The carnival's finally over...

Howard and Costello are out!!!!!

(with a bang apparently... Howard looks like making history - Stanley Bruce was the last prime minister to lose his seat in 1929!!!! That makes Howard only the second prime minister since Federation to do so - way to go Maxine!!! - you should have retired John!!!)

Rudd and Gillard are in - good to see a woman get there finally, but she is bound by her party's politics - will we notice any change??? Is there much of a difference between Labor and Liberal these days???

Will they ratify the Kyoto Protocol??? soon???

I'm sure these magnificent creatures need the answer to be YES!!! This is just a small selection of the amazing animals who stand to become extinct if we don't do something NOW!!!!

"Climate change and global warming impacts on species in a number of ways. Animals and plants that are suited to cooler climates will need to move polewards or uphill when the climate becomes even just that little bit warmer. This process has been observed in many places – in the Alps, in mountainous Queensland in Australia, and in the misty forests of Costa Rica. Fish in the North Sea have been observed moving northwards too – fish stocks that used to be common around Cornwall have moved as far north as the Shetland and Orkney Islands. The impacts on species are becoming so significant that their movements can be used as on indicator of a warming world. They are the silent witnesses of the rapid changes being inflicted on the Earth..." read more here.

and what about this little cutie... ... the Pika, the first mammal to be endangered by climate change...

and of course there's the birds, the plants... won't the world be a far more barren place to live without this beauty?!?! Would you really want to live in a world like that?!?!

#23 - Is this really the end... or just the beginning?

It's definitely not the end while I’m still finding new toys to play with!!! Found a great little application that allows you to edit animated graphics without losing the animation… Gifworks (my sojourner was a warrior with a body at her feet before I found an animated image editor - she just doesn't have any feet now!!!) - it’s basic, but it’s fine if you just want to crop something, add text (limited to a certain amount of space though – depends on the font and the size) – but hey, it’s available, it’s online, and it’s free.

This programme has been a great learning curve – I have had a ball creating the blog. I am hoping to keep it up – to ‘own’ it – that’s the plan anyway (but the downside to that is I'll need to upgrade my computer to deal with all of these graphics and programmes now - the price of 'progress' hey!!!!)

There have been a few ‘glitches’ along the way – I don’t know about any of the other participating libraries but my colleagues and I have had a lot of problems due to our council’s firewall etc. We had to laugh when one of my YouTube clips was blocked under the “satanic sites rule”!!! If we’re to be part of the Web 2.0 culture, we need access to the resources!!

Another problem has been the ‘instability’ of some of the applications… some things worked immediately, some worked some of the time, some didn’t work at all - even formatting within Blogger was problematic at times… a pain when you’ve got limited time to explore which resources are suitable and what they can do. My blog was done at home because I like to spend time checking things out – an hour per week just wouldn't have allowed me to create what I have - but I can totally understand the frustration and disillusionment of my colleagues confined to that timeframe in the workplace because there were so many things I had to redo a number of times or just give up on and find something else that worked… I guess the technology isn’t perfect (yet??).

Due to this programme and the knowledge that’s come out of it we are currently looking at the viability of a wiki in the library – we’re thinking book club and trialling one internally to see how the 'collaborative' aspects work, but there are so many other possibilities and avenues to explore - so much that could be incorporated - podcasts of author talks, videos of storytimes??

Thanks to Lynette and Leslie for administering the programme and for their encouragement (I'm sure you'll both be looking forward to some blog-free time!!!!)

The only thing left to say is CHEERS… and congratulations to all those who participated (whether willingly or grudgingly) -I've enjoyed a number of blogs throughout the programme - there are some extremely creative and talented people out there!!! Hopefully those who didn’t get a chance this time around will have an opportunity in the future to explore and learn the wonders of Web 2.0 technology.

30s & 40s Technology - the Typing Pool

I worked in typing pools in the early 70s - but not quite as cramped as some of these!! Although I did learn to type on this sort of equipment in the 60s!!! (and I hope you're enjoying the wolf and rose graphic - I put that up because it's a great image).

I have to say I do prefer Photobucket over Flickr for the things I've done so far - it seems to be far more user friendly.

The end of the programme is looming... I just have to 'reflect' and write a few thoughts - but that's for another post!!!!

Still no closer to the next task, but....

I did 'stumble' across another great site that has free content for blogs (surprise, surprise!!!)

This site provides a Dictionary lookup box, Word of the day, Article of the day, This day in history, Today's birthday, In the news, Quote of the day, and interactive content as well... you can see some of these in my sidebar. The articles update automatically in your blog which is good!!

These items about Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ida M. Tarbell and Susan B. Anthony all appeared on the same day - they were calling out to be put in my post!!!!

And I might just think about the next task soon... well, sometime this week...

More YouTube stuff!!!

I know, I should be looking at downloadable audiobook titles but I just got caught up in YouTube (again!!!) and came across these two videos - one's a little gem from Mary Poppins called "Sister Suffragette" (I prefer Suffragist and you'd know why if you read my "Politics of language" presentation), and the other one has old images juxtaposed to more contemporary images of women... Hope you enjoy them...



there are so many good (and extremely bad!!) videos to watch on YouTube (of course, that's dependent on the search terms you use and what things are actually 'tagged' with - as we know, that can be problematic, and then there's 'individual taste') - but you can lose track of time!!! ooh, my animals are hassling to be fed - is it that time already? I will get around to the next task soon... if I can only stop playing with other toys