Thing 26

I did that last round, made some comments, uploaded photos, added the badge. I checked out the groups and the ones that were there still, at this point, don't have any either obviously useful or entertaining traffic. I'll admit I don't have any deep thoughts about it, and I haven't used it since then except to look at right now, and add a comment to someone's thread. It's hard to imagine it being valuable at work, honestly.

25.3

I already put up a couple slideshows. I have an account at Smugmug for my photos that took me an aggregate of about 15 hours, at various times, to find out how to do what I paid $149 FOR: have my photos printed by a lab using machines calibrated properly to Adobe RGB, with no changes or 'enhancements.'

The fact that it took me that long including help from The Love Bunny, and I only managed to resolve the question with email to the site owners, tells me they did a v. poor job with that bit.

I read the article on putting up polls, but didn't think putting one up just for Carol was worth the effort. Sorry, hon. :) I've read about a poll assigned by a teacher where the subject matter (have people choose their favorite color) was completely at odds with the data being sought (find the mode, median, and mean of the answers). People who responded pointed out that the mean was undoubtedly going to be some shade of brown, no matter what the answers were, and how do you find the mode of 4 pink, 6 blue and 25 yellow?

That did serve to highlight Darren Rowse's suggestion that the offered answers must be given careful thought.

Thing 25 Part deux

The videos on widgets are really interesting -- has more useful-application type things than I suspected. I really like the reading window that opens inside one's blog. Disqus sounds interesting. I did put up a sitemeter statistics gatherer so I can keep track of Carol, the person who reads my blog. :)

I wasn't interested in the photo manipulation because yeah, Photoshop Elements, but at the Science Museum class on digital cameras I learned two v. kewl things I never knew how to do! I knew you could put a head on somebody else's body by using the selection tools and layers, but I never knew you could clone a head in three seconds or less simply by selecting any target spot and waving the mouse around in a circle elsewhere until the entire object appears. Also, I never thought about writing on (or drawing on) a photo with the brush tool.

I can now put Santa hats on top of anyone's new and different head. :D

Also, I think that teaching the bare essentials of digital camera is possible for the library, but it may need two 1.5 hour sessions. Because even if you can use your camera, you still need to be able to do something with the pictures.

What Thing Is This?

24!

And also, 23 Things, thanks for fixing the visuals on your wiki.

I changed my template, my avatar, and added The Wall Street Journal.

The existence of third-party templates explains why the ones Blogger has are so boring. I figured there had to be creative and talented people out there who also use Blogger.

Even LiveJournal [which has been dying for years and much more quickly now the owners sold it to the Russian mob and the new owners fired all the software engineers] has a nice selection of attractive and creative user-designed templates.

I added Ramsey County Library System to my user info.

I haven't blogged much here since I finished, but I've been using my personal/hobby journal the usual amount. I love the internetz. Some of my best friends are women I met online. I've had a friend in Poland for nearly ten years, and I'll probably never meet her and her family. There are people I know in England, Singapore, Australia, Germany, Brazil, and all over the US and Canada, some of whom I've met and some I haven't.

I'm going to a convention in Boston at the end of the month because half my online buddies are going to be there, and I couldn't even get a ticket; they sold out 150 tickets in an hour. Jeez, it's like VividCon. I'm just staying in the hotel for the weekend. I'll be spending a couple days in Jersey City with Dana, and going to Marblehead for a few days with Janis, who wants me to see her home town.

So yeah, blogging's good with me.

More Things On Sticks

Yay! Got rid of the evol and offensive avatar! I never realized how obnoxious those kinds of stereotypically 20skinny&beautiful avatars are until I had to get one. Kudos to the 23 things people for linking to the South Park kids site.

OTOH, a big ol' raspberry to them for this:

"If others use your home computer, it is a good idea to discuss any changes you might make on that computer, too."

Who wrote this, and who was the intended audience? Do I look 12? Or is it just that he/she feels that adult library staff are incapable of interacting reasonably with their significant others? (If it's people's kids the writer is worried about, then that's a whole other story about the writer's mindset.)

Then there are these gems:

Buy a tabbed address book to record your usernames/passwords. Enter the tool name under the right letter, then add your personal info. This works well, but don’t lose it!

Keep your passwords in a Word document on a flashdrive—you can encrypt the drive, too. But don’t lose it either!

Somebody just told an entire audience of people whose job it is to organize information to write it down, file it alphabetically, and don't lose it.

Twice.

I'm not sure I need to add any commentary to this bit of fail.