Showing posts with label Just for fun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Just for fun. Show all posts

Monday, January 05, 2009

Not quite a blogthing

I did take a Blogthings quiz this morning while catching up with my Bloglines account; it was a New Year's, or more aptly old year themed, titled How Much Do You Remember 2008? I finished with a relatively passable 80%, but was ultimately more interested in the "blogchain" posted on Walt at Random (via Ruminations and several other blogs of note) at the end of December. Posts I also found going through my 1300+ blog updates. Here goes.



The 99 Things Meme

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.
This blog is my first personal blog, I started with a work blog and moved along. Currently I own and/or contribute to eight different blogs.

2. Slept under the stars.
We had a trailer and camped through my childhood. Sleeping under the stars near a campfire has much to offer.

3. Played in a band.
Hmm, where to start? I was in marching bands and concert bands from the fourth grade through college. Yep, a big ole band geek I started with the flute, then piccolo, french horn, oboe, and mellophone.

4. Visited Hawaii.
Would love to do this, if only I could convince myself to be on an airplane that long.

5. Watched a meteor shower.

6. Given more than you can afford to charity.
I've given, but honestly it has never been more than I could afford.

7. Been to Disneyland/World.
My family visited Walt Disney World in Florida during it's inaugural season, camping with close friends. I've been lucky enough to visit a second time as a that band geek in senior high school, and a third time during a family trip about ten years ago. Though I didn't have Mickey Mouse Ears, I did get a Donald Duck hat (the beak squeaked). As with many librarians at ALA in Anaheim last summer, I was on the Disney property during the conference. I was able to see fireworks from my hotel room at night.

8. Climbed a mountain.

9. Held a praying mantis.
Picked up a lot of critters when I was a kid.

10. Sang a solo.

11. Bungee jumped. (So not going to happen)

12. Visited Paris.

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea.

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch.

15. Adopted a child.

16. Had food poisoning.

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

18. Grown your own vegetables.

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France.

20. Slept on an overnight train.

21. Had a pillow fight.
I have two sisters, we camped every summer when I was a kid, do the math.

22. Hitch hiked.

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill.
I prefer to think of it as more like a mental health day ...

24. Built a snow fort.
I'm originally from PA, we got lots if snow when I was a child.

25. Held a lamb.

26. Gone skinny dipping.

27. Run a marathon.

28. Ridden a gondola in Venice.

29. Seen a total eclipse.

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset.
It's hard to decide which is more beautiful. I was able to see a sunset from the window during my plane ride back to Columbus last summer; we were high enough the world was curved around the sun. Fabulous.

31. Hit a home run.

32. Been on a cruise.

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person.
People argue that one side is better than the other. If you have seen the falls it does not matter which border you are viewing from, it's a fantastic sight. I recommend riding the Maid of the Mist and seeing them up close.

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors.

35. Seen an Amish Community.
I live in north-central Ohio and see Amish at the Walmart. As a child, we did visit Amish villages (more camping trips).

36. Taught yourself a new language.

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied.

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person.

39. Gone rock climbing.

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.

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight.
A long time ago I lived in South Carolina, about an hour from Myrtle Beach. It was common for several of us to visit during the off season. Walking on the beach in the winter is quite invigorating.

46. Been transported in an ambulance.
While working in Spencer Gifts (another lifetime) we were building displays and I dropped a partition on my foot. It was broken and required a trip to the nearby hosptial.

47. Had your portrait painted.

48. Gone deep sea fishing.

49. Seen the Sistene chapel in person.

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkelling.

52. Kissed in the rain.
I'm not going to kiss and tell ...

53. Played in the mud.
Hasn't everyone?

54. Gone to a drive-in theatre.
The family trailer was pulled by a station wagon which was perfect for drive-in movie night. We would wear our pajamas, grab blankets, and put the seats down to see movies. It was great!

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.

60. Served at a soup kitchen.

61. Sold Girl Scout cookies.
Both a brownie and a girl scout, I sold my share of cookies. One year our house was the cookie box house, everyone came to get their orders. I have never seen so many cookie boxes in my life.

62. Gone whale watching.

63. Gotten flowers for no reason.
Each year we get a group of doctoral students to mentor at the library. I once got flowers from one of my mentees as a thank you.

64. Donated blood.

65. Gone sky diving.

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp.

67. Bounced a cheque.
Well, it was a "check," but still an annoying occurance. As anyone who's done it knows soon the penalties for the bouncing amount to more than the check.

68. Flown in a helicopter.

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy.
I had, actually still have, not only several of my Barbie dolls and comic books, but also a doll named Velvet. She was Crissy's cousin. If you pushed her belly-button you could "grow" (actually pull) her hair longer. A knob on her back turned to return her hair inside. She came with a purple velvet dress and my grandmother used to make her clothes.

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial.
Those family camping trips again, as well as the requisite seventh grade class trip to Washington, DC.

71. Eaten Caviar.

72. Pieced a quilt.

73. Stood in Times Square.

74. Toured the Everglades.

75. Been fired from a job.

76. Seen the Changing of the Guard in London.

77. Broken a bone.
On more than one occassion (as noted above on the ambulance trip). For me the first time was when I was five year's old and we were playing between the houses on a spring-like February afternoon. I slipped and the rest is history.

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle.

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person.

80. Published a book.

81. Visited the Vatican.

82. Bought a brand new car.
The first car I ever bought was a Ford Mustang. I drove it until the engine fell out (literally, it was awful) at over 100,000 miles. Couldn't afford to replace or repair and had to let it go.

83. Walked in Jerusalem.

84. Had your picture in the newspaper.

85. Read the entire Bible.

86. Visited the White House.
Actually, I remember touring the White House back when you were allowed to be inside some of the public rooms.

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating (so not going to happen).

88. Had chickenpox.
I had it, my two sisters had it, what joy.

89. Saved someone’s life.

90. Sat on a jury.

91. Met someone famous.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips signed my book at ALA last summer. She's famous as far as I'm concerned.

92. Joined a book club.

93. Lost a loved one.
My mom, not quite a year ago.

94. Had a baby.

95. Seen the Alamo in person.
I made a point to visit the Alamo when at ALA mid-winter two years ago. It was my first ALA conference.

96. Swum in the Great Salt Lake.

97. Been involved in a law suit.

98. Owned a cell phone.
Yes, yes, I have a cell phone and even sometimes remember to turn it on!

99. Been stung by a bee.

Friday, December 12, 2008

A picture's worth

A post this morning on LJ Insider reminded me that for some time now I have wanted to take a closer look at Wordle: Beautiful Word Clouds. Similar in nature to tag clouds, where the image is generated to illustrate the number of times a term is tagged in a blog or other application, Wordle creates a cloud from all of the words. They say it best:

"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."


I created two Wordle's. For the first, I entered this blog's URL and naturally played around with font, color, layout, and generally anything they would let me do because I could.



For the second Wordle I used yesterday's post with different results. When I used the persistent URL to the post it generated a picture almost identical to the whole blog. The second time I cut and pasted the text from the post and got this:



My guess is it was generating from the whole feed as opposed to a specific portion. Either way it is an interesting visual and could be an interesting tool for classroom use under controlled circumstance as they have a gallery freely accessible and no filters.

Below is one final image, because I have another ten minutes on my lunch break and wanted to play. This is the image of Wednesday's post with a little more color variation (I used mostly black on the others so it would show on the green blog background).
I found it interesting, or maybe telling is more appropriate, the words ACRL, accepted, conference, and national are very prominent (yes, yes, it works like tag clouds and the more a word is used the bigger it displays ... but still). Over all, it kind of looks like an acorn.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Hand gestures?

No, not that kind of hand gesture, an early-in-the-workday Blogthings quiz. There were two options today; I found this one more interesting than learning if I could spot a liar. Plus, the hand gesture in question was neither offensive nor a disappointment.


You Are an "A-OK"



Your life philosophy can be summed up as, "Whatever will be, will be."

Your greatest wish is to live each day a little better than the next.

You are naturally calm and stable. Some people would call you a rock.

You feel one with the world. You are a spiritual person, though no one who knows you would guess it.

Friday, July 18, 2008

It's just me

A quick perusal of myBloglines account uncovered this post courtesy of Infodoodads, Is that site downforeveryoneorjustme? It is a way to see if a web site problem belongs to the site, or if it is inherent to only your computer. Naturally I had to try it, first with Amazon.

Not quite the response I was expecting, so I tried Blogger.

Great, I was just getting ready to post about this site and Blogger is reported down (it wasn't as this post proves). Now that I am batting a thousand, I decided to try Bloglines since I was successfully reading feeds from my account. Finally ...

All was not lost, it was fun to play with and thanks to Infodoodads I learned what it means to prairie-dog your cube neighbor. Since two of the sites said they were down when I had them open in other windows, I am left to wonder (and wander after lunch).

Sunday, July 13, 2008

To early in OC

ALA scheduled their annual conference in Anaheim, Orange County, California, a week or so too early; we missed the 30th Annual Mooning of Amtrak festivities by a mere ten days! Seems this started twenty odd years ago when a patron at a nearby saloon said he'd buy a drink for anyone who went out and mooned the train (Mooning Amtrak Trains). What an interesting picture for AL Direct or ALA Cognotes that would have been! The website disclaimer reads ...

"Attending this event may be hazardous due to the large concentration of silly people cars, motorcycles, motorhomes, concrete vehicle wheel-stops, potholes & cracks in the road & parking-lots and dangerous pets. Everyone present is responsible for their own actions. If you trip on something, or hurt yourself, you alone are responsible. There is no one to sue. No one either promotes this nor charges admission. If you do come, act safely! If you're accident prone, please don't come, go somewhere else where you'll be safer. Neither Mugs Away Saloon, The City of Laguna Niguel nor Amtrak, nor Metrolink are responsible for this event, nor for assuring your safety. The City & the railroad would rather you didn't bother coming to this event. No one is carrying public liability insurance for this. Besides, would any insurance underwriter insure an event called, "Mooning Amtrak"?" - Mooning Amtrak Trains, Southern California.


You just can't make this stuff up!

Friday, January 04, 2008

What's in a name

Each time I succumb to one more Blogthings personality test I am reminded of my college freshman psychology course. The professor instructed several (I do not recall how many ... long, long, loooong time ago) people to write a paragraph about what we did over the summer and he would then analyze our handwriting. Next class period students were given a personalized analysis and we were asked to determine its possible validity. Everyone was able to make some judgments and a few were outright surprised at how close the analysis was to their perception of personality; only thing was, each of us was given the exact same paragraph.

Today's tantalizing Blogthings quiz was "What's Your Name's Hidden Meaning?" I could not pass up the opportunity to test my first name against my middle name (used here for blogging). Interestingly enough the first name was more accurate, but given the millions of people who share a name and a broad based interpretation there of, it was bound to hit on at least one aspect correctly. Now it's time to share:

My Name Means:

You are balanced, orderly, and organized.
You like your ducks in a row.
You are powerful and competent,
especially in the workplace.
People can see you as stubborn and headstrong.
You definitely have a dominant personality.

You tend to be pretty tightly wound.
It's easy to get you excited...
which can be a good or bad thing.
You have a lot of enthusiasm,
but it fades rather quickly.
You don't stick with any one thing for very long.
You have the drive to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time.
Your biggest problem is making sure you finish the projects you start.

You are usually the best at everything ...
you strive for perfection.
You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive.
You have the classic "Type A" personality.

You are very intuitive and wise.
You understand the world better than most people.
You also have a very active imagination.
You often get carried away with your thoughts.
You are prone to a little paranoia and jealousy.
You sometimes go overboard in interpreting signals.

You are friendly, charming, and warm.
You get along with almost everyone.
You work hard not to rock the boat.
Your easy going attitude brings people together.
At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible.
But for the important things, you pull it together.


I take a bit of umbrage at the thought I "can be a little flaky and irresponsible" but feel since it balances out with being "very intuitive and wise" I will not complain!

Tags:

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Hypothetically, not a genius

My bloglines account ultimately led me to this fun little blog toy, The Blog Readability Test. Yes, by simply submitting my blog URL it is possible to find out "what level of education is required to understand your blog." Obviously made for curious souls such as my self (re: those willing to play with the goofy blog toy); hey, I check out my Pirate name courtesy of Blogthings on Talk like a pirate day, I was game for the test. Not including this particularly intellectually stellar post, my blog readability appears to be:



I am not sure how long this lovely readability image will remain, there was a cheesy advertisement link attached to the end of the image URL and I removed it before posting. I checked another blog I write, the collaborative library project, and learned it has a genius rating. Obviously the other contributors are taking up the slack for my college level writing skills (at least it was post grad). Thank heavens for smart peers and collaborative partners.

Anyway, thanks to Walt at Randomfor his post about Readability.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Ahoy, mateys!

It's that time again, September 19, 2007 ... Talk Like a Pirate Day!

This just in from the Blogthings pirate name generator:


Your Pirate Name Is...

Lieutenant-Colonel Sweet Waters



Interested in learning more about "Talk Like a Pirate Day?"

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Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Predicting the unpredictable

Will Harry live or die? Is Voldemort evil personified? Is Dumbledore really dead? Is Snape truly a bad guy? And what about Ron, Hermoine, and Ginny? Every day there is another article and one more prediction about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I am a Harry Potter fan, not fanatic - just a muggle born fan - and eagerly await the arrival of my copy (I ordered it through the library's book jobber) this week. It seems the only thing that can authentically be predicted is that people will invariably have predictons about the end!

Here are just a few "predictions" I found today:

I also found a very cool interactive prediction resource, Ultimate Deathly Hallow Prediction Exam from The Leaky Cauldron. Not for the faint of heart, this multi-part exam covers a plethora of possibilities for Harry. Users need only to enter a name and email address to become part of the fracas. Plus, you get a cool blog widget to let other people see your predictions. Alas I made it through only four of the quiz pages before my lunch hour was finished, but I will be able to return and finish at my leisure.

Hmmm, wonder if J.K. Rowling has taken the quiz? If so, she's messed up the curve for the rest of us seeing she's the only one who knows for sure how things end (okay, there are those editors and her husband, but still).


Update: 7/18/07

A Good Morning America Harry Potter teaser claiming to know the "secret" caught my attention this morning before work. I checked online and found Final Harry Potter Now in "Hollows" of Internet (shouldn't that be "hallows"?).

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Monday, June 11, 2007

Quick Library humor

If you don't read Unshelved, the library comic strip, by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum, you should.

"Welcome to Unshelved, the world's only daily comic strip set in a public library! Writer Gene Ambaum (the made-up name of a real-life librarian) and co-writer and artist Bill Barnes have been publishing since February 16, 2002. Some of the stories are made up, some of them are based on real life, and some are absolutely true stories sent to us from our readers. And the stranger the story, the more likely it is to be true."(Unshelved Primer, 6/11/07)

Today's strip struck features "library" questions at the reference desk, I would love to post it, but you can read it here.


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Thursday, March 08, 2007

I am chocolate cake

No big surprise here ...


You Are a Chocolate Cake



Fun, comforting, and friendly.

You are a true classic, and while you're not super cutting edge, you're high quality.

People love your company - and have even been known to get addicted to you.