Memememememememememe

Closest Book meme
* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next seven sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

nuoc n. water; country
nuoc hoa n. perfume
nuoc mam n. fish sauce
nuoc ngoai adj., adv. foreign: abroad
nuoc tra n. tea
NG
ngay n. day, date

My closest book meme is:
VIETNAMESE Dictionary & Phrasebook

(No, I'm not learning Vietnamese. This item is only on my desk for cataloguing review purposes, no other reason.)

One Last Post

The world’s oldest marathon runner Fauja Singh (95)
Originally uploaded by SMNDA

Well I've entered the stadium with just one lap to negotiate before I break through the tape and end this marathon that is 23 Things. This journey has slightly resembled a marathon. Sometimes a grind or test of endurance; juggling usernames and passwords, technology failing me, me failing technology, finding that what I envisaged would take one hour takes four, feeling entirely exhausted with no end in sight. At other times completely 'in the zone' playing with Flickr photos and Image Generators, YouTube videos and Hairmixer, the hours seemingly rushing by effortlessly. Just, as I can only imagine, like a competitor at the end of a marathon I'm experiencing a feeling of satisfaction, achievement, contentment and even elation that I've completed this learning activity (surely I'm not going to stumble with the finish line so close?). But honestly this hasn't really been like a marathon. Surely marathon runners don't experience pleasure, don't enjoy themselves and without doubt never laugh out loud uncontrollably? Because at times during this exercise I have experienced these things, mainly due to the blogs created by the UniSA Library's other 23 Things participants. Sometimes it was Simpsonizer images, another time a James May video, or on more than one occasion the Death Star Canteen video link. The images either created or discovered and added to everyone's posts have been, on occasion, spectacular and beautiful.

This has been a most worthwhile exercise and I recommend it to all. Strangely I think I'm going to miss it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/smnda/166360343/

NetLibrary Audiobooks

First things first I must confess that I can't ever see a time when I would prefer an audiobook to a version in print format (despite the joys of new technologies that the 23 Things Discovery Exercise has introduced me to). Give me the smell of ink and paper, the crinkle and rustle of pages, the texture of binding anytime.

Time to create my account to NetLibrary through the PLCMC website. Surprise, surprise the message I receive is:

"We apologize, but the page you have requested is currently unavailable". Hmmmmm.

Even though the UniSA Library doesn't subscribe to any eAudiobooks through NetLibrary I did still search for audiobooks on NetLibrary and out of the 1,300+ available items discovered some titles of interest:

Gullible's Travels: The Adventures of a Bad Taste Tourist

Mr. Chickee's Funny Money

Keep Your Brain Alive: 83 Neurobic Exercises to Help Prevent Memory Loss and Increase Mental Fitness (could be very valuable at my time of life)

Beating Back the Devil: on the Front Lines With the Disease Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service

My Tank Is Fight!: Deranged Inventions of WWII

CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap: Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD

and my personal favourite...................................

Temporary Sanity

Podcasting

Time to discover searchtools to locate podcasts. Yahoo Podcasts seems to have disappeared into the ether. The only trace left behind is the "Sorry the page you requested can't be found" message. Accessing Podcast.net only produced the infamous "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" message. OK, hopefully third time lucky. Hooray Podcastalley.com works! As with many of the Web 2.0 technologies the choice is immense. I thought the Tourcaster site could be useful. "Tourcaster is a free service that provides downloadable audio tours of locations around the world." I couldn't get this podcast to work on the UniSA Library's VLC Media Player or Windows Media Player (technology doesn't like me) so I downloaded a podcast aggregator onto my home pc. I listened to the feed below to compare the audio tour to my experience of Valletta almost 20 years ago. Seemingly, not much has changed.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Tourcaster-Malta-VallettaAudioTour

After much browsing I concentrated on the Food and Drink podcast genre (how predictable). I eventually subscribed to the Napa Valley Wine Radio by adding it to my Bloglines account. Hmmm now I'm thirsty.

YouTube and Libraries

Here's an obviously inappropriate example of YouTube being used in a Library.

The technologies used by YouTube can easily be applied to libraries. Instructional videos for library clients demonstating how to use the EasyLoan machines, scanners, photocopiers, booking laptops and study rooms online, how to search the Library catalogue, video tours of campus libraries, etc. The University of South Australia Library have embedded a number of online videos on the Library homepage under the heading of Online Training, for example, tutorials for efficient search strategies in various databases. These technologies can also be used for staff training and development.

YouTube

I really enjoy browsing YouTube. Many an hour or three has been spent viewing old video clips of my favourite songs, sporting highlights, timelapse videos (see my post from Week 4), skits from comedy shows, etc. I know my daughters love watching bloopers from their favourite movies and tv programmes.

I had trouble trying to decide which YouTube video I thought most worthy to use for this post: the choice is immense. I finally settled on Collaboration with Nature featuring some great examples of Andy Goldworthy's art. The music isn't completely to my taste but most of the works depicted in this video certainly are. I think they appeal to my inner hippie.

And the winner is............

The Web 2.0 Award Shortlist included many already discovered Web 2.0 technologies: Del.icio.us, Vufind, Google Earth, Zoho, Flickr, Google Docs, Bloglines, Technorati, YouTube, Google Maps and Rollyo. It also featured software that I've sworned a blood oath to avoid for all eternity: Facebook and Craigslist. (Obviously said blood oath has prevented me from making an informative, objective judgement of any kind but a blood oath made can't be retracted).

I began this Discovery Exercise with the supposed 'fun stuff': Hair Mixer (mostly disappointed with the results), Doof (the 'Top Members'' photos put me off), Threadless (the designs didn't really appeal), iFoods (the photos made me too hungry to concentrate), Cocktail Builder (not one match for that leftover, 14 year old bottle of unwanted Advocaat) and One Sentence (the stories in the main weren't at all interesting). Nothing really appealed.

Decision time: I eventually selected a serious option for examination: Biblio. Biblio combines my love of books and my materialistic inclinations. Over 50 million used book titles to browse and potentially acquire. Now I know where I can find a hard cover, 1931, 3rd Impression copy of The Gardener's Year by Karel Capek, illustrated by Josef Capek and printed by George Allen & Unwin Ltd. A "good+" copy that is "a touch musty but very clean". Woo Hoo.