A changing paradise

I've discovered how to do all sorts of things that I often wondered about! I just played with the image I'd called "A smoker's paradise". First of all I add a frame, brightened some areas and sharpened others. This didn't make a huge difference. I don't think the frame is really appropriate but it served for the exercise. I then tried a different frame, pencil sketch effect and stickers - just for a bit of fun! Hmm... corny Christmas card??!

And then I published my blog... with my pictures in it.... except that they weren't. An hour later, despite help from a very competent colleague, I was still totally frustrated. I could upload photos from file; I could upload other web images; I changed my licensing on said photos to none; I told Flickr to grant access to my blog….. I even managed to blog the photo using “blog this” in Flickr, but it then wouldn’t let me edit it to add more photos – indeed seemingly not much at all. I didn’t know what else to do. After emailing for help, I have had to resort to the way I had already sussed, i.e. download pictures from Flickr and then put them in the blog. And even now I haven't managed to make them small enough to sit side by side. It's so frustrating. Oh well.... Onwards and upwards....

And now my fonts are all over the place and I can't find what my default is, and am even more frustrated. I've got to leave now, so it will have to wait until I have time to sort it out. Grr... It started so well!

PS Thanks for helpful comments. I think I might have finally got it sorted - I hope!

Fun!

This "thing" was quite good fun. I'm not a great photographer but do enjoy keeping memories of people, events and places, and this seems a good way to manage pictures. Probably being able to geotag pictures is one of the most useful features. We have loads of photos that we think we will remember exactly where they were taken - except that we don't!
Flickr is relatively easy to navigate around once you get used to the layout.

Getting there!

Hmm... interesting! The first bit of this week's tasks was easy, but I got somewhat stuck when trying to add my extra feeds and had to be rescued by Michelle, our resident guru. What would I do without her? It was good that we had to add lots of feeds because I gradually got it sorted out and began to speed up. I think I got a bit carried away in the end! I was quite surprised at some of the sites that I would have expected to have RSS that didn't have.

.... better get back to "proper" library stuff. This business can start to get a bit addictive, especially once you begin to feel more at home in it.

Blogs

Like all things, it takes time to accustom yourself, and gets much quicker as you become more familiar with it. Once I am using the blogs regularly, I'm sure I'll wonder why I could ever have been searching for how to do something. It is already improving, but it seems to have taken me a long time today to do not a great deal.

Thoughts on week 1

I found the instructions extremely clear. I am glad that they assume no knowledge. It doesn't matter if we know bits already because there always comes that point where you think you know something - until you actually try to do it on your own.

There are two or three of us doing it here, and we are fortunate in also having people who know exactly what they are doing. We had a good few laughs over creating the iGoogle pages!

First blog by an amateur

Well, I've got this far! So far, so good...

Why am I doing this? Because I feel I'm getting left behind. We use all sorts of Web 2.0 tools in the library and I ought to be able to use them myself. I may be old but I don't want to turn into a dinosaur! I know it's mainly a matter of confidence and understanding the terminology etc, and I know I can do it if I give it a bit of time, but that's what I never do - so here is my opportunity.

What do I know already? I have a Facebook account, and I use it to keep track sometimes of other people, but I don't really do anything with it myself. I'm not entirely sure of the implications of some of the things, and am slightly wary about what I put out.

Hopefully, by April, I will be more confident at actually using the tools.