Twitter-iffic? Maybe not.

And the final part of the week's assignment - join something new. I chose Twitter, mainly because I feel so scathingly dismissive of it, and want to make sure I'm not casting nasturtiums without foundation.

Easy to join, but I do have to confess I don't see the attraction so far. I found Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and am following them, but also seem to have picked up a follower of my own, who rather disconcertingly seems to be wanting to 'chat to guys in Christchurch'. I think she may not be entirely on the level ...

Well, I spent the weekend mulling over why I couldn't add a gadget to the sidebar, when they all worked really well in the main body of a blog post. And now I finally have an answer - thanks to that fantastic resource THE PIONEER PAGE.
Apparently since a 2007 update, only the 'official' gadgets work properly, not ones developed by other people. So now I'm off to see if this makes a difference, although I can't remember seeing an 'official gadget' list ...

#$%^&** gadgets

So this was my third attempt to add a gadget to the gadget toolbar. And for the third time I have failed.
Adding stuff into a post is easy-peasy, but into the toolbar? Not a hope. I keep getting error messages and scripting messages and broken link messages, and so I am officially quitting. Unless someone clever out there can tell me what I'm doing wrong?
I figured at first that I was just being unlucky and picking stuff that didn't work, but I've tried at least half a dozen different ones, and none of them work.

Am open to suggestions of a technical and helpful nature ...

how 'bout that weather, then ...

gadgets for the win

rss and podcasts

Another lesson done! Not sure I've fully 'got' this one, but I think I've done the basics. I actually started a bloglines account last year for the dreaded MLIS 525 paper, and was initially all excited and keen, but as with much of this stuff, it's the ongoing commitment that makes the difference. It's good fun to work out how to start, and how to add stuff, and then after a few weeks, you realise you haven't checked your reader for aaaaages, and when you do it's overwhelming, due to the 86 feeds and notifications that you hadn't noticed, and you try desperately to catch up and ...
Maybe it's a matter of structuring this into my day, just like I make time for email checking, and for looking at Desknet. I guess also, it's to do with choosing the right stuff to add, and not just random things that look cool.
I also can't figure out yet how to integrate the rss feeds into my blog page, or podcast notifications. I've added some of the blogs I follow in a list on the side, but I don't know if this is what the task actually was? And I'm using iTunes to listen to my podcasts, but I don't know if this is the best/easiest tool for this - thoughts, anyone?

Thoughts about Flickr etc

And now, having finished off the Images bit of this weeks' homework, I have to confess that I found the toys and gadgets section way more interesting than the actual photo-sharing bit. I wonder why (that's an actual question, as well as a metaphorical one). Is it something to do with me not believing that anyone in this world is interested in weird pictures I took of moss in Lewis Pass, or the fact that my cat is really grumpy today?
Wordle, however, is sooooooo much fun. As are several of the other image toys and tools I played with. I really liked the idea of the Flickr mosaic, but it took quite a while to upload and sort itself out. I chose 'leaf' as the theme, and the end result was pretty cool, but it was not speedy at all, and was quite patchy too.
I also really liked the colour matching tool, and have promised myself that I will go back and play some more.
Still struggle somewhat with justifying these things past the obvious 'playing with' reason, tho. I keep finding myself thinking, "Wow, that's great, but what am I supposed to DO with it?"

Well, another day of learning curves.
Today was Be Brave and Open a Flickr Account Day.
Again, none of this seems too incredibly difficult, just all seems to involve lots of to-ing and fro-ing, and back and forth-ing from sign in screen to permission screen, back to uploader and then refresh, answer bizarre questions about second cousin's first pet's next door neighbour's first car, and then it's done!
And now my cat is an internet star, and everyone knows I like to take odd and mostly boring pictures of moss.

What a mission!

Note to Internet Explorer 6 from Mozilla Firefox: you are faily faily fail. What with the cookies not enabled and the active script business and the no tabs and the crashing, all in IE, Firefox does seem to be the way to go.
And I now have to go, having spent 25 minutes grappling with security settings and the above crashing in IE, otherwise I shall be late for the desk!
I am promising myself I will actually finish this set-up later today.