Friday, April 25, 2008

Story I wrote for a contest

Hi, said I'd be sharing fic, and this story I wrote for a writing contest. I did show it to some of my coworkers among others and they all liked it, so if you'd like to read it just click the link below. Hope you enjoy :)


Click me to read story!

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Thing number 10, Technology blogging

The discovery exercise says to "...simply blog about anything technology related. Yes, it can be anything that relates to technology! Just share a few thoughts."

That's it? Well hmm. How about this?...(is drooling):

Asus Eee PC I found on flickr.



Ain't she purty? A light laptop you can take anywhere, and connect to the internet wirelessly. Boy do I want one :)

How about pictures? Digital cameras are definitely technology. To that end, this picture is one I edited. I took a picture of the Pacific Ocean when I visited my brother and nephew, and then put some other pictures I had into that picture using the Microsoft photo editor on my computer to make a wallpaper.

Pic for work blog

More: this photo I scanned in (scanners are Technology) is of me holding a present my friend gave me for my birthday, a Palm PDA (personal digital assistant). With that technology I can download stories from the computer and read them at my leisure.



Oh and one thing I do agree will impact libraries are e-books. My PDA came with "The Wizard of Oz" and "The Last of the Mohicans" already installed on it. It's not the same as reading a nice physical book, but just like audio books can now be downloaded from the computer it's just a short hop to novels and the latest bestsellers. And I'm wondering-maybe home borrowers who have access to the computer might find that a convenient way to read their books? Without waiting for volunteers to come by. Hmm. Hopefully though that is a long way off-the sheer amount of children's books that go out in a day makes me think libraries won't become all digital anytime soon.

Now I'm off to go comment on a coworker's blog :) Have a good day!

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Fun blogthings thing

How's your spelling? I found this while trolling the net for fun things, and turns out I could win at a spelling bee :) How about you? Follow the link below if you want to try. Have fun!




Your Spelling is Perfect



You got 10/10 correct.



Your spelling is excellent. You also have a great memory and eye for detail.

Thing Number 9: Finding Feeds

Well for Thing Nine it was to look at search tools for finding feeds, and I did visit Technorati, Syndic8, Topix, as well as the ever useful Google where I clicked on "More" and to my surprise found blogs there-thanks WebThings! I wouldn't normally have looked there. I also watched the Technorati Tutorial, during which I exclaimed aloud (luckily not too loudly as I was at the Circulation desk, lol): "This is supposed to be helpful?" :) So here are a few of my thoughts on these things.

Technorati Tutorial: aptly named, good for Techies already familiar with it. Watching it I figured I could learn more just fooling around the site myself. My own opinion, of course :)

Technorati.com: Eh. It's okay, but the results definitely skew to the news, even if you put in something like cats in the search box. Seeing as the only news I really want to see is in a store's sales circular, it doesn't really work for me ;)

syndic8: Which I just realized would stand for Syndicate-hahaha-is interesting I guess, but I'd have to spend a bit more time to really look at it. Put something like cats in the "search for feed" box, and you definitely get some cat blogs. Plus it gives you extra information like when it was created, what its status is, and a bunch of other information I'd need some more time to look into (when not being interrupted by pesky customers, lol-just kidding!).

Topix: Which says "Your town. Your news. Your take." I suppose to say it means that it can do more local information. It's just that most news that news sources want to bombard you with is too depressing for me. Basically, it's kinda like news on a Yahoo homepage, and on that I can customize it to show the less depressing and more interesting to me news (like what computers are hot, for example). Its search also skews to the more depressing news, so I'll be giving Topix a pass.

Now the two sources after all that that I would probably use to find feeds if I was looking: the ever-useful Google, and Bloglines search. Also: you can do a search for, say, "blogfinder" on Ask.com, and it comes up with a bunch of links to blog finders :) Ditto for "find feeds". I'm very comfortable with the search engines I already use, so inertia being what it is, I'll probably stick with them. But this was an interesting exercise anyway :)

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Thing number 8: Rss and Bloglines newsreader

Well actually, I was looking forward to this one because I was one of the people that had no idea what "RSS" was. I'd be reading in Livejournal and see the little orange icon but didn't know what it meant. Now I do, and it's cool. Oh and thanks to J*** from Ocl Web Things for answering my question about feeds.

I did join Bloglines, and currently have 13 feeds, which I'm sure will increase by the next posting. Some of the feeds are:

APP.com's living
Ocl Web Things Challenge :)
Upcoming Events at Jackson Branch
My town's weather from Weather Underground
Uploads from windyfontaine, my flickr account
and Fanfiction.net, where I read and write and post fanfic.

Also subscribed to a few blogs from my coworkers (so I can sigh with envy at how good theirs is, lol).

It's actually much easier than I thought it would be. Oh and the video from Commoncraft of RSS in plain english was kinda funny, but also informative. I got a little distracted by the hand continually tossing things away, but it is good for the first timer. Note-If you are one of my friends and have no idea what I'm talking about and just clicked this link to be nice, this is where you can find a copy of it-apparently there are many from a short search of YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

So now I'm actually thinking, hmm, where do I normally go a lot that would have an RSS feed? And well, I think I got it, except there isn't one for the WeatherChannel that I could find easily so I went with Weather Underground. I also looked on beading magazine sites and Bob's Rock Shop show calender, but nope. I guess some things I'll just do the old fashioned way, lol. Actually though, I probably will still go to all the web sites, because that's what I'm used to doing. It takes a little time to get used to new things. I am glad I now know what feeds and RSS are though, so thanks OCL!

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Thing Number Six, More Photo Fun


Library pics plus 014
Originally uploaded by windyfontaine

Well I'm way behind in blogging, but I did manage to take a bunch of pictures around the library.

This first is from the Welcoming Information Monitor in the library that you see when you walk in the door, also called the Powerpoint Display (Thanks boss!).

I also went upstairs to the break room and took pictures of the plants around the library and also the stairs. Hmm, now I think of it I missed the elevator :) Anywho, I think I'm beginning to like flickr a little more. It does upload very easily. Here are some pictures-the exercise said to take one but I went a little crazy, lol.

Plant in break room:



Here's another from the welcome monitor-the display keeps changing (I had to wait till it scrolled through a couple times to get some cool images):



This is a plant upstairs by the phone books:



These are of the Jackson Library Quilt, that very talented people sewed-not me, lol. I did pick out a design though, but I have no idea which one it is :)





Oh and if you go to flickr, my oclwebthings photostream is public, under the name windyfontaine. That's my nom de plume for my writing identity. (Looks around) Yikes, it's like Bruce Wayne admitting he's Batman, lol. Well, I'll just trust you all :)

This is the Series DVD area, otherwise known as Blockbuster. Hehe, joking. On the other side are the items in Spanish.



The stairs to the upper level:



And a picture of a picture of the library :)



Like I said, I went a little picture crazy. And I did take more on my flickr account. But I think that's enough for here :) Have a good day!

Oh and p.s., a last note-I did take a look at the "...online photo editors, such as FotoFlexer, Splashup and Picnik." And the result? I'm going to join Fotoflexer, because darn, it's cool! It actually has one thing I've been looking for to help me make my banners-to be able to cut out a figure from a scene and place it in another photo. Now that? Useful. The others don't have anything more special than my Microsoft photo editor already on my computer. Okay, think this Thing is done :)

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Thing number five


LITTLE MUSHY
Originally uploaded by jessesavag_e
I found this on flickr, titled LITTLE MUSHY. Obviously he looks different from my mom's puppy Mushy :) He's a bulldog. Here's my mom's Westie that I uploaded to my new flickr account:


Well, it seems that Little Mushy has gone walkabout, so here is a link to another picture of a dog named Mushy:

Mushy Bandit on Flickr

It's a little blurry but the living room lights were off so we could enjoy the snow :)


And here is another pic of Mushy from my Photobucket:

I've been working with Photobucket longer, and I think I like it more than flickr. Although flickr does upload very easily and there are tags and stuff and you can organize, you can do the same in Photobucket with the added ease of being able to include a pic in a webpage or a post. It's easier for me I think, maybe because I'm more used to it, but I'll try to work some more with flickr and see if I like it any more.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Mushy making puppy eyes


Mushy making puppy eyes
Originally uploaded by windyfontaine
And this is my mom's puppy Mushy, also a Westie.

Another Westie


Big black eyes
Originally uploaded by Jurica G.
Here's a pic I found of another West Highland White Terrier while surfing photos on flickr for thing number five.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Fanfiction story I wrote

Hi, this is a story I wrote (told ya I'd be sharing) for a show that I love. A lot of people, fans of certain tv shows and movies, write fictional stories based on those shows, called fanfiction. It's also called fanfic. The fans don't own the shows or their characters, but just want to share their love of that show with others (and in my case start honing my writing skills on something fun). For this particular show, "Supernatural", the creator, Eric Kripke, is fully aware of and encourages fanfiction. (Or so he has stated at one of the fan conventions held for the show, according to the site that I belong to.) In fact, many ideas that have come up in the show in Season 2 are eerily similar to many fanfiction stories that had been written during and just after Season 1 ended...

Short summary of the show (which for this story you don't really have to have seen): Sam and Dean Winchester are brothers that hunt the supernatural; the scary things that go bump in the night. They grew up learning and hunting, and are quite good at it. They have faced (in the show so far) vampires, ghosts, Wendigo, vengeful spirits and other creatures that no one believes exist. That's about all you need to know for this story.

Story summary: "Foiled by the Winchesters" This was written for a fanfic challenge. Slacker Todd finally found what he wanted to do with his life-be a vampire. Unfortunately for him the Winchesters keep showing up and "saving" him from his fate. One shot, humor.

Warnings: Contains imagery that might be upsetting to some individuals. However, it is meant in a humorous context. Also contains a bad word or two, but it's in character for the characters.

Click the link below if you'd like to read the story.

Link to story :)

Hope you like!

Have a good day :)

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Thing number 5, photo fun



Hi, for the challenge we were to look around Flickr and learn about tags and groups. I don't have a Flickr account but I do have a Photobucket account. Will look some more for a Flickr photo, but above is one from my Photobucket account, a picture of chicken soup that I used in a post to make someone feel better. Cool, it worked! I clicked on the add image icon and put in my link. Neat! Up next-maybe a banner I made from the show I watch.




Cool, that uploaded too! The sink and the missing wall are actual photos from my kitchen :) I added them to two photos from the show Supernatural to make a banner. Maybe I'll blog about the saga of my kitchen someday, lol. Have a good day!