Icebergs

Finally got around to reading the five perspectives on the future of libraries for thing #14. I actually enjoyed Anderson's "Away from the "icebergs"" article. His statement, "But if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons." stuck with me the most. Like he said, its impossible for us to train every customer that walks through our doors. Our products need to be simple to use. Amen brother!

Yummy!

I created my own Delicous account in addition to looking at CML's account. Creating the account was simple, but getting the buttons to appear properly in the toolbar was anything but. A fellow Learn&Play'er asked me about this the other day and I didn't know. However, after doing a little investigating today I was able to figure it out. Yippee!

If you haven't created your own Delicious account, don't wait! Its great having access to all of your favorites from any computer. And it organizes them nicely to boot!

Twittering

Just figured out how to send messages from my phone to my Twitter account. I'm going to try it for a while and see which my friends prefer. My friend Tyrone loves Twitter and sends messages out all the time to both his friends and Twitter. He's been on my case about not posting anything new to Twitter since I opened my account...which was back in April.

I've actually learned to tell when I need to reply to a text from Tyrone. He frequently sends out funny revelations and quotes, so it took me a while to figure out. Texts directed towards me always begin with word "Hey".

The LibraryThing...thing

I've finally added some books to my LibraryThing account today. It had been so long since I created the account that it took a few tries to get my password correct. LibraryThing is an interesting concept, especially for someone like me. Unlike many of my colleagues I own very few books. I've moved so many times that I refuse to keep more than I have too. So I've always been a great advocate for libraries. Why own the book when I can borrow it from the library?

I did run into one glitch with LibraryThing. Can anyone tell me about the Jave script error messages when you are trying to add a book? I got this error a number of times today and it was quite frustrating. The only work around I could discover was selecting another entry to click to have the book added. Sure, I could eventually figure it out myself, but it could take a while and I'm still catching up. Help!

Back it Up!

Thanks to Ben the Libraryman I found the great image generator, LetterJames. The following image is for my friend Masako. We used to work out together at the IU Bloomington gym. After a while we began to notice another guy at the gym that was always there when we were and he always wore a jersey with the number 92 on it. So Masako this one is for you!

Google Reader

Amazingly I've had a few moments this afternoon to complete thing #8. This time it was easy. Instead of using Bloglines, I decided to use Google Reader since I already access it for email. Everything in one place. Yeah! I did have trouble coming up with 10 feeds to keep track of. I was amazed realize that I only keep track of about 5 sites religiously. Now its even easier! Now to see if the new sites are worth keeping track of. Hmmm...

No Need for ConCERN

The new particle accelerator is now running outside of Geneva and as of yet, nothing has been produced that could destroy the earth. I must admit that I had some concerns when I first heard about the lawsuit to stop it earlier this year. Why? The accelerator was built to recreate particles found immediately after the Big Bang. It is assumed that if created these particles will immediately break down, but how does anyone know what will happen? And if something bad is created, like say a black hole? The Cern scientists say, "We'll just turn it off and the black hole will disappate." Oh, I'm so relieved because of all your experience with black holes...looking at them from billions of miles away..hmmm. Anyway, yes I'm still little concerned, but if it works as anticipated, we'll learn about dark matter and ways to make computers and iPods even smaller!

I'm so behind, I'm ahead!

So its nearing the end of week 5 of Learn & Play @CML and I'm just now doing a post for Flickr, which is from week 3. Egads! Between deadlines and vacation its been difficult for me to make time to play. I've been hearing this from other participants as well. Luckily, we all have the 3 week buffer at the end of the program to catch up before the prizes are drawn. So I figure in a way I'm ahead of the game. Phew!

Anyway, I went to Washington State to see my brother, niece and sister-in-law. Here are some pics I've uploaded to my Flickr account.