Thing 23

Dr. Bloggles has evaluated the 23 Things. Prepare for judgement day.

Shootin' Squirrels With My Trusty Thing .22

Dr. Bloggles has come mighty far indeed since he awakened to the 2.0 world way back in Thing 1. You can read more about my transfiguration by Flickring me a Tweet to my Ta Da mashup and by embedding the Youtube code into your reader through RSS feed and then adding comments which can then be tagged and posted in 3D video format for easy reading on my Blackberry when I'm in orbit. Or better yet, I suppose practice makes perfect. I consider myself already to be a perfect Dr. Bloggles, but my skills with new technology can definitely improve. I'm starting to feel the weight of the virtual world on my shoulders (Bloggles Shrugged) and it does take some persistence to achieve 2.0 egomania. I will be keeping up with the professional literature so that I don't lose my momentum, as well as watching out for the library blogs on the frozen horizon.

Thing 21 (Can I See Some ID?)

The Assignment Calculator would be a good tool for students who have a hard time staying on task to complete a project. The timeline feature is probably useful, and the documents such as the one I read about finding articles in the library are good, if fairly generic. It almost seems as if it would take just as much time for a student to learn a website or a search engine as it would to navigate and read these documents, only to have to take that generic info and apply it to a specific search. But again, for a beginner or someone who need a lot of structure I think it could be an good tool. The Research Project Calculator is like the Assignment Calculator if it were pumped up with Chernobyl bilge and left in the sun for a few million years. It's a similar idea, aimed at the teachers. We don't need no education. Anyway, again I can't help but think that researching the research process is a bit redundant and difficult when the student doesn't know how to research. This information might be hard to digest without the specific teachable moment of an actual specific search. So I'm researching caribou lice and I've found some books about it, then I read that I should "brainstorm and note ideas that you have identified in your information sources. Use arrows. Draw circles. Look for connections and patterns. Identify lines of reasoning." Sounds good, and this is a good way for a teacher to know how to approach lessons, but I can draw arrows and circles all over the tundra and I'll still have caribou lice if I don't know how to narrow my search within my specific topic. That's one nice feature of the Assignment Calculator, a constant reminder of the university writing support/librarian assistance a click away.

Thing 20.0

I decided to do this Thing "by the book." In my library I find that the anatomy books and National Geographic magazine nudes do the best with the young rapscallions. Why does the dictionary always fall right open to the word hermaphrodite? I do think that the physical book will be hard to replace...most patrons who are big readers will not want to duplicate that experience on the web. E-books, for example, have not been a big hit and tend to be most useful for academic, research-oriented reading where it is useful to scan a title for particular sections or search for specific keywords. In that way, an e-book can be even better than a physical volume. However, the actual fiction and novel reader does not want this...they do love the audiobooks but don't want to read on a screen. Some version of a print-on-demand service which could produce cheap paperback copies of brand-new titles would be a big hit, but would kill the hardcover profits for the publishers and authors. It would also kill my practice of tiling the floor of my yurt with romance novel covers.

I checked out Overbooked, Wired For Books, Librivox, and Worldcat. Overbooked was a bit underwhelming...the site had moved to a new address. I found it to be difficult to navigate and find actual documents. Many links did not go where they indicated (like nonfiction) and I was only able to find excel spreadsheets instead of html lists, which is annoying. You have to open the file and view in a separate window and it doesn't display well. Wired For Books was actually quite good...very interesting niche for a site. This could be very useful for programming or library website features to add the actual voice of an author. Those audio clips can be hard to locate, especially in a central location. Librivox is another very interesting site, featuring volunteers reading public domain titles as audiobooks. Easy to search and find things. This can potentially open up older works, particularly individual titles that are not an author's best-selling or most famous work, to the audiobook patron. I did not see a listing for my self-published biography, Siberian Circe. I was hoping to find a version of it read by Fran Drescher wearing a nose plug. But 'twas not meant to be. Worldcat is a library standby, used for ILL requests and title info, and a good source for reviews also.

Hey Thing 19

Webjunction is much more than a place for spiders to hook-up. I find this to be a good networking site for the non-insects to find out about library technology, programs, and methods. There is some great information on, for example, computer classes for the public and how to obtain free lesson plans. This would have helped me out a lot when I tried to teach my own computer class. I had heard about "degradable music" so I showed the kids how to use a computer to flatten caribou dung patties into percussion instruments which would then degrade. It's a very green way to make music, though it's not always exactly green. Downloadable music? What if you want to hear the treble? Wagner triangle concerto? Anyway, the blog entries were appropriate, substantive, or at least very quick when conversational. And I thought it refreshing to see how the entries were all signed by people with their actual names, which in a social network helps a lot to maintain a civil atmosphere free from the penchant to insult and parody anonymously. I for one can't stand people who blog fictitiously under assumed identities and use that anonymity to clutter the web with arrogant fantasies. Now Dr. Bloggles will return to his Siberian sleep heap.

18 (The Barely Legal Thing)

I just examined the My Space pages for Alachua County, Jacksonville, Pasco, and Ask-A-Librarian. At first I was hesitant to explore someone else's space because I am known to have an almost magnetic attraction for restraining orders. Maybe I should add my list of restraining orders to my ta da list from a previous Thing. Anyway, these pages have some good potential. A couple of them concentrated on basic library news, which seems a bit redundant. The libraries already have their own websites, and although these 2.0 sites will allow access to the libraries from a place where the patrons may already be, most of the features needed to really search properly will be at the original sites. I also see that many of the "friends" listed are simply self-published authors trying to pimp their wares. I think the Pasco site is interesting because it concentrates on the Battle of the Bands program, which seems more appropriate for a My Space page in order to reach that particular audience and allow them a personal page that seems removed from the rest of the library. My library had a battle of the bands, but I was the judge and therefore I always won. I performed my karaoke rendition of Billy Joel's Uptown Girl, much to the chagrin of the angry scowling teens.

When I was Thing 17

Here is a link to a Russian podcast about Putin and the KGB from podcast.com:

http://podcast.com/show/90737/Putin-KGB/

I liked the design and interface of podcast.com, but I think the search results could be displayed better. Some entries have no information, and some have pages of it in tiny tiny gray type. Better descriptions would help greatly. Download times were quite fast and I only found one podcast of several that I tried which did not connect. I put this Thing off for quite a awhile...does that make me a podcastinator? Did not care for the Yahoo audio search at all...it generated too many music hits and fewer podcasts, and the design was not easy on the eyes. I had to use my radiation goggles from Siberian summer camp just to look at the screen.

Sweet Thing Sixteen

I found this 80s classic on Youtube. This was my favorite song back then. I remember going to the dive-in theatre as a youth and watching this on the big screen. I say dive-in theatre because the only working TV was on an underwater nucleur sub. I would dive down and peer through the window into the captain's room and he had this video on an endless loop. (It was easy to get into the navy back then).

Fiftheeng

This is how Dr. Bloggles Rollyos...

To find my Russian newspaper search:

http://rollyo.com/alachuaclass/russian_news/

I could use this in my library to cater resources to current events, like the latest outbreak of bird flu. I could create an Am-I-Going-To-Die Research Center that could take a search term like "avian bird flu" and instead of searching the whole Interwebs I could have it search only for images from 1950s science-fiction bird-alien films. This would frighten my patients and make them easier to sell placebos to.

Thing 14 Going On 23

I created an iGoogle page and now I'm Dr. Blogging about it. I chose this one after writing down the names of the choices on little signs all around the tundra, consulting the divining rod book I discovered in Library Thing (See previous Thing for more info), and feeling my way to iGoogle. I chose music as one of my interests and it gives me links to Youtube videos where I can behold much auditory crap. I also chose politics but it gave me an archive of various minor candidate articles from last year's election! That's so 1.0! Besides, Putin won the US election according to my best local sources. The Google calendar has a great feature where you can email directly from an event entry. I could use this when I'm scheduling my patients for the annual Ruttfest, where they agree to be "helpers" in the caribou mating rituals. It's somewhere halfway between rodeo clown and fluffer. If you have to ask what that means, you probably don't want to know. Anyway, I can notify all of them at once instead of having to email them individually. I think it's a great example of ancient tradition and modern technology. I also checked out the ta da list, but I found it odd to choose from a list of listmakers, then go on a tour where it lists what you can list with the listmaker, then making a topic list for your lists, then looking at lists of lists that others have listed, and then making your list, in order to save time. Plus I don't think it would be smart to post my list of victims, tax shelters, or bookie payments online (if I had them.)

Thirtthing

Here is the URL to my Library Thing Booklist:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/alachuaclass

To save some valuable time, here are my selected titles:

1.The divining rod: Its history, truthfulness, & practical utility
2.Love Thine Enemas & Heal Thyself: 5th Ed.
3.Sexiest Soles: Erotic Stories About Feet and Shoes
4.UFOs, Aliens,Impregnated Women,Extraterrestrials And God:Sex with Reptilians, Alien Motherhood,The Bible,Abductions and Hybrids
5.Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects

Strangely, my books were extremely unpopular and included no reviews whatsoever. Believe me, I looked! These titles must be self-evidently brilliant.

On The 12th Thing of NEFLIN, Dr Bloggles said...

I've got the wiki fever. I really liked the concept of being able to secretly edit someone else's work, in the manner of an online Peeping Bloggles. I wanted to practice my technique first, so I went to the Wiki Sandbox to begin. However I couldn't resist the chance to meddle, so I searched for "Russian" and I found a page where Wikimedia, the website itself, displays actual photos of its Russian business license. In the 2.0 spirit I tried to alter some of the documents, but you can imagine my surprise when the site warned me that my IP address would appear with every change. So I guess this isn't quite the Wild West atmosphere I was looking for. Here is a copy of one of the documents. I think the wiki concept can be good for research if it is used as a starting point, in order to get some basic context, terminology, or facts and then to know better where and how to look for authoritative information elsewhere. I can go to a wiki entry for antidepressant medications, for example, so that I know what medicines are normally given to people for those conditions so that I know what to put on the bottles of frozen dung pelletts that I prescribe to my patients. If I was depressed I would know to go to another, authoritative site or to ask a real doctor. The only information format I would ban would be 8-tracks.

This Thing Goes To Eleven

I've been Diggin' things lately after learning about this Thing. I never knew there were so many Things to Digg! I used to dig mostly to bury found objects that proved to be radioactive, like that "solar powered" tanning bed. It was just the latrine from a failed nuclear sub. I didn't think that tans were supposed to smell like that. I think that Digg can help me discover new websites that I haven't heard of before by linking to the most popular stories on the Digg home page, since it does take you directly to the original piece and you can explore from there. For example, Digg had a highly rated story from something called Time magazine called "When S--- Happens." I clicked on it, seduced by the temptation of a hinted-at piece of hyphenated scatalogical teasing, and then after I internalized my fierce disappointment into a reservoir of rage for future revenge in an unrelated situtation, I was able to read other stories, like this sophisticated political analysis entitled "Senate Constipation."
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2008/07/30/senate_constipation/

Tenathing Williams

I left a bookmark on a patient once when I dropped my copy of Gorbachev's memoirs on her exposed sciatic nerve nerve (I was airing it out). This website is good for research for me because I often can't remember the medical websites I collect. They usually have non-standard Nigerian domain names or exist on off-shore shrimp boats broadcasting from a hand-held radar dish. And they change a lot, sometimes right when I'm looking at something on the screen, because the maritime commerce and medication laws change in real time. Delicious will help me keep track of these Interweb Gems and to tag them so I can keep my surgical sites separate from my malpractice websites and keep both of them separate from my Somali pirate radio lingo websites, which I need for ready reference.

Thing That Has Nine Lives

Thing I Eight

Dr. Bloggles says that Instant Messaging is better than instant coffee but not as good as an instant massage. I like to spread the joy of Bloggles across the tundra, and sometimes I don't have time for email. Email is for three-toed sloths and human dinosaurs who do their banking on an abacus.

My library uses email to mail things electronically. We do email reference, which is important out here. Last night I answered a query from a U2 spy plane pilot who needed some directions. We also use email as an internal communication tool. I am the only staff member, but I find it helpful to facilitate communication between the better angels of my nature and the nihilistic harlot living in my belly.

Web conferencing is another 2.0 tool that is highly prized in the Siberian wastes. This is a good way for a self-taught surgeon like me to brush up on new techniques like anaesthetic. I watched a webinar the other day on gal bladder surgery. It was very useful to be able to learn in the convenience of my own space and to be able to ask questions of the presenter in real time. I should have waited to begin my operation until after I watched the webinar instead of trying to follow along, but this is a learning process. It took me a few tries to remember to electronically raise my hand instead of actually raising my hand, which led to what we call in the biz "elective incisions."

I am an active user of text messaging on my phone. It can be imperfect, however. I like to keep in touch with some of my dozens of mongrel children. I am hoping that one of them will have an abnormality to earn a circus pension for its father. But one time I was walking to the crafts store through the snow and I saw a Russian Orthodox trader on a frozen lake on Lent. Knowing what an emergency this was, I texted the authorities ROTFLOL and I got nothing for my troubles but a KGB warning not to waste the airwaves.

I attended the OPAL webinar program detailing the life of Pt Barnum. It was interesting but did not give detailed instructions for obtaining a Soviet Circus Pension for my mutant offspring. So I give it an "8" in honor of the Thing.

Lucky Thing Number 7

Thing VI

Number Five of The Things

Flickr is what the TV in my waiting room does during the test firing of the government's nuclear missiles. It is also a photo website. I searched for caribou again, and I was quite surprised to find that someone had posted a picture of my examination table (see photo on right). This table was made via donation from one of my caribou patients who had been suffering from an addiction to biting his nails. Telling him that he in fact had no fingers or fingernails did not seem to do the trick, so I had no choice but to do a quadruple amputation. Happily, the patient is doing well, thougfh he doesn't get around like he used to. Honestly, I think he's kind of mad at me. Thank god for release forms (he signed before I cut off his arms).

Here's the link: http://flickr.com/photos/barndance03/239844247/

Feeng Fore

I have successfully submitted to the power of the Gulag...I mean Google reader. I see many posts from blogs and I have successfully subscribed to 3 additional feeds. When I mention "feed" my caribou get very aggressive, so I am working to tame my habit of speaking the words as I type.

Theeng Threeeeeeee3

At first I thought Technorati was the name of the new Italian dictator, but now I see that it is a search engine for blogs. And better yet, it isn't even limited to blogs about fascism! I eagerly performed several searches using important newsworthy terms like reindeer, caribou, and Siberia. Technorati generated many blogy tidbits, but I did have trouble finding anything very relevant to my query. I found lots of bits about "Caribou Barbie" and exploding satellites but not much about the actual animals. Finally after reviewing several hits I did locate one young blogger who described the caribou's "embarrassing habit of pawing the snow for food." Well, my caribou likes to paw me for food (and sometimes just for fun) so that's not much help.

I repeated my search in IceRocket, hoping at first that this was an express train across the Sea of Okhotsk to the shores of Japan, but actually it was just more blogs. I repeated my "caribou" search. This time I received more appropriate bestial hits, although I also generated some blogs in French (purty words, but I didn't understand 'em.) Benito Technorati let me filter out by language so that was a bit easier. IceRocket produced several blogs about environmental policy appropriate to my query, as well as one post that also appeared in my Technorati search. What's Russian for deja-vu?

Theeng Too

I have been away on the tundra tending to my many duties. Yes, Dr. Bloggles makes house calls. Although they are really more like yurt calls. I like to say "show me where it yurts" when I arrive. It's good to see a toothless smile shining through a jaundiced face.


Anyhow, as I dry my reindeer chaps on a newsprint fire I have been pondering the nature of library 2.0 and how it will affect my library. Mine is a small branch, consisting of one staff member (me) so I'm very interested in connecting with the larger world out there. For example, I'm really curious about this Y2K thing...is that like Library 2.0?


I see lots to like in the potential of 2.0. I can imagine myself finding new sources for many things that are hard to get out here. If I could get, for example, an RSS feed notifying me when my favorite medieval medical supply website gets in the new leeches I would be happy as a rutting caribou. I also like the idea of tagging items so that I can, for example, let colleagues know how well the chakra magnets worked for that case of equine demonic possession (not at all! Should not have bought generic!) I am also interested in the idea of photo sharing...in my neighborhood Flicker is something you mostly do in mosquito season. But it would be nice to document the progressive and untreatable conditions that nearly all of my patients seem to have in order to protect myself from litigation.


I do worry, however, that we may be a bit paranoid about the application of this "new technology." I remember when they introduced new things in the past. Some, like antibiotics, were great but overhyped and overused. I've got a three-headed trout in my koi pond that is not responding to any antibiotics, go figure! Other new ideas (Bolshevism comes to mind) didn't seem to take. So I'm understandably skeptical. I remember long ago when the organic communal farm co-op (slave labor prison) tried to switch over to new Coke in the employee cafeteria. Morale plummeted and they were soon forced to return to Coke classic.


The thing is that they might have done better worrying about running an efficient work-labor camp. They could have worried more about having the latest and greatest in psychological torture methods instead of what kind of soda was in the vending machine. Their business was human deprivation, not beverages. So my argument is that the innovation needs to be focused in ways that make direct and practical sense instead of being merely part of a trend or a paranoia about being relevant. If they can learn to subjugate and torture in new and innovative ways, then by all means innovate. If they are worried that subjugation and torture are not in demand anymore, then it's time to go into a new business (consulting?) and the relevancy argument is already lost.

I feel my moment of clarity is on the wane...the shadows gather...what light through yonder window breaks, mommy....

Theeng Won.

Eye Mayke Blawg...Iye doo goowde.