Invasion of the pod people

Status: 45% zombie, 53% perk, 2% unaccounted for


So, where are we now...?

That's right - podcasts!

Took me a while to get back here - to be honest, having this fall in the middle of summer reading has not made it easy to get these things done. But I am determined to get there - things have settled down a little bit (HAH).

I haven't made much use of podcasts, and for the most part don't imagine that I will in the future. I subscribed to a couple at home a while back - KEXP's Song of the Day and Live Performance podcasts. Turns out though that I just don't get to them very often. Every now and then I'll load them onto my iPod and listen, but they aren't terribly high priority for me.

I took a look at the list of library related podcasts and did subscribe to Nancy Keane's Booktalks Quick and Simple - something that will actually be useful! Good to listen to somebody else doing a booktalk.

Currently I'm listening to the Boulder Public Library teen webcast - the Funkylama reviewing a Joe Jackson concert among other things. It's amusing, but she is rambling on and on - which leads me to think creating podcasts are definitely for people that like to TALK. And that the quality of podcasts might vary quite a bit. Certainly there are well planned, well read informational podcasts out there - but there are probably a lot of junk podcasts to wade through too.

I can see that it might be nice to have teen podcasts available on the Sno-Isle website, especially as we move to branch pages. I think local teens would enjoy producing them, and the interest level in podcasts by people you actually know might be high. It could be a good activity for the Teen Advisory Group, IF they were interested and technically inclined.

Just for fun, I subscribed to the Onion's one-minute news briefs they release regularly ~

The Onion Radio News Broadcast

Oh hey - I started this a while back, finished it today - so it's not at the top of my blog! They filed it under the date I started it. Whatever.

I've been in overdrive all week!

Status: 94% zombie, 2% perk, 4% unaccounted for

School visits are over!

23 presentations in 3 days, and almost 1,000 teens.

Wow...

Now it's time to take a breath and get back to work on all of this web 2.0 stuff.

I tried to use Overdrive here at work, but am getting an error message. I know it works at home, so I'll listen to a couple of things there. I used it a while back to listen to a book with my son, and it worked quite nicely.

As always, I'm a bit more interested in the music portion of this service. Music on the brain, I guess! I like audio books all right, but am much more likely to listen to some of the music Overdrive offers - especially the newer things that have just been added. Right now I have Tiesto and The Clumsy Lovers checked out (and if this blasted thing worked here today I'd be able to listen while I get caught up). I'm happy to see the selection of music growing broader than just classical. It's an interesting collection of artists, too! Seems like a good way to "test run" some music and find out if you like it.

I think it's unfortunate that Overdrive doesn't work with iPods and macs - hopefully that will be taken care of in the future!

Well - I'm still swamped and pretty tired from the first part of the week. Time to keep forging ahead!

Use your image-ination!

Status: 11% zombie, 89% perk

Yes - I'm skipping ahead. Skipping past the downloadable media because I'm not in a spot where I can slap on a pair of headphones and tune out the world. I'll come back to it later...maybe when summer reading is over. Ha!

Anyhow, this week's out of sequence exercise has to do with online image generators. I actually find that term to be a little bit misleading, as really we're talking about image manipulators...or modifiers...

Generator implies (to me anyhow) making something completely new. A long while back, I came across a site that takes any words you type in and makes a lovely collage looking picture, like so ~

Try it out here, at Typogenerator.

As for image manipulators/modifiers, my site of choice is fd's Flickr Toys, because - as you may have guessed - I can mess around with my photos from Flickr, and then directly upload my creations.

Easy peasy!

Even better, you don't have to have a Flickr account to play around here - you can upload photos from your computer. So anybody can play.

My favorite toy here is the mosaic maker - which allows you to create a mosaic of your favorite photos. Sometimes you have a group of photos that just call out to be combined into one cool creation - like the series at the top of this post.

Gurgle gurgle blurp.

And who doesn't like Old Faithful?

Or bugs?

Okay - I didn't take all of those pictures myself - but some of them are mine! I selected a few cool bug pictures I found here and there on Flickr and made this creepy crawly creation...be sure to click through and take a look at it close up!

One last little trick - the Hockneyizer...

Pretty cool, but I think I'll stick with the mosaic maker. I like telling a story with my pictures sometimes...