#10 Image Generators

I wasn't too interested in image generators. I can see how they might be funny but for some reason they didn't really appeal to me. I suppose because they are existing templates I think you can spend a lot of time trying to produce something unique that in the end is still kind of generic.

I guess there is the option of using the generators where it's a movie publicity poster template or magazine cover where you can use a photo from your own personal collection - this would be good. I also saw that you could put together a greeting card or calendar using your own photos - that is a good idea as well because you could create something quite unique. I might play around with those options more...

The link for the above picture is http://imagegenerator.net

#8 RSS

I think the reason why I've steered clear of blogs and reading news articles online in the past is because the amount of time this takes up - as the exercise points out, you have to scroll through a lot of stuff you're not interested in and pages can take ages to load up, etc. The RSS feeds are a really good solution to this - they are a quick one-stop shop and I can see myself taking more interest in blogs and other online resources in future knowing that I can utilise a tool like Bloglines. Now that I know about this I think that blogs and sites that don't offer a RSS feed will perhaps become less popular because most people don't have the time to check several individual sites.

#5 flickr

New York, New York! I'm going overseas for the first time next year and I can't wait. I'm a massive fan of "Sex and the City" so New York will be our first stop.

Flickr's kind of interesting - you could spend ages poring over the images. In fact it did take me awhile to find a nice photo of New York to post. Results are clearly not listed in order or relevance because of the nature of the resource - they are photos taken by individuals who have tagged them as they want to. It wasn't until probably the fifth page of results from my search "New York" that I found this photo - before that there were plenty of shots of people running marathons and other obscure things happening in New York. Interesting to do the tutorial, have a browse and learn what it's all about though.

Perhaps I was too dismissive ... I did a second search "New York buildings" and that did return more of the type of photo I was after. I suppose the first issue I encountered was because they are all tagged by location. Well, live and learn.

Lifelong learning

Now that I've explored the Learning Web 2.0 site more thoroughly and have looked at Week 1's tutorial I've learnt that we are meant to be writing our thoughts on our learning, not making pointless remarks about the colour of our shoes. I'm starting to feel better about spending time doing these activities because already I feel I've learnt a lot setting up my blog. It's nice to "play" as they suggest because that's how you really learn and build confidence in what you're doing. I still feel that having a blog and putting up posts is a bit scary - it's kind of like keeping a diary, you tend to post streams of consciousness, but at the same time people can view it and respond and judge. Thank god for anonymity!

#3 The Beginning

I suppose getting started is always the hardest part. After um-ing and ah-ing for what feels like too long in work time over what to call my blog and what my first post should be my guilt over ignoring my other work to write this blog has won over my desire to post something interesting and intelligent. Not that I don't think this is a great opportunity to learn - the world of blogging, Facebook etc is still a relatively scary unknown to me. I'm just hopeful that the posts will flow more easily now that I've made a start.

Wondering why I've chosen to write in this hard-to-read colour? I was inspired by my new shoes which are this colour in shiny patent leather - they, like this blog, are making their debut today. These are the things that occur to me when I'm racking my brain for something to write about. Fingers crossed something interesting happens between now and my next post.