Insert Clever Name Here

Image Generators

I’ve always wanted to try one of those highway sign generators – I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a roadgeek, but I am sort of interested in highways, signs, infrastructure and that sort of thing. 

So I made a quick sign using the Kurumi Signmaker.  I was sort of disappointed that all of the highway marker shapes were American (see Interstate marker above – maybe I’m a roadgeek after all), but it is pretty cool.   They don’t make it easy to save the image – you have to take a screenshot, edit that, then save it.  And WordPress is kind of zany when it comes to inserting images into posts.  But this is still sort of neat.

Twitter

Further to the last post – I’ve actually started using my Google Reader account fairly heavily.  My work browser wasn’t updating the RSS feeds for some reason (I had to do it manually) and the portability is nice.   I’m still wary of the fact that I’m logging in to Google, likely giving them the ability to track my internet activity, but that’s getting hard to avoid anyway.

Twitter – I have a bit of a head start on this one.  Is that fair?  I dunno.  Anyway, I’ve had a Twitter account with the handle “info_ninja” since the summer.   I’m kinda proud of the name.   Also, I’m one of the administrators for the library’s Twitter account too.  So join us!  Become a follower!  Do not be afraid.

RSS feedfind – Where’s Waldo?

Like I said in the previous post, I already follow a bunch of library-related blogs at work and other stuff at home.  I took a quick look at Technorati and Topix.  Nothing really interesting, to be honest.  Lots of vitriol about the usual political topics.  And it’s good that you can subscribe to the RSS feeds on your browser or through Google Reader once you find something, since the ad content on Topix was insane.  I’ll keep them in mind if I want to search for something specific, but in the meantime I’ll just watch for the little orange symbol on top of my browser.

RSS Mania

A confession…I’ve been using RSS feeds for quite awhile.  They kept prattling on about it at OLA and I kept thinking, yeah, yeah, I get it.  RSS is awesome, blah blah blah.  However, as with any new thing, it’s a lot cooler when you figure out something useful to do with it.  I started out at work by following a few blogs, then gradually found some more useful stuff and even added a bunch of hobby and other stuff to my home computer.  Now the first thing I do when I turn on my home computer is check my RSS.  At work, I do it when I can, but it’s still extremely useful. 

Using Google Reader is a new one though.  It seems like a useful tool in that it aggregates all of the blogs into one handy place (hence the name ‘aggregator’).  Still, all I do now is open up my RSS feed list in Explorer and check the stuff that’s changed.  Maybe I’ll gradually move everything over to Google – if nothing else, it’s portable and longer-lasting (I had to rebuild the whole list when I got a new work PC), but the advantages aren’t insanely great.  And of course, Big Brother Google gets yet another way to learn what I’m doing and what I’m interested in….

Library usefulness?  Definitely.  For example, I have RSS feeds for the bestsellers list at Amazon.ca.  This is a great place to see what books we need to order.

As an aside, I also use Watch That Page to keep an eye on changes in pages that don’t have RSS.  It sends a daily email advising when the pages I’m ‘watching’ change.  It’s old school, but pretty useful, since there are a lot of pages out there that aren’t RSS compliant.

Bloggin’ on technology

Ah, thinking under pressure and with a time deadline, as I have to be on the desk in 20 minutes and still want to grab a snack. 

Technology is generally cool.  I particularly like what’s happening with maps.  Google Maps has revolutionised mapping – I remember thinking how cool it would be to have a great big map book covering all roads at the same scale those MapArt city maps use.  Of course, in real life, such a thing would be encyclopedia sized for Ontario alone.  And now, you can get decent maps of just about anywhere (although still not as detailed, colourful and neat as MapArt).  StreetView is even cooler – I’m looking forward to more coverage of Canada.

Week 3, Thing 7

I poked around a few of the mashups and didn’t really find anything to get too excited about.  There was one that was sorta interesting – Bubblr allows you to put little voice bubbles in a photo to make it look like a comic.  All of my photos are fire trucks, so maybe not the best subject, but I still managed to quickly create something.  In the right hands, you could do some pretty cool stuff with Bubblr.  I clicked on the ‘blog this’ link, so we’ll see if this works.

Update:  Bubblr gives you two options – post the photo directly in the blog or post a link.  I liked the idea of posting directly, so I tried to cut & paste the HTML coding provided.  No dice.  The blog either erased it for me or just posted HTML in the blog text as is.  Very annoying.   So to see the photo, just click here.

Flickr – Week 3, Thing 6

Kawartha Lakes Unit 1911 (Coboconk), originally uploaded by Ontario Fire Buffs.

As mentioned last week, I’ve already been playing around with Flickr.  I created an account for a club I’m in (and webmaster for) and started uploading some photos. Our club president has been after me for ages to get some pictures up – I’m about two years behind. I can put photos on the page itself, but it takes ages – I have to edit (shrink) the photos, create a page and do a write-up. Flickr is way faster and it has a cool mapping feature.

In fact, due to some limitations on the free version, I upgraded to Flickr Pro for US$24.95. Regular Flickr will expire after 90 days of inactivity (not sure what that means) and has monthly upload limits, which means I still had to shrink the photos. I’ve already added 57 photos with tags and captions in three groups. Still lots more to go, but at least I can show some progress before our annual meeting on the 7th of November.

Nothing too spectacular about the picture. Fire truck photos work best when taken in bright sunlight, with the truck positioned nicely in the sun. On cloudy days, things look a lot duller. The weather on this day in May 09 was pretty nasty – we had hail about 20 minutes before this photo was taken. This rig is the main pumper for Coboconk in Kawartha Lakes. Kawartha Lakes is a pretty big city (area wise) and operates a large department with 21 stations spread throughout the municipality. This truck was actually on a call just west of Coboconk when we shot it – a resident had reported a large bird (heron?) nest on a hydro pole and the FD attended on standby until Hydro One crews arrived. The rest of Coboconk’s trucks (a tanker, a rescue truck and a reserve pumper) were shot at the fire hall.

Week 2, Thing 5

Thing 5 – isn’t that sort of like the Cat in the Hat with Thing 1 and Thing 2?

Stuff that I’ve learned, stuff that I’ve learned…I mentioned some things in the initial post.   However, I think the most interesting thing I’ve learned this week is about next week’s thing, Flickr.  I need to post some photos for a club I’m in – I run the website and the president and others have been suggesting I get some pictures up for about two years now.  So I thought I’d try it early, since we have a meeting in November.  Turns out it’s really cool.  The only drawback is that there’s a 10MB per month limit – it’s perfectly reasonable for a free service, but I have a bit of a backlog to attend to.  No worries, I’ll just adjust the photos.  Yay FLickr!

See Dean blog. Blog, blog, blog.

It seems I’m a blogger now.  I’ve been following blogs off and on for years and considered starting one up in the past.  Every now and then, I’d feel like I was bursting with something to say (usually about politics) and would write a post in my head.  I even had a name – poliblog.  I’d have a photo of a polliwog.  Clever, eh?  Fortunately, sanity prevailed.  I’m glad it did.  Most political blogs look like time-consuming mudfights.  I’m sure I would have dropped it shortly after starting.

I do post to our WPL Business Blog, so I have some blog experience.  However, RJ set that one up and I thought I should try the whole experience from scratch.

This is a little different – I’m doing it for 25 Things at work and will mainly be writing about my impressions of, er, the 25 Things.  That should be cool – I’m looking forward to some of these. 

So off we go!

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