Planet Gold Coast

petaj posted a photo:

In the Citadel, Hue, Vietnam

petaj posted a photo:

Flickr has teamed up with Picnik to add photo editing as a feature for Flickr users.
Choose an image in your photostream, hit the edit button, allow Picnik to access your Flickr image and a suite of editing options load.

Images can be modified with effects, shapes and frames added, color adjustment, resizing and rotations.

Here's one I prepared earlier - If you've forgotten to send a Christmas Card, turn one of your photos into a greeting and send an email...




Just be careful you don't replace your existing photo (unless you want to) and check the options before saving.

petaj posted a video:

Bond University library staff wish everyone a Happy Christmas.

Recorded at a pancake morning tea on Christmas Eve. Thanks for the yummy pancakes Anne.

Inspired by Flexnib

Things you’ve already done: bold
Things you want to do:
italicize
Things you haven’t done and don’t want to - leave in plain font

1. Started your own blog.
Several times

2. Slept under the stars.
Last time I did this? Lake Cargelligo in the 70s in December or January - too hot to stay in the house
3. Played in a band.
School bands count? Played recorder, tenor recorder, clarinet, bass clarinet, glockenspiele at various times/bands. Also got to lead the marching band and twirl the staff.

4. Visited Hawaii
Don't have a burning desire to do this, but won't complain if I get to go there.

5. Watched a meteor shower.

6. Given more than you can afford to charity.

7. Been to Disneyland/world.

8. Climbed a mountain.
Mt Warning, Mt Cougall, Mt Kosciusko (but not quite to the top) - none of these are difficult climbs

9. Held a praying mantis.

10. Sang a solo.
Annie in Annie Get Your Gun - school musical and various school concerts

11. Bungee jumped.

12. Visited Paris.

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea?
Watched plenty over the sea, but not actually while I was at sea.

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch.
Does walking, talking count? :-)

15. Adopted a child.

16. Had food poisoning.
Only very mildly

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty.

18. Grown your own vegetables
They are currently being demolished by grasshoppers. Pumpkins, cucumbers, tomatoes, peas, carrots, various salad greens....

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France.
Yep, along with the gazillion other masterpieces at the Louvre

20. Slept on an overnight train.
Delhi to Madras, Jaisalmer to Jodphur? it was a long time ago, Barcelona to Ventimiglia or thereabouts.

21. Had a pillow fight.
Has anyone not done this?

22. Hitch hiked.

23. Taken a sick day when you're not ill.
I just can't do it, unless I have at least a headache or sore throat.

24. Built a snow fort.
Not a lot of snow in Australia, and not a lot of time to construct a fort when I was in Simla, Switzerland or New Zealand

25. Held a lamb.

26. Gone skinny dipping.
In the privacy of my backyard swimming pool

27. Run a marathon.
Not likely to do this

28. Ridden a gondola in Venice.
Not even when I had the chance - just so darn expensive when you are travelling on a budget

29. Seen a total eclipse.

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset.
Both, wow huh!

31. Hit a home run.
Can't remember, but I did used to play softball at school.

32. Been on a cruise.
How long does it have to be to count as a cruise? Or what about a houseboat on the Hawkesbury River?

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person.

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors.
England

35. Seen an Amish community.

36. Taught yourself a new language.

37.Had enough money to be truly satisfied.
Being truly satisfied is dependent more on your state of mind, than your bank balance.

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person

39. Gone rock climbing.
Turtle Rock - Not exactly an effort worth bragging about, but we did abseil down.

40. Seen Michelangelo's David in person

41. Sung Karaoke.

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt.

43. Bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant.

44. Visited Africa
Egypt

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight.
Many times.

46. Been transported in an ambulance.
4 years old, cut open my forehead, lots of blood, 4 stitches, no siren

47. Had your portrait painted.

48. Gone deep sea fishing.
No thank-you

49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
Also the Taj Mahal - why is it not on this list

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Took my boys when they were 8 and 10 - we ate chocolate bars at the top

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkelling.
Fiji, and someplaces in North Queensland

52. Kissed in the rain.
Don't remember, but possibly. Have definitely showered in the rain during drought breaking rain, when our tanks were dribbling out sediment.

53. Played in the mud.

54. Gone to a drive-in theatre.
Yatala, Burleigh, some place near Cessnock - little town I think begins with H. People from Newcastle drive out there for it.

55. Been in a movie.

56. visited the Great Wall of China

57. Started a business.

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia.
Would like to take the trans-Siberian railway one day

60. Served at a soup kitchen.

61. Sold Girl Scout cookies.
I was a brownie guide

62. Gone whale watching.

63. Gotten flowers for no reason.

64. Donated blood
Tend to be a bit anaemic

65. Gone sky diving.

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp.

67. Bounced a cheque.
What's a cheque! Haven't used them in years

68. Flown in a helicopter.

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy.
A doll, plus some clothes my grandma knitted for it.

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial.

71. Eaten Caviar.
And don't need to ever do that again

72. Pieced a quilt
Quilt was for a cot for my first child

73. Stood in Time Square

74. Toured the Everglades.
I have visited the Everglades on the Noosa River, but not in Florida

75. Been fired from a job.
I wonder if anyone is putting this in italics

76. Seen the Changing of the Guard in London.

77. Broken a bone.
Right wrist

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle.

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person.

80. Published a book.
I've got a chapter in a book, but it's too small to count.

81. Visited the Vatican.

82. Bought a brand new car.
Well, it had only 35km on it - a demo model. Oh and more recently a Hyundai

83. Walked in Jerusalem

84. Had your picture in the newspaper.
Annie Get Your Gun, School musical - managed to get my two front teeth broken while the reporter was there! The photo did not show the broken teeth, but I was captured wearing a hessian sack dress in the first scene.

85. Read the entire Bible.

86. Visited the White House.

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating.
Seen it done at home when i was a child - it was pretty difficult meal to eat as that chicken had a name.

88. Had chickenpox.

89. Saved someone’s life.

90. Sat on a jury.

91. Met someone famous.

92. Joined a book club.

93. Lost a loved one.

94. Had a baby.
Had two

95. Seen the Alamo in person.

96. Swum in the Great Salt Lake.

97. Been involved in a law suit.

98. Owned a cell phone.

99. Been stung by a bee
Aah childhood memories making daisy chains from the clover flowers

SlideShare has launched an add-in for MS PowerPoint. Without opening a browser and navigating to SlideShare users are enabled to:

• share their presentation from within PowerPoint itself
• update existing SlideShare presentations
• download content from SlideShare for remixing
• view their contacts' and groups' presentations
• check statistics

I would love to try this out, but I'm currently struggling with a desktop PC that is not coping well with the stress I place on it. (hurry up, end of lease!) It is slow, sometimes glacial and I hope to give it a spring clean, backup stuff and ask for a re-image. But - I don't have Office 2007 and it is not quite part of the SOE at MPOW. I did volunteer to be an early adopter, but the fact that my PC is so highly customised, put it in the too risky category.

At home I use OpenOffice - must check to see if SlideShare is working on an add-in for that.

Maybe in 2009 I'll get a chance to give this a whirl.

ReadWriteWeb reports on the Add-In.
SlideShare blogs about it.
Get the Download here.

Some fun from spacefem. Get yourself classified in the Dewey Decimal scheme.




Peta Hopkins's Dewey Decimal Section:

003 Systems


Class:
000 Computer Science, Information & General Works


Contains:
Encyclopedias, magazines, journals and books with quotations.



What it says about you:
You are very informative and up to date. You're working on living in the here and now, not the past. You go through a lot of changes. When you make a decision you can be very sure of yourself, maybe even stubborn, but your friends appreciate your honesty and resolve.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com


Found via Bibliophile

I've been playing with a try-online version of Balsamiq and created this mockup in just a couple of minutes. Showcased at Gold Coast Barcamp by Steve Dalton, blogged by Michael Rees, Balsamiq is software for making mockups for websites and software development. Elements can easily be moved around on the page and the hand-drawn look is deliberate to keep the focus on functionality rather than graphic design.

The mockup can be exported to a .png file. A desktop version is available, but this can also be integrated into wikis.

GetUp now has a widget for those wishing to support the Save the Net campaign to put on their blog or website.




Get the code from the GetUp site.

Take a look at this video for some ideas about manipulating video. Some of the things showcased include:

• Add graffiti to moving objects
• drag facial features around
• slide objects back and forth
• show the pathway of a moving object
• add speech balloons that follow the images
• capture everyone's best side from different points in time
  

Interactive Video Object Manipulation from Dan Goldman on Vimeo.


Via Kiwi Light

If an academic librarian says they don't have time to learn about web 2.0 and social media, show them this video created by Wendy Drexler. The networked learner in the 21st century uses a variety of tools in their personal learning environment.

GetUp has launched a campaign to petition the Australian government to prevent mandatory internet filtering being introduced.

"Senator Conroy,

I don't want draconian
government restrictions on the internet that will hold back the digital
economy and miss the vast majority of unwanted content."


Save the Net - GetUp! Campaign Actions

Some people have a completely different approach to tagging. Check out the tags on this image at Flickr - they tell a story.

don't you hear it? (47/365) on Flickr - Photo Sharing!




Tags by d a g g i e.

There's nothing very helpful about a presentation that focuses only on the great and successful aspects of something. This presentation covers the good features of a service, but also acknowledges where there is room for improvement. I hope that discussing the challenges faced in providing this reference chat service help others thinking about providing a similar service.

In summary, although we have some things to work on the service is generally valued by our customers.
The slides are those used at the Unconference at Queensland State Library last week, but the audio was recorded afterwards. So for those who were there, it's not verbatim. It's also a little bit longer. The audio recording was made using a Creative Zen x-fi (mp3 player). I need to figure out the best distance between me and the microphone - excuse the occasional microphone noises.

library chatView SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: library chat)
Wondering what pecha kucha is? Check out this article on Wikipedia.

petaj posted a photo:

petaj posted a photo:

petaj posted a photo:

Introduced to animoto at the library 2.0 unconference. A few holiday snaps and this short video made in just a few minutes.

Much more involved than previous attempts at making video - here is my very mediocre offering. Some thoughts from the unconference at Queensland State Library. Web 2.0, what next?

There has never been such a wealth of free and low cost tools for personal and research information management, but students still struggle to achieve an effective routine to get them through the research and writing process.

"All the students we interviewed struggle to achieve proficiency in both traditional and digital technologies. We did not interview a single student who had settled into a satisfactory routine in either. Graduate students change their work processes over the course of their projects and most complain that they have not found adequate ways to organize information and retrieve it later on. We found enormous variety in the way they approach these and other tasks, including communication with peers and advisors."

Ryan Randall, Jane Smith, Katie Clark, & Nancy Fried Foster. (2008). The next generation of academics : a report on a study conducted at the University of Rochester. University of Rochester. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1802/6053. Accessed 15 November 2008

This paper looks at what authoring tools could be integrated into institutional repositories to meet the needs of individual and collaborative writing and to make it easy to move completed documents into the repository. It also calls for librarians to take on a mentoring role with students as information management experts. Section B. Implications of findings for our software outlines the challenges that students face.

A good read for academic librarians and institutional repository managers.