Thing 10 again, Meez images

Drat, the jet pack actually costs money. I'll just have to stay on the ground. But I don't have to stay on my feet.

Thing 11, Library Thing

I created a private account in Library Thing to see if keeping track of my books online instead of on paper will work for me. I added the science fiction title "Blindsight" by Peter Watts, my choice for the Hugo Award this year. The recommendations machine generated a very good-looking list of quality hard SF. The "unsuggester" is rife with Oprah books, certainly a category many hard SF readers would find boring. I see reader's advisory possibilities here, for sure.
Mom liked to read Victoria Holt.

Thing 10, playing around

Still working on the image generator. My avatar needs a jet pack.

I explored the Generator Blog and took a shine to the Random Technobabble Generator. Bad science fiction writers could have a ball with this. It says things like, "Sir, the core processing of the tractor beam has been redefined." And, "Will calibrating the activation circuitry of the distortion field increase the power supply of the semi-fluorescent generator, Lieutenant?"

Wait, what does this have to do with librarianship again?
Generator Blog: http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/
Random Technobabble: http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~msjj/index.html

Mom says, quit reading that science fiction, it'll rot your mind!
Too late.

Return to Thing 6: Flickr mashups

Look, a picture.

Thing 9, Merlin

First, a thank-you to Albert Kazooba for alerting us to the trick for typing in the title bar. His message saved me much frustration!
So, I've looked at Merlin and subscribed to its newsfeed. The dangers of RSS: I looked at Salon's postings and got distracted by an article on people betting who dies in Harry Potter. However, Salon only lets you look at the first page and then you have to register. So, forget that! And I refuse to even LOOK at the feed search tools, because the last thing I need is MORE stuff to read. I have a JOB, people! I appreciate knowing what tools exist, but I intend to be selective about which ones I use.
Wow, I'm sounding wonderfully curmudgeonly today. Mom says stop frowning, your face will freeze that way! (Remember the Calvin & Hobbes strip in which Calvin goes around with a grotesque expression, trying to get his face to freeze that way? What a guy! He's my hero.)

Thing 8, RSS feeds

This could be useful for me to track book reviews on such sites as Slashdot. It was easy to set up but I'm trying to figure out how to manage the posts once they're there. It looks like they disappear unless I mark "keep new."

My public bloglines url: I have no idea. I'm not understanding the 23 things directions. There's no Share tab, there's a Share link. I don't know if I'm supposed to make up a user name or if one is already assigned. If I enter a username, I get instructions to insert Javascript code into my blog template. This is Greek to me (or maybe, Geek to me). I am not getting what I expected to see based on the 23 things directions.

I just went into my settings and found a place to enter a user name and change the privacy settings. I'm getting confused between blogrolls and bloglines but I'll ignore that for now.

Okay, I saved the settings and NOW I'm getting what 23 things showed I would get. When I first set up the bloglines account, I had not entered a user name and I had all the settings on Private. Apparently this makes a difference in what you can do later. My url is:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/moink

This is how technology drives people nuts. Directions never seem to be foolproof. And I be a Fool! (No, really -- I was born on April Fool's Day. Thanks, Mom!)

Things 6 & 7

Okay, I like the librarian trading cards. In my copious spare time I will create one to pass out to all my fans.
Here's what technology I appreciate: my car dings at me if I leave the lights on. This was one of the most useful improvements in cars in a long time. Now I can drive in the daytime with the lights on and not risk running down the battery when I forget... Another useful bit of technology: email reminders about which of my library books are due. Now that's worthwhile.
Mom says: turn half these lights out!