The Day of Reckoning

As in "I reckon I'm about finished that there playground type thing." My thoughts on the playground programme; well I thought it was a great way to round out my day, as well as an effective way of making sure that we are all on roughly the same page vis a vis the new things on the internet. It seems all too recently that I would have people asking me about their RSS or or their twitter and not know what on earth they were talking about. Now, though I may be more inclineed to some (RSS) than others (twitter), I can at least say that I have passing familiarity with each, and thus at least can say why I don't have an account on this or that social networking site. The most important thing that I have learned from this, if I had to pick, would be wikis. Prior to learning 2.0 I knew nothing of wikis, but knew only wikipedia, that great repository of information that might even be accurate. The concept of wikis for organizational purposes had never occurred to me, and now I'm quite glad to have that option available to me. (though I must say getting my friends on board may be difficult, however that brings me to my next point.) One unexpected discovery that I was quite glad to have made was the discovery of the common craft show. This show was used to great effect on several of the "things" and I have invoked its teachings with my parents on numerous occasions. For example the age old "Graeme, why does mastercard want me to send them my card information, and what doesn phishing mean?" The reason I feel that the common craft show is so usefull is because it can be used when you're too tired, lazy, exasperated, etc. to actually explain how using a wiki could allow us to organize our barbeque better one could simply email their friend the url for the youtube page with the common craft show's schpeal on wikis. All in all, this has been a great programme, and I feel that it has yeilded very positive results for me. I would be very eager to partake in furhter discovery programmes of this kind were they to be offered.

More Catch up

Having never posted about my library thing, and long since forgotten the account info, I decided to set up a new one. (Of course I promply forgot the account info on the new one, accidently rediscovered the origional, then followed my trail back to the new one.)and now I can finally blog about it. So the new one is called leftisright and I made a little blog widget for this blog with it.

I didn't know what to add so I went all over the place, two are slightly different editions than the ones I actually own (those being the Hugo and the Castaneda) and I would have to dig around my attic for a while to confirm that I do, in fact, still own a copy of Mortimer, but those were the books that jumped to mind.

Catch up.

Well it occurred to me that there were one or two things from earlier on that I missed. thus I will try to catch up on a few of those now. firstly I noticed I was supposed to put up a link to a file on the shared notes folder, also I missed the portion where I was supposed to write about the flickr mashups. I'm not sure how this task eluded me as I can remember the jubilation with which I discovered the "trading card maker" (as a connoisseur of all things pertaining to geek humour you can imagine how psyched I was) I have since been using it to create trading cards of religious and political figures with all the imaginary reasons you might want them. Another portion I missed was actually writing about my RSS. I thought it was great once I got the notion of podcasts under my belt and have since used it a little more. With regards to looking at the different feeds and subscriptions I am firmly in the copy/paste url camp (and I am also glad to know what that little subscription symbol on everybody's youtube channel is all about(though I should note that I still haven't figured out what exactly youtube channels themselves are all about.)) Anyhow, this post is already becoming quite the doozy so I shall cut it here for now and add the next "catch up" instalment next week.

So long as they don't put us out of a job.

My gander into the inner workings of Library to go, Librivox and The Gutenberg Project showed me some interesting things. I was a little confused at first by the notion of downloading up to five items at once and keeping them for 14 days, but I'm sure they've made some sense out of it and am excited to give it a try. The most interesting for me however were the other two organizations; librivox and gutenberg project. These sites, in dealing with public domain materials, are to me of incalculable worth. The public domain is one of the great threatened domains of the modern world, and there are many money wolves who would no doubt like to tear the throat from the public domain and copyright the Bible or the Charter of Human Rights, thus making untold problems (not to mention profits). As a result, I think the idea of organizing and compliling as much of the public domain as possible into a corner of the internet where the thought police can't get at it is a brilliant plan. I was particularly pleased to see that the gutenberg project has, also, a section for sheet music, thus allowing public domain music to reach the masses as well as public domain literature.

Podcasts

So I'm quite shocked and amazed by these things; I had previously avoided podcasts simply because I tend to avoid anything with the prefix "i"or the suffix "Pod"(obviously the iPod is roughly equivical to the devil in this school thought) but my discovery of radio shows featuring music that could not otherwise be accessed with any ease and that can be popped on my "wepod" (that is, my iPod that doesn't want to be an I (formerly known as my Bukarin-pod) has thorouhgly changed my view on these devices. This could not come at a better time, my music library has been starting to wilt and go stale and I've been needing a breath of fresh air. Well it seems that I've once again run out of time, but I'm excited to run home and put one or two of these on my mp3 player. (not to mention actually put that RSS I set up to some use by subscribing to the ones I like.)

Youtube

Will this become the new TV? We all thought it was a great idea when we could by our favorite tv shows on DVD and be able to see the ones we want when we wanted to. But add "for free" and you've got a revolution. Youtube has been used for everything from pirating TV shows to evidence court cases regarding school yard bullying, and I'm actually somewhat suprised that I haven't heard any major complaints from people whose copyrights or privacy may have been infringed by youtube. Generally speaking I like to keep things a little outside the box, left field, whatever you wish to call it, so I thought I would find the most obscure video possible. What I have come up with is this; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo6rJTV-aXA this was an attempt made by Canadian journalism icon Nardwuar the Human Serviette to interview then Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. One of his first interviews the footage is c/o the CBC. (This is also the journalist who achieved some note when, after heckling PM Cretien about the pepper spray incident during the APEC protests, he brought about Cretien's famous "for me pepper I put it on my plate" quote. see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWf2LLaHkM0&feature=related)

Ask Away

Wow. I really do wish that the existence of this tool had come to my attention so much sooner. After a brief and very helpful chat with a librarian I was directed to the section of the Government of Canada website that I have been looking for for ages. Without the help of that librarian I would have been doomed to a total lack of information backing up my political arguments in my not-so-workplace-friendly rant blog. No more will my accusations of homophobia and sexism running rampant within certain political parties go without a tallying of exactly which members demonstrated this on which votes. Basically my point is that its great having, at your fingertips, access to people who can help you navigate even the deepest quagmire of government websites. Unfortunatly I was not able to gain access to the academic side of the site due to... well they didn't actually specify exactly what this was due to, but I imagine it probably has to do with the fact that school hasn't really started back up yet since christmas break. Rest assured, I'll be on there Jan 12 as soon as it's up and running again.