YouTube and Podcasts
YouTube
I rather like YouTube. And given that I had something in particular that I’d looked up recently on there, I thought I’d share it with you guys too 🙂 Sadly, this version doesn’t allow embedding, but there are many interpretations of video responses to the song. And it is about zombies and brains 😀 Hoorah!
Podcasts
I love podcasts! Well, the right ones anyway 🙂 I download knitting and music ones through iTunes, and subscribed to their updates via Bloglines, so I don’t have to log into iTunes everytime I want to check if there is a new one out. For those who might be interested (and I know some might be), I subscribe to Cast On by Brenda Dayne, Lime N Violet, Sock Tart, Stephen Fry’s Podgrams and Blessays and the Guardian Music Weekly podcast (amongst many others). I tend to listen to them on the way into work, which is a bit bad as I end up a couple of episodes behind all the time. Some of the podcasts are quite fun in the way they introduce you to indie artists too – many of them use music from the podsafe network, and I’ve found a few tracks that have caught my eye (or ears :D) including the one in the YouTube link above. I certainly wouldn’t be tempted to make my own though – sounds like far too much work 😉
Things 19-21
Image Generators
I was really excited about being able to do a manga one, but it won’t work on my PC so I’ll have to try at home. Hated the Image Chef one, but can at least see why it appeals to the yoof of today. Clearly I’m too old for Image Chef… In the end I went with the South Park generator, and here I am:
🙂 In short I tried to make me as a South Park character, and ended up with something a bit more flattering than expected even by me! You pick skin tone, eyes hair etc, which was easy enough, but the hard bit was selecting what clothes I’d be wearing. I chose not to dress myself as an American teenager and went the route of the silly instead, hence I’m in a dirndl. Clearly I do not dress that way in day-to-day life. Or at home. Or anywhere. Except if I was in South Park 🙂 Not sure whether this is tasteful enough for 25Things though ;D
Google Docs
This is rather funky 😀 Again one I had probs getting to work on my PC, but once I was in there and could share my documents, it was dead easy and quite a nice way to create something with someone else (and also to find out what Jane’s fave veggies are). I can see this would be useful for collaborative work between people who can’t meet up that easily in person, and might have probs with email inbox size etc, plus it is just a really funky tool 🙂
LibraryThing
I’m a bad 25 Thinger. I’ve been following LibraryThing for quite a while on their blog, but have never mustered up the energy to join them. I did at one point join Shelfari (booo! Hissss!), but I just could never be bothered with it. I would much rather just be able to go and look on my bookshelves and find something by happy coincidence. I’m not really a book group person either. Maybe that comes from my degree background (English Studies), but I really have no desire to discuss what happens in a book to potentially the point where it loses all joy – after studying, most discussions seem to miss the point, or trivialise or over-interpret what goes on in the text, and certainly after meeting some authors, they’ve agreed that it happens rather frequently… I do think though that LT are doing some excellent work for the book world, and have really created a buzz in the way they view texts. I love the way they are striving for free information too 🙂
Having said all that bad stuff about online lists and book groups, I’ve set up my LibraryThing account 🙂 and my library is here. I’ve added some of my fave books on there so have a nosy and see whether you have the same taste or not. I quite like that some of my faves aren’t that popular – is that terrible? I don’t feel elitist or anything, I just like the idea that I’ve found an author whose work is still to be discovered by others and can promote a bit to others. That probably doesn’t sound how I mean it to sound still, but I’m a librarian – I like bringing information to those who haven’t found it yet!
Social Networking
I confess, I’m a social networker. Primarily because I’m quite lazy when it comes to keeping in touch with friends – email takes a looong time, and texting is nice but not quite enough space and costs money. Facebook is an option that means I can be extremely nosy at what my mates are up to, and send little messages so that they can see what I’m up to too 🙂 There is a particular aspect of Facebook that I both love and loath… Applications. At first I just added them as people requested them, partly because I was curious, and partly because I was worried people would be offended if I didn’t. Then I got really fed up of them! There are so many, most of them suggesting you log in every 5 mins in order to make the most of them, and with the old fascia of Facebook they ate the screen up everywhere. Now I’m a bit more picky. But if you are new or haven’t found it yet there is a particular app with a rude word in it which I will change accordingly – ‘Rubbish’ Gifts for Academics 🙂 Lynn, Graham and I have already had quite a bit of fun with it… 😀 Sadly I haven’t yet wished anyone Happy New Year or Merry Christmas. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think it 😉 although I might sent you yarn… Mmmmmmmm free yarn…
I know Facebook can be a very useful commercial tool for companies and institutions to keep in touch with their clients, and that we have a presence on Facebook for the various sites, but frankly I think the student led ones are more popular because they don’t worry about posting any old stuff on their own groups, whereas if we start one, we are probably just old fogies or something and will be watching their every move… However, for some reason, Barnsley’s group is pretty popular while CLS is a bit, well, less popular. Personally I think it is down to BA being a smaller site, so they end up getting to know the students better. But still, not really sure what we could do to encourage people to sign up for the CLS one, other than maybe adding a popup to the desktop or email in student notices.
Ok, now I’ve spent some time on Facebook for work purposes (and anyone viewing my status will discover!), it is time to look at microblogging. I’m a Plurker rather than a Tweeter (although at the mo I’m tempted to swap). I like microblogging, to a certain extent. Strangely I feel more pressure to be interesting in microblogging than I do in normal blogging. I can’t see myself posting about some of the stuff mentioned in the video, but I do like being able to follow other people. They seem to be more personal posts than in blogging (e.g X feels that something is quite good/someone is a pain in the backside), which is nice. But at the same time, getting requests to follow or friend you is like Facebook – freaky if you don’t know the person.
Having read a bit more about Twitter, I’d be tempted to migrate there if only to read Stephen Fry’s updates. Twittervision is kind of hypnotic too – you could easily lose yourself in reading about other people’s exploits. And when Courtney Cox confesses that she wants to know about other celebs the way people want to be nosy about her, then what hope do I have for avoiding being nosy about other people? 😀
Edited to add: interesting article on BBC News website on Tweeting 😀
Google Maps and Earth
Google Maps is fun 🙂 I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this before (it has probably been in Grapevine), but quite often, someone with a sense of humour has suggested swimming between continents in the directions to get abroad… 😀 Apparently, if I want to walk to Madrid, it is a bit nearer than driving (good thing too!) – 1,145 miles as opposed to 1,200 and something if driving. I’m surprised at the level of detail too, but then who knows if it is accurate without trying it out. And I’m not going to do that I’m afraid. Sorry!
I decided to look up where my favourite, most expensive yarn shop is. I know how to get to it, but I just thought I’d look it up to check it was still there and hadn’t had anything terrible happen to it ;D
Well worth a trip to the town, plus Your Nuts nearby is good, as is the pub next door to it… Just if you were wondering 😉
I’ve also been nosying on Google Sightseeing. Sadly, the only thing of note on search of West Yorkshire is the Emley Moor Mast – I’m sure there must be more to us than that!
As for Google Earth, it is VERY funky… But privacy can definitely be a possible issue. Presumably, Google wouldn’t publish an image if it was really obvious someone was sunbathing in their garden in the nuddie or something, but I’ll always remember (whether it was faked or not) a photo of a street from one of the maps in the US with a guy pointing a gun at a young boy. Regardless of how real or not it was, that does raise questions of responsibility and vetting of photos, and it goes back to similar arguements with regards to Wikipedia – whether it is real or not, should it stay on there? I’m not really sure – you could say it is important to show real life as long as people agree to their images being on there, but there is a level of appropriateness and responsibility as to whether it will have an impact on other people on viewing it… Hmmmm
Bryony Ramsden's 25 Things Blog 