#10 Play around with Image Generators

Being a music lover and a bit of a musician myself I was curious about the The Blues Name Generator. Guess what my blues name is? You have to laugh!!!!!!

It is `Big Mama´ Bella Madison.

I also had a go at the modern art generator with the following result.

Click on the image to go to the generator to have a go at it yourself.

#9 Finding Feeds

I found this exercise a bit frustrating and ended up having a better success rate by going to sites I was familiar with and pasting in the URLs myself. Technorati was the easiest for me to use and I wasn't overly impressed by Feedster or Topix. Google Blog search wasn't too bad. Found subscribing to a journal from Ebsco ANZ Reference Centre easy as.. I'm really looking forward to the next lesson on image generators.

#8 Make life "really simple" with RSS & a newsreader

Yes, make life really "simple"!!! I didn't find this a particularly hard task once I'd managed to read the instructions properly. Does anyone else have a problem reading instructions off a computer screen? For some reason I get along a lot better if I can read instructions off a paper copy instead off the computer screen. I had tried RSS feeds some time ago but got busy with other things and didn't bother with it again. However, this time around I have taken the time to explore them a lot more. I found some very interesting feeds and can see that I will most likely use them now. My reader can be found here. I also had to have several attempts at creating the link to my reader. I had neglected to change my settings to enable sharing and also to give myself a user name. All good now. I found this article interesting http://www.artknowledgenews.com/Vincent_van_Gogh_Masterpiece.html
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to view the Van Gogh exhibition at Brisbane Art Gallery quite a number of years ago now and have been hooked on him ever since. It was a truly awe inspiring experience to stand before a work from this great artist and actually see his finger prints in the paint.

# 7 Blog about technology

I have just been trying to catch up on some of my reading and as I subscribe to PC World I thought I'd better get October's issue read before I end up with November's before I have finished it. One of the leading articles in it is a report on the first tests the magazine has run on quad-core PCs. They mention the top specs for one the machines they have tested. It has a Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700, 2TB hard drive, 4GB RAM, 24in LCD monitor and a Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics card. I couldn't help comparing it to the first PC I ever bought. It was top of the range at the time and cost me around $2500.00. It was an old 486 that ran at 50MHz, a 500MB hard drive and a whole 4MB of RAM, and, wonders of wonders, it actually had a colour monitor. It had Windows 3.11 on it as well as a few other programs like Works and Bookshelf. Of course we didn't have internet access either. Around about the same time I went to an in-service training day to learn about using the internet but it wasn't anything like what we have now, it was all text based. I guess my point is, we have come a long way in the last 14 years and whereas once owning a PC was something of a luxury it is now fast becoming a necessity. I know I couldn't be without mine for very long. A bit sad isn't it, taking it on holidays!!

# 6 More Flickr fun mark two

warholizer6236315,
originally uploaded by aileenmott.

For similar reasons to the last post I wanted to see what the same photo of my grandson looked like after being given the Warhol treatment. Think I might like the Hockney version better.

# 6 More Flickr fun

hockney5927250,
originally uploaded by aileenmott.

I was rather intrigued by this Flickr tool as I have a love of art, being something of an artist myself. So I combined that with my little guy, my grandson Dylan. He's little but definitely not green!! He is actually a GVRL book bag baby and the book he's "reading" is from his book bag. You have to admit he's cute.

#5 flickr

Eden42,
originally uploaded by aileenmott.

This is a photo I took while on a holiday last year. It was taken from one of the bays in Two Fold Bay, Eden, NSW. I have been fasinated by Eden since reading "Killers of Eden" by Tom Mead years ago. The museum in Eden is also worth a visit if you ever get the opportunity. It was hard to imagine people going out to sea hunting whales in such small boats. Not that they went chasing whales in these particular boats. I just liked the look of them!

While doing this exercise I learnt that I must read the instructions more thoroughly! It took me longer to post my photo to my blog than it did to upload them as I had missed something along the way. Happily I ended up succeeding.

There are certainly some very talented people around though. I could have trolled through Flickr for hours and hours looking at the photos.

I had almost decided not to participate in Learning 2.0 but changed my mind after talking to some colleagues last week. Luckily for me there was one position left. I decided that we are all busy people and if others can do it so can I.

Of the Lifelong Learning habits, Habit 6 is probably my easiest as I have always used technology to my advantage and am always keen to try new things out. I get a real thrill out of mastering new technologies. Habit 4 – having confidence in myself as a competent, effective learner is probably my hardest as I have to continually remind myself that I can. Being a procrastinater from way back, it helps me to have deadlines and, of course, everything always gets left to the late minute.