Online videos

YouTube: fun! But really hit & miss unless you are looking for something specific. The viewer ratings are really valuable. Could spend a lot of time here. Or, could spend a lot of time outside, doing something fun of my own! There's definitely a cultural shift that's gone on, and to ignore YouTube is to ignore that aspect of pop culture. Sort of like shrugging off TV. You can, and you can be perfectly happy(ier) doing so, but you'll also miss out on a lot of the common humor and references of the time. That can have greater implications that it would initially appear. As what felt like one of only about three teenagers in the universe that didn't have access to MTV, I think I'll make up for a little of that lost cultural reference on YouTube.

Quickie on wiki

Just toured the wiki for Stevens County and for KRL. So glad to have had an intro to the land of wikis -- have heard about them for a long time but didn't really have a sense of what they are. I'm not a web cruiser -- more a user, on & off as needed, not for entertainment, so have tended to stick with the type of websites I know & trust. This KRL2pt0 project is opening up whole new expanses of info & experiences. Now just need to weed through & determine what will be the most useful & interesting new tools to use, and train myself into new habits. Easier said than done. I'm grateful for the experience, though. This is training like I've had nowhere else, and something I would've never done on my own (wouldn't have know where to start, or even what to start.) So this is all good.

As for the wikis -- the Stevens County one reminded me a lot of an online tourism project I've been working on for another county, except without the gorgeous photos. Interesting. As a new user I hadn't a clue what the difference between "category" and "portal" was -- they aren't familiar terms for webpages (are they akin to "services" and "links"?). If so, it seems that would deter new wiki users (like me) from clicking further.

As for the KRL wiki -- the PR dept page should include press release updates. It would also be nice to have committee meetings & committee work handled this way (just like the Common Sense demo of the camping trip.) Sure would save a lot of email.

Flickr flutter

It's interesting -- I've used Flickr professionally, uploading photos to a group account for a project, but haven't explored it as a private party viewer until today. I'm still not a fan. Ticked off a little by the idea that artists must give our art away in order to be in the current millenium. Perhaps over-Internetted for tonight. Over saturated. (Under-vacationed???! haha) (As I write, my partner is in the balmy islands of Hawaii at a conference, and here it rains and blows and I am working....grumble grumble).

Enough for tonight. Why post if it's not a good? At least it's authentic.

Feed me -- does that mean I'm Gen X? Gen Y?

Just spent waaaaaaayyyyy too long trying to catch up on the krl2pt0 assigments. Got SO VERY sidetracked in completing the RSS task....becuase it led me to so many interesting things! I'm not a net surfer, but to have info delivered to me once it was narrowed down a bit to my interests...very cool! I didn't really jump on the tagging wagon....I can see the benefits, maybe, but the bug didn't bite me. The RSS stuff is different though. I like it!

Tagging

So I am just finishing up the tagging assignment for KRL2pt0. It feels very much like learning to use new software or a new keyboard or someone else's computer.....awkaward, but I have a sense that it could be useful once the awkwardness goes away. I tagged random pages from my Favorites files (a website I was a part of creating, some resource sites I use for my business, and a watersports club site). The geek in me found it was fun to see some people had already tagged some of those sites ("so the rest of the world really is using this stuff -- this isn't just busywork that our IT department was putting us through!:)"). I was then surprised to see that the WA Kayak Club site -- a very busy site for a large club in a techno-savy region of the country -- hadn't been tagged yet. Hmmm...

43 Things I Might Want to Do This Year

The "20 Reasons" article was great. (The MSOD in me particularly loved it.) But, the "43 Things" article got me thinking. Here is my first go at a list. Think of it as a digital time capsule that I get to open up on October 25 next year....

43 Things I Might Want to Do This Year:

1. Hike into the Grand Canyon
2. Hike out of the Grand Canyon
3. Really look at web design as another facet of my business
4. Start homeschooling with my little one
5. Watch "The Killing Fields"
6. Paint my office
7. Buy a new house
8. Sell this house
9. Visit my friend in Tucson before she moves
10. Rebuild our photo website
11. Post our "B" photos to Flickr as a tool to drive visitors to our site
12. Make time to read more books
13. Get a new desktop computer
14. Visit China, VietNam, Korea, Thailand or ????
15. Take our little one to the prospective parents night at the adoption agency
16. Get a new bed
17. Get a new hairstyle/color
18. Add Flash to my website
19. Earn an iPod!
20. Buy investment property
21. Go to a photography workshop with my partner
22. Join the local photo club
23. Join a pro photographer association
24. Rebuild my business website
25. Finish (need to start, first) the Illustrator training
26. Exercise every day
27. Save a little every month & go out to a very nice dinner without worrying about the $ we're spending
28. Build a sandbox or a treehouse or a playstructure
29. Get software & a computer for our little one
30. Teach little one to do something new
31. Earn more, and work equal or less, in my regular business (raise rates, or be more selective, or be more efficient, or all of the above?)
32. Stop drinking soft drinks
33. Grow a garden that feeds us
34. Learn to snowboard?
35. Kayak more
36. Spend more time with my son
37. Upgrade to CS3
38. Build a family photobook
39. Write and send pictures to little one's birthfamily and foster family
40. Enter a real photo contest
41. See my friend on stage in Portland
42. Finish my tribal dance top
43. Get rid of a lot of stuff that we don't need. Simplify. Less stuff = more time to play.