Fair Flower Show Pictures

I have added links on the side bar for the Fair Flower Shows. The picture for show # is for the Class called Cypress Gardens and was to include some Cypress Wood in the design. This arrangement won the "Best of Show" award. The picture showing on the show #2 link is for a class called Hawaii. This arrangement received the "Creativity" award for the show. If you click on the pictures, it will take you to the album where you can view all the flower show pictures if you wish.

#9-Finding Feeds

I guess I missed blogging about finding feeds. Of course I pay more attention on webpages now looking for the RSS icons (now that I know what they are for) . I found that the Bloglines search tool was easiest for me to use. Topix is mainly news feeds and looks like it is easy to link to local news feeds. The most confusing were Feedster and Syndic8.com. Neither of these offered the preview feature as on the Bloglines search tool. This is a feature that I really liked. You can click on this and it will give you a sample of what is there now in a separate window, without having to go to the site and then come back again. I did subscribe to some feeds on my bloglines account and even added one of them to my side bar. So check out the feed for 'About Gardening'. While checking out all of the other tools, I came across Feedburner. This seems to be a tool to redirect your Blogger feed and monitor your number of subscribers, and I am sure it has other features that I missed. It looks like this wood be a good tool to use if you were intersted in getting your Blog out there to be seen by a lot of people.

Thing # 23!

So here I am at thing #23. I am not sure what my favorites are. The photo generators and widgets were a lot of fun to play with. As for my lifelong goals, I think this will be a useful tool for a lot of things that may come up along the way. Prior to beginning these exercises, I had no desire to find out even what a blog was! The surprise was that it is really fun and the tools that go along with it make it so much more. The team that put this together did a fantastic job and I wouldn't change anything. I definitely would participate in another discover program were it offered.

Face-To-Face-Social Networking

I did a little exploring on Facebook and took the tour. I also did a little more exploring on MySpace. Previously I had set up a MySpace account when I discovered that my daughter, my grandson, and a several of my nieces had MySpace pages. The best thing I like about it is that it is a great way to stay in touch with friends and relatives that you rarely get a chance to see or talk to. Once they are on your list of friends, you can go to their page and see if they have posted any new pictures or anything, and also send them a quick message if you want to. I also like the bulletins, because you can send a quick bulletin to your whole group of friends if you want to instead of haveing to enter a message for each one. I am not sure I see this being used as a tool for the library, especially with all the other tools available (Like the Wiki).

Podcasts, Schmodcasts!

I went to Yahoo podcasts and checked out the tutorial and then investigated the three directories: Podcast.net, Podcastalley.net and Yahoo Podcasts. I didn't care much for Podcastalley. Their page did not seem to be as user friendly as the other two. On the other two, I did some searches for book reviews and other things that interest me, and as with the YouTube, there is more stuff out there than you have time to listen to! Of the three directories, I was impressed more with the Yahoo Podcasts. As a matter of fact, I did a search on each one for Alden and Ohio University, and Yahoo is the only one that came up with anything. This brought me to the OU Libraries News, and also the ipod tour of the library, which might prove to be a very useful tool for new students. I don't expect to do much downloading of these on my computer at home, though because I have dial up and it would take forever. Not much hope of getting anything else in the near future.

YouTube

There are videos on many many subjects in YouTube. You would have to spend lots of time to search for and look at those that were interesting to you. It might be useful for uploading and sharing teaching/learning videos for the library. In order to choose a video, I went to the DIY section and quite by accident came upon some "Bob Ross" videos. Since last fall I became interesed in painting and even took a few classes during the winter. Consequently, I took advantage of some programs on TV by Jerry Yarnell and also Bob Ross. Both of them really make the paintings look easy. Bob Ross passed away in 1995, but his "Joy of Painting" shows are still showing on TV. On YouTube there are some videos that are spoofs of his shows and quite a few that are tributes to him, and also some that are downright onery. I have chosen one called "Purple Majesty" which is actually one of three in a series of Bob Ross doing one of his paintings. I am only going to embed the first one. If you are really interested, you can go to YouTube and do a search for Bob Ross and you can easily find the remaining two. Maybe you will decide you want to paint some "Happy Little Clouds." Enjoy!

It's Fair Time!

This week is the Athens county fair,
and next week is Meigs County Fair.
I usually get excited about the fair
because we have two flower shows at the fair.
One on Monday and the other on Thursday.
Last year I managed to win the BEST OF SHOW award on Thursday.
This is a picture of that winning arrangement. If you want to view other photos from this flower show, click on this picture!
by opal96

Web 2.0 Tools

I have explored several of the Web 2.0 tools. If you are interested in connecting with other people interested in fittness and training, you can find others who will offer support for you and there is a multitude of information about diets (including recipes) and exercise. If you want to check it out, just go to Peertrainer. If you are into games you might want to check out Arcaplay. You can go here to play the games, or you can imbed them in your blog. If you are looking for widgets, check out yourminis. I have imbeded one of the wigets in the side bar. Check out the Yahoo Word of the Day! They have an unlimited supply of widgets for just about anything. So many different tools to play with and so little time!

About Web Based Applications

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a site where you can check out and play with some web based applications. You can create documents and spreadsheets online without using a desktop application. It seems to me these can be really convenient to use if you need to create or access documents and/or spreadsheets when you are away for your home or office computer. Even though they are convenient, I do not think they are as user friendly as the desktop applications, nor do they offer as many options. I am using Google Documents to create this post, so if you are reading it, you know that my plan was successful. I also checked out the Zoho Show online presentation tools. The main thing I didn't like about either application was that when you were given the option of entering a URL for a photo, you are not able to copy and paste the URL. You must type it in. I was able to upload a presentation from my computer to Zoho without any difficulty.

Garden Pictures

I have added a couple of links to some pictures of my garden. These are from 2004-2005. I don't think I took the time to take any picutres in 2006. These pictures are loaded on WebShots . This is a site I like for storing photos and sharing them. They are similar to Flikr, but I found on Flikr that after you establish 3 groupings of pictures, they want you to pay a fee to be able to organize your pictures they way you want. If you would like to see more of my albums, you can use this link to go to them: http://community.webshots.com/user/opal96?vhost=community.

OULibrariesLearn Sandbox

Ok, I went to play in the sandbox like we were supposed to . So I followed the directions and entered my blog into the favorite blogs page. Then I decided to try and enter a picture on the Library Pictures page since I had some, so when I did that, the other two that were on there disappeared! Sorry, I didn't mean to do it! So I think I figured out what I did wrong and I put the pictures back, only the original comments are missing.

Wiki Wiki

After exploring some of the Wikis I can see where these can be very useful. On the SJCPL Wiki which is a subject guide, I particularly liked how they added links to information about local organizations and/or places that had something to do with the subject you were looking at. On the Booklovers Wiki I enjoyed reading some of the book reviews. The Library Success Wiki is especially nice . It allows librarians all over the world to input info about newly developed programs and innovative things with new technology. There are also online tutorials. I can see where Wikis can be extremely helpful in a library setting.

Away from icebergs and into a new world

It is my opinion that our library has taken a big step away from the icebergs and opened a great new door into cyberspace with library 2.0 and web 2.0. The use of this tool is going to help us keep an edge on the new technologies created to help us master the web. I for one would probably never ventured into a lot of this if this opportunity had not been offered to us.

Technorati

Technorati could be a useful tool for those who do a lot of searching, but personally I don't. I did check out their site though in cluding the "most popular" page which was interesting. The "oulibraries" tag brought up a lot of photos, blog posts and such by people in the library. This was interesting also.

Using Delicious

Del.icio.us is a super easy way to add and organize bookmarks. It also makes it possible for you to access your bookmarks from any computer. I think I will have to play with this one a lot more to see how useful it can be to me.

Rollyo

On Rollyo I found some search engines that look interesting. There is an e-book search engine that might be useful once I get an MP3 because then I could download and listen to books on it! Another one I liked was "Ask Mr. Fix It". I did not try to create my own yet, as I do not frequently search for things, but it would be very useful to someone who does a lot of searching.

My LibraryThing

Most of the books I have are not novels. There are mostly gardening books, craft books, and cookbooks. I don't seem to have much time for sitting down and actually reading a book, but I do take advantage of the "Books on Tape" and more recently "Books on CD". This is because I have a long commute to work everyday, and therefore 40 minutes each way to "read" a book. Even though Alden has some of these, the best selection in town is at the Athens public library. I did set up an account with LibraryThing and catalogue a few of my books. It would be very time comsuming to catalogue all of them as I have two full bookcases at home. For a sample of my books you can go to http://www.librarything.com/catalog/sheliac.

Generators

This is my first attempt at using a generator. This photo is of my daughter's children last August when Elizabeth was born. Her big brothers are Nicholas (left) who will soon be 6 and Jacob who is now 16. Elizabeth is the baby, of course. It is hard to believe she will soon be one year old. I think this is so cool! Don't you think it really looks like someone sketched them? This was created by a generator at http://www.dumpr.net/. If you get a chance, go to this site and try some of their fun generators. There are a lot of fun things you can do with photos. Here is the link specific for the sketch generator.

RSS Feeds Post

Ok, so I checked out the RSS Feeds and went to bloglines and set up an account (another password to remember). I don't think this would be useful in my job, but I can see where it would be for others in the library. On the other hand, I think it could be a useful tool to follow blogs by my children, grandchildren and some of my nieces. Since I don't see a lot of them very often, this could be a way to keep up on what they are doing. It also could be useful to follow blogs that catch my interest, and I did add a couple of feeds about gardening to see what they are like.

Johnny Paul's Birthday Magazine

Johnny Paul's Birthday Magazine
Originally uploaded by juniper45743

This weekend we celebrated my grandson's birthday with a pool party in our backyard. A fun time was had by all, but the water was really cold! If you want to see the rest of the party pictures follow the link. This magazine cover was made using one of the flikr toys on a blog we were referred to in our directions. If you haven't checked this out, you should. There are lots of interesting and fun things to try and do.

High-Tech Gardening

While in search of technology to blog about I came upon information about a new tool called the Cobra Head Weeder. You can follow the link to get more information about it. It has a uniquie shape which appears to be easy to get at some of the weeds. Kind of like a large finger/fingernail to dig out those weeds! It is a hand-held tool and they have recently added a long handled one, so you don't have to stoop over to dig the weeds. Be sure to check it out. Also, while searching for new gardening technology I came upon another blog called High-Tech Gardening. If you are interested in this sort of thing, you might want to check it out.

Phalaenopsis Orchid

Phalaenopsis Orchid
Originally uploaded by All Flowers

Since one of our assignments for this week is to blog about a photo on Flikr, I decided to look for orchids. There were over 170,000 pictures of orchids in Flikr, and no! I did not try to look at all of them! I chose this one because it is about the color of one I have at home and is also the same type of orchid. I recently became attracted to orchids while browsing through the plants at Lowe's back in March. The pricetag on them kind of turned me off, but they had one marked down to $5 that wasn't blooming, so I decided to "rescue" it. It took about six weeks for it to start blooming again, and is now beautiful. In the meantime, I purchased another one in April that was blooming already because I couldn't wait. Another thing I like about Orchids is that the blooms last a long time. This one still has some of the blooms that were on it in April, plus there are new ones coming on. This type of orchid is fairly easy to grow. The do not require direct sunlight, so my kitchen window is perfect for it. They also require a lot of humidity which is accomplished by placing a small tray of pebbles under the pot and adding water to it periodically.

Lifelong Learning Habits

I have always been in favor of lifelong learning. It is always exciting to learn a new skill or craft. My previous learning experience was to learn how to paint. I have taken a few classes, and the paintings turned out better than I anticipated. This project has been put on hold for the summer because of other activities which limit my time for this, but I do plan to go back to it in the fall. Of the 7 1/2 learning habits, I think right now that # 1 is the hardest for me. This is the one for setting goals for your learning experience. With this project, I am not quite sure where I want to go with it yet, or how involved I want to be in it so it is difficult to set any specific goals. As for the easiest, I feel that the #4 challenge one is for me since I usally feel pretty confident about applying new information. The # 7 1/2 (Play) is an easy one too!.

First Blog Posting

Well, here it is! A couple of weeks ago I would not have thought that I would be attempting to create a blog. We will see how it goes. The blog is named Along The River because that is where I live, on the bank of the Ohio river. This is really going to be a challenge for me to write down my thoughts, etc.