I joined the 23 Things on a Stick Ning way back at Thing 21. Okay, that was only five Things ago, but given the break between the two sets of Things, that was also five months ago. Not that I did much then. Heck, I'd joined Ning itself even earlier, May 2008, in conjunction with the Midwest Library Technology Conference, and hadn't done much with it then.
This time around, I am putting slightly more effort into the Ning. I finally got around to answering a friend request from last fall (in my defense, I thought I had accepted that request back when it was made), and I've just accepted another one. I've also left some comments on a wall. As it turns out, we're discussing knitting, not the 23 Things, but it's communication. (I swear, knitting has gotten me further in networking than my professional responsibilities ever have).
I have glanced over the Ning widgets and I'm not finding them compelling. For all that Ning can be used for just about any interest, because of the two groups I'm part of, it feels professional to me and no, I don't really want to add BuddyPoke! ("Express yourself! Hug, kiss, tickle, or punch your friends with your own personalized 3D avatar") to a professional group.
I considered joining another Ning group, perhaps one more in tune with my extracurricular interests. Oddly, I'm not coming up with anything. A search for "knitting" netted me some photos, but no groups--not that I really need another knitting group in my life, since I have Ravelry. "Writing" is far too general; "journaling," far too specific. Of course, the beauty of Ning is that I could run out and create groups for anything I searched for and didn't find. But that's not me. This is partly because my schedule is just crowded right now and partly because I'm only a half-hearted social networker at best. Give me an actual network of people I'm familiar with and I will participate pretty regularly. But starting one and luring people into it? Nah. I'd never follow through.
I did add the 23 Things Ning badge to my blog way back when. Indeed, that redesign that I mention in the most recent in-between thing was prompted by my realizing that the new template I'd chosen was cutting off the right edge of the badge. So if I hadn't been able to get DISQUS to work, could I have blamed Ning?
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
in-between thing: disqus and blogger
Not being entirely satisfied with my new template, I changed it. What with DISQUS being tangled in the HTML, it changed as well. Now, regardless of whether a post has comments or not, it says "View Comments" instead of giving me the correct number (usually "0 Comments," but occasionally people do say things). Tried reinstalling DISQUS and apparently the code went in twice because it then said "0 Comments 0 Comments." This is when I learned that DISQUS's help files are practically nonexistent (the one for Blogger is "Coming Soon"). Okay, world, I'm not positively impressed by this!
[a few minutes later] Fixed this! I can't believe I figured out to fix this; I don't speak XML. Pure intuition--and it happened to work this time. But I don't think I should have had to rely on intuition in this situation. Surely many people who use DISQUS wish to redesign their blogs at some point.
[a few minutes later] Fixed this! I can't believe I figured out to fix this; I don't speak XML. Pure intuition--and it happened to work this time. But I don't think I should have had to rely on intuition in this situation. Surely many people who use DISQUS wish to redesign their blogs at some point.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
in-between thing: disqus
Ha. With an actual post, I see how DISQUS works. Yay: no one will be forced to sign up with DISQUS if they don't want to!
(No, I'm not saying how it works. If you've made it this far and you're curious, come comment on something from Thing 25 onwards. :) Yes, that's only two posts. I'm trying.)
(No, I'm not saying how it works. If you've made it this far and you're curious, come comment on something from Thing 25 onwards. :) Yes, that's only two posts. I'm trying.)
Thing 25: Bloggers' Toolkit
Okay, I got it: gadgets and widgets are blog bling. If I used enough of these, I could so successfully camoflage my writing that no one would ever find it.
The easiesttoys gadgets and widgets were the ones that required the least effort on my part (duh). Since all I had to do to take advantage of the Typealyzer and the Blog Readability Test was to plug my blog's address into a box, they were the first I played with. I'm really hoping that my blog's postgrad readability rating doesn't mean that 23 Distractions is about as pleasant to read as the worst academic writing! Also, 23 Distractions scores as an ESTP blog. I'm an INTJ, and I'm spending way too much time trying to puzzle out how an anonymous computer somewhere was so off-base.
Moving on to more serious/functional stuff, I eventually decided to sign up for DISQUS. I went back and forth on this because I couldn't figure out from what I was seeing how it improved anything. I suppose I signed up for it mostly to see how it worked. Although now I'm confused: since I had to shut Blogger's comments down to get DISQUS to work, do readers have to be signed into DISQUS to make any comments at all? Gah.
Site statistics intrigue me. I'm delaying signing up for any, however, since most of them looked like overkill. But I would certainly try to set them up on a library blog: we all know libraries live and die by their statistics! So far, this hasn't seemed like a blog that would benefit from adding audio or video gadgets. If I were writing a more personal blog, though, I'd probably want to add photos and the occasional video. As for a professional blog, I'm certain we could find a use for those widgets. With this particular blog, though, it really would be bling: flashy, eye-catching, but not much in the way of functional.
The time consumption is pretty high for this Thing. Installation and sign-up usually didn't take long, but working through lists of widgets, reading about them, sorting them out in my head, testing them, and so on took quite a while. I eventually made myself stop just so I could get this posted before February. Although if we do set up a library blog at some point in the future, at least my preliminary research is taken care of.
The easiest
Moving on to more serious/functional stuff, I eventually decided to sign up for DISQUS. I went back and forth on this because I couldn't figure out from what I was seeing how it improved anything. I suppose I signed up for it mostly to see how it worked. Although now I'm confused: since I had to shut Blogger's comments down to get DISQUS to work, do readers have to be signed into DISQUS to make any comments at all? Gah.
Site statistics intrigue me. I'm delaying signing up for any, however, since most of them looked like overkill. But I would certainly try to set them up on a library blog: we all know libraries live and die by their statistics! So far, this hasn't seemed like a blog that would benefit from adding audio or video gadgets. If I were writing a more personal blog, though, I'd probably want to add photos and the occasional video. As for a professional blog, I'm certain we could find a use for those widgets. With this particular blog, though, it really would be bling: flashy, eye-catching, but not much in the way of functional.
The time consumption is pretty high for this Thing. Installation and sign-up usually didn't take long, but working through lists of widgets, reading about them, sorting them out in my head, testing them, and so on took quite a while. I eventually made myself stop just so I could get this posted before February. Although if we do set up a library blog at some point in the future, at least my preliminary research is taken care of.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Thing 24: Refresh Your Blog
And we're back, ladies and gentlemen: blog revamped, avatar refreshed, ready to plunge into the next 23 Things.
I like Blogger just fine for blogging, but doing this Thing reminded me that I'm not happy with its layout capabilities, something I'd forgotten since the long-ago days of Thing 1. I could probably make it look like anything I wanted to if my HTML skills were good enough, but they're not, so I'm stuck with the templates. And much to my annoyance, I can't customize the templates very much. Oh, it looked like there were possibilites, but it didn't take long for me to realize that only some of the colors could be changed, that tweaking the font threw off the spacing, etc. So wait, in the months since I last posted here, Google added more gadgets but didn't plump up the template selection? Sigh. Well, I did manage to add a subscription gadget, so keeping track of my dazzling prose should be a smidgen easier.
I like Blogger just fine for blogging, but doing this Thing reminded me that I'm not happy with its layout capabilities, something I'd forgotten since the long-ago days of Thing 1. I could probably make it look like anything I wanted to if my HTML skills were good enough, but they're not, so I'm stuck with the templates. And much to my annoyance, I can't customize the templates very much. Oh, it looked like there were possibilites, but it didn't take long for me to realize that only some of the colors could be changed, that tweaking the font threw off the spacing, etc. So wait, in the months since I last posted here, Google added more gadgets but didn't plump up the template selection? Sigh. Well, I did manage to add a subscription gadget, so keeping track of my dazzling prose should be a smidgen easier.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Thing 23: Final Thoughts
Oh, where to begin? I gained several favorite new Things through 23 Things. I went from having no idea what Facebook was to using it daily to keep my long-distance social life on track. I didn't understand why people want to blog (why so many people want to blog!) and now I'm tentatively considering starting a personal blog once I sign off on 23 Distractions. And let's not even get into listing the online productivity tools--those are just plain fun (and useful--a win/win situation!). Plus there were the old Things I was already familiar with that I was happy to see during the program: seeing LibraryThing on the list made me feel like I was already being trendy and innovative on my own.
Naturally in a list of multiple options, some will be less attractive than others. The idea of doing much with my photos online just leaves me feeling exhausted, not creative. I keep forgetting I have a Delicious account, much less that I can use it. Second Life may have to wait until I put grad school behind me and get a faster Internet connection. But at least now I know that these Things are out there and I've tried them, rather than just hearing about them and idly meaning to look into them someday.
I liked that I knew people, usually coworkers or fellow students, who were also going through the 23 Things. It was always interesting to read their takes on stuff; often they picked up on aspects of something that I didn't consider important or vice versa. And yes, if you do a "23 More Things" or "Another 23 Things," I'm likely to sign up.
Naturally in a list of multiple options, some will be less attractive than others. The idea of doing much with my photos online just leaves me feeling exhausted, not creative. I keep forgetting I have a Delicious account, much less that I can use it. Second Life may have to wait until I put grad school behind me and get a faster Internet connection. But at least now I know that these Things are out there and I've tried them, rather than just hearing about them and idly meaning to look into them someday.
I liked that I knew people, usually coworkers or fellow students, who were also going through the 23 Things. It was always interesting to read their takes on stuff; often they picked up on aspects of something that I didn't consider important or vice versa. And yes, if you do a "23 More Things" or "Another 23 Things," I'm likely to sign up.
Thing 22: What Did I Learn Today?
I came into 23 Things wanting to learn more about the new stuff out there in Internet-world. I'm coming out of it knowing more and wanting to learn still yet more, so it looks like the program worked. Unlike a resolution to lose weight or break a bad habit, a resolution to keep poking around in Web 2.0 will probably be easier to keep because it promises to be interesting and often fun as well.
I've been hearing intriguing things about Lifehacker, so I'll probably get its RSS feed and try it out for a while. It sounds like it could keep me posted on useful Web 2.0 developments. I don't know how many Things I'll find a use for in our library, for all the reasons I've detailed over the past four months, but when I come upon someThing new, I'll give it a good onceover and see if we can use it. I anticipate far more success with Web 2.0 in my personal life because I can probably always find some justification for a new toy!
I've been hearing intriguing things about Lifehacker, so I'll probably get its RSS feed and try it out for a while. It sounds like it could keep me posted on useful Web 2.0 developments. I don't know how many Things I'll find a use for in our library, for all the reasons I've detailed over the past four months, but when I come upon someThing new, I'll give it a good onceover and see if we can use it. I anticipate far more success with Web 2.0 in my personal life because I can probably always find some justification for a new toy!
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