thing15 - image generators

Creative Writing Exercises: Writing Prompts

Consider word and letter as forms-the concretistic distortion of a text, a multiplicity of o's or ea's, or a pleasing visual arrangement: "the mill pond of chill doubt."

fairy Poppy - my great niece

christmas 2007

thing13 - uploading an image - 23 feet

thing10 pbwiki

I've already set up, or been part of, a number of wikis over the past couple of years; not having a need for a new one right now I've decided to save cyberspace and not create yet another.

I don't think any of the wikis I've been involved in have been hugely successful - if there's only a few people involved then we've usually ended up using email for contact - though I suppose that in a couple of instances the wiki has functioned ok as a repository for documents held in common.

There are so many online options to do so many similar online activities that sometimes choosing one over another simply comes down to personal taste or familiarity - or the fact that someone else has done the set up using their favourite tool.

thing9 - google docs

Sue D invited me to be a guinea pig for her first google doc and I was pretty taken with it - e.g. I liked that it remembered me when I made interjections in Sue's text by automatically using the same colours etc I had chosen for the first comment.

There seemed to be plenty of templates for various types and subtypes of documents - but, like everyone else who has commented, googledoc isn't the place to develop confidential material.

I wonder what happens if 2 or more authors try to work on a document at the same time? Will have to try!

btw...

I came across "The 7 weirdest and wackiest uses for WordPress" after Kathryn G added herself to the 23katethings network (or vice versa), amongst them is this:

WordPress, the Word Processor

Are you one of those people who are queasy about Google having access to all your information? Myself, I’m not so worried about that—but I hate the Google Docs interface with a great deal of passion (to each his own, eh?). So much so that if I’m out and about without access to a desktop word processor I’ll simply fire up WordPress and do some writing in there.

And if you’re collaborating, the new revision histories allow you to reverse any bone-headed changes your collaborator makes. Because you’d never do that, right?

later: I went back and looked around a bit more at the available docs, and found a wonderful quiz/test template - you can choose a variety of answers (text, multiple choice, etc) - the test can be emailed, embedded in a website, etc - and when someone completes their copy their answers are automatically fed into a spreadsheet. Sue D passed my copyright test with flying colours - big gold star!

thing8 - firefox +++

I had already inadvertently added 2 extensions to my firefox browser (that may not be the right term for whatever firefox is) - zotero and delicious - inadvertent only in that I didn't know they were 'extensions' at the time that I added them.

When you create a delicious account in firefox you are offered a delicious extension, and I said 'yes' out of curiosity, not knowing what would show up. It's a simpler way of adding the buttons that you might want anyway (and which can be added by hand in IE by dragging and dropping in a current toolbar)such as My Delicious (i.e. straight to your bookmarks), Add a New Bookmark (from within the website you want to save), and so on e.g. managing tag bundles.

Zotero just seems to have made its mark down in the right hand corner of the screen without needing a whole toolbar to itself; it's been joined by a delicious button that goes straight to one of my accounts, and a libx button.

Zotero is fab - much easier to manage than endnote (or at least as it was last time I used it, which is more than 4 years ago and for different purposes). It provides for instant entries - and even where a website doesn't appear to have the little zotero flag in the address box, somehow you can still quickly add the relevant info just by clicking yet another button - and there are so many options to organising the contents, cross-referencing with tabs, collecting and collating pdfs, etc etc. I wish this had been around years ago!

thing7 - firefoxy

I now seem to have about - no - I do have 6 toolbars: firefox (themed as 'classic compact' though the catty ones were tempting), LibX, the toolbar that came with my delicious extension, an earlier firefox version with my own tabs (?), the 23 community toolbar, and another one that also has youtube flickr my blog etc - looks like an active subset of the 23things toolbar - maybe I should do some housework (maybe i need to try a catty theme). There's another minitoolbar at the bottom of my screen with a delicious link, zotero, and a murdoch symbol that is another doorway to libx.

So, I've done the tasks for thing7 - I like the speed and simplicity of using firefox: I'd already found through creating multiple delicious identities (for my thing in a couple of weeks) that closing down and reopening firefox is much quicker and more automated than IE, that playing around is easy, and that their instructions are pretty straight forward. and I looooove zotero, but more about that in thing8.

thing6 - rss feeds

I did get this far last year, but thought I'd better remind myself about the topic because I haven't bothered to keep up with my Reader.

At first I subscribed to quite a lot of blogs, newspapers, etc, but didn't like the rapid build up of unread matter - I'm more of a dipper and dabbler and probably prefer just going to visit interesting sites every now and again.

I did come across this useful article last year though - 'How to put your feeds on a diet' - it was/is nice to know that I'm not the only one with a tendency to induce my own overload.

So, anyway for this year I've added the ABC Breaking News feed - easy peasy - then I used The Australian Blog Index that Joanne and Rosita provided - it's a great resource, thank you - and added a couple of craft sites. Only one of them is Australian, craftblog.com.au, because it led me to another (Pink Penguin) that I liked - clear and clean pages, lots of patterns and ideas for bags (which I'm very keen on at the moment), and not so much about the hubby, kids, church, etc that one finds on some (especially u.s.) supposedly craft oriented blogs.

I've got quite a lot of sewing and craft links in/on delicious - not sure which avenue I'll use more.

Now I just need to work out how to make the links in this post go somewhere - aha there's a link icon - that'll be it! oh yes, and how to delete the feeds that I'll never read.

thing2

Not sure which of the 71/2 habits is the easiest; the hardest is probably no.1 'beginning with the end in mind' - making goals - I often fear that I'll miss out on the serendipitous if I focus on predetermined goals - what actually happens is that I can drift around happily for a certain amount of time, pursuing this and that, and then just drift away completely from the original project [this doesn't apply to work projects - obviously :-)]

Maybe the easiest would be number 5: create your own learning toolkit - because it's sort of finite and tangible.

So my goals for 23 things are to actually finish it this time, to enjoy it, to find ways to apply the techniques in my work, and to persist even when I can't see the applicability for myself.

I think I've got all the gear (and people) in the toolbox that I need - even my own digital camera; but although I've had it since May, I haven't actually used it, and know that there's a gadget that I need to buy to make it work properly - will find out what it is and get one!

2nd time around

thought I'd celebrate doing 23things again with a new blog, but I can't seem to play with the layout - I even asked a diginative if she could see where I was going wrong... and we've decided it's google not me.

...

aha - it wasn't google, it was IE - have changed to mozilla and all the bits work fine now.