A little light relief

Welcome back to the Wolf's blog.

Been a few of those weeks work-wise, so a little light relief of the LOL kind is required...

You see - even kittens know the value of their - hardcopy - Ency Brits !!

Arrr!! It be International Talk Like A Pirate Day !

Couldn`t let such an auspicious tide go past without addin' a quick piratical post - from Th' Wolf o' Th' Seas !

Be havin' a great tide all ye wannabes an' may th' seas swallow any o' th' real ones!

and...

Happy Birthday James!

Scrappy times

Well, as much as the Wolf has a conscientious objection to the idea of scrapbooking - the possibilities of the needless destruction of original and irreplaceable photos (less of a worry these digital days)... but now you can safely scrap away in a virtual manner!
Definitely need plenty of time - uploading pics, selecting decals and stickers, etc - will take a while.
A nifty and more decorative way to share photos of any occasion, especially with distant friends and it is another useful app eg. to use for the production of marketing/promotion materials.
So try Scrapblog - it's fun and free;
Here's one I came up with to try it out: http://www.scrapblog.com/6946b50947/086C21D5-B9D0

Not a Jott!

As this tool is only available to folks in the US of A, the Wolf is not too fussed by its absence here. Jott.com is a combined alerting service where you can use voicemail to the service to generate 'notes to self', calls/notes to others, etc - eg. one can phone jott, record a voicemail which can then generate a text/email that is sent to one or several. I'd have to admit that this broadcast function could be useful - if you didn't have a chance to text/email a message yourself (which would probably take the same - or less - time!) It has a variety of other features to play with, but if you need to phone a service, record a voicemail, receive a text and email to remind yourself to buy milk on the way home... you really need to take a break from technology !

Animoto sample

For your viewing pleasure !

Getting Animoto-ed

Another in the range of cool tools selected by the Wolf!
Be your own director, producer, sound editor & cinematographer all in one. There's a free acount option so you can add your images, choose or add the music and let Animoto mix you up a video clip. The Wolf made a (not really) quick sample, as you can see here. (Took a bit of time to sort, find, upload photos, edit plus the 3 steps saving the video-as-you-go were a bit slow - but likely that was the computer and the traffic in the ether!) Did highlight one good tip - prepare a dedicated folder with your selected pics in your photohost for each video you plan to make - only need about 10 pics for the 30 sec video, though it won't necessarily use them all. Liked the 'remix' option - where you can change the way the graphics morph to have a new video - without losing the original.
You can then send your creation to a blog, by email to friends, to YouTube, etc.
Certainly fun and a great new twist on a slide night!

Feeling nostalgic?

So much out on the web revolves around the 'new' - it's a nice change to play around looking at the 'old'.
One site the Wolf's been told about is Retroland, lots of interesting stuff and wiki-ish in design and content, but too US centric for my taste. Another one I found while cruisin for old stuff is Nostalgiacentral - I found I like this site alot more, including the look and layout. It covers 1950s-1980s news/events, music, television and other popular culture. Better still, it includes a not-small amount of Australian material.
More place to trawl around for memories of delights (and perhaps horrors) past include: the Internet Movie Database, the Big Cartoon Database, British TV History incl its links page, the British Film Institute's film & tv database and televisionau.com for Australian stuff on the small screen.

Some classics of the Wolf's past - Kimba the White Lion (1960s amime/manga; and the original Lion King!) ; cereal toys (yes... you do remember them!) ; Astro Boy (more 60s anime).

Want to be fit? get away from the computer ! :)

We all know there's sooooo much out there on everything you could imagine - and alot you wouldn't want to. So, asks the Wolf, if you want to improve your health and fitness - why do it all on the web? (unless you're a spider - tee hee). A huge number of websites offer any amount of good (and bad) information of diet, food choices, exercise, etc etc etc. Though you'll get more exercise going for a walk and using a pad & pencil than recording all your health info via computer - there are a couple of websites you may want to look at.
(NB The Wolf does not endorse any opinions or information on any such websites - they are just discussed as interesting websites.)
Nutridiary and fitday are two websites that, after registration, allow you to record food and exercise in diaries, calorie and carb counters and all manner of other info you may want to look at if you're after ideas and advice.
Some authoritative health information websites include: smartraveller.gov.au's page on travel health; healthinsite.gov.au on all sorts of health topics; and the US's pubmed for medical and other journals articles on health/medicine.

So. You want more web 2.0 ?...

Apart from the various websites out there that list and comment on web 2.0 (2.1...3.0...) goodies, a nice little real world paper item was produced recently...
A set of articles in the Australian business magazine Business Review Weekly (aka BRW) (ISSN 0727-7458), issue date June 19-25 2008.
Sorry e-people but the articles are currently subscriber access only online.
The first one is entitled 'The new web revolution' and a few pages on is a list (compiled the the firm Future Exploration Network) of 100 "significantly Australian" (some of them not for much longer!) web 2.0 applications.
A wide range of apps are included in this list - some that sound interesting include:
factbites - a search engine that displays results with full sentences - nice one for young and new net surfers; streetadvisor - rate the amenities in your street/locality, mostly Australia, UK, US and Canada plus other countries; plugger - Australian news monitoring site; and a favourite of the Wolf's: Powerhouse Museum collection search - search the many thousands of items using taxonomy or folksonomy tags.

Still want to share...

Yet another place to share stuff - of a more practical nature - is Box.net. The "Lite" (free registration) access lets you store, work on and share documents, photos, etc. Not a bad tool - is more of an aggregator as you use/give Box.net access to your photos on your photo host (for a change, this one does include Photobucket!), documents and spreadsheets with Zoho, etc. Useful to bring these together rather than working across these applications separately. Another useful choice for groups working collaboratively, but not directly connected, as folder/s can be shared and all with access have the uploads as soon as they are put in. Not bad for someone working with, for example, a number of community groups or work teams concurrently - access all your own material in one place and share selected folder/s with each group; or even with work colleagues if you are (supposedly) on holidays!

Cats' correction

Responding to the perpetuation of linguistic injustice being inflicted on felines across the internet, the Wolf was sent the following -

Some fun stuff

Time for a bit of Wolf play - some fun websites to look at when you really have nothing else to do... (try reading a book or playing a word game - with paper, pencils and real people! - it will do you a lot of good! )
But for more e-play, with a slightly arty bent, try...
- designing a snowflake - then turn it into a cool 2D or 3D kaleidoscope (cool fun);
- try an e-version of the string art you used to do in primary school (it never looked this good);
- play cartoon identikit with mr picasso head (cute); or
- make sand fall in cascades of your own design.

And for something of a little more intellectual value, have a look at the science & nature and mind quizzes and surveys on the BBC website - some of these are gathering results for research projects.

Yet another place to share your life online !

When you've run out of MySpace, you can't bear to FaceBook and you really - (wwwhhhyyyy???) want another place to go and write up bits and pieces to share with those out there - there's Plaxo. Could be a useful tool though to synchronise work calendars and task lists, etc with friends and colleagues not linked via a fixed network but are wandering around the internet.

Pop out for a newsletter?

More web type publishing ideas - this time a (fairly) quick way to put together a newsletter, invitation or other missive where you don't want to do all the graphic design yourself. Try sites such as Letterpop where you can add your text and select images to create your own news - ideal for party invitations, community groups, etc - if you can find templates you like amongst the overly American selections. You are a bit limited in what you can do under a free rego but there are account options if you're really keen. Go over the top and use it to create one of those evil, gloating Christmas letters that other people hate to receive; or in a more humble manner share a delicious recipe - like the Wolf has done ! - http://www.letterpop.com/newsletters/?id=90214-5e7420

Want to get into publishing?

...at least in a small but fun way... a variety of websites, such as bighugelabs will let you mock up magazine covers. Great for birthdays and other occasions or to just try a layout for upcoming works.

Now Wolf is off to gather the scaly friends to help write the content!

That sinking feeling...

As the Wolf is on hols... she took in a musical (only three times) where her niece-cub was in the top billing! - "Titanic the musical" (strange but true; most enjoyable and fortunately not like that movie!).

A lavish production put on by the Armidale Drama and Musical Society ADMS (in the glorious winter New England area of northern NSW, Australia). The cast of about 70 did great justice to some wonderful choruses and the many solo performances were outstanding.


The girl in the grey tartan is Emily Thomas-Moore playing Kate Murphey, a third class passenger, when she first sees the Titanic...



The glittering first class passengers...



The three lovely girls (L-R: Kate Jones, Emily Thomas-Moore & Ruth Strutt) playing the three Kates on board...



Some of the survivors and ghosts in the 'foggy' finale on closing night...



(so now I've had a chance to play with pics on Photobucket - not bad tool for photo share/play/edit, etc )

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Soooo many cats... (and more other cute/weird/funny pics than one can comprehend!)

Yes, the Wolf is on holidays and is now (again) borrowing litter mate's laptop with actual computing power to learn more 2.1 things !!

Well, there may be a few of you out there who haven't found these sites yet but... they are worth a look... and quite a few laughs... and the occasional groan or 'what the !?' -- lolcats and icanhascheezburger for starters, then there's cuteoverload and doubtless many others (too much time on these three already!)

So go browse and enjoy !






ok... but wait, there's tooo many more... just a few (hard to stop really!)...



mixing your movie concepts --



extra aawwwhhh! points when you combine your cute critters --



-- a candidate for 'most unusual' !


more cat pictures

muuuust stopppp nowwwww ...

and a good one to finish...

More widgeting

Ok..., now that the Wolf's had more time to look at yourminis... it officially rates as a 'Cool Toy' ! Set up a page and create your own nifty, useful (and even fun) desktop e-corkboard - well, sort of - but that's the way you can play with the layout. Pick and choose among the widgets - for pictures, newsfeeds, games, various net searches, and so much more; then you can just have them at the ready - and on any computer you use, if you start a free account. Something to play around with, but a nice way to group many internet bits and pieces that you use alot, or only occasionally. Plus you can have more than one page on the go...

Widgets... smidgets

Another curious place to browse is yourminis - source of many a widget, on many and varied things. How to keep up with some of the things you don't have time to keep up with anyway! Add to your desktop - or even into your blog ;) Try film news...

Sha... Zamzar!

First thing off the list! Got a document/file you'd really rather have in a different format... try Zamzar. A newish? site, still displayed as beta. Choices look nifty so I uploaded my massive 25kb word file to convert twice - once to html, the other to pdf. First attempt was on a Friday afternoon - not a good idea as the site (as a freebie tool) works by emailing you a notification with 24 hrs to collect your new file; one email arrived (expecting 2 tho presumably?!) but not in time for me to access file before time elapsed. So..., next attempt Monday afternoon... and over an hour later still waiting for any email... [they arrived after about 3 hrs - not unfair for a free service; linking and saving the new files was quick]. However, it does look like a nice freebie site (there are $$ subscriber options too) and useful site for odd jobs, especially if you don't have access to the creator parts of software or you receive a file that would be so much more useful in another format. The on-page and pop-up ads are a bit irritating but again only to be expected. One handy page is Zamzar's list of what files can be converted to what other files - quick place to use as a lookup for 'what one earth is that file extension!?' questions.

Learning more things!

Well, the wolf is back - now thoroughly dried out and back on track for more learning thingamies!
Off to explore another set of bits and pieces - useful tools (and hopefully some cool toys?!) out there in the ether that could make e-life a bit easier and/or more interesting.
As to helping in real life and around the library... we shall see...!

Today's lovely pic is the beautiful Long Room of the Library at Trinity College, Dublin, (what I couldn't do with just some of that shelving!)