Google Maps

Have used this a few times to see how long it will take me to drive somewhere and I absolutely love it! Also use it while browsing real estate web sites as they often have maps from Google embedded to show where a property is located.

Here is where I used to work.

Are you on Facebook or MySpace?

I have had a good look at MySpace over the last 12 months but prefer Facebook. I set up a MySpace account back in July 2007 but couldn't be bothered doing anything with it. I wonder if it will self-combust soon given my inactivity!

I read an interesting article by Danah Boyd in The Age sometime last year. Danah talked about class divisions existing between MySpace and Facebook. The possible cause for this is that Facebook came out of Harvard and at first only welcomed people with a .edu email address.

I was a little obsessed with Facebook in the beginning but I think the novelty is starting to wear off. I have reacquainted myself with some old school friends which has been one of the best things - it beats having to pay the annual AUD$50 account fee for School Friends - not that I ever did! I don't know how much longer sites like School Friends can exist now that we have Facebook for free.

RSS feeds and blogs

I have been using RSS feeds for a few years to simplify keeping up-to-date with things of interest to me.

There are a few blogs I subscribe to as well including Peter Suber's which keeps me up-to-date with news about the open-access movement. Very important for us librarians!

LibraryThing

I don't really see the point of the LibraryThing tool, I mean, aren't there better things to do with one's spare time? One of the books I own wasn't listed so I added it manually. I couldn't add publisher details as there wasn't a dedicated field.

Anyway, here's my catalogue:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/helenw

Funny image generator

I'm a bit late but Week 4 was 'Play Week' and we were supposed to create some funny images. Using ImageChef, here is my first attempt.

Doing some gardening...

Not surprisingly, I've been side-tracked again and would like to tell you about my day...


I hate anything 'football' so decided to spend the day in the garden. I only have a small backyard so decided to plant an Acer palmatum 'Trompenburg'. It's a small maple and should only reach 4 metres which is perfect. It has a great shape and the red leaves will provide a lovely canopy in coming years.

I also took some Ajuga reptan cuttings from my neighbours which will provide a lovely ground cover (and suppress weeds) in a new garden bed that I have been working on for the past few months. It used to be a old concrete driveway but I dug it up and replaced it with a winding limestone path with a garden bed on either side...

Gardening for me is the most relaxing thing, particularly when the baby is asleep...

flickr

Well it's Week 3 and we need to create a flickr account and join a flickr group. I'm proud to say that I did this about 18 months ago. As the family historian, I uploaded a few family photos to flickr which have since been harvested by PictureAustralia.