Well, this was a Thing I was already very familiar with. I can't say I've ever used it for work purposes (not quite the same as not using it at work, but never mind), and having looked at the uninspiring material on Youtube Edu, I'm not sure I will.
I did find a very amusing video called All Souls College - if you want to see 9 minutes of someone videoing parts of the college, zooming shakily in to one tower, then out, then back in again at the other, and similarly at the reredos, then enjoy! I especially like the opening scene where the camera zooms for ages...at Exeter College!
Still, my time wasn't wholly wasted as I found two of my favourite book-related clips:
and from the brilliant Mitchell and Webb - this is hilarious, but only if you've ever caught yourself doing it. Otherwise, it goes straight over people's heads. Personally, I think flank-patting should be introduced university wide to speed up book retrieval...
(if you do have a look, apologies in advance for the earthquake survivor gag, which obviously isn't appropriate at the moment)
Sunday 28 February 2010
Codcasting?
I've subscribed to a few podcasts, but haven't had chance to actually listen to any of them yet. From the BBC, I went for Front Row highlights, as a programme I always mean to listen to, but never do, and In Our Time. This is a favourite of mine, especially as this week's programme is on an Early Modern topic. This felt somewhat artificial, though, as I already subscribe to the email which lets me know when a new programme is released anyway. I couldn't immediately find anything of interest on podcast.com or Podcast Alley, but might have a closer look another time.
Still, the University lecture podcasts were good for a giggle. Before I actually went there, I thought 'I bet all the English lit ones are by Stuart Lee', and I was pretty much correct! In fact, I remember him telling us he was recording them for podcasts way back when I was doing my Old English Mods paper in 04-05, and although they've been re-recorded htis year, I'm sure they're basically the same so if I have the urge to revisit the Battle of Maldon or Dream of the Rood, I'll have the bizarre experience of listening to myself listening to a lecture...
One of the only two non-Old English items is a series by my own Masters supervisor on early modern drama - she was one of the best lecturers I heard, and they're on early modern drama, so I'll try to listen to them soon. Still, these are complete series, and aren't going to be updated, so it seems a bit pointless to actually subscribe to them - I know they're there now, and that's enough!
I can see that the Bod has done some Bodcasts, but I'm not sure that the Cod will be producing any in the near future!
Still, the University lecture podcasts were good for a giggle. Before I actually went there, I thought 'I bet all the English lit ones are by Stuart Lee', and I was pretty much correct! In fact, I remember him telling us he was recording them for podcasts way back when I was doing my Old English Mods paper in 04-05, and although they've been re-recorded htis year, I'm sure they're basically the same so if I have the urge to revisit the Battle of Maldon or Dream of the Rood, I'll have the bizarre experience of listening to myself listening to a lecture...
One of the only two non-Old English items is a series by my own Masters supervisor on early modern drama - she was one of the best lecturers I heard, and they're on early modern drama, so I'll try to listen to them soon. Still, these are complete series, and aren't going to be updated, so it seems a bit pointless to actually subscribe to them - I know they're there now, and that's enough!
I can see that the Bod has done some Bodcasts, but I'm not sure that the Cod will be producing any in the near future!
Sunday 21 February 2010
Not too tasty
I'm pretty sceptical about the usefulness of Delicious for me. I've added several of my favourite websites, and added the History Faculty to my network. However, I have a lot of static bookmarks on Mozilla that I use on my laptop, and I've arranged it so my most frequently used ones begin with unique letters, so Hotmail is the only H, and Googlemail the only G, etc. This means there's a big time/hassle difference between going Alt+B+[letter] and having the page instantly load, and going to Delicious, signing in, finding the pages I want and opening them in new windows, as I usually want several at once.
I suppose there might be occasions when I'm at an unfamiliar computer and would want them, but a quick google search would do the job just as well, as I only have a small number of sites I use all the time. I'm not actively looking for new sites to visit, so whilst I might mine the HFL page for some ideas, I don't habitually need to find more 'delicious' websites to sample all the time.
As for library pages, I don't think Delicious has (or will) become well-known enough for it to be worthwhile. I've been asking quite a lot of people, mainly students, and no one I know outside of library work has heard of it, or of social bookmarking. I'd be very interested to hear about students who are using it, and do know all about it, though, so if anyone has had a different experience, please do drop me a comment!
I suppose there might be occasions when I'm at an unfamiliar computer and would want them, but a quick google search would do the job just as well, as I only have a small number of sites I use all the time. I'm not actively looking for new sites to visit, so whilst I might mine the HFL page for some ideas, I don't habitually need to find more 'delicious' websites to sample all the time.
As for library pages, I don't think Delicious has (or will) become well-known enough for it to be worthwhile. I've been asking quite a lot of people, mainly students, and no one I know outside of library work has heard of it, or of social bookmarking. I'd be very interested to hear about students who are using it, and do know all about it, though, so if anyone has had a different experience, please do drop me a comment!
Sunday 14 February 2010
I couldn't resist...
...messing with Magdalen. As my college (New) has a friendly rivalry with Magdelen (something to do with rowing, the King of Sweden, and New just being a generally superior college...), I couldn't resist playing with this picture - not sure how this superpower would help me at work, however!
Oxford in the snow
This was going to go in the previous post - I cropped it, sharpened it, and added a border, but as I said, I was pretty happy with it beforehand!
Tactical Error
The small selection of pictures I uploaded to flickr were ones I was really pleased with - I'm vain enough not to want to publish blurry attempts to get my friends all in one picture, and all those night shots that didn't quite work out (there are enough of those on Facebook, anyway!).
That meant, though, that when it came to editing on Picnik, there wasn't very much I wanted to do to my favourite photos!
Still, I changed one of the ones I showed below to sepia, as you can see.
I usually pride myself on being able to work out how to do computery thing just by trying things out, or, if all else fails, reading the instructions. I can't, however, work out how to
a) drop photos from flickr directly into my blog
b) put more than one photos into a blog post, as I'm doing this directly from flickr.
c) save the photos on flickr which I edited via Picnik, back onto my computer.
Any suggestions? Perhaps I'm just expecting things which aren't possible, but I'm getting very frustrated!
That meant, though, that when it came to editing on Picnik, there wasn't very much I wanted to do to my favourite photos!
Still, I changed one of the ones I showed below to sepia, as you can see.
I usually pride myself on being able to work out how to do computery thing just by trying things out, or, if all else fails, reading the instructions. I can't, however, work out how to
a) drop photos from flickr directly into my blog
b) put more than one photos into a blog post, as I'm doing this directly from flickr.
c) save the photos on flickr which I edited via Picnik, back onto my computer.
Any suggestions? Perhaps I'm just expecting things which aren't possible, but I'm getting very frustrated!
Technical Difficulties
I'm still having to deal with this blog in IE, and, as a dedicated Mozilla user, this means that there's a bit of a mental barrier to me just posting bits and pieces whenever they occur to me as I have to open a different programme to do it.
There seemed to be a similar barrier to my use of flickr - the bulk uploader kept crashing, and even the 'simple' uploader would only let me do one at a time, instead of five. Perhaps there's something wrong with my settings or my computer, but it was all a bit annoying and consequently took ages (and put me in a bit of a bad mood!). Anyway, my patience held out to six pictures, including some of Oxford in the snow,
and some of my travels (this one is from Krakow):
It was good to see the variety of pictures in the 23 Things flickr group - glad to see they weren't all of libraries...
There seemed to be a similar barrier to my use of flickr - the bulk uploader kept crashing, and even the 'simple' uploader would only let me do one at a time, instead of five. Perhaps there's something wrong with my settings or my computer, but it was all a bit annoying and consequently took ages (and put me in a bit of a bad mood!). Anyway, my patience held out to six pictures, including some of Oxford in the snow,
and some of my travels (this one is from Krakow):
It was good to see the variety of pictures in the 23 Things flickr group - glad to see they weren't all of libraries...
Sunday 7 February 2010
Jumping the gun
As I like to press buttons to see what things do, in the process of establishing my start page, I ended up setting up Google Reader and subscribing to the 23 Things blog before I even noticed that it constituted a Thing. Putting off laundry may also have had something to do with the intensity of my curiosity.
Even though I'm writing this post just before the next Thing is assigned (writing Thing with a majuscule - note the bibliographer-in-training! - makes me think of aliens and blob monsters from sci-fi films like this one), I did subscribe to a few other RSS feeds at the start of the week.
I added the posts and comments of the Graduate Trainee blog, and the 23 Things (they're behind you...run!) of some of my fellow trainees. The one for CILIP was swiftly removed, as I was instantly bombarded with stuff that no amount of kowtowing to the idea of professional development was going to make me actually read.
I swapped it for the feed of the CILIP Rare Books and Special Collections group, of which I am a member, but apart from an advert for a conservation course taught by someone who will be conserving books in my library for a month in the summer, it's been very quiet.
The only not-quite-work-related one I found was the blog of the Centre for Early Modern Studies. I was hoping to get a feed of all the Early Modern events, but for some reason that resulted in being sent a single list of all the medieval seminars for the term. Still, as all the seminars start during working hours, I suppose it doesn't matter whether I hear about them in time or not! At least I can go to the History of the Book sessions, which are considered part of my training, and are amongst the closest to my own interests.
If I ever get round to evolving this blog beyond the 23 things programme (does it seem better in minuscule?), I'll expand on my love of the Early Modern, and hopefully make the blog live up to its title. And if I've intrigued you, you can go here for a very inadequate wikipedia definition of a commonplace book.
Even though I'm writing this post just before the next Thing is assigned (writing Thing with a majuscule - note the bibliographer-in-training! - makes me think of aliens and blob monsters from sci-fi films like this one), I did subscribe to a few other RSS feeds at the start of the week.
I added the posts and comments of the Graduate Trainee blog, and the 23 Things (they're behind you...run!) of some of my fellow trainees. The one for CILIP was swiftly removed, as I was instantly bombarded with stuff that no amount of kowtowing to the idea of professional development was going to make me actually read.
I swapped it for the feed of the CILIP Rare Books and Special Collections group, of which I am a member, but apart from an advert for a conservation course taught by someone who will be conserving books in my library for a month in the summer, it's been very quiet.
The only not-quite-work-related one I found was the blog of the Centre for Early Modern Studies. I was hoping to get a feed of all the Early Modern events, but for some reason that resulted in being sent a single list of all the medieval seminars for the term. Still, as all the seminars start during working hours, I suppose it doesn't matter whether I hear about them in time or not! At least I can go to the History of the Book sessions, which are considered part of my training, and are amongst the closest to my own interests.
If I ever get round to evolving this blog beyond the 23 things programme (does it seem better in minuscule?), I'll expand on my love of the Early Modern, and hopefully make the blog live up to its title. And if I've intrigued you, you can go here for a very inadequate wikipedia definition of a commonplace book.
More blogging
Returning to my slice of cyber-space after a hectic week in the real world, I'm pleased to see that I have indeed had some visitors in my absence. And now that I've turned on the comments notification function, I might find out about them a little sooner from now on...
I came to tinker with the settings and add a tag cloud, as well as catch up on the 23 things homework, but I've just spent a frustrating half-hour trying the add the above as a reply to the comments on my previous post. Is this just not possible on Blogger? I just assumed it would be an obvious thing that bloggers would want to do. I tried to just post a comment as a reader, but it wouldn't let me do that either, and deleted what I wrote - I originally pondered the potential value and vanity of blogs a little more, and how they seem a very paradoxical way to communicate, but I can't be bothered to write it out again.
Any comments about comments gratefully received.
I came to tinker with the settings and add a tag cloud, as well as catch up on the 23 things homework, but I've just spent a frustrating half-hour trying the add the above as a reply to the comments on my previous post. Is this just not possible on Blogger? I just assumed it would be an obvious thing that bloggers would want to do. I tried to just post a comment as a reader, but it wouldn't let me do that either, and deleted what I wrote - I originally pondered the potential value and vanity of blogs a little more, and how they seem a very paradoxical way to communicate, but I can't be bothered to write it out again.
Any comments about comments gratefully received.
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