Giant Sky Fish

California Tonguefish

California Tonguefish, in the style of Dan Miller's illustration in Probably More Than you Want to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast. Also embellished.

Blue Shark

Blue Shark, in the style of Dan Miller's illustration in Probably More Than you Want to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast. Somewhat embellished.

Leftovers

I have developed the habit of drawing on my to-go containers.  Generally these drawings are even sillier than my usual ones.

Change of Scenery

This blog was started in 2008 as a work-related project.  It has sat here forlorn and forgotten since then.  I have decided to make some use of it, and post the silly drawings I make as I loaf around on Friday nights.

Thing #23 - Summarize your thoughts about this program on your blog

Ok, so it took me a little longer than expected to get here, but I am finally here. I really enjoyed this Learning 2.0 program. It was fun and useful. I definitely feel more savvy about social networking and some of the neat things that are out there on the web.

My favorite discoveries were probably Bloglines and Pandora. These are things that I will continue to use long after the 23 Things are over. LibraryThing is also really fun, though I don't really use it that much. Perhaps one of the most valuable things about the program was to learn that blogging and these other things are not all that exotic. Regular people like you and me can create and post to a blog. I feel somewhat less out of touch than before. Even if I am not using most of these things regularly, at least I am literate about them.

It was really challenging finding the time to do these. Some weeks, I had enough time to devote to Learning 2.0. Many weeks, though, are spent just running to stand still. It's good to have a deadline, so that people are working toward a goal. On the other hand, it seemed at times somewhat unattainable, though that may be just how I prioritize things. Obviously some folks were able to finish on time. For the most part, I felt that the structure of the program was a good one. I would definitely participate in this sort of discovery program again.

Thing #22 - Take a look at the titles available on NetLibrary and learn how to download audiobooks

I had already learned a bit about NetLibrary and downloading audiobooks from Donna and Heidi's training session. It was good, though, to return and go through it on my own. It was fairly easy, having been through the training session, and having watched PMCLC's video about it. I don't know how intuitive it would have been otherwise.

I did find an audiobook to download, H.H. The Dalai Lama's The Art of Happiness at Work. However, I don't have an MP3 player (since I did not finish my 23 things in a timely fashion), so I don't know if I will actually listen to it. Still, it was an instructive exercise. Maybe I will be inspired by this to purchase an MP3 player.

Thing #21 - Discover some useful search tools for locating podcasts

It took me a very long time to find a podcast that I would actually want to subscribe to. Blogs are one thing, but actually listening to folks chatter along was not appealing. I finally found Poetry Moment. (http://poetrymoment.podomatic.com/) Some gal reading the classics. She's not a great reader, but that's probably all for the better. Why not take a moment to listen to poetry? This is an instance where I find a podcast to be better than a blog, because poetry should be read aloud. This is a good use of podcasting, in my opinion.

I found podcastalley.com to be the way to go for searching for podcasts. It was very easy to use, and brought a good assortment of results. I was not able to load podcast.net at all, and I did not care for Yahoo Podcasts. It seemed really clunky after podcastalley.com. Besides, podcastalley is a much cooler name.

Thing #20 - Discover YouTube

One of my all time favorites on YouTube is March of the Librarians (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Td922l0NoDQ). It is an extraordinary look at this very interesting species. I especially value it for its footage of male librarian facial plumage. It is one of the more fascinating documentaries I have seen in some time.

YouTube has a tremendous amount of crap on it, but many gems. I have seen lots of humorous videos at this site. I would never have known about Weird Al's White and Nerdy, if it weren't for YouTube.

Thing #19 - Explore any site from the Web 2.0 awards list, play with it ...

Ever since Staff Day, I have been wanting to try Pandora, but have been too busy messing around with all these other "Things", and haven't gotten around to it. Fortunately, Pandora was a Web 2.0 nominee, so I am able to check it out here, at Station #19.

Pandora lets you type in an artist or song, and it will create a "radio station" based on that type of music. It's part of the Music Genome Project, which is awesome just for the name if for no other reason. It's very useful because quite often I'm too lazy to search for more music of the type that I like. For instance, I was starting to become tired of the CD I've been listening to endlessly lately, but wanted more music like it. Pandora is perfect for this. Also, it's nice to have an easy source of music for listening to at work (with earphones, of course) without having to drag around CDs, or even an MP3 player. Pretty cool.

I think this will help me return to my much more eclectic tastes in music. They have become more homogenized due to laziness. The downside is all those Toyota adds.