PS toThing 12

Here's a YouTube link specially for Laura, who loves typefaces even more than I do:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHCu28bfxSI

Thing 12 - You Tube

I have been using YouTube at home for a couple of years, chiefly to watch the exploits of Simon's Cat and to search for old TV programmes - usually to settle some silly bet about theme tunes of seventies cop shows. Using it to find work-related content was a new experience. Imagine my excitement when I found a short film by Shawne Miksa introducing her presentation on RDA (Resource Description and Access) at the forthcoming RDA Executive Briefing in March (I'll be there!). I was also pleased to find the Library of Congress channel which contains lots of archive material as well as contemporary stuff. Our own British Library is also represented on YouTube, but no sign of a channel for the Bodleian Libraries yet.
Since it's late on Sunday evening I feel justified in including a link to a clip from one of my favourite TV shows - The Mighty Boosh. Check out the Bouncy Bouncy Crimp. It's impossible to explain - you'll just have to watch it.

Podcasting and Thing 11

I knew that Angela was the Queen of Podcasting, so I was not surprised to see that she had written the explanatory post for Thing 11. After reading her post and watching "Podcasting in plain English" I was ready to have a go. I went to the BBC site and subscribed to AHOW (or A History of the World in 100 Objects) as I feel that I ought to be listening to these programmes but have not really managed to so far. (Neil MacGregor's voice sounds quite different over my weedy laptop speaker, but mustn't let that put me off.) I also searched Podcast Alley for podcasts on cats (well, I searched for"Resource Description and Access" first, but no got hits). I found plenty but after trying out a few in Google Reader I decided that life is too short to spend time with some of these podcasters.

Delicious and Thing 10

I've belatedly completed Thing 10 by adding some other Delicious users to my network. The Web 2.0 Directory page on the Bodleian Libraries intranet makes it very easy to add other Bodleian Libraries libraries' (?) to my Delicious network. Once I have clicked on the del.icio.us link to get to their Delicious page I can simply click the "Add to my network" link on the right hand side, under the search box, and Bob, as they say, is your uncle.
As I prepare to leave Delicious for the time being, I must share with you the best website I discovered by randomly browsing in Delicious - the Red Interactive Agency. Enjoy!

Laura and Labels

Thank goodness for Laura's timely post "Half-way point!" and its description of the Labels gadget. When I added this gadget to my blog the full horror of my amateur labelling efforts was exposed for all to see. I had been entering the labels incorrectly, not separating each label with a comma, and as a result I had long stringy labels in my list. Luckily I was able to edit each post and tidy up the labels and I now have a very respectable and tidy list on my blog. Honour is satisfied.
Now all I need to do is catch up with last week's Things ...

Timezone

Whilst trying to change my email address to the new @bodleian version I came across the timezone setting for my blog and changed it to GMT. Now my posts will have the correct time stamp. A small victory, but a sweet one.

Social bookmarking

I have to confess I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw this week's things. I've been using Delicious to save my bookmarks (aka favourites) ever since the Oxford Web 2.0 day back in spring 2008, and feel very comfortable with it. I've just added the bookmarklets (is that a real word?) to my Firefox toolbar, and will add a bookmark for my blog when I've finished this post.
I do find it very useful to have my bookmarks with me wherever I go, and I would never go back to using bookmarks/favourites linked to a PC.
Having said that, I have been fairly indiscriminate in my bookmarking, and I now have 330. Many of these I no longer use, and I should really delete some of them. I have tried to use tagging consistently, and Delicious makes this easy by suggesting tags that you have used before and other possible tags as part of the process of creating the bookmark.
Another problem with my use of Delicious is that I have a single account for work and personal bookmarks. I should really set up separate accounts and keep the two sets separate. It's too easy to be distracted by personal bookmarks (like the latest products at ModernCat) when I really should be working ...

Flickr and Picnik

Considering 7 is my lucky number, Thing 7 got off to a bad start when I could not link my Yahoo ID to my existing Flickr account. Tried two or three times, and eventually gave up and created a new Flickr account (leda_neatfossil). Uploaded some photos of the January snow in Moreton and the cats in moody black and white. Geotagged one of the snowy shots, which was great fun. Thanks to a mouse malfunction I almost located the photo in Norway - which, considering the snowy scene, was not as dumb as it sounds. Played around a bit with Picnik but could not achieve anything worth saving. May have another go tomorrow.
Here's a link to my Flickr photostream:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/leda_neatfossil/

RSS feeds and a glass of wine

I went back to Google Reader this evening, with a glass of wine near at hand, to spend some more time with RSS feeds. I have to confess this was prompted by receiving a link from friends in Washington, DC, to their photographs of the recent snow storm (http://web.me.com/dcbooboobear/Site/Snowmageddon.html). I was slightly surprised to see the now-familiar RSS icon, and clicked on it to add the feed to my Google Reader.
Once "in the zone", I added a few more feeds from the Recommended Sources. That led me to wonder who recommends these sources? I checked in the Google Reader help and discovered that it's done automatically based on various factors including the feeds you're subscribed to, information from your web history and your location (see
http://www.google.com/support/reader/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=80468 for more details). This strikes me as having something of the Big Brother about it, but I have to admit that the Recommended Sources were all on the money and I added all of them (including our own Digitalist) with the only exception of the graduate trainees' blog.
Looking forward to next week's Things!

By the way ...

Every time I go to my blog I always finish by clicking "Next Blog". It's different everytime!

Does she know her RSS from her email?

I have set up my Google Reader and have added some feeds, including some of the blogs of other 23 Things Oxford participants. I'm getting another flashback, to when I set up a Bloglines account last year (or was it 2008?) and subscribed to so many feeds I just could not keep up with them. Aren't RSS feeds just another way of feeling overwhelmed by information, like email? I gave up on the Bloglines account but did not delete it - goodness knows how many items are sitting in it now, patiently waiting for my attention...

What is the optimum manageable number of RSS feeds?

PS Apologies for the pointlessly punning title.