arrr ess ess

RSS seems like a very useful tool, it sounds perfect for someone like me that goes to lots of different sites every day to read articles. So, this week I subscribed to Bloglines. Thruthfully, I don't think I will be using it too much. I found the interface a bit awkward. I have most of the sites I visit bookmarked in my toolbar, just a click away. For example, one of the sites I visit for general news during the day is NYtimes. I like the way it's set up, it's almost like browsing through a real newspaper. It also allows you to stumble upon things that might not come up if I didn't exactly specify that section in my RSS feed. The Bloglines interface, even though it showed me interesting articles from a number of sites, was not as enjoyably navigated.

After a disappointing experience with Bloglines, I decided to try Google reader. I did like this a bit better, the familiar "g-interface" was a bit easier to navigate. But again, I missed the browsing aspect of going directly to a site.

Even though I did not have the best experience with these two, I think that I will try to use them again. I do sometimes find it hard to keep up with new content on sites and RSS feed organizers like these could probably help me with a bit more effort on my part.

Fun on Flickr

Though I have used Flickr to look at friends' photos, I had never uploaded any of mine. I had a lot of fun searching through people's photos just by typing in random things. I found photos from all over the world with comments in lots of different languages, it's so cool how many people on there sharing photos.

One of my biggest pet peeves is misspellings on signs; like in advertisements, street signs, notices people put up, also it's sometimes just really funny. There were tons that people had posted on Flickr and I had a lot of fun going through them.

(I had a picture of a sign here but took it down after our discussion about copy right, for some fun misspelled sign, click here).

I also think that the mashups were cool, especially Mappr, which allows you to assign your photos to a specific location. There are also tons of other mashups that people have created. One that I thought was really fun to play with was Retievr. You draw something in a little box and then the program finds photos on Flickr that "match" your sketch. Sometimes the results are quite hilarious.

After playing around with that stuff I decided to create my own Flickr account. I have only uploaded one photo so far (below), but I think that I'll definitely start putting up some more.

(This is my dog Jupiter after a swim in the Colombia River, Portland, OR)

Learn Me Something New!

I think I already am a lifelong learner. I try to never pass up the chance to learn something new.
I love to read and always have to be reading something, whether it be a magazine or a newspaper or a history book or some crappy sci fi novel. I also love traveling and (trying) to learn new languages. It really stretches your brain sometimes, almost as if you can feel your neurons making new connections.

Of the 7.5 habits of highly successful lifelong learners, I think that the easiest for me is number two, taking responsibility for my own learning. I feel that I have already proven to myself that I can do that by getting in and going back to school. I like to learn to do new things and am always willing to try something challenging, however, I can sometimes be a bit overzealous. For example, last year using an online guide I tried to take apart and fix our wireless router because the signal was not strong enough. Let's just say that I believed in myself a little too much and the day ended with a trip to Radio Shack. That being said, I think that the hardest habit for me is setting realistic, well-defined goals. This is something I have been trying to do for some time but I seem to always get caught up in the 'big picture'. I think I need to learn to take things one day at a time and practice setting smaller goals and then work my way up to the big ones. We'll see how it goes!

mother would be so proud

So here's the thing, I swore I would never write a blog. This is mostly because my mother has a blog and I can't stand to read her musings on middle age, divorce, 'life changes', et al.

Then again, I'm back in school again on the complete opposite side of the country, in a totally new city, surrounded by new people, so why not try something new? (and of course we have to for class, but I think it will be fun!)