Giveaway: Win a Totoro or Baby Octopus Plush!

Giveaway: Win a Totoro or Baby Octopus Plush!

the octopus will be the death of me.

Halloween display at Clarence

Halloween display at Clarence, a photo by darlingsparks on Flickr.

Halloween display at Clarence

RainyMood.com: Rain makes everything better.

RainyMood.com: Rain makes everything better.

great background noise while you're working, or need a bit of a time out. Ah, it's so relaxing :[ I love the sound of rain.

Hurts - Illuminated

podcats!

It wasn't easy finding one that was really interesting, or amazingly long (some were up to an hour long) and while I understand their purpose, I don't quite get them. Well the un-interesting and extremely long ones anyway. 

I found some interesting podcasts that were library related through this post: http://marginalian.wordpress.com/2010/10/23/library-podcasts/ and chose to take a listen to The Knitting Librarian which was interesting and quite cute. I don't have much but a passing interest in knitting but the way she presented her information in her Library Sciences was quite compelling. Even if they're a little long, they were really interesting.

It is cool that just about anyone can do a podcast, unfortunately that's also it's downside. 

RSS Feeds, I-Google and Google Reader

How easy! How effortless!

These days I don't go many places on the internet, besides a few of my favourite places, or where-ever I'm linked to from twitter, or have fed to me from livejournal (which has it's own option for RSS, that is quite interesting!). Which leaves a few of the websites I once visited everyday out in the cold for one reason or another. those poor websites, I have missed them dearly, and now I can have all of them in one place. Thank you Google-reader!!!

Really though~ I-Google was a lot of run to customise, and one thing I love about Google is that all their interfaces are really simple and easy to use! Nothing too fussy unless you want it to be. I have I-Google as my homepage when I open up Chrome and it's nice to have news and blog posts waiting for me, as well as my Hamster app which is more than a little adorable.

I can easily imagine this being used in every day life. Having everything in one place is as simple as it gets and it's very smart with no fuss.

Little Thor

I'm a stan for all things Marvel Movie!verse related lately, from Iron Man, to Captain America and the Avengers movie coming out next year. Hohoho~~ This is just adorably brilliant.

Rosny Barn

Rosny Barn, a set on Flickr.

Pictures from the 20/9/11 visit to the Rosny Barn and the cottage on the premises.

Videos to come. Still learning my phone T_T!

Fantasy Matters: Thoughts on Library Bannings: Let's Talk

Books are often shell casings for very potent philosophies; if you're reading this site and haven't had your synapses permanently reshuffled by some amazing collection of words, I'm not quite sure why you're here.

For me, C.S. Lewis' Narnia (and the concept that deeds done in Tash's name still went to Aslan, and vice versa) was the way I could step away from the formal church and still retain a faith in Christ. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant instilled in me an appreciation for shades of moral ambiguity so complex they transcended black, an idea that’s present in almost every one of my political ramblings. Stephen King taught me that evil could be beaten back, but it always had a cost that brave men and women must pay, and he convinced me it was worth the price.

A common argument given against banning books is that books aren’t dangerous. Don’t fool yourself. Books are high explosives. Books can shatter psyches. Books can retool you from the ground up.

And like high explosives, books don’t distinguish. Most of the books you’ll see on the banned books lists are packed with messages of tolerance of sex, race, and gender, but there are books that teach the opposite — that narrow and constrict world views as opposed to widening them. Books that teach us how really, womendid have it coming to them. Books that confirm biases, books that clog the mind and create tunnel vision — a form of mental arteriosclerosis.

Fantasy Matters [2011] Thoughts on Library Bannings: Let's Talk

Viewed 30th September 2011

http://www.fantasy-matters.com/2011/09/thoughts-on-library-bannings-lets-talk.html

ninja interesting website.

http://www.mashpedia.com

Links (or almost everywhere I am on the internet)

GoodReads

LibraryThing

Twitter

Delicious

Delicious, Librarything and Goodreads

I've peeped through delicious a few times before, but hadn't thought too much about using it for real until now. My personal bookmarks are all-a-shambles, considering I've been collecting them through my long years on the internet. These days too, I come across a lot of articles I find interesting, end up tweeting them and losing them in amongst a flurry of status updates, so if I can get into the habit of using delicious, I might be able to keep them in some semblance of order. 

Unfortunately I trend towards chaos so we'll see how that goes in the long run.

Onto LibraryThing! Which I have to admit, since I am used to Goodreads and the sheer accessibility of Goodreads from my ipod touch and phone through apps, is a bit of a moot point for me. 

On playing around with it, joining and attempting to add my known books to it, I've found it a fairly arduous process so I think I'll stick to GoodReads! My bias has already been sold. Oops! -- I've just exported my GoodReads book list and imported it to LibraryThing which eases that pain. 

GoodReads, to me has a simpler user interface. Not to mention I've already added most (at least 60% = 136 books) of my owned/read/to-read books to my shelves.

I will explore LibraryThing a bit more, but the current lack of apps is a big downside. 

Portal: No Escape (Live Action Short Film by Dan Trachtenberg)

awesome.

Image Generators

Here are two images I played with on two different image generator sites. One came from black-text.com which converts the image into chosen words. It was a lot of fun and the results are really kind of gorgeous.

The other was made using picnik.com which was fun too, with so many options for free.


I had a lot of trouble using slide.com and it's not a very attractive site to use so I decided to forgo creating anything to show on it.

You can also use a site called blingee.com for image generating, it's good for over the top glittery pictures. Photobucket also has a really good image editing section that allows you to do the same things to your photos.

Tumblr!

I'll be using Tumblr for my Information Literacy project. ^^


http://sparrowhearts.tumblr.com/

What is Tumblr?

Millions of people sharing the things they do, find, love, think, or create.

How are people using Tumblr?

The average Tumblr user creates 14 original posts each month, and reblogs 3. Half of those posts are photos. The rest are split between text, links, quotes, music, and video.

What is reblogging?

The same way YouTube embeds make it easy for a video to become a viral hit, the "reblog" button on all Tumblr posts allows a meme to spread rapidly across thousands of blogs with just a click.

- http://www.tumblr.com/about

 

Power Point!

I was unable to embed my powerpoint presentation but here is the link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/62386238/Information-Literacy-Big-6-PP


Hopefully this works! Not too happy with it /o/ Information is missing! Epp!

*****

https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dcgz2f3k_56g98p8hd3

metal bath

metal bath, a photo by darlingsparks on Flickr.

Urbex

Scanning a lot of the black and white photo's I've taken from the Willow Court/Royal Derwent Asylum today. It's kind of exciting. Photographing abandoned buildings has long been a passion of mine. I don't get to photographing much anymore, because these beautiful pieces of history are often wiped out by redevelopment. Which I can understand on one level, but often the redevelopment spoils, or doesn't take into account the nature of these places.

I've been down in in drains, the rivulet, crawled along pipes underground all the way to North Hobart. It's so interesting, like this other world.

Super Junior 슈퍼주니어_Mr.Simple_MUSICVIDEO

  

I think I'm enjoying blogging too much!

Mr.Simple new music video from K-pop boyband Super Junior.

In the theatre!

In the theatre!, a photo by darlingsparks on Flickr.

In the theatre!

Hall Corner

Hall Corner, a photo by darlingsparks on Flickr.

Taken within the Nurses building at the Willow Court Asylum in New Norfolk on one of many adventures.

Discover Information Literacy

A very interesting video. Simple and informative, the 'DISCOVER' method is new to me and interesting to find out about. 

The New National Anthem

This is a test post for the interest of Develop and Use Information Literacy Skills.