Geocaching - FINALLY!

Phew! Its been tricky to get the time to finish this but finally I can complete this course...and whats the last topic..something ismple and easy that I'm relatively familiar with I take it..hmmn..I...GEOCACHING!!!

Ok..ok..relax. This should be easy enough..after all I did complete a year of the Geographic INformations System course at Uni - I should be fine...hmmn..."USe your gps on your mobile phoine or find someone who has one.." ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!

Ok, I'm calm. Geocaching then. Its a cool fun little tool - I've seen it used in stuff like Foursquare and the like (i think thats the same thing)..I think its low on the priority list compared to the blogs and the podcasts and the twitters and the facebooks and such but its still a handy fun little thing to be familiar with.

I can see lotsa cool activities that could be linked with this/ Having a kids activity over school holidays where they had to use this to get to various parts of the library where they can find clues would be a cool little idea ..and maybe one id like to try and implement one day..could be fun. I wont go into too much detail on it (as I havent exactly thought of it yet) but yes, I can see how it can be used for fun activities and such. But I don't think its as important to libraries as the other web 2.0 tools we've been discussing.

Ok. My final thoughts and wrap up. Its been fun. I've enjoyed doing it - enjoyed the social elemnts and reading everyones blogs, twitter posts (oh sorry..tweets. Nope. I cant say that non sarcastically) and so forth. Its been fun. I'm a bit of a computer nerd myself so I was already relatively familiar with the bulk of the program (plus I just did a unit on essentially the same material last semester at university so that helps too) so while I REALLY havent learnt too much new stuff its been great revision. Tagging i guess, and delicious, is an area ...oh! And wikis... that I wasnt too familiar with so thats nice.

Thanks to Melissa and Mark for organising it all and thanks to the guys at Spearwood for providing me with that lovely iPad that I shalt win. :)

And yeah, I'd like to do some comics for the course next year - should be fun!

Online Video

OK, I'm going a little out of order here but I'm doing my post about Online Video now. Yup - AFTER podcasts. That's the way I roll.

Anyway, yes, online video is a nifty thing. There's been talk about recording storytime (as i think i mentioned in next weeks task on podcasts..oh wait..) and hosting it somewhere so people can watch it from home if they cant make it in. Whatever gets me more exposure I say! (I do storytime at Success once a week)

Er..anyway, I do watch a lot of online video - mostly (to be totally unexpected here) comic video shows. Yes, shocking I know. Revision 3 is a site that produces a lot of Internet TV shows of very high production values - check em out. The best of these is actually no longer a part of revision 3 but iFanboy is a podcast and videocast (or vodcast if you're cool and in the know ;) ) which I've been watching/listening to for around 4 or 5 years now.

Argh. I apparently cant figure out how to start typing again after the embedded video so I'll leave it till the end of the post. Embedded video of library events of any type, authors reading excerpts from their books (Neil Gaiman is doing a tour of the US at the moment and at each stop he's reading a chapter from the Graveyard Book which is then being uploaded to the net) and other book related events would be the first step I'd take in using online video. And now I'm all motivated, darnit.




Hey whaddaya know, i figured out how to do it after all. (hint - 'edit html' rather than 'compose' tends to work fairly nicely.) Oh by the way, I haven't actuallyw atched the above episode. Normally its pretty SFW but they can be known to drop a little language from time to time so be warned.

Edit..AAANNND Its messed my page up. Oh well. Its widescreen people - get with the times.

The Madcap Adventures of Pharnabus Filch #1

So I did a strip based on the title of the blog with more of a library focus. Its rough..very rough but what the hey..click on the picture to make it legible..

we've all been there right folks?

PODCASTS

Yeah, now this is more like it.

Big fan of podcasts. I think i discovered them about...hmmn..5 years or so ago? I was approached about being interviewed on one at the time and that led to me looking into them and finding a couple of burgeoning comic book podcasts which had just started up. I got friendly with a couple of them, provided some artwork for some of the sites and so on.

At one time i think i was subscribed to around 50 podcasts (not that I listened to them all mind you) mostly being comic book and video game related! I was working as a flatter and drawing my strip/doing comissions at night after looking after the kids during the day, so it was great to be able to listen to something while I worked.

I also..cough..used to a podcast myself with my wife. We were going through Marvel comics from the 60's, reading them in chronological order and reviewing/discussing/makingfunof them. But then she got pregnant with our third and morning sickness is not an attractive quality in an audio recording so there went that..

I would LOVE the library to get more on the podcast bandwagon and Lawley and I have taken some steps in that direction by recording a recent Genealogy talk at Coolbelup with the hope of putting that up as an audio podcast. I really think given how much we pay for these guest speakers it makes sense to provide the material to as many people as possible. If only 20 people can make it to a talk at 2pm on a Friday afternoon why stop there? If we have it available to download it can be so much more worthwhile.

I know we're also talking about recording Storytime (ye gods, i'm one of the people who do storytime) and streaming it live (with the option to download it later of course) using something like UStream i guess. That would be good too.

I really feel since all this stuff is pretty easy to setup and get going it makes sense to be able to provide as much content as we can as long as its not overly time consuming or expensive.

I know other librarys have authors read excerpts from their books. I would LOVE to start a podcast inviting local or even Australian authors to read the first chapter from their upcoming books which we could release as a podcast promoting Australian talent. I think its a great idea but I dont know, i may be missing some of the negatives.

Other libraries release podcasts where staff just discuss books and what they're reading, some release podcasts from the groups that meet at the library (i think it'd be particularly good for school aged kids to work on something like this) never mind the more practical uses such as using podcasts to update people on news, events or tutorials on how to search through the catalogue.

SOOOO many excellent options available - really keen to be involved in implementing some of them.

I'm not sure if any local libraries are doing any of the above but its a shame if they're not. As long as you have someone on staff enthusiastic to do it it really doesn't take that much time or expense to get one going and they can be quite fun once you get going.

As for podcasts I like, the main two i have followed for the last 4 years or so are;

The Player One Podcast - Great videogame podcast hosted by ex editors of EGM..and..

iFanboy - excellent comic book podcast. Expanded their weekly schedule to include video podcasts as well. Out of the thousands of comic book podcasts around (some release episodes every 2nd day!) this is the best.

If you like comics or videogames (I know of at least one other blogger on our web 2.0 journey that likes the latter) the there are MANY MANY options available to you.

twitterin' the day away pt1

Well, that didn't work. Tried to write the blog with the ipad but no good. Then again,I seemto have problems with blogger no matter what I'm using.

Off sick today (fromchildren minding duties) so I'm playing catch-up and decided I'll start with twitter.

My twitterid/name/thingy is msparkinson if anyone wants to follow me.

Edit: Whoopise - did i forget to do this part? I think I did.

Twitter! I like me some twitter. Its agreat way of dripfeeding constant information in tiny bite sized chunks! I have a number of library people that I follow and I'm getting constantly bombarded by interesting library related posts and information that I have no way of being able to consume. So theres that. As a basis for your personal learning network its a great tool (oooo, i used a buzz word). Then theres using twitter as a library tool - interacting with members and pushing out information about the library. Very good for marketting and communication and if you have someone sitting on the librarys twitter account all day keeping tabs on whats going down (in twitter you can keep track of any mentions you might get)..well, it really is a great way for direct (well, not direct but you know what i mean) communication with the public.

Facebook. I hate me some Facebook. I much prefer Twitter- i dont really like how Facebook works and what its all about but again its a great communication and marketing tool for libraries to use. Linking to pictures via flickr or promoting upcoming events is a great way to establish and build a community around the library and gives you that extra ability to interact a little more directly with the library members.

Cockburn has a great facebook presence that I believe links to the twitter feed as well so while theres a little crossover between the two, users that may not be following us on both services don't miss out on any of the updates that are posted. I just completed my first unit in my grad dip of Library Stuff at Curtin and my first unit was on this type of stuff exactly (and i'm not too unfamiliar with it in the first place) but I REALLY cant think of too much information to write about onFacebook in the library field strangely enough.

The State Libraries facebook page has general information about them as well as links, photos and general information that their followers (sorry friends, getting my social network tools confused) would be interested in reading or viewing. Interstingly they also provide access (its just a link I suppose) to their catalogue through the facebook page.

Its essentially a hub for everything State Library related for the public - which is a good use of the Facebook service.

Out of Print #13,16,17

I like the last panel



Another early favourite


overly sentimental?

more self indulgence..

Typing on my graphics tablet screenand ittends to miss letters so if there any tpos i sncry aplogse

a few more strips..



The thing about these strips is these are all realcharacters..ive changed their appearance obviously but the characters and costumes are all real...ok maybe except this dude.


This isone of my fave early strips..the colours dont look right, but whatever. Plus my first attempt at lettering by hand..it'll get better.