).

I have started using quite a few of the tools we have been playing with, entertaining friends and family with my JibJab disco dance featuring Bill Gates and Martha Stewart, making magazine covers with various photos and enjoying a daily dose of Cute Overload.

And thank god for SurveyMonkey. At the eleventh hour I had to re-work an online staff holiday guessing game because the form I created in Dreamweaver didn't work. Something about scripts, and variables, I don't really know. Our web librarian said I could redo it in SurveyMonkey and I actually kind of knew how to do it! She has the fancy $$ subscription, so I was able to add images and stuff. It is not perfect, but I was able to do it in about an hour and that is all that matters.

The Week 6 assignment was my favorite. Not necessarily because of flickr, but because of the other entertaining things I can do with photos on the web. There is a whole world of distraction out there. I also valued reading fellow players' blogs and seeing what they were up to. I found out about dogster (see Taffy the wonderdoodle's page) and Church Sign Generator (thanks, Emily!).

I will definitely continue with Semester 2. I have never tried IM'ing and the productivity week looks appealing. Ta-da lists? I love lists!

So until next semester,

Play More. Learn More. Fear Less. And JibJab like your life depends on it.

if you want to send a letter to santa,

get it postmarked in Rudolph, WI. Home of the Grotto Shrine and Wonder Cave, Rudolph also postmarks thousands of holiday cards and letters with a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer stamp. Did you know you can send your package of cards to the Postmaster of a particular city, and label it "Holiday Greeting Card Re-Mailing" and they will send your cards out with a special little cancellation? There are other communities that do this, too, like Bethlehem Georgia and Christmas Valley, Oregon, but Rudolph is nearest and dearest to my heart.

For this week's assignment, I searched Rudolph, on Wikipedia. I would have added my name to the notable residents area of the Wikipedia entry, but even though I grew up there, it's been 26 years since I have lived there, and it's debatable how notable I really am. Instead, I added a line about the postmark. That was quite thrilling! There really is a lot of trust there, as it got edited and posted immediately, I didn't even have to login. I had a new found love for Wikipedia. But then the love was tarnished. My post may have been the victim of vandalism! I am not sure why, but when I went back later, my addition had been deleted. Then, a short while later, my post was back up with a reference note! Who researched and then referenced my post, I have no idea. The wiki gods? You can see the whole sordid deal in history.

And for pbwiki. I have already made out my holiday shopping list! Online! This is genius! I can link to everything from the front page and then sort my various lists into separate pages. I think I might do this with my book lists, too. LibraryThing only sorts with tagging, which is nice, but not like a separate list. This way, I can have separate lists organized by year! I really enjoy making lists, so wikis are tailor made for me.

That's all for today.

Play more. Learn more. Fear less. If you want the scoop about what it was like to race around the Wonder Cave during school picnics, or play kickball near the grotto cemetery, just give me a holler! (That means you need to comment.)

mm-mm, good

Delicious. In honor of our tagging assignment and del.icio.us, I am posting a graphic of quiche. I made a gorgeous quiche this morning (red peppers, carrots, onion, tomato, garlic, marinated artichokes and provolone!) and it was quite delicious. But who can remember where to punctuate that word when referring to the tagging site? del.icio.us is not intuitive. At least not for me. As for quiche, I think that I favor quiche so much because it reminds me of pie, and I luuurrrve pie. Anything with a crust is OK with me.

I am currently using del.icio.us for tracking recipe sites. This was a great suggestion by the Project Play coordinators. I spend a lot of my free time browsing sites looking for recipes (and even more time digging through my cookbooks, looking for the printed copy of something that I found on the Internet and didn't want to "lose"). I think this will save me a lot of time and is handy, too. I like the idea that you can find your bookmarks on any computer; this truly does take a world of chaos and make it orderly. But what happens if multiple people use the same computer? If more than one person tags something, can you add additional keywords? At home, I am the only user with my login, so I haven't run into this yet.

And what about the social aspect of this? This might be handy, or it might be a giant pitfall. Do I really need to see other people's bookmarks? Will their bookmarks really be useful to me and save me time? Or will I just spend more time browsing through the curiosity that Web 2.0 provides in terms of seeing what other people are up to?

Finally, a big hooray to Blogger! The blog tags get alphabetized automatically. Woo hoo! That, too, is delicious.

Play more. Learn more. Fear less. Eat quiche.

I know Abby Blachly

the LibraryThing librarian. Well, not really, but I did sit next to her at the Kevin Henkes author luncheon at WLA in the Wisconsin Dells last year. And we did joke about how we have ducks in the Dells and they have ducks in Boston (see, I do know her, I know she lives in Boston!). She was very cool. Abby Blachly=Cool.

So in honor of ABC (Abby Blachly=Cool), I created a fun alphabet library for this week's Project Play assignment.

Some thoughts on LibraryThing:

Strengths
LibraryThing is a beautiful concept. You can organize like crazy! You can catalog your personal collection, books that you have read, books that you would like to read, books that you have reviewed (there is a MADreads LibraryThing group) and on and on. It is easy to use and has tons of information available without being overwhelming. It is also fun to find out what your peers (and total strangers) are reading.

Weaknesses
This is too much work for me. I do not have my home library cataloged in any discernible way (horrors!). It is loosely shelved like so: young adult fiction, adult fiction, cookbooks, film books, all of my husband's books, oversize and so on. I focus my talents on color coordinating my closet - this truly gets me out of the house more quickly in the morning.

Unsuggestor
This is plain weird. But amusing. I typed in The Joy of Cooking and clicked on the Unsuggestor box to get some bad recommendations. The list was weird, and included quite a few biblical titles and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell. Unrecommendations noted. It should also be noted that the Suggestor provided a lot of really useful, sensible titles like Mastering the Art of French Cooking and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (one of my favorites by Mollie Katzen).

Silly Dummiez Book Cover Maker


Play more. Learn more. Fear less. Read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. It is without a doubt the best alphabet book ever written.

survey results favor television viewing

Library people watch television! Thank you to the various participants of my survey. I now understand how SurveyMonkey makes their money; I was tempted to upgrade my account in order to have the data analyzed for me. Sadly, I had to cut and paste the answers into a word document and then analyze the data myself. Here is a summary of responses:

1. Did you watch the season premiere of Pushing Daisies and if so, what did you think?
All but one participant in the survey watched Pushing Daisies and everyone who watched loved it. One participant compared it to the movie Waitress, another described it as a cross between a Tim Burton movie and Wonderfalls. One participant watched it twice!

2. Are there any other new shows you are watching? If yes, what new shows are you watching?
People are watching (in alpha order) Chuck, Gossip Girl, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Journeyman, Mad Men, Moonlight, Private Practice and Tell Me You Love Me. What this data tells me is that not only do library folks watch television, they also pony up for the fancy premium cable. Aside: Janice Min, the editor of US Weekly chose to include Mad Men in her editorial this week! If you missed this new series, an encore of season one begins Thursday, November 1 at 9:00 on AMC.

3. If you do not watch television, why not?
The majority of respondents really enjoy television, but reading and busy schedules get in the way of watching more. There was even a shout out to MTV.

4. Do you have any "one touch and it was gone" technology disaster stories that you would like to share? If so, please tell us!
Two lucky people did not have any harrowing tales to tell. Another had the "laptop won't talk to the projector" problem. Don't I know it! The majority of frightening happenings include losing data while working on the web: while creating web pages, losing brilliant blog posts and comments, having online software go buggy and not read necessary files or losing photo changes. The photo changes were particularly tragic as they were for a Lost Kitty poster. Thank goodness the kitty was later found. Whew! One participant is still suffering post traumatic stress over a techno incident gone wrong. Sorry about that! Didn't mean to dredge up any painful memories.

Thanks again for your feedback! Play more. Learn more. Fear less. Shell out the big bucks for expanded basic cable. It's worth it.

alphabet fun with flickr

I created a tiny collection of photos featuring my various abc paraphernalia. I generally load all of my photos into Kodak Gallery, so I don't really have the hang of Flickr, yet. I wish that I could organize the photos on the main page; I figured out how to organize them as a set, so I am linking to that here. And don't forget to visit Taffy the Wonder Doodle's first magazine cover. I could have spent all day working on that!

good books, the smart choice

Thanks to Sloganizer for these words of wisdom! This week's Project Play lesson focuses on feedback thingies, so I am begging for comments, people!

In order to achieve a greater sense of community, I would like to tell a little tale. This is a story of people coming together. Not at the library, not while reading books, not even where people gather to spend money (like Starbucks, or Target). In this story, people are gathered around their TV, sharing in a cultural phenomena, in the privacy of their own homes, not unlike our online community here, where we are gathered around our computers, participating in Project Play via cyberspace. I am talking about Pushing Daisies, the fall season's hottest new prime time show.

In a nutshell, Ned, the adorable main character of the show, has the power to bring dead people back to life by touching them. Once the dead person comes back to life, they have one minute to remain alive before someone else in close proximity will die. If Ned touches the "alive again" person at any time after they have been brought back to life, they re-die. You can see the double-edged sword here! Someone is going to die either way. And if the "alive again" people want to remain alive, they need to stay as far away from Ned as possible. But the show is sweet and mysterious and Ned is using his powers for good (as far as episode one, anyway). And he bakes pies. I will definitely keep watching.

Has anyone else seen this fantastic new show? Will anyone watch it this week because I referred to it as "the fall season's hottest new show"? This may be an editorial statement, but in general, the reviews have been glowing. Click here for a quick survey.

And finally, can anyone totally relate to Ned's ability to bring life back from the dead, only to lose it all with a simple touch? Am I the only one that sees a parable for our modern society and technology here? How many times have I searched for the perfect resource online and in one click, lost it forever? Or worse yet, spend time working on a document to have the computer freeze or the web go down and lose whatever I was working on, at least up to the point that I had last saved it? One touch, and all is lost...

So on that note, I will end my entry.

Play more. Learn more. Fear less. Watch Pushing Daisies on ABC/Wednesdays/7 Central. And please comment.

more addictive than italian cream cake

I am back for more trouble! Today I subscribed to more blogs than I probably should have, but it is fun and addictive:

• A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette
• Annoyed Librarian
• Bloglines News
• Cute Overload (couldn't resist)
• Frenzied Librarian
• Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
• ISTHMUS - The Daily Page - DAILY RSS Feed
• Kasey's Page
• Library Link of the Day
• Library Web Chic
• Love That Dog (love you, Barney!)
• MADreads
• Mr. Manners
• Nonfiction Readers Anonymous
• SatisfiedCuriosity
• Unshelved
• Veronica's Play

I am really enjoying Project Play and look forward to the new lessons each week. I did not know that I could sign up for podcasts with bloglines, so I added Grammar Girl to the list. I normally receive it automatically through itunes, but I sometimes forget to check it if I am just re-charging my nano. Now I have a handy reminder that something new has been added.

Until we meet again: Play more. Learn more. Fear less. Appreciate reversible tights.

bienvenue

Welcome to my abc's of library blogging!

This is not my first blog, but it is my first library blog, and I will be posting as part of

Project Play, a free, online, self-discovery program that encourages the exploration of Web 2.0 tools and new technologies.

In that spirit, I would like to introduce my avatar, sporting an official ALA Read t-shirt, as any good librarian avatar should, right?

Play more, learn more, fear less!