0 Down the Rabbit Hole - Sat 26 Feb 2011

Basically, the Internet is a rabbit burrow of cosmic proportions. If you're like me, you wander in, looking for one little thing and emerge 5 hours later not knowing where you are (and usually without getting the "thing" you were after in the first place!).

This is okay on a 38 degree day when you're in an air-conditioned room and don't have to be anywhere anytime anyway, but most of the time it's inconvenient and can take an immense amount of willpower to find what you were looking for and get out while you can.

If you're in Perth, you know today is a 38 degree day and perfect for getting lost down the online rabbit hole - which leads me to share with you some of the cool things I have encountered online today:

1. The must-have owl design leather handbag - how have I lived to the ripe old age of 32 without one of these things?! Available in a rainbow of colours, apparently "the slight tilt of the owl's beak makes it look more vivid!" This would probably work as a great theft deterrent, given the way the owl stares at you with those deadly eyes, threatening to take off your hand everytime you go for your keys. If a handbag's not your thing, there is also the backpack.

2. The thumb piano - no musical background is needed to play the thumb piano! I'm not sure how it sounds, but it sure looks pretty funky - and how can you go wrong with something made from a gourd! If you're looking to buy me a Christmas present this year, here's my suggestion - please don't buy me a thumb piano, I'd prefer an owl handbag instead.




3. Finally, I must profess my love for Panjabi MC and share with you the video for his song "Jogi". I have to say I really, really love it - even though there's not a thumb piano in sight! Enjoy :)

2 In which Saire is thrilled by an Orchestral performance - Sun 20 Feb 2011

Having reached an all new level of Neanderthal-like hermitry in recent weeks (you know, never leaving the house and barely covering your nakedness with rags just in case someone happens to see through the window), I figured it was high time to Step Away from the Console and Do Something ™.


Thus, prompted by the involvement of the lovely Alethea, last night I ventured to the wilds of Midland, to see a performance by the Hills Symphony Orchestra.


The theme for the night was "Spot The Segue", in which each piece of music the orchestra played was somehow linked to the preceding piece, and the delightful Conductor would invoke the audience to call out between tunes if they had "spotted" the segue. Alas, this game was way beyond my pre-school level knowledge of classical music, and much of the Conductor's in-joke commentary was lost on my ignorant ears.


BUT, music is the universal language, and once the orchestra began to play, I could understand completely. What a fantastic performance it was, with music including an excerpt from Scheherezade, the hauntingly beautiful Greensleeves and, in an encore performance, the crowd-pleasing Toreador's Song from Carmen. My favourite piece for the night was Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights from Romeo and Juliet - Op. 64: 13 (Alethea, please correct me if this is wrong!).


Seeing the Hills Symphony Orchestra was the best $5 I've spent since Coles last had that 2 for 1 deal on Omo washing powder. Very impressive. 


For your viewing pleasure, I have included a video of the London Symphony Orchestra performing Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights here. Behold the excellence! :

7 Lazy

I have been lazy this week and have yet to do any Web 2.0 study, and given I didn't get out of bed today until around midday, I think you can see how this weekend is going to go.

However.

In the spirit of keeping my blog somewhat up-to-date and for your viewing pleasure, I have three things to share.

1. My Christmas tree:

The tree is about 180cm tall. Note the red and gold theme, and lack of tinsel. Choosing a colour theme and omitting tinsel are techniques a seasoned tree decorator recently shared with me, to try and make your tree look more like a Myer tree. However, I have recently seen both Alethea and GozzieHoon's trees which have well-placed tinsel, and they look pretty fab. So, my advice is if you are going to use tinsel, I would suggest you use it sparingly.

I made the gold bows myself out of 5 metres of wired gold ribbon. If you want to do this yourself, I suggest using at least 10 metres of ribbon (or more) for a tree this size, as 5 metres proved to not be enough :P

2. Cool (and useful) little website:

The Literature Map   <-----  click here

The literature map basically shows "who writes like" author names, but in a cute and animated way. It's not as detailed as NoveList, for example, but you don't need a database subscription or library card to use it. Check it out!

3. Study like a scholar, scholar

You may have seen this before, as I "borrowed" the link from another Library's blog, but I love it so much I just have to share it here for anyone that hasn't already seen it. It's a play on the famous "I'm on a horse" Old Spice ad. Enjoy :)

5 Wiki Wiki

With any luck, this will be a wiki wiki post, though once I get going one can never be sure when I'll stop!


The word "wiki" is supposed to have derived from the Hawaiian "wiki wiki" meaning quick or speedy. If you think about a wiki website, the name makes a lot of sense, given that a wiki allows multiple contributors to update information quite quickly.


If you've ever looked at Wikipedia (which would have to be the best wiki in the world) on the day of a major event - say, the swearing in of the prime minister - you will generally find that this new information about both the person and the nation has already been updated.


Apart from Wikipedia, the wiki I look at most often can be found here. Yes, it is The Vault, a Fallout wiki, and it is quite possibly the second best wiki in the world (though this has yet to be proven).

I have visited The Vault many times when I've been stuck on one particular part of Fallout, or if I can't work out how to do something (like make my avatar move the way I want, for example). If you take a look at The Vault, you can see it has over 11000 pages, meaning it has thousands of contributors and a plethora of information about the history of the game, it's characters, different cities in the Fallout universe and the best ways to play.


When I was a Library student, I remember we had a dreaded group assignment (in my opinion, group assignments are a kind of cruel, and unfortunately not unusual, form of torture inflicted on students so that Lecturers have less marking to do - am I wrong?). We found that the best way for our group to work on this - a group which included students who traveled a long way to the University, was through a wiki. At that stage, I had never contributed to one before and wasn't even sure what to do, but given that they are so easy to edit and update, I found working on that particular group assignment almost painless.


Well, this post is fast becoming very non wiki wiki, so I shall leave it for now. Suffice to say, I am a pro-wikiite and can really see the benefit in using them - they're the perfect way to share information, which is what I imagine the internet was created for in the first place ...


P.S. How awesome are those Common Craft videos by Lee LeFever? Here's one you won't see in the Web 2.0 training (it's a Youtube video, so you may not be able to see it at work):