Library Thing

Part of Vermont's 23 Things is to look at Library Thing, a site for you to enter the books that you read, review them, and read what others have written. Amazing source of reviews for books lovers! It's free and easy to set up. I wonder if kids could do this during the school year? The site is http://www.librarything.com/home/TravelingChris if you want to see what I'm recommending. Book lovers, this is the site for you!

It seems that once I have posted a blog entry, I don't know how to edit it, so I will put, in this post, the website if you want to create your own word image : http://www.imagechef.com/ic/word_mosaic/. I certainly had fun looking at some of the websites and created my own avatar. However, I didn't see anything on yahoo's avatar to save it before I lost it! I don't spend a lot of time browsing these kinds of sites and had no idea there were so many! I would love to buy a Christmas ornament that I saw you could make out of groups of your photos. Maybe when I retire I will have the time for it.

I am learning how to use generators and created this image. I am a big supporter of the Central Vermont Humane Society, which has a great need for people to adopt animals and to temporarily house them to get them ready for adoption. I had a great cat that came from the shelter. Hope you can visit your local shelter!

Social Networks

I am not able to get on the social networks at my job, but I may try at home. With so many millions on these sites, I would like to find a group that is interested in traveling or quilting, for ex. Perhaps when my granddaughter gets older, I can join her social network!
I have watched so much on Dr. Phil & Oprah about the evils of what kids are doing, but I understand the attraction for the younger generation. It seems that young people who want to feel popular can, if they can be part of one of the most popular MySpace kids in school. And it may empower people to be more outgoing in the safety of their home, in front of the computer. How much time they spend on these things, I can only imagine. Between that and texting, I don't know how they get anything accomplished, like studying.
But I'm glad they have these sites because it opens their world. Since the young today are being raised on this, it's no different than how we met with friends for hours on the phone. I still prefer to talk with someone personally. I'm a product of my generation, too.

Technology - I'm still learning

I've had some success lately and a failure, which makes it difficult to wile away hours on something and not have it work.
I was successful in putting a project together, with pictures and text, and copying it to a CD. I had to do this for UVM because I had to finish my graduate course. That seems pretty simple, but I tried three kinds of discs before one of them worked. I knew it wasn't the size of the project, only 4 pictures and 5 written pages of text, but getting the computer to transfer the work to a disc. My tech teacher told me to save the stuff in a folder, and that eventually worked.
My unsuccessful venture was today, actually. I had created, on a MAC in my library, a Keynote presentation that I made from photos and video I had taken of robins that had built a nest below my deck. The photos and videos took 2 weeks to gather as the birds matured and I was quite proud of how much you could see as mom and dad robin fed the babies. I wanted to be able to transfer the completed work to a CD so that I could show it anywhere. On the MAC, the movie was only 2" high and wouldn't work at all on my PC. I know that the easiest way is to have the original program on a laptop and run it from there, but I don't have a laptop or a MAC. When I leave this school, I really wanted to take it with me. I'll try again.

flickr image

I was successful somewhat in taking this off of Flickr. It came in vertically instead of horizontally. All I did was copy the letters and paste it here. Using the "Add Image" choice from my blog did not do it. At least I got this far!

Flickr mashups

This week's Vermont's 23 Things wants us to look at some mashups available from Flickr. I was certainly amazed at what one can make! I liked the "Catchy Colors Colr Pickr" site. I'm sure one could waste a lot of time playing with it. I tried uploading a photo but had no luck. I tried using a picture that was not copyrighted, but it wouldn't work. I'll try something else.