Again, I am playing catch-up. Fortunately, this one's easy. I love YouTube and have for quite some time. It's a fantastic thing. I can watch clips from concerts I have no hope of ever getting to. I can watch British tv. (Oh, QI, how I adore you! Why are you not broadcast anywhere in the states?) I can listen to music and find new artists I like - artists that I can't necessarily find at the library. 8)
I never quite got into the whole video-blogging phenomenon - somehow, it hits my embarrassment squick. But it's a really cool idea.
YouTube is my supreme time wasting device. I'm sure that there are educational and inspiring videos out there, but mostly I love it for the people who make it their mission to upload all of MST3k in 10-minute chunks. People who do that, I salute you! You have entertained me throughout hours of sewing time.
Showing posts with label wonders of the interwebs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wonders of the interwebs. Show all posts
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Thursday, November 29, 2007
LibraryThing
It's quiet, so I'm still playing 2.0 catch up. LibraryThing is pretty nifty. (My library is linked in the handy widget to the left.) I will say, though, that I find the entering of my books to be somewhat tedious. Still, once I get some entered, it's neat to see all the covers all in a row. 8)
It's amazingly easy to get lost in LibraryThing - like wikipedia, you can spend hours simply following a chain of link after link after link, noting down titles or interesting bits of information to follow up later. For instance - while entering books into my library, I discovered that there's a new Captain Raptor book* out! How awesome is that? While following tags on things I had already entered, I found a list of books on runes that I've never read. And new books on horror films that I'll have to track down. It's all very exciting.
Unlike flickr, I can see myself continuing to play with this one. And I haven't even touched the more social aspects of the site yet.
*Captain Raptor is about dinosaurs in space ships. Also, there are robots. And jetpacks. If there is anything in the world that is better than that, someone needs to tell me about immediately.
It's amazingly easy to get lost in LibraryThing - like wikipedia, you can spend hours simply following a chain of link after link after link, noting down titles or interesting bits of information to follow up later. For instance - while entering books into my library, I discovered that there's a new Captain Raptor book* out! How awesome is that? While following tags on things I had already entered, I found a list of books on runes that I've never read. And new books on horror films that I'll have to track down. It's all very exciting.
Unlike flickr, I can see myself continuing to play with this one. And I haven't even touched the more social aspects of the site yet.
*Captain Raptor is about dinosaurs in space ships. Also, there are robots. And jetpacks. If there is anything in the world that is better than that, someone needs to tell me about immediately.
Photohosting
So...I've been totally slacking on my 2.0 stuff - time to play catch up. Today, I am browsing through flickr.*
Personally, I don't take a lot of pictures. My family tells me that this is a failing. I do have various pretty pictures that I've found on the internet stored on my computer, but none of these are things I've taken myself. I save them because they're shiny and then I reupload as needed, because hotlinking is rude. I tend to use photobucket.com for that because, well, when I was a wee interweb n00b, it was what was free and available. And it's pretty easy to use, for my purposes.
Flickr is very pretty. And I like being able to search other people's pictures - with just a cursory search, I've found some amazing raven and crow pictures that I'll have to add to my collection when I get home. (Seriously - is this not gorgeous?) I'm pretty sure my mom uses flickr to upload pictures of her artist trading cards - she goes through a lot of pictures space. (Or does she use picassa? I'm honestly not sure.)
As for me, despite flickr's prettiness, I really don't have so many pictures to share with the internet that I would need a huge picture community to do it. Photobucket works for the few pictures I have so, at the moment, that's probably where I'm going to stay.
But I'll head to flickr the next time I'm looking for pretty corvids.
*I cannot type that word properly to save my life. My fingers really want it to be "flirk" and that's completely incorrect.
Personally, I don't take a lot of pictures. My family tells me that this is a failing. I do have various pretty pictures that I've found on the internet stored on my computer, but none of these are things I've taken myself. I save them because they're shiny and then I reupload as needed, because hotlinking is rude. I tend to use photobucket.com for that because, well, when I was a wee interweb n00b, it was what was free and available. And it's pretty easy to use, for my purposes.
Flickr is very pretty. And I like being able to search other people's pictures - with just a cursory search, I've found some amazing raven and crow pictures that I'll have to add to my collection when I get home. (Seriously - is this not gorgeous?) I'm pretty sure my mom uses flickr to upload pictures of her artist trading cards - she goes through a lot of pictures space. (Or does she use picassa? I'm honestly not sure.)
As for me, despite flickr's prettiness, I really don't have so many pictures to share with the internet that I would need a huge picture community to do it. Photobucket works for the few pictures I have so, at the moment, that's probably where I'm going to stay.
But I'll head to flickr the next time I'm looking for pretty corvids.
*I cannot type that word properly to save my life. My fingers really want it to be "flirk" and that's completely incorrect.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
RSS
Today is RSS day! Yet another thing that I've heard of in my internet travels but have never really played with. Now that I've got an account on bloglines, following other people's blogs is certainly easier.
In my previous blogging experience, I've tended to use services like journalfen or insanejournal, which have a sort of built-in RSS feature. Once you sign up for a blog at a service like that, you get what's called a "friend's page" - a way to subscribe to the journals of people or groups that you want to continue reading. I'd missed that on blogger, so I'm glad to find a comparable way of doing things.
(I still think the other way's easier, since it's built in and you only have to have one account. Having seperate accounts to read and post from seems silly to me. Ah, well.)
In my previous blogging experience, I've tended to use services like journalfen or insanejournal, which have a sort of built-in RSS feature. Once you sign up for a blog at a service like that, you get what's called a "friend's page" - a way to subscribe to the journals of people or groups that you want to continue reading. I'd missed that on blogger, so I'm glad to find a comparable way of doing things.
(I still think the other way's easier, since it's built in and you only have to have one account. Having seperate accounts to read and post from seems silly to me. Ah, well.)
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
My favorite part of AV is the A
Y'know what's fantastic? Audiobooks. Audiobooks are one of the best thing in the world. See, I love being read to but it's hard to find people who want to sit still and read to me for hours on end. Especially when I'm trying to go to sleep or when I'm going to be crocheting for a long time. I'm an audiobook junkie. My favorites, I've ripped to my computer so that I can listen to them whenever I want (or put them on my iPod for use in the car). I love the Discworld audiobooks though, alas, the older ones read by Nigel Planer are a little hard to find and my copy of Men at Arms kind of sucks. The newer ones read by Stephen Briggs are fun, as well. (I am incredibly amused by the fact that his Carrot is Welsh. I'm not sure why that's funny.)
Good readers are incredibly important. A bad reader will turn me off a recording at lightning speed, even if it's a book I dearly love. I tend to avoid books that are read by the author for that reason. Reading well is a difficult skill to acquire (one that I've never manged, myself) and a lot of authors don't have it. Neil Gaiman does fairly well on his own books, though. Fortunately, one of my favorite readers (George Guidall) is incredibly prolific. And even if he weren't, seeing as he's read Dune, American Gods, Crime and Punishment and most of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, I'm pretty much set.
And Constance, I know you've mentioned C. S. Lewis and Narnia recently - have you heard the audiobooks? Dawn Treader's read by Sir Derek Jacobi and is amazing and, although I'm perhaps overfond of Silver Chair anyway, I really like Jeremy Northam's recording of it. I'm very fond of his Puddleglum.
Audio drama? Also good. The BBC has a fantastic full-cast dramatization of that I was addicted to as a teenager. (Eventually, someone gave me a copy as a gift. The tapes are still under my bed, close to the stereo in case of audio emergency.) Audio drama is almost more fun, for me, than television. TV's all right, as far as it goes, but I tend to watch tv in an odd way, where I don't actually look at the screen much. Especially when I'm crocheting or doing something else with my hands. (I fidget. A lot.) So I end up missing a good bit of the narrative because it's visual. With audio drama, I get the acting, I get all of the narrative, and I get really good special effects because my brain generally has a bigger FX budget than most tv shows. 8) Also, I can listen in my car. (Audio dramas don't work at bedtime, though. Too exciting.)
I don't really have that many links for audio drama* but I can give you a nifty one for straight audiobooks - audiobooksforfree.com. Bunches of books on which the copyright has expired, all available for free and immediate download. The sound quality isn't fantastic, perhaps, but the selection is nifty and hey, it's free. (Also, the files are very small indeed so you can fit several books on even the smallest mp3 player.)
*I have one link for audiodrama but it's a bit specific and a little weird. Anyway. If you are a Doctor Who fan who doesn't know about Big Finish Productions, hie thee there immediately and find yourself a way to acquire a copy of Jubilee. You will not regret it.
(Yes, it stars the Sixth Doctor. Yes, you probably think you don't like the Sixth Doctor. I don't care - you will like Jubilee. And here are three advantages that Jubilee has over actual Sixth Doctor episodes: a) better writers, b) neither Peri nor Mel are anywhere to be found and c) you can't see the coat.)
Good readers are incredibly important. A bad reader will turn me off a recording at lightning speed, even if it's a book I dearly love. I tend to avoid books that are read by the author for that reason. Reading well is a difficult skill to acquire (one that I've never manged, myself) and a lot of authors don't have it. Neil Gaiman does fairly well on his own books, though. Fortunately, one of my favorite readers (George Guidall) is incredibly prolific. And even if he weren't, seeing as he's read Dune, American Gods, Crime and Punishment and most of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, I'm pretty much set.
And Constance, I know you've mentioned C. S. Lewis and Narnia recently - have you heard the audiobooks? Dawn Treader's read by Sir Derek Jacobi and is amazing and, although I'm perhaps overfond of Silver Chair anyway, I really like Jeremy Northam's recording of it. I'm very fond of his Puddleglum.
Audio drama? Also good. The BBC has a fantastic full-cast dramatization of that I was addicted to as a teenager. (Eventually, someone gave me a copy as a gift. The tapes are still under my bed, close to the stereo in case of audio emergency.) Audio drama is almost more fun, for me, than television. TV's all right, as far as it goes, but I tend to watch tv in an odd way, where I don't actually look at the screen much. Especially when I'm crocheting or doing something else with my hands. (I fidget. A lot.) So I end up missing a good bit of the narrative because it's visual. With audio drama, I get the acting, I get all of the narrative, and I get really good special effects because my brain generally has a bigger FX budget than most tv shows. 8) Also, I can listen in my car. (Audio dramas don't work at bedtime, though. Too exciting.)
I don't really have that many links for audio drama* but I can give you a nifty one for straight audiobooks - audiobooksforfree.com. Bunches of books on which the copyright has expired, all available for free and immediate download. The sound quality isn't fantastic, perhaps, but the selection is nifty and hey, it's free. (Also, the files are very small indeed so you can fit several books on even the smallest mp3 player.)
*I have one link for audiodrama but it's a bit specific and a little weird. Anyway. If you are a Doctor Who fan who doesn't know about Big Finish Productions, hie thee there immediately and find yourself a way to acquire a copy of Jubilee. You will not regret it.
(Yes, it stars the Sixth Doctor. Yes, you probably think you don't like the Sixth Doctor. I don't care - you will like Jubilee. And here are three advantages that Jubilee has over actual Sixth Doctor episodes: a) better writers, b) neither Peri nor Mel are anywhere to be found and c) you can't see the coat.)
Thursday, October 18, 2007
del.icio.us
Today, I am playing with del.icio.us. I'd heard of it in my internet travels before the whole krl 2.0 thing but I'd never been quite sure what it was. Looking at it now, with a better understanding of it, it's pretty much totally awesome. I've actually set up two accounts - one for work and one for my internet leisure time. 8)
For work, having resources I regularly use (and a network of other people who are also listing useful sites) right at my fingertips has obvious advantages. At home...well, I have a huge and intimidating folder of bookmarks at home. I save a whole lot of things - recipes, crafty things, stories of all kinds - and then, when I want to go back to them later, I can never find them. It's going to take weeks to categorize and tag all of my bookmarks but the end result will be well worth it. God, I love tags.
And in the mean time, I get to rediscover all the stuff I thought was worth saving.
(Though I have to say, I find the name off-putting. I mean, I know most people just say "delicious" but it's get all those periods in the middle! Surely, one is meant to pronounce them in some way. Are they glottal stops of some kind? Since the "icio" and the "us" are split apart, is one meant to pronounce them more separately? These things bother me.)
For work, having resources I regularly use (and a network of other people who are also listing useful sites) right at my fingertips has obvious advantages. At home...well, I have a huge and intimidating folder of bookmarks at home. I save a whole lot of things - recipes, crafty things, stories of all kinds - and then, when I want to go back to them later, I can never find them. It's going to take weeks to categorize and tag all of my bookmarks but the end result will be well worth it. God, I love tags.
And in the mean time, I get to rediscover all the stuff I thought was worth saving.
(Though I have to say, I find the name off-putting. I mean, I know most people just say "delicious" but it's get all those periods in the middle! Surely, one is meant to pronounce them in some way. Are they glottal stops of some kind? Since the "icio" and the "us" are split apart, is one meant to pronounce them more separately? These things bother me.)
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