Maps #31: Have Map, Will Travel

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Well, this certainly has been an interesting lesson. I attempted to view the Google Create a Map Tutorial but did not find it very helpful. I ended up just playing around with my map and seeing what I could do. I ended up making a map with points from my past all around the Houston suburbs. I was also able to draw a line connecting the three elementary schools I went to in Missouri City and drew a shape connecting the various places I lived in the Tri-City area.

This might be fun when planning a road trip. A person can put points on a map that they are going to visit and then draw a line as they travel so everyone else can follow their progress.

Spring Cleaning #30: Take a Load Off Our Drives

I post to the S:drive all the time. As programming and publicity coordinator for my library, I am continually creating fliers and posters and then transfering them to the S:drive so that they can be printed downtown.

I spent quite a bit of time deleting files from the P:drive. I found fliers that had been created before I arrived. (I've been here six years.) I deleted any flier that was so old it was not done in current HCPL format. I ended up clearing out probably 2/3 of the old fliers. I also got rid of a couple of old press releases not done on current HCPL letterhead. There were many folders where now there is only one or two things in them. It took me a while to work through the Fonts folder . I tried to be extra careful because I didn't want to get rid of any fonts we still might need.

Best of all, I finally cleared the pictures from my 2004 engagement and 2005 wedding off the P:drive. I've been meaning to do it for a while and I finally had no excuse. There were more pictures than I thought there would be. Now, though, they are on Flickr and off the P:drive. Yea!!!

I don't really have much in my Z:drive. I was able to get rid of one or two of the files there though.

Spring Cleaning #29: Email

I have always tried to keep my e-mail pretty cleaned out. Usually, I keep it under 10% of the space used. That being said, I actually did need to clean it out when this started as I am now over 11%! And, wow, that worked big time!!! It was pretty easy to clear out enough to get the box down to 8%. I just went through and found old messages I had previously forgotten to delete. Now I just have e-mail from people regarding work events coming up.

What really surprised me though was when I was looking in my folder of e-mails I had from family. I hadn't added to it for a long time as I have been encouraging them to e-mail me at my home address. I assure them that it does get checked and only e-mail me at work if there is an emergency. However, I found several old pictures of my nieces and nephew. I hesitated purging them because they were so cute, but really, when was the last time I looked at them. So, delete, delete, delete and purge!!! And now, my box is less than 3% full. It's amazing how much unnecessary space they were taking up.

Now, all my e-mails are in folders, my inbox is completely clear, and my address book is all updated.

Spring Cleaning #28: Don’t Clutter Up Expensive Cyberspace

I decided to use Remember the Milk. I liked the way I could set things to come back on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis. I can just mark things as done and they will automatically set things back with a new due date. I do not have to keep adding things back in. I was also able to tag things, another advantage. I created my very own honey-do list for my husband full of household chores and repairs he needs to take care of.

When it comes to taking care of my house, I use the FlyLady system. A year ago, a friend of mine with 3 kids told me this was how she kept her house in working order. The entire concept for this is a person can do anything for 15 minutes. If you try to go longer you can get bored, stress, etc. So you set your timer and spend 15 minutes on any one task. Then, even if it is not done, you move on to something else for 15 minutes. Every 45 minutes you take a 15 minute break. I have found this motivates me to get things done quickly and correctly. After all, if you only have 15 minutes before you have to move on, do you really want to come back to a project?

I have found the idea of Getting Things Done rather intriguing. I remember I have often written out a to-do list and then forgotten to look at what I have written down. I think what I'm going to try to do from now on is set aside 15 minutes every Sunday to log on to Remember the Milk and set my to-do list for the week. By doing this on the Internet, I can access it anywhere and therefore have no excuse but to follow through with it at 15 minute intervals at a time.

Sound: #27: Creating Your Own Podcast

O.K. I have the Podcast. It is up on Gabcast. I decided to do a podcast about events happening at the library during the month of April. For now, it is just me reading the press releases I send out every month but maybe someday I can get more creative.

Problem: I can't figure out HOW to post it to my blog. I tried everything it seems. I put my blog address in three different places and no such luck. If you want to listen to it though, it is on Gabcast.com. It is called Branch Happenin's and the channel number is 18652.

Sound: #26: Making (or listening to) Music Together

I knew about MySpace, but not any of the others. It seems like Qloud goes through iTunes which I have no interest in so that probably won't work at all for me. Project Playlist was really interesting. It is a music search engine with pretty new stuff. I even found whole albums listed. I found the Beatles Revolver album. I know it was the entire thing since it was over 34 minutes long. A drawback I found was that there was no way I found to browse the selections. I think Imeem was the best. It was really organized with the ability to browse as well as exact search for music. It had really new stuff too. The first page came up with Jordin Sparks.

I ended up signing up for Imeem. At first I found it extremely confusing. It was and still is having problems sending me a confirmation e-mail. (It's partially my fault, I gave it the wrong e-mail address; but when I switch the address around, it still couldn't find me.) Finally, when I gave up with that, I decided just to start creating a playlist. I had a little trouble figuring out how to do this also. They don't give real directions on their page. Finally, I was able to create a list and add a couple of Beatles and U2 songs. It's kind of cool but I don't think it's something I will ever really use.

Sound # 25: Am I a music pirate? It's hard to know...

Burning to a CD was easier than I thought it would be. It had taken me over an hour and a half to download my All Strings Considered file. (My husband and I still live in the 20th century with dial-up. We'll be moving forward to the turn of the century next month with DSL.) It took me a bit of finagling, but I was finally able to figure out how to burn it onto a CD. I was surprised with how fast it went. Originally, my computer told me it would take 20 minutes to burn the CD but when I went back to it 10 minutes later, the CD had been ejected and the computer told me the task was completed. I popped the CD into my CD player and sure enough, beautiful dulcimer music.

I still love my CDs. Not many people I know have made the transistion to MP3s yet. I'm sure I will have to someday but at the moment I prefer the CD player I can blast around the house while I'm cleaning. I'm not a huge fan of earphones.

I waiver between whether or not music sharing is good for the industry. I can see the one side where it is good for new artists. It allows for the exposure to more people out there and is definitely easier and probably cheaper than trying to convince radio stations to play the music. Demand feeds demand. People will possibly be willing to buy an entire CD if they like what they hear on the one song. On the other hand, since the advent of the Internet and Napster, sales in the music industry have plunged. No one wants to pay for what they can get for free. This has been a problem since cassette tapes became available and people were able to record their favorite record albums. It has become increasingly worse since file sharing became possible through the Internet.

The real problem is that technology has taken off and as a society, we are unable to keep up with all the changes. With every piece of "life simplifying" technology, life actually becomes more complicated.

Sound #24: The Sound of Music!

I looked at all 5 different pay sites for the music. If I were to use one of those sites, I would probably go the Yahoo! Music. Right now they are running a free 14 day trial. They only have access to about 2 milion songs compared to Napster's 5 million but that is still quite a bit of music. You have to download the free Yahoo! Music Jukebox. The best part though is that it is only $8.99 a month or (even cheaper) at $71.88 a year. In today's struggling economy, no one has a lot of disposable income.

It took me a couple of days to figure out how to download to my home computer. I chose All Strings Considered, a Hammered Dulcimer file off the Overdrive Database. I was able to download the Overdrive software without any problem. But, the first time I tried to download the file from the database, it told me my Microsoft Player version was out of date and I needed to update it. It continued to tell me this even after I took steps to correct this problem. I walked away from it for a couple of days. When I came back to it, I was able to download it with no problem. The computer didn't even act like it had any problem at all! Now I'm able to listen to dulcimer music straight from my computer.

I do not have a MP3 player to transfer it to, but I have been able to do this multiple times over the past couple of years from work computers during other training.

I did figure out that my favorite stations, Sunny 99 and 106.9 The Point do broadcast over the Internet. I decided that I preferred Sunny's broadcast to The Point's because it connects faster. Also, The Point started with a commercial while Sunny went straight for the broadcast. This was very annoying as The Point was supposed to be playing Runaway Train (great song!) and I was watching a commercial instead. I only caught the last few seconds of Runaway Train! Annoying!