#14 Technorati overload

Well, I checked it out and all I can say is that the blogosphere can be a scary place. Scary big, scary wierd, scary funny - honestly who would have thought that so many people could spend so much time writing about absolutely anything and everything.

I think that this is where my preference for wading over jumping starts to show. I've been back a few times, going a little deeper with each visit but being very careful where I put my feet. Maybe next time I'll take on TomKat or Brangelina but only if I have my storm rated floaties on and my finger on the off button.

This does somewhat downgrade my geek rating but I'm sure I'll get it back up there soon enough.

Whilst paddling in the shallow end I did find "Cooking for Engineers" (http://www.cookingforengineers.com/). If you like your recipes with step-by-step photos and a Ghant chart then this is the site for you.

#13 Totally del.icio.us

I know I've skipped 11 & 12 but I really will go back and do them.

In the meantime I've uploaded all my bookmarks into del.icio.us and have been having fun tagging and sharing them. I must say I'm a bit of a fan of the tag cloud, I love the way it shows patterns of usage at a glance. I suspect tags like 'book' and 'food' are just going to keep getting bigger and bigger in my little cloud.

This is going to be really useful if I ever change jobs - no more exporting & importing and hoping nothing gets lost in transit. Come to think of it it'll be handy when I move around from PC to PC here and when I travel, all my favourite stuff just a few clicks away.

deeelicious!

I love Bloglines!

I feel like I haven't done anything L2ish for ages but then realised this isn't exactly true. Whilst I haven't made a rollyo yet or put any of my stuff on LibraryThing (although I have created an account) or even made any more images I LOVE! Bloglines.

I have a bunch of library type blogs plugged in and it has become part of my 'first thing' routine - turn everything on and put in all my passwords, get a coffee while my PC thinks about things for a bit, check email then check Bloglines and see what is happening in libraryland. There are some wonderful, inspiring things going on out there! It's nice to start the day thinking anything is possible.

If I get nothing else out of all this (not likely) then this will be worth it all on it's own.

#10 Images

How cool is that! The little wave picture below was sent straight to my blog from the image generator. I've also made personalised noodle soup, of only you could get it to do this in real life.

I used redkid for the soup (www.redkid.net/generator/soup/sign.php) and imagechef for the wave (www.imagechef.com/ic/make.jsp?tid=Wave+Animated) both are listed on generatorblog (http://generatorblog.blogspot.com ) and that was only going through the A's on the list.

Wave image

#9 Feed finding

Maybe it's just because it's 4.55 and late in the week but I found the feed finders like Feedster and Google a but overwhealming. Even when I thought I'd been really specific in my search I got a squillion hits.



So I ended up using the search function in bloglines and I'm now getting weather updates, All Blacks rugby news (because we are going to WIN! the world cup). I'm also getting updates from a few L2 blogs, just to keep up with what you all out there are up to. :-)

#8 RSS

Well, it was sort of simple. Setting up my Bloglines account wasn't hard but once I got in it was kind of...so now what. With a bit of faffing around of the 'wonder what happens if I click here' variety I have subscribed to 6 feeds, 4 from the Bloglines list and 2 I found myself (yeah me!). I must say it's nice getting the latest bits from different sources all in one spot. One of the blogs I subscribe to had nothing new added yesterday so I didn't even have to have a look at it, I knew I wasn't missing anything and didn't get disappointed or feel I was wasting time by going to check it out and not seeing anything new.

Now that I have it set up I can just keep adding things as I come across them in my travels.

#7 100 words on Technology

Well here goes.

I remember sitting at the PC that had our first and only (dial up) internet connection at work some time in the midish 90s. A couple of us had decided that we just wanted to see if it was really as flash as all the articles said it was and thought we'd put it through it's paces. The only place I could think of that had a web site that might be even vaguely useful (this was work time) and interesting was the NY Public Library. Don't forget that this was way pre-Google so having found their web address in a paper article we brought it up and started playing. A few clicks of the mouse and basic searches later we were looking at a digital copy of a photograph from the Library of Congress of Abraham Lincoln standing on the back of a wagon giving the Gettysburgh address.

Right then I knew this was going to be big.

Now I own a laptop with a wireless connection so I can be online anywhere, anytime, a phone that has more stuff on it than I know what to do with and an ipod that has made me realise I have quite weird taste in music. I know a 1yr old who has a blog - his dad does the typing at this stage but I'm sure that won't last long.

I went to hear Stephen Abram yesterday and one of his messages was "If you thought this was big, you ain't seen nothing yet". I don't know about living my entire life online, I'm busy enough as it is but wow, when you can share photos instantly with your family & friends no matter where they are, find a recipe for turkey stuffing and locate John & Kevin's views on climate change all within a few clicks the mind boggles as to what might be next.

#6 Photo Phun

There seems to be no end of stuff that you can do with a Flickr account. I have created a little cube of my holiday photos that now sits on my desk. I made it with my Flickr photos and one of the Flickr Toys from bighugelabs.com. You pick your photos and they send you a pdf to print, cut out and stick and voila! photo cube!

The photo is a bit fuzzy but you get the idea.