End of an Era

Some of you may be aware that I am currently grieving the closure of my pub.

I am now accepting suggestions of new drinking venues.

Word of the Festive Season

Killories: The units of energy in all the tasty treats consumed over christmas that utterly kill any notions of self-restraint and/or any possibility of losing weight over summer.

Rob’s and My Christmas Song

Although it may seem a little rough around the edges, this is ‘our’ Christmas song because Rob sang the lyrics

“‘Cause I’m the lucky one, came in at ten to one, I’ve got a feeling- there’s years for me and you”

to me on our first Chrissy together.

We have since found out these aren’t the exact lyrics but we’re choosing to ignore that small detail. Dawwwwwwwwww

The Coolest Giftie

When you know that someone wants salt and pepper grinders for Christmas- you may feel a little uninspired responding to their wishes. That is -unless you found these little babies:

Lifelong Learning (a little late) and Timely Reflection

I feel like such a doofus- somehow I never posted about Lifelong Learning right at the beginning of the programme. I did however find the hard-copy of the learning contract that I had drawn up in response to the concept of Lifelong Learning. I’m a huge advocate of Lifelong Learning which is pretty lucky considering that the information service profession is constantly changing and thus providing more and more opportunities to learn new things. Looking back at my contract I had identified as possible obstacles to my learning 1) Lack of confidence to “play”  with technologies 2)An inability to accept responsibility for my own learning and 3)Not allotting the necessary time  to the programme.

I had proposed that the lack of confidence could be overcome through consultation and discussion with my friends and peers- pretty forward thinking of me actually as my fellow 23 thingers were always on hand to help out (and to share a chuckle with). I thought that I might overcome my inability to accept responsibility for my learning by setting achievable goals and deadlines. This helped me to structure my learning and I found that I even re-allocated my time to fit around other responsibilities never neglecting the programme. This meant that I ensured the 23 Things programme got the attention that it deserved and the time it required.

On that note, it’s time to reflect upon the 23 Things programme. The most resounding result, and the most desired one, is that I am a great deal more open to exploring new technologies. I no longer harbor the irrational (yet previously quite persistent) fear that I will break the internet or cause my computer to explode- thanks to the support of fellow 23 Thingers.

I have signed up to a number of RSS feeds -that I will continue to subscribe to- that will help me to remain abreast of changes and advances in my profession- iLibrarian, Librarians Matter and In the Library with the Lead Pipe.

I put together a powerpoint presentation for a project team meeting (which, admittedly, I did not use) because I was inspired by our session on slidecasting (and I accidentally found out some stuff about institutional repositories whilst exploring other peoples’ slidecasts).

I was able to recognise the Del.ici.ous icon whilst investigating and benchmarking other universities’  institutional repositories and to recommend it as a valuable feature for our online students.

Most importantly I made some excellent friends and I think that we will continue to support each other in our quest to remain technologically savvy.

Thank you Practically Perfect Programmer and thank you my fellow 23 Thingers.

Are you game?

This week we played around with games. Globopato and I discovered that we used to be big fans (read addicts) of DOOM and had perhaps avoided the world of online gaming because we were scared that we would become incurable gaming addicts.

I’m already a fan of the online poker on Spacebook (Texas Hold ‘Em) and I ‘m only $22000 odd away from my very first (virtual) million.

Poker Goddess

This week I played the Impossible Quiz and (eventually) got as far as 55 -using numerous skip options and arguing the arbitrariness of several answers- loudly, with my computer, who wasn’t listening. I played some bloons- Amy had to tell me what to do because I had just jumped in without reading the instructions. And I created a pastafarian character in Kingdom of Loathing (I have a ravioli hat but I have not yet earned enough meat to purchase some pants).

I could very easily slip back into the narcotic fog of gaming.

Excuse me while I go kill some more bunnies to attain enough meat for pants.

Spacebook and Myface

Already on myface (as opposed to off it) I’ve also pottered around in spacebook before as well. What I did learn -of great value- today is how to tweak my privacy settings- I can’t believe I’d been operating on default settings all this time- doh!

I also saw what my profile looks to other people- apologies everyone who has already seen this- I will edit it soon. You really don’t need to know about my obsession with TV shows that start with the letter S (and besides- a recent mad keen fan of The Wire which kind of debunks the shows beginning with S theory anyway). I digress…

I joined the i heart science library, UWA Web 2.0 community, groups and had a stickybeak at some of the cool applications.

I think I may change my facebook language setting back to pirate. Avast me maties

Wait! We’re re-inventing the wheel…..

Slippery-slide casting

World Inverted and I have to give a wee presentation tomorrow (note the attempt to deflect the imminent, crippling panic-attack with the use of the very cute and non-threatening adjective “wee”).

If we had been more prepared and had produced it in Powerpoint we may have had our very own slidecast to upload here. As it stands, here is one the Practically Perfect Programmer prepared earlier:

BTW my presentation is currently very low-tech and rather resembles a year 5 school project. I’m going for ‘kitsch’ and ‘quirky’ with a small dose of ‘cutesie pie’

YouTube-Halloween Style

I had created a YouTube account last week with the aid of Miss Helen Kitty and was automatically logged in when I entered YouTube via my iGoogle page (which is quite fortunate as I am not sure what password I had used having seemingly signed up to everything in the entire webisphere in the last couple of weeks).

So here’s the spooky music file:

And following that theme, here’s my old favourite Nouvelle Vague performing the Bauhaus classic Bela Lugosi’s Dead:

I hope you all had a spooooooky halloween.

On to the next thing