Lesson# 12

Library elf is a handy tool, but it does not have a great benefit for myself. The times it would send an RSS or text, I would not be by the books and I would end up forgetting again. I also only use one account. For those who don't work in the library and have access to the catalog all day, or that use multiple cards, this could be an awesome tool.

The caons to this site, though, outweigh the Pros. the free version only lets you get email reminders of Predue and overdue items. Our system does this already, so this becomes redundant. To get the other options, it is $12 a year for one card and $20 a year for multiple. My overdue charges never amount to this in a given year (yet)...

Lesson# 11

I messed around with librarything today. It is a nice site, though I personally don't have much use for it. It was easy to use and had some titles I did not expect them to have on it. I Think that this could be of great benefit in the right hands. It is great that you can access it on a mobile device as now you don't have to keep a list with you when you go to the library or bookstore.

The URL to my catalog is http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Derekjr

Lesson #10

Here is the Avatar I created on Yahoo.

I have used a program called Heromachine in the past for teen programming.

http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/heromachine2/heroMachine2.asp

I have not tried version 2.5, but have tried 2.0. The free version does not let you save what you make, but it was still pretty cool.

Lesson#9

The website feedster appears to be dead so that site was of no help. I tried the Topix site you provided and I thought the layout was horrid. I won't be visiting that site again. I found the website syndic8.com to be as useful as a bellybutton lint. It was about as visually appealing as well. Technorati was much better looking than the other two. The main problem I had was that when searching for blogs, the results were brought up by title. I would rather see the title of the blog and homepage. But that is just me.

I found the website search4rss.com to be the best. Its hompage is simple and the reults are listed by blog/rss title and the website, just the way I like it! I mostly searched for gaming of course. I do already have the best ones saved already (kotaku.com / ign.com / n4g.com / destructoid.com).

Lesson 8 - RSS Feeds

I added 10 RSS feeds to bloglines today. Took longer than expected as it was hard to come up with ten places I cared enough about to get an RSS feed for.

Most of them are gaming related of course, though I did manage to fit in 2 honost to goodnes non-game related news sites. I also had to add the best online comic there is - Order of the Stick.

I had most of them in Bloglines when I decided to just start adding them to my intenet explorer RSS feed links. I think it will be easier for me this way. Also, I can't yet tell the difference between the two methods, though I will check each to see which I find better.

Week#3

Part 5. Here is the uploaded image from Fliker. I thought i would keep it gaming related. This was when I was running an RPG game through a forum. I would create maps so the players would follow that battles easier.

Part 6. I thought the colorpicker app at http://www.krazydad.com/colrpickr/ was interesting for a few seconds. Since I was doing this at work I had to deal with popup blockers.

I have seen the trading card maker at http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/deck.php before. and have used it already. The examples of the library created ones are kinds lame IMHO. The Conan the Librarian one had so much potential. The text makes no sense though. Although I will throw out a recommendation to see the movie Conan the Librarian came from. "UHF" was just awesome!!! (Wheel of Fish...lol:)

Part 7. I edited the photo of myself on Harriet using Picnik http://www.picnik.com/ already. I cropped out parts of the picture and changed the file size. Other parts were edited using Adobe by my awesome wife! I prefer not to post personal pictures though!!

As a side not, I a running out of daytime games I can play that I feel comfortable letting the kids watch me play. Guess its back to Littlebigplanet for a while...

Well, this is the first post on my blog, but incase you have not figured it out yet, I would rather be gaming. Not just video games mind you, board games and RPG's as well. Some people say that I am competitive, I say they are poor loosers!

Since I don't have a lot of time to write, I thought I would just share a financial tip to those interested.

When you are about to make a purchase, compare the price of the oject in question with the price of a video game. Are you about to buy a new jacket, thats 2 Xbox or PS3 games. New belt, a used DS game. Going to buy food for the week, 2 xbox or PS3 games. I find when you think of your purchases this way, you spend less on the frivolous stuff (IE clothes and food) and are able to get more of what matters in life... Just saying.