CULLB602C Greetings & Invitation

Today at work students of "CULLB602C Use, evaluate and extend own information literacy skills" @UB explored the library. Some have already visited my blog, and I wonder if they will wander back?

If so:..... HI guys :D

You're so lucky that Loretta completely restructured this unit after I applied for RPL - it looks so exciting and fun now.

You'll be setting up your own blogs: merveilleux, fantastique!

Please, tell me where your blog is when you have it set up, it will be fun to see you play with blogging. It would be exciting to see you use your blogs to explore your sources and thoughts as you research for your essays.

Or if blogging is a little unnerving for you and you'd like to shoot the breeze about it feel free to contact me through comments, gmail, twitter or even Moodle.

I'm also challenging Hazel, who completed this unit in the old format, to take on her own 23 Things.

See you 2.0 :D

Hello from our new laptop

How exciting: for our trip we’ve bought a new laptop :-D

Why? We want to be able to:

• keep in touch with people back home
• go online wherever we happen to be to research the next stage
• watch movies or shows we’ve bought specially to view on the trip (could you recommend some good “travel” movies?)
• play a game or two in down-time
• transfer, sort and store our photos as we go.

Please give your tips/advice for travelling with a laptop.

So, Cricket researched options and required specifications and finally recommended the:

Toshiba Satellite A500/031

Sure go ahead, if you’ve had trouble with one, do send warnings.

But so far (4 hours in to familiarisation, only Firefox installed) I’m enjoying it – except that the desktop icons are a lot larger than I would like and there are no options to make them smaller (resolution is as high as it will go; and Control Panel options to change desktop icon & text size is only available to go larger).

Just like when I found delightful features of Windows 7, I have been delighted to discover Toshiba Bulletin Board.  The boys and I will be sharing the laptop and I don’t think we need to have different user settings because we use the same programs, and anything we want to keep private we can save to our memory sticks – BUT I like to use stickies and to do lists – but the boys don’t need to see my notes to myself on the desktop.  With Toshiba Bulletin Board we can make our own boards – to pin up our own lists, photos, notes etc.

Naturally one of the first things I did when I finally started familiarisation procedures (ie mucking about in there) was to begin a todo list, and documenting what I’ve done and learned so far :P

1. Removed battery
2. Connected to secure home network
3. Windows 7 offered to set up a homegroup and this time I went with that and received a password
4. I can access some stuff on other home computers - but it looks limited to docs, pics, vids, music; couldn't see how to access program files - would be convenient not to have to redownload stuff.
5. Created personal Bulletin Board - boys can have their own
6. Listed things to install in Board’s ToDo List
7. Installed Firefox
8. Learned a tiny bit about homegroups – but still confused about Windows 7 file management.
9. Tried to find a way to shrink the icons on desktop – couldn't
10. Changed basic computer's Windows7 user name from New User, although that is still showing as its name from my PC.
11. Wondered what option we will use for office software on this machine.
12. Removed Wild Tangent
13. Looked for that Windows 7 writing tool I liked so much for blogging, ah yes Windows Live Writer, so it is in the Windows Live folder.
14. Changed desktop background theme.
15. Binned Adobe shortcuts - won't need those
16. Pinned tools I use (Paint, Writer, calculator) to Taskbar, unpinning the unnecessaries.
17. Played some more with the Board (added a pic of Xin and Me in Second Life)

And now the laptop and I need to get back to work…. that to do list calls…particularly the firefox addons: delicious, kwout and zotero.

Creating a Reading List with Zotero

Working in a library I tend to discover way more books I'd like to read than time allows.

So I have a few challenges:

• How do I track titles of books I'd like to read when I get the chance?
• Considering I may never get back to anything on that list, how do I choose what to borrow Right Now?
• What is the most efficient and effective way for me to track the ideas I discover while reading?

My lunch is cooking right now, giving me a deadline for completing a post, which some of you may have discovered is another one of my challenges.

SO: today I'm only going to touch on the first one - because I've recently found an idea for that purpose.

I've been using Zotero to capture works I use for study - and now I've created a folder called: Reading List :D how clever is that?

Okay, for you to appreciate how it is that Zotero is so helpful in this respect, you need to understand what Zotero can do. It grabs and keeps citation data from library and other catalogues, or websites that provide such data, allowing us to make notes, tag, sort etcetera, and Share too I think.

Last night at work I found a few books on the shelf I really want to read, but too many books at home unfinished, so I found the titles in the catalogue, and had Zotero grab the information.

In a way, I used to prefer to be able to create my reading list more directly in conjunction with the library catalogue, much as it now allows me to keep a Reading History (which should probably more accurately be called a Borrowing History). Of course the catalogue allows me to mark records and email myself a list, and I guess I could then maintain a folder for such emails over time.

But maybe using Zotero for my Reading List is even better because the data is then in the same place that when I have read it, I can make notes, and later access the citation data if I use it. And when I work out to use the collaboration feature, I could share my Reading List... which is an intriguing thought for if/when I get into teaching.

Are any teachers in library science using Zotero this way?

I've used a toread tag with delicious for collecting online matertial to read later; however today I discovered the firefox extension Read It Later which would allow me to download pages for offline reading - particularly useful when I'm using a laptop I think.

Four sentences for your cover letter (from creamcitian at The Scott Adams blog)

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Next time I need to write a cover letter for a resume I believe I will remember those four sentences from The Princess Bride - thanks to creamcitian's concise explanation of how they represent the four key messages one needs to convey.

I want to link you directly to the comment in which creamcitian offers this striking cue, but it seems Dilbert.com doesn't assign permalinks to comments. The link I have provided is to a display of most popular comments first (creamcitian's topping the votes at this time).

Will visit Canada & USA in July

Dartril, Shortiye and I are excited about a new adventure.  From 25 June – 23 July we will be visiting friends and family and then meeting people we’ve met through World of Warcraft throughout Canada and USA.

Our journey will take us through: Portland & Corvallis OR, Puyallup WA, Vancouver BC, Toronto & Hamilton ON, New York, Dallas TX and Los Angeles CA.

I’ve had moments of anxiety over the details that were not yet sorted, but as they have gradually ironed out (except for precise dates, accommodation and travel for the last half, and how lightly can we travel?) I’m somewhat calmer.

I keep thinking it would be ever so interesting to meet other unschoolers or library bloggers (are there other sorts who read here?) along our journey.  If you live in one of the above areas and might be classified in one or more of those broad descriptions and might like to meet us, you could send a message to my gmail (yup my blogger name) or twitter account (at Twitter: my blog’s name without the e, because when I began we were limited to 15 characters :( ).

Oh do feel free to share your travel advice/recommendations.

A webcomic I read: Freefall

Do you enjoy comics? Do you read any on the web?

I've mentioned Ask Dr Eldritch before, and I still visit there regularly to keep up. I keep up with Unshelved in Bloglines. But I haven't described them, perhaps I will soon as I heartily recommend both.

Lately I've discovered others that have been around for years. As I've got more posts in the works than published lately, and I'm feeling low and not up to much at all today, I'm going to tell you about Freefall, and maybe this will start a series, or you can peruse my collection.

Kitty introduced me to Freefall by Mark Stanley. Naturally I like to begin at the beginning, so I'm still trying to catch up because the series began in 1998. The adventures of a peculiarly criminal invertebrate alien Sam, his simple robot sidekick Helix and their illegally obtained exceptionally honest and upright Bowman wolf engineer Florence are, so far (I'm up to April 2002), quite diverting and addictive.

The roster of delightful additional characters (Savage Chicken, the ship who would happily kill the captain (Sam); Sawtooth, the enormous beetle shaped construction bot who is [at least in 2003] considering motherhood; and Winston, Florence's veterinarian & romantic interest to name just a few) are all way more endearing than, but probably because of the foil provided by, Sam.

Freefall via kwout

And that's about wiped my energy levels. Perhaps I'll share some of my favourite moments in the series later.

Perhaps I won't need to, there are some excellent reviews of this cartoon by Brian Roney, Ankur Gupta, Absolute Astronomy (sourced from but apparently since deleted from Wikipedia) and someone at Nationmaster/Statemaster.

Freefall is apparently ranked #80 at the webcomic list which also provides a "people who liked this also liked" list of suggestions:

Freefall profile at the webcomic list via kwout

I must tag Mark Stanley's list of other online comics for later perusal too.

Go ahead tell me about the webcomics you read.

I control what I share

Thanks for sharing Michael and cogdogblog.

i control what I share « Tame The Web via kwout