# 18 Actually pulled a quill from my gorgeous tail to try out Zoho Writer. Logged in under Alkonost and penned a poem-song inspired by this Dreamscape watercolor. Being cautious, I saved the whole on a floppy disk as a Word document. Then I tried posting it as a draft from Zoho to my blog. This worked only when I was simultaneously logged in at Blogger. The draft was formated in HTML which I edited, taking out repetitive, unnecessary coding, fixing line spacing and margin indent. Perhaps I didn't need to fuss so much with the original draft; it would have been presentable, but as you know by now, I am a perfectionist whether in feather attire or creative endeavor. As soon as I've mastered the technology, you also will be able to hear this siren song.
# 19 Ah, I could happily sing about LibraryThing. A wonderful roost for an avian with a long literary history! Once signed up, I entered a few of my favorite books, choosing less well-known titles tasted decades ago but which have kept their savor, like Twilight of the Gods by Richard Garnett (1 other owner), Walter de la Mare's The Three Mulla-mulgars (3), and Shilappadikaram by Ilango Adigal (0). To properly list a title, I had to determine publisher, edition, date, illustrator, etc., using information from Amazon.com, the Library of Congress, or other sources I selected to search. This meant frequently returning to my booktree to see what I really had. An absorbing exercise for collectors, but a bit frustrating if you'd like to record your library quickly. The exciting part was dipping into other folk's libraries and following tags to reading lists or reviews. Clicking on Albert Bigelow Paine, author of The Hollow Tree Snowed-In Book (0), brought up his more popular stories and their owners. A bookloving bird could easily get lost for the rest of March in this site.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Week 7: Wikis #16, #17
# 16 I'm chewing on some ideas. It's lunch time and this bird is just too hungry for words.
# 17 Finally managed to drop two edits into the Learning 2.0 SandBox wiki's Favorite Animals (naturally) and Favorite Books. This should have been easy but the Point & Click edit mode doesn't work for a sirin using more medieval technology. The Classic mode editor is the appropriate choice. The skimpy help information didn't cover this problem. Apart from having to poke around a lot to understand how to contribute, adding one's own considerable knowledge/expertise to such a public encyclopedia is very satisfying. Flew off with some reading recommendations for that evening I can nestle down with a book.
# 17 Finally managed to drop two edits into the Learning 2.0 SandBox wiki's Favorite Animals (naturally) and Favorite Books. This should have been easy but the Point & Click edit mode doesn't work for a sirin using more medieval technology. The Classic mode editor is the appropriate choice. The skimpy help information didn't cover this problem. Apart from having to poke around a lot to understand how to contribute, adding one's own considerable knowledge/expertise to such a public encyclopedia is very satisfying. Flew off with some reading recommendations for that evening I can nestle down with a book.
Week 6: Tagging, Folksonomies & Technorati #13, #14, #15
# 13 Not to denigrate my friends and frequent flight companions, but birds are messy creatures who mark their favorite perches with quantities of droppings. I've picked up some very slovenly habits which make my using Del.icio.us a wing-stretching challenge, therefore I am rushing back to my favorite nests to tidy before attempting to tag their contents. After tossing my smelly dead links, I dropped (oops, a very avian action) my fresh tasty ones into Del.icio.us where I am constructing a new and hopefully better nest in which to keep them. The procedure of tagging is agreeably bird-like; we visually store impressions of the creatures and landscape features we pass over. It's also familiar to have a word-cloud hovering above, although at first it appeared to be more of a word-fog
I'm still tidying but you're welcome to drop in (oops, again) for a guest's taste of what I've collected. Just follow my Flight Path (below left).
# 14 How shall I tag myself? This is the question. Perhaps Technorati will offer a solution. First I tried a Technorati Discover search for lubok to locate any interesting references to my popular 18th century hand-colored woodcut portraits and found that this style of art is still being used in Russia for political caricature and social satire. A photo link to Flickr took me to a reproduction of that Lubok favorite, Celebrating the Dead - Mice on Parade, illustrating rodents happily assisting with a drunkard cat's funeral. I resisted following one of this blog's enticing tags, Vintage Childrens Books, preferring to circle back to claim my blog at Technorati, so I, too, could entice web wanderers.
# 15 Although I visited Wikipedia before undertaking that tagging task, I'd like to fly forward into next week before talking about Web2.0 and the Library of the Future.
I'm still tidying but you're welcome to drop in (oops, again) for a guest's taste of what I've collected. Just follow my Flight Path (below left).
# 14 How shall I tag myself? This is the question. Perhaps Technorati will offer a solution. First I tried a Technorati Discover search for lubok to locate any interesting references to my popular 18th century hand-colored woodcut portraits and found that this style of art is still being used in Russia for political caricature and social satire. A photo link to Flickr took me to a reproduction of that Lubok favorite, Celebrating the Dead - Mice on Parade, illustrating rodents happily assisting with a drunkard cat's funeral. I resisted following one of this blog's enticing tags, Vintage Childrens Books, preferring to circle back to claim my blog at Technorati, so I, too, could entice web wanderers.
# 15 Although I visited Wikipedia before undertaking that tagging task, I'd like to fly forward into next week before talking about Web2.0 and the Library of the Future.
Week 5: Play #10, #11, #12
# 10 Haven't had much daylight to play. Birds are always busy searching for food to keep themselves aloft. Tiresome for the human half of me. Can I trade my Melusina image for play credit?
# 11 After circling a bit, decided on a closeup investigation of the Book (link) area of Web 2.0 Award Winners. Found 4 good perches out of 7 sighted. Using Coverpop might qualify as play since it just offers a flashy page of images. However it does have a link to MagazineArt.org's collection of vintage cover art. Zack Bookmaps, a German site, will help me locate a book about mythic (ha!) creatures in selected German, Swedish, Norwegian library catalogs (if I am fluent enough in these languages) as well as in the Library of Congress and Melvyl. Sixapart hosts personal or business and professional blogs for a fee. When I don't have a flight itinerary to follow I'll probably try out Reader2 to find some recommended books about the sort of fabulous adventures I undertake. (I'll hop back to LibraryThing for Thing #19.) But my two favorite perches are Lulu which provides a way for me to publish my autobiography online and in book format, and CiteULike, where I was able to locate a congenial group or two, such as Learn Online and eLearning whose members have submitted some articles I would consider excellent mental food. Tried a search for Mosaics that unearthed a Jstor article on Mosaic Ateliers at Tabarka with a reference to a handsome mosaic depiction of heraldic birds and orants flanked by candles.
# 12 All this flapping around has given me a human-size appetite. With Rollyo's Ask an Avian search tool I did a quick dive into my preferred wild and pet bird websites to seize tips on the most nourishing meal for a stressed avian. Better not mention what I found until I've eaten it.
# 11 After circling a bit, decided on a closeup investigation of the Book (link) area of Web 2.0 Award Winners. Found 4 good perches out of 7 sighted. Using Coverpop might qualify as play since it just offers a flashy page of images. However it does have a link to MagazineArt.org's collection of vintage cover art. Zack Bookmaps, a German site, will help me locate a book about mythic (ha!) creatures in selected German, Swedish, Norwegian library catalogs (if I am fluent enough in these languages) as well as in the Library of Congress and Melvyl. Sixapart hosts personal or business and professional blogs for a fee. When I don't have a flight itinerary to follow I'll probably try out Reader2 to find some recommended books about the sort of fabulous adventures I undertake. (I'll hop back to LibraryThing for Thing #19.) But my two favorite perches are Lulu which provides a way for me to publish my autobiography online and in book format, and CiteULike, where I was able to locate a congenial group or two, such as Learn Online and eLearning whose members have submitted some articles I would consider excellent mental food. Tried a search for Mosaics that unearthed a Jstor article on Mosaic Ateliers at Tabarka with a reference to a handsome mosaic depiction of heraldic birds and orants flanked by candles.
# 12 All this flapping around has given me a human-size appetite. With Rollyo's Ask an Avian search tool I did a quick dive into my preferred wild and pet bird websites to seize tips on the most nourishing meal for a stressed avian. Better not mention what I found until I've eaten it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
