Delicious

This is pretty cool.  I took some cataloging courses for my MLIS and even did a practicum at OSU in their cataloging department, so I have an appreciation for cataloging.  Even though this is not the same, the concept of assigning keywords to material is fun.  It is interesting to see how others emphasize different aspects of a web site than I would.  It is also interesting to see sites that others have found useful.  I find Delicious to be one of the 2.0 tools I may continue using after Learn & Play is complete.

Twitter

I created a twitter account and my username is beatlenut.  I don’t think I will use this much but maybe I’m wrong.

LibraryThing

I just got finished setting up a username on LibraryThing.  It is kind of a cool site.  I added five books that I really enjoyed reading.  This would be a nice thing to use to organize all of my books.  Here’s a link to my LibraryThing http://www.librarything.com/catalog/beatlenut

Text Generator

I played around with a few of the image and text generators.  I found several that I liked.  One of them was a British town name generator.  Here is the link to the generator: http://www.generatorland.com/generators/british_town_gl.php  An example of a town name that it generated was  “Shempbydrip on the Sea, Essex.”

Weblog Search Tools

I was able to try two of the three suggested search tools (Syndic8 would not load for me).  Of the two I tried, I liked Technorati the best.  I guess I was looking for things outside the typical news sources.  I liked how it had the subject tabs at the top of the page.  I also was more interested in searching weblogs rather than traditional news feeds.

Bloglines News Reader

Today I created a news reader on Bloglines.  I set up 10 news feeds.  I like being able to go to one place rather than several web sites to find recent developments.  I have a few “official” news feeds but also some hobby/interest feeds that I will enjoy checking.  It was fairly easy setting them up.  All in all, this is a very efficient way to keep up with developing news.

Technology

I just recently bought my first mp3 player, an I-pod shuffle.  I’ve enjoyed it so far.  It  is nice to be able to create playlists of songs that I enjoy.  Also, I’ve purchased a few songs from I-Tunes.  I’ve got to watch that though, it could get expensive.  I’ve gone through all of my CDs and loaded those onto my Itunes library.  I thought about getting a Nano but I didn’t want to part with the extra cash and so far the shuffle seems to be enough for me. 

As a kid I listened to music on records.  Then, in high school I had an 8-track player and I remember the switch over to casettes.  The CD was a big deal to me when those came out.  I still have my record collection and a working player.  Basically, I just pick up used players at thrift stores and use them until they break.

Hockneyized Version

Hockneyized Version, originally uploaded by 1511jeffras.

This is one of the APIs I tried out. I thought some of the APIs would be pretty cool for special occasions. Some of them I don’t think I would ever use.

IMG_2088_edited

IMG_2088_edited, originally uploaded by 1511jeffras.

This picture was taken last month during our annual family summer vacation. One of the things we did was take a tour of Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, Ohio. That is me with my wife Lori and our two children, Bryce and Isabel. It was very hot that day!  Yes, that is a CML t-shirt that I’m wearing.

My Friend Flickr

Okay, so I now have added an RSS feed on my blog for Beatle news updates.  Also, I added a link to Flickr.  Speaking of Flickr, I just loaded some summer vaction photos.  It really makes it easy to share them with friends and coworkers without going to the trouble of printing them out or bringing my digital camera to work.  Plus, I can access them on any computer. 

I think my favorite thing about creating the blog is playing with different designs and adding new features.  The toughest thing for me is to think of something to write.