A word or two about Learn & Play

Or as I like to kiddingly call it Toil & Frustration. Don't get me wrong there were a couple of fun and useful bits. I do recall enjoying embedding photos and youtube crap. I thought stumbleupon on the power tools was amusing. And Delicious would have been neat if our darn PCs didn't remove it from the toolbar everytime I signed out! I never did figure out RSS nor do I really find news articles that much fun. Twitter was just dumb. The online word processing could be useful in a pinch. I never got MOLDI to work on a staff PC. The Web 2.0 articles made me cringe. This whole believe that everything old school is bad just makes me feel OLD. Heck the whole Learn & Play made me feel like an out of touch fuddy duddy at 35. I would like to make a shout out to Connie Kleaver, the only person who was usually ahead of me, for helping out with the tricky spots!

MOLDI

I played with MOLDI three times and everytime I go to download I get the same Error message. I assume this is to keep me from downloading stuff to the staff PCs. I get the gist of the idea though so that's going to have to be good enough. If I didn't have such slow internet access at home I might try it there but I am 3 1/2 months pregnant and just getting through a day right now is E-NUF.

Ralphie all growed up!

This is the guy that was Ralphie in Christmas Story. He kinda grew up into a looker didn't he? Love those light blue eyes!

What if a Willie Nelson were a fox?

ZOHO Again

Ok so I finally got around to trying Zoho again. It worked better this time. Last time I would only get vertical lines when I would type or it would take forever for the letters to show up on the screen. Must have been a one time glitch.

http://hogwartsradio.com/hogradio.xml

Podcasts are for Pod People!

Ok I am bewildered by podcasts. I guess if I had an MP3 player and money to play with it might be interesting. What I could find out there for free was not too impressive. So I added Hogwarts radio to Bloglines and my blog. I had a heck of a time with podfeed.net . I had a much easier time finding a feed on podcastalley to enter into bloglines. I still haven't figured out if bloglines should some how conect to my blog? I am so confused and frustrated with the lack of training provided on the Learn & Play website! Ok the cute little videos with the cut outs are fun but really not very practical. They explain what things are but not how to manipulate them. I am officially giving up my sci fi geek status to be a mom instead. I am sure when I was 19 or 20 and a total Star Trek fan I woulda loved this crap.

Lemme Try This YouTube embedding

CML Power Tools

LOVED LOVED LOVED this power tool http://www.stumbleupon.com/


It is great fun. It basically spits random websites at you and it you love it you can tell it and it spits out more websites like the one you loved. I so far have found lots of fun doodle sites and pet photos. They need to invent a kid friendly version because some of it would not be appropriate for kids.

Web 2.0 Funstuff

Ok I only did fun stuff from Web 2.0. I played with something called Shandonni which let me doodle and then slighly animated it. It let me create backgrounds and other animals. Kids might enjoy it. I also tried Cocktail Builder from the award winners. It was fun. You type in what drink ingredients you have and it gives you new drink recipes to try. It worked well. I also tried Hairmixer. Which was dumb. You took hair from Jessica Alba and put it on America Ferrera. It had lots of nasty pop up ads and was very slow.

Pheewww!

Ok so Doc Brown made me feel much better. He did an ultrasound and we have 1 very healthy baby with a nice strong heartbeat. Even got a nice little photo of peanut. Doc Brown assures me that a miscarriage is very unlikely with a heartbeat this strong. We'll see him again in early November. Now how do I survive the exhaustion and sick stomach?

Zoho is SoSo and SoSlow

OK so I tried out Zoho. It worked ok the first time and the second time I got into it was sooooooo sloooooow. I would type in a few letters and then wait minutes to see them appear on screen. So I switched to Google which seemed worlds better. It was faster, more user friendly, and it even lets you convert the files to Word documents. I would reccomend it but Zoho was a loser.

Letting the little Kat outta the bag.

Ok I will admit it. I just sure hope Doc Brown says everything is ok when I see him on Tuesday morning and that it's not just a weird tumor or some sort of psycho-sematic soap opera kinda thing. If the indigestion, vomiting, sore chest, tiredness, mood swings, and backache are to be believed ... I Katie Gilbert am knocked up. I had sorta given up hope. Please let this baby be chubby, healthy, bright eyed, and happy. I don't think I could bare to lose a second one.

ICKY STICKY WIKI

Ok so I hope I did all that right. My big complaint is that now I get an e-mail every time someone changes something on the Learn&Play Wiki. Is that necessary? Hey, I still like Wikipedia for useless information so it's cool.

Wiki World

Ok so I created a Wiki and want add it to Favorites to get credit for it but I am still waiting on permission to edit the Wiki. I have no idea how long that takes. So I will just try to be patient. I do like Wikipedia for usually useless information so I guess they do have their uses. I mean we looked up the names of the Fraggle characters on it just the other day.

Web 2.0

Just in case collections? Just in case?? Weren't we taught in library science school that it was the job of the librarian to anticipate the customers needs and order accordingly? Gosh everything I learned in has gone out the window? When did old become synonymous with bad?

RSS Newsfeed

I guess this doesn't interest me much cuz I don't like reading the news. It's too darn depressing. I like to live in my make beleive world so I can't hear you la la la!

Living without Electricity and Library related news

I have to say that all of this Learn & Play technology seems really silly when I can't even turn on the kitchen light in my home! We have not had power since Sunday afternoon and are not projected to have any until Friday. Luckily it is very temperate this week so just having the windows open is livable. My husband grilled up some meat while I threw out all of our no longer frozen food stuffs. Gosh it was sad. I would say we lost 200 dollars worth of stuff. The worst thing was all my frozen garden veggies! I can NOT replace them. We will have to live on store bought this winter. Ugh. I do miss being able to watch TV in the evening when Jeff is sleepin and I really miss cooking in my kitchen. This is what I get for having an electric range I guess. We do have hot water and a laundromat down the street so don't worry we are clean if nothing else! Not impressed by Library related news blogs.

Delicious

It is rather nice to have bookmarks back. I had missed them when they updated the staff computers and we lost the ability to bookmark favorite sites. I don't have much but Amazon and CML stuff now but gosh it's good. Finally something I like!

Library Thing

Ok so I am writing my posts all outta order. Forgive me. I kinda got a kick outta Library Thing. I searched Cookbooks and found lots that I own and added them to my list. I tried to add it to my blog but doubt I was successful. I am really struggling with connecting things to my blog. I figured out how to do it with Flickr but nothing else so far.

I didn't realize people like to catalog their stuff so much. I guess it would be useful if someone ever stole all my cook books.

Twitter is for Twits

I do not get it! I guess it's for the generation that all check on each other every 5 minutes and just gotta know what everyone else is up to. I am getting old as I really don't want to tell everyone every time I get a drink of water or go on a walk. Maybe I am just too boring of a person for Twitter. I will admit it. My life is very dull and that's just the way I like it!

MY LIBRARY THANG

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/tadohead

READ Poster

READ Poster
Originally uploaded by tadohead

This is item #10 on learn and play. I even added it through flickr.

Friday

It's Friday!! Yahoo. Brought Jeff an eggplant and two black tomatoes. I finished the artwork that Chuck Cody had requested. A portrait of a librarian from upstairs. Other than that not much happenin'. Tomarrow we go to Traders World. Should be fun. later.

flash drives

Ok so how much does a flash drive cost now? My stepdaughter sold me her computer and now I need to buy one. I also need to break down and get faster internet at home. I must confess I am still using dial up and it is painfully slow. I also installed a DTV converter this past weekend. It does give me a better picture but I can't seem to get PBS on it. Which sucks. Everyone told me about these cool extra subchannels and I can't even get PBS. This is such a conspiracy on the part of the cable companies!

Abwasch

Abwasch
Originally uploaded by diddi

Found this image and thought it was cool on colr picr.

Party

So last night's party at our house was pretty successful. It was smaller than most we've had but Ashley seemed happy with it. She really liked her Barbie birthday cake even if it did melt on one side. I was bad and had some cake and ice cream. I will try to be on my best behavior today.

It rained like crazy. Doesn't it always do that when you throw a picnic? I sure hope the tomatoes don't split. Gosh that would suck. It has not been a good year for tomatoes.

boysnkarrie

boysnkarrie
Originally uploaded by tadohead

My sister and her boys G. and E. when they were babies. This is my example of using a photo from Flickr as required by Learn & Play.

Ok I am playing

Ok I am playing with my blog. It must have lots of orange as that is my favorite color and most photos I have are of my nephews or the Jack- Jack. So here goes. What do ya think?

Cute Accent

My favorite part of the Life Long Learners vid was the southern accent of the narrator.

Learn&Play

I read the Learn&Play blog and think it would have been VERY helpful for it to have had in plain English "Watch this video" - "Fill out this form" - "Go to one of these sites and follow instructions to create a blog!"