OK, I liked Stubleupon. I like how simple it is. I can see that people on cell phones would like it in particular.
It actually works well with my current RSS based reading set up. The one limitation of this is that you don't bump into new sites so much as follow the ones that you already like a lot. So this is a way to get a little glimpse of what else is going on out there.
This is what I found via the site and then tweeted: www.shambles.net/worldclock/worldclock.swf/
Friday, April 11, 2014
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Reflection
Unless I missed a Thing, this is the end. Well, almost the end: I still have to try out StumbleUpon.
In terms of reflection, this wasn't the most helpful project in that I did not learn that many new things, but I had to sign up for a bunch of sites that I had already decided were not interesting to me. That's why I am just finishing up now: the last few weeks were mostly about getting accounts and sharing things.
This isn't really the fault of the project though: I finished my MLIS in the last year and have always been pretty forward looking when it comes to technology--I think I might be too old to be a "millennial", but my father has always had a computer around the house (although he was a journalist with CBC, he learned to program via punch cards at UNB in the electrical engineering department before computer science was a thing), so I fit the term "born digital" if not the other aspects of the term.
But there were some good moments and fun times. In particular, I appreciate the chance to write non-academically. It has been a long time since I have just knocked a bunch of words into a computer for "fun" (yes, it was mandatory: I mean that in the sense that no one is really judging me for content here).
Mostly, I have been writing papers, professionally, or just the short nonsense of social media posts. At least here there are paragraphs and more developed thoughts.
So that was probably the best thing about this: just writing.
In terms of reflection, this wasn't the most helpful project in that I did not learn that many new things, but I had to sign up for a bunch of sites that I had already decided were not interesting to me. That's why I am just finishing up now: the last few weeks were mostly about getting accounts and sharing things.
This isn't really the fault of the project though: I finished my MLIS in the last year and have always been pretty forward looking when it comes to technology--I think I might be too old to be a "millennial", but my father has always had a computer around the house (although he was a journalist with CBC, he learned to program via punch cards at UNB in the electrical engineering department before computer science was a thing), so I fit the term "born digital" if not the other aspects of the term.
But there were some good moments and fun times. In particular, I appreciate the chance to write non-academically. It has been a long time since I have just knocked a bunch of words into a computer for "fun" (yes, it was mandatory: I mean that in the sense that no one is really judging me for content here).
Mostly, I have been writing papers, professionally, or just the short nonsense of social media posts. At least here there are paragraphs and more developed thoughts.
So that was probably the best thing about this: just writing.
Things that I have been doing instead of working on this 23Things project
So I had not been keeping up on my 23things for work. Why is that? Because I had a bunch of other technology projects on the go and just a limited amount of time at work. Fortunately, today I am only on the reference desk for two shifts, so I have the time to catch up.
And the other projects? Well, there are a few non-work ones: I am learning Python, which is going slowly honestly just because I am spending more time on French, I have reconfigured my household media server (not that Plex requires that much work), and I assembled a new computer for my wife.
Building a computer is actually pretty simple: you just need to buy a bunch of parts that all work together: I chose a new Gigabyte motherboard that only supports certain types of RAM, processors, and so on, so you just choose the best that you can get for whatever price you have set and make sure that it is all compatible.
The hard part was that I wanted it to run Apple's OS X, which is not something that just works out of the box. There is a community of people online that are into this sort of thing though, and they call these hacked macs "Hackintoshes" (quelle surprise). I had to choose the right hardware: only certain motherboards and CPUs will work, configure the BIOS on the motherboard just right, run a special program off that installs the OS off of a USB key, run a bunch of configuration tools so that everything worked right, and now I still have to troubleshoot a few issues that have come up (volume is disabled after it goes to sleep, Bluetooth is not working, occasional freezes that I think are being caused by GUI animations, and a kernal panic on boot when something is plugged into a particular USB port.)
Meanwhile, at work I have been preoccupied with Minecraft and Minecraft servers. Bea and I are running this program for teens and I want us to have our own stable server that they can log into while they are here--not shared over the internet, just connected to a wireless router here so you can connect to the network and join. This means running a server via Java in windows, which I know relatively little about.
The first issue was just getting the thing to run via a batch file. I had to learn about Path and how to specify what Java to launch, since the work laptop I was using had Java 6 and 7 and there are these issues with 32-bit compatibility with Windows 7 that I didn't want to even have to figure out. So I learned how to point to the exact version of Java that I wanted and I got the batch file configured so that more RAM is allocated and all that.
The first issue was just getting the thing to run via a batch file. I had to learn about Path and how to specify what Java to launch, since the work laptop I was using had Java 6 and 7 and there are these issues with 32-bit compatibility with Windows 7 that I didn't want to even have to figure out. So I learned how to point to the exact version of Java that I wanted and I got the batch file configured so that more RAM is allocated and all that.
The second issue is Windows networking and Windows firewall. Both are, from my OS X and minimal Linux background, insane. Networking just makes no sense. There are Public, Home, and Work environments with different conditions, all the settings are buried here and there. I can get it to work, but I just do not understand the logic of it. The firewall is the lesser evil, although it still has the different environments and the issue of multiple Javas was confusing there as well.
All that is mostly behind me: I now have a server that works and I can start configuring. But the process was so annoying that I would rather track down an older computer somewhere (2 gigs ram and a post-"core2duo" CPU would be fine) so that I can put Ubuntu on it and have it set up as a dedicated server.
The other thing has being figuring out Hootsuite, which has simplified library social media significantly. I know that Cat was using it, so I gave it a shot and the ability to schedule posts is great.
So that is what has been up.
All that is mostly behind me: I now have a server that works and I can start configuring. But the process was so annoying that I would rather track down an older computer somewhere (2 gigs ram and a post-"core2duo" CPU would be fine) so that I can put Ubuntu on it and have it set up as a dedicated server.
The other thing has being figuring out Hootsuite, which has simplified library social media significantly. I know that Cat was using it, so I gave it a shot and the ability to schedule posts is great.
So that is what has been up.
Sharing
Scoop.it
Not interested: I use Feedly instead. RSS readers are a bit different that scoop.it, sure, but I am less interested in seeing a feed of things curated by topics (a la scoop.it, pinterest, even tumblr) than I am getting a feed of new things from a specific news source.
The days of RSS may be numbered and I may end up switching to one of these new services. Before Feedly I used Safari's RSS feed support, but then they got rid of that in order to push users of RSS towards their newer concept of system wide "following" of sites where you get notifications as pop ups (which is similar to an addon called Growl, but also to how notifications work on a phone). So I moved to Google Reader. But then Google shutdown reader to move users to Google+ and following sites through that (do you see a trend?). Even now I am thinking of leaving feedly because they have switched to a "Pro" system where all the new features require you to pay a fee and there the interface is cluttered by annoying ads for these new features.
But I digress.
There is nothing wrong with scoop.it. My only issue would be that by default you get messages with suggestions every day and I have managed to forget my password and now have to sort all of that out and disable my account.
But I did my two "things": I signed up and then I tweeted something that I found via the site: this link to an article about Minecraft Servers.
I didn't use the "post to twitter" button as suggested. I just copied and pasted the link. I don't like all of my online accounts having access to all of the other ones (on my home computers that is even disabled because I use a browser extension to limit sites from communicating with social media) and I don't see the time savings in pressing one of those buttons. Oh digressions.
For the EXTRA COOL THING portion of this: one of my schemes would be to get a raspberry pi and set up Calibre on it with a locally stored copy of the entire collection of out of copyright books at Project Gutenberg. Then you could have an eBook terminal in the library where people could move over non-DRM out of copyright classics onto their devices even if the internet is down. And a copy of pretty much every significant work of writing from pre-1900.
Not interested: I use Feedly instead. RSS readers are a bit different that scoop.it, sure, but I am less interested in seeing a feed of things curated by topics (a la scoop.it, pinterest, even tumblr) than I am getting a feed of new things from a specific news source.
The days of RSS may be numbered and I may end up switching to one of these new services. Before Feedly I used Safari's RSS feed support, but then they got rid of that in order to push users of RSS towards their newer concept of system wide "following" of sites where you get notifications as pop ups (which is similar to an addon called Growl, but also to how notifications work on a phone). So I moved to Google Reader. But then Google shutdown reader to move users to Google+ and following sites through that (do you see a trend?). Even now I am thinking of leaving feedly because they have switched to a "Pro" system where all the new features require you to pay a fee and there the interface is cluttered by annoying ads for these new features.
But I digress.
There is nothing wrong with scoop.it. My only issue would be that by default you get messages with suggestions every day and I have managed to forget my password and now have to sort all of that out and disable my account.
But I did my two "things": I signed up and then I tweeted something that I found via the site: this link to an article about Minecraft Servers.
I didn't use the "post to twitter" button as suggested. I just copied and pasted the link. I don't like all of my online accounts having access to all of the other ones (on my home computers that is even disabled because I use a browser extension to limit sites from communicating with social media) and I don't see the time savings in pressing one of those buttons. Oh digressions.
For the EXTRA COOL THING portion of this: one of my schemes would be to get a raspberry pi and set up Calibre on it with a locally stored copy of the entire collection of out of copyright books at Project Gutenberg. Then you could have an eBook terminal in the library where people could move over non-DRM out of copyright classics onto their devices even if the internet is down. And a copy of pretty much every significant work of writing from pre-1900.
Apps
I'm skipping around here because I am still deciding if I like Scoopit (the next 23Things task). But I already went over everything relating to the apps.
The process is relatively simple. I had an iPhone before with Overdrive on it, now I have an Android Nexus 5 (which is great and more affordable, but requires more DIY ethic). Downloading a book is easy, reading is easy, no problem.
I do this frequently as a reference librarian in Moncton, so it is nothing new. As long as you can get overdrive onto the device and don't have to add the extra step of going through Adobe Digital Editions and all that, it goes smoothly.
In terms of using the online library, I can't stand reading on digital devices and I am not an audio-book person (maybe on the next big drive I will give it a shot?), so that is about it for me.
The last thing today is BiblioNB, which appears to be the app that was made for us by Bibliocommons. I have used it on Android and iOS. It is fine--it works as advertised. My only criticism is that the logo that we supplied to Bibliocommons is really low quality, so when I launch the app I get a grainy, unprofessional looking welcome to the NB Public Library. Might be that it is just that the logo is from before people had HD screens on their phones (that wasn't that long ago really), but it something that we should try to fix when the app is next updated.
Finally, I wrote this ages ago and forgot to publish it. Oops!
The process is relatively simple. I had an iPhone before with Overdrive on it, now I have an Android Nexus 5 (which is great and more affordable, but requires more DIY ethic). Downloading a book is easy, reading is easy, no problem.
I do this frequently as a reference librarian in Moncton, so it is nothing new. As long as you can get overdrive onto the device and don't have to add the extra step of going through Adobe Digital Editions and all that, it goes smoothly.
In terms of using the online library, I can't stand reading on digital devices and I am not an audio-book person (maybe on the next big drive I will give it a shot?), so that is about it for me.
The last thing today is BiblioNB, which appears to be the app that was made for us by Bibliocommons. I have used it on Android and iOS. It is fine--it works as advertised. My only criticism is that the logo that we supplied to Bibliocommons is really low quality, so when I launch the app I get a grainy, unprofessional looking welcome to the NB Public Library. Might be that it is just that the logo is from before people had HD screens on their phones (that wasn't that long ago really), but it something that we should try to fix when the app is next updated.
Finally, I wrote this ages ago and forgot to publish it. Oops!
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Multimedia
It has been awhile since I have done my 23 things training. It has just been busy around here with the departure of some staff and March break activities. But here we go once more. Embedding a youtube video in blogger is very intuitive and straight forward. I will probably end up messing around trying to get the alignment of the video to the left and the spacing around it just right, but format pickiness is one of my weaknesses. I have it close enough for now, so I'll move one.
This is a video of one of my favourite historians, Howard Zinn, discussing the topic of a just war. This is the idea that there are "good" wars that are worth fighting. Zinn himself fought in the Second World War, which is generally considered the easiest to justify. I can't actually watch this video at work, but I have read a fair amount of Zinn's writing and I assume that the content is fairly similar.
So that`s that.
In terms of professional development resources, I am currently going through the introduction to computer science course videos from MIT. The course teaches computer science concepts using Python, which would be handy to know if we start using RaspberryPi computers at work as part of a markerspace since it is the recommended language for that platform. I'm using an older set of videos, but here is a link to the newer ones. I have not really had the time to watch more of them recently as I have been working more on day-to-day things and on improving my French, but learning Python is one of my goals for 2014.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
dis-Pinterest
I played around with Pinterest.
I used my wife's account.
I pinned some things and made a board and so on.
Pinterest is not for me, though.
I appreciate the features and I could see using it if my lifestyle was more cooking and home decor based,1 but I don't see it as meeting any of my social media needs. I'd rather invest the time into tumblr, which seems more open and strange, than pinterest.2
So this is a pretty minimal week in terms of training exercises. In terms of e-learning and whatnot, I did finally order the last few parts for the computer that I am assembling. Maybe I will blog about if there are other slow weeks. I also found a portable version of the image editor GIMP, so I can now have a copy of that on my work PC without having to jump through the hoops of having it installed for me.
Oh, the interns here made a Vine that I am featured in. It refers to a scene in the movie Her.
I used my wife's account.
I pinned some things and made a board and so on.
Pinterest is not for me, though.
I appreciate the features and I could see using it if my lifestyle was more cooking and home decor based,1 but I don't see it as meeting any of my social media needs. I'd rather invest the time into tumblr, which seems more open and strange, than pinterest.2
So this is a pretty minimal week in terms of training exercises. In terms of e-learning and whatnot, I did finally order the last few parts for the computer that I am assembling. Maybe I will blog about if there are other slow weeks. I also found a portable version of the image editor GIMP, so I can now have a copy of that on my work PC without having to jump through the hoops of having it installed for me.
Oh, the interns here made a Vine that I am featured in. It refers to a scene in the movie Her.
1 If I was renovating a house and wanted to see a bunch of examples of--say--trim or floorboards, I could see this being useful. But I don't need a social scrapbooking site in my life right now.
2 Not that I am actually investing any time into tumblr--too many other internet things on the go right now.
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