The DT shelf of Left-field Reads

I first discovered Shelfari on our super-brilliant Quicksand site. That team is doing great work, you really must check it out http://cclcquicksand.blogspot.com/ Anyhoo, much 'n all as I enjoyed Library Thing [scroll waaaaaaay down to find it in about week 5] Shelfari offers a you-beaut bookshelf to put all your books on, *ta da*, and when you move the mouse over the covers, up pops a review! Neat huh. Of course there's heaps of other guff too, which I haven't had time to immerse myself in yet, like, umm, "friends" [if you're into that kind of thing "^ ^"] and what they're reading, reviews from others who've read the same book, and a whole heap more. Check out http://www.shelfari.com/ when you've got a mo.

I created the bookshelf to hold what I call "my left field reads" - y'know, those ones that either take you totally unawares [usually because the blurb on the cover was written by some hack publicist who's never read the book] or mentally takes you somewhere better than you ever expected. All of these 'left-field reads' were so wonderful in their own right and yet so different from one another that it surprises me how I picked them up in the first place! And yes, there are more to come! I will add more soon, I promise, but at this time on a Friday arvo, I've gotta get my skates on and make a dent in the in-tray.

Oh, BTW, when searching for covers in Shelfari, sometimes it just comes up with zip, zero, zilch so that's why a couple of my books are blank with just a typewritten title. :( [Well what would expect when you read such left-field stuff. It's hardly mainstream now is it, duh!] Eh, you win some, you lose some.

'Aveagoodweekend Blogsters. Ciao for now.

The Winter of Discontent

Brrrr ... bloody Winter. The only decent things about winter are cooking and footy! Right, now that I've had my annual grumble, onto bigger and better things. It's been interesting watching the new blogs unfold, albeit slowly. Time is proving, as it did with us, to be the designated driver. So c'mon guys ... we're ready and waiting to be dazzled by your sheer brilliance and creativity :o)
Our other blogs have been a veritable hive of industry. Invisible Ink has seen more activity than a bride's nightie and Quicksand is now "out there" and looking sensational! Both are a great read, so jump on board. We'd love to hear what you think, so make sure you leave comments, heheh heheh like the ahem, Mr Justice Department, M B A if you don't mind, from Florida. Well, what the heck, it's nice to know that someone is reading it!
Must get on with things, so a few more yummo dishes have been added to the Cookathon, and wouldn't ya know it, Photobucket, where I create this slide show, has a max of 30 pix only, so I've reached the dizzy limit. Hmmmmm, what now? Create anothery? Edit/delete the existing? Or put it all in the Who Cares basket and move on to something else? Tune in next time for the answer to my Winter of Discontent. ;o)

Thunderbirds are GO!

Wow ... the next round of Learning 2'ers is up and running and I for one cannot wait to see "who does what". Half the fun in these early days is trying to identify who's who. I've got 'South of the Border' nailed ... just need a few more starters and the fun begins.

In the interim, a few of us 'oldies', ahem, as in 'old hands' not 'old age' "^ ^", have been sequestered to add a bit of 'va va va voom' to our Library blog, Invisible Ink, http://www.cclc.vic.gov.au/news/blog/ so make sure you keep an eye peeled as we dilute the corporate-speak and ramp up the wow factor a bit more. :o) During this process, we Ed-Chics created new avatars, and, as my lot in life, I'm still in the kitchen, heh heh heh. Anyway, here's the 'new Me'. Check out Michelle, Linda, Monique and Cenza! The management duo, Peter & Pru, aka P&P, will be dropping their pearlers in from time to time too, so it's full steam ahead again in blogland. Thunderbirds are GO!!

Weekend Cookathons

Hi guyz - I'm baaaaack! I just couldn't resist not doing something with all the foodie pix I've been taking on the new digital camera Brian gave me at Christmas. It's fantastic, and what's so unreal about it is that it has a Cuisine Setting! Have a look at the Weekend Cookathon above - I can't believe I've cooked all these since I've had the camera, so that'd be from Dec 26 to now, the end of March. If I can, I'll keep the Cookathon slideshow at the top and just add to it when we've made something photo-worthy!
I must add a thanks to Cenza here. She and Ann have been busy creating a teen blog [which I've been keeping an eye on] and when I saw what Cen did with the pix in Photobucket, I just had to join up. When you all have a mo. check out Quicksand, it's great. PS - it's only available for viewing internally at CCLC at the moment, but when it goes live, and I'm sure it will, I'll let you know.
Ciao for now.

Have a *Cool Yule* Bloggers!

Ho Ho Holiday time :o)

Chistmas Graphic Comments

I've just made a New Year's resolution - I WILL take on the Learning 2.1 challenge next year... I think. It's up there with believing 6 impossible things before breakfast, and hey, that's been done, so a la Gary Larson, it's "looking good Vern".
Now all I have to do is wish everyone a really great Christmas, a sensational New Year, and remember how to put an animation in here. Pffff, a few weeks of not blogging and I'm having problems with the frontal lobotomy, or is that the bottle in front of me, *hic*?? :o)

A tonne of festive wishes to Lynette and Leslie and all the Learning 2.0 inmates!

The Last Hurrah?

Good morning Bloggers,
I looked on the dreaded Learning 2.0 list this morning and lo and behold, it looks like we've come to the end of the road. I think I'm experiencing withdrawal symptoms! It has been a rocky road, one of peaks and troughs, laughter and head-banging frustration. It's dragged me kicking and screaming into a new world, one that I did not wish to visit. My job is technologically challenging on most days as it is. Apart from Unicorn and iBistro, I regularly use about seven other different software packages to just get my work done, so trying to find some mental storage space for all this has been huge. Just how much can a Koala bear? ;o)

In a brief moment of retrospection, one thing I struggled with is now something I use every day, and that is "Feeds". I have all my Feeds set up next to Favourites in Internet Explorer and it makes life so much easier instead of opening stuff up to see if it's been updated.
The other thing that did my head in was becoming fluent in 'cyber speak'. I don't know how many times I searched for definitions so I could understand what I was reading and that has to be the pinnacle of frustration! I now have a collection of hard copy printouts, a sort of mini cyber-speak dictionary if you will, because I know I will not remember. I mean, how many times in a day will you blurt out, "Oh yeah, right, the Folksonomic Zeitgeist". "^ ^" [You can check this definition out at http://blogs.guardian.com.uk/global/whatisfz.html]

IF there is a common parlance in cyber world, why can't you find these words in Microsoft Word's Shift F7?? Huh Mr Gates, huh?! Or, hold the phone, is there a common parlance? When we did the Bloglines lesson, I printed out the steps, and step 2d says "you will see a link that says 'rss'. On some sites this may appear as an orange RSS or XML button. Some sites may just have a 'syndicate' text. All these things mean the same thing." Pfffff. OK, enough said on this topic. I guess it's a Rockmelon/Cantaloupe thing but gee it makes learning and comprehension so much harder than what it should be.

GlitterBell.com

During the journey, I always enjoyed reading everyone else's blogs, and what got the collective dander up is the amount of signing in and passwords. I think Monica summed up pretty well with her 17 & 18 posts [on Random Thoughts from a Drama Queen Library Technician] ... "Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgghhhhhh!!!" I think the next group to join the Learning 2.0 journey definitely should be forewarned!!

My overall opinion is that this training exercise has been valuable to all of us. Some colleagues will pick up the baton and run with it, blazing a trail for others to follow, whereas others may only use bits and pieces that suit them in their respective jobs. But all of us have had a monumental increase in awareness and for that, we thank you!

- As an aside, I'm wondering about how many temp files and cookies have taken up residence in the system, so I guess housekeeping will be on my agenda this afternoon! :o) -

"Don't let yesterday take up too much of today"

Herby Goes To Mornington

Good morning Bloggers & Blogettes,
Monday again, groan. Where does the weekend go? It seemed like we spent the whole time driving around the Peninsula in preparation for Saturday's cookup. We'd flagged a rather full-on recipe in November's Gourmet Traveller mag, now on shelf at your fave CCLC library! :o) It's Cured Beef Fillet with a Herb Crust and we served it with a platter of crisp veggies with two sauces. Both these recipes are on page 136. [We did, however, substitute the zucchini flowers and baby fennel with celery and green and butter beans.]
Talk about culinary dedication! We drove to Mt. Martha to visit Phil, our butcher extraordinaire at Bell's Gourmet Meats, who plied us with a choice King Island beef fillet, and popped into the greengrocers for fresh flat leaf parsley, oregano, dill and taragon, coming out somewhat bereft with only the parsley in hand. This necessitated a visit to Tully's, the fruit and veggie coolstore in Moorooduc which I've mentioned before, and after much consultation and $30 later, came out with a trolley full of herbs and fresh vegetables. We then headed off to Safeways back in Mornington for the more boring daily necessities, but could not get any creme fraiche, the base of one of the dipping sauces. So we then drove around to the Coles supermarket (up near the Beleura Hill end of Mornington) and picked that up. Then back to Joey the Bottleshop Dude for a rather good Peninsula Pinot Noir, and finally, after nearly three hours, headed back home!
This recipe was very labour intensive, and I felt like I was chained to the kitchen all weekend, which is not a good thing. However, there was some distraction - we have Kookaburras nesting in a large palm tree next door, and watching them and listening to that iconic Kooka laughter was very entertaining.
I won't bore the eyeballs out of you with what you have to do to get 'cured beef'; it involves a lot of rock salt/caster sugar/white wine etc. and 6 hours in the fridge before 'un-salting, un-sugaring and un-wining' and ready for cooking, and after the oven cooking is when you start 'herbing' and re-covering for a further 2 hours in the fridge! The two sauces required a lot of mixing and blending in the food processor, and then there was the veggie preparation and blanching and drying, and pffffff, it just went on and on and on.
But, I hear the Bloggy cry, was it worth it? In a word, NO. It wasn't disappointing, it was just ... hmmm, a bit too salty, a bit too taragon-y, and the garlic and anchovy sauce had too much lemon in it. Ho hum, we can tick that one off the list. Glory only knows how we're gonna get through all the herbs in the fridge. I'll have to freeze them I think. Methinks next Saturday BJ can don the chef's apron and fire up something on the barbie. I'm going to put my feet up!

Week 9: Take 2!

EUREKA!!! Geez Louise, I knew if I waited long enough our Learning 2.0 site would point us in the right direction. So ... YouTube minus the 'O! M! G!' factor [See Week 9: original post]. Fingers crossed and dive in.
I did a video search for ... yep, you guessed it ... COOKING, and lo and behold, yet another Eureka moment, up pops Julia Child who features in one of my fave reads on my Library Thing - Julie & Julia!
I listened to the first vid and cracked up laughing - Julia Child's voice has got to be dead set straight out of the Muppets. I could not believe it!! And further along I found this. How good is that - a home-made vid set to one of the pages straight out of Julie & Julia! XLENT stuff. :o)
Mind you, it took me about 3 or 4 goes to get the "embed this into your blog" bit embedded into my blog, but persistence paid off. Have a squizz, it only runs for 3mins.



Now, onto Podcasts [yet again!] I chose the Yahoo Podcast site as I figured if I have to sign up to another account and get another password, I'll go off my tree! And wouldn't you know it, as it so succinctly says in my first Week 9 post, "sorry, this site is closing on October 31". *Sigh*. This is all so frustrating! *Undaunted, she forges ahead*. Actually, in the last 10 or so minutes I've been all over the place looking for podcasting that you don't have to subscribe to. I did find one site that extolled the virtues of some lady reading chapters from Anne of Green Gables, which I used to love as a kid, so I clicked on Chapter 25 - Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves "^ ^" and thought "bewdy Newk, here goes..." Up came an error message, the page, or whatever it is, is unavailable. More sighing :o( *Undeterred, she forges ahead, again* OK dipstick, I said to myself, let's work around this. Take a deep breath dear reader ...
I jumped onto Google, did a search for FREE podcasts, got onto Digital Podcast.com, searched for books on Stories To Go, got nowhere, clicked on the FREE icon, got onto PodBean.com, clicked further, which took me into the NPR site [whatever that is], dodged all the advertising and found a headline "Is it any wonder why Dumbledore kept closeted". What the??? And *ta da*, puff, pant, gasp ... here's MY PODCAST! The site doesn't allow widgets and whatnots but is happy for links to be used instead, so after clicking on this, click on 'LISTEN' and use the play controls on the pop-up NPR ad thingo. If it plays an ad, click on the 'LISTEN' button again. Well, it worked for me! :o)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15528724&ft=1&f=1

In answer to the question "Can you see a use for podcasts in the library's situation?", ummm, in a training situation I can. Somewhere back in the myriad sites I traipsed around, there is a SirsiDynix set of learning podcasts so I could picture all of us sitting around with headphones on with someone talking us through the ins and outs of Unicorn. [Would that make us all PodBods?? ;op] Hey, maybe that already happens, I dunno because, as you will have noticed throughout this whole exercise, "I Am Not A Librarian".

Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their
level and then beat you with experience.

The Saturday cook up

Hi Bloggers,
Wow, I've been so flat chat of late there's been nary a spare minute to waffle on about the weekend cookathon. The weather, as you can probably recall, screamed "BAR-B-QUE" at us, so dust it off and fire it up we did. That of course was after much hmmmming and aaaaaahing about just what to toss onto it in the first place. Being the sort of people we are, seafood won out and we headed off to our friendly fishmongers, Pete and Voula [?], Con and Aristea [?], really must, after all this time, find out their names! Our desire for shasliks saw us buy up big on prawns, scallops and a large firm white fish fillet - the trevally was just the ticket. First thing to do back on home turf was get the bamboo skewers soaking, so out with an empty Coke bottle, fill it up to the brim, drop in the skewers and tighten the lid. [I've finally wisenheimered up in my olde age and given up the stupid practice of putting them in water-filled bowls/dishes/the sink with weights on them to keep them down!]
We really knocked ourselves out over this meal, hehhehheh, by doing some spuds in alfoil, rustling up a salad, tearing up some bread and opening another Houghton's [well, we did buy a dozen .. hate 'em to go off ;o) ;o)]. Oh, ok, I did make a lemon/herb/olive oil number to brush the shasliks as they were grilling, and yep! It was all just luvverly! And best of all, bugga all in the way of washing up!
Now, I wonder if this video/podcasting lesson is a happening thing yet ...


I'm adding a bit of a post-script to this, as after writing the word prawns, it reminded me of New Year's Eve 1999 - the night the new century clicked over. We spent our usual holiday break on a 40ft cruiser on the Gippsland Lakes and that New Year's night the prawns were running at Barrier Landing, just near where Lakes Entrance washes into the lakes. That was too good an opportunity to miss, so as these pix show, here's the prawns we caught, swimming about in a water filled dinghy, and *ta da*, here's the breakfast we enjoyed to greet a new century! Wow!

Week 9: Podcasts, Video and downloadable Audio

Hi fellow Bloggers,
Week 9 on our site hasn't been activated yet, but I thought I'd jump the gun and forge ahead anyway during a free moment and logged on to YouTube. I've heard about YouTube but I've never seen it, so I was quite looking forward to this whole new cyber realm, particularly after reading Julie H's blog where she waxes lyrical about all the different sites she enjoyed. [As an aside, isn't it interesting the things you learn about fellow colleagues with this Blogging caper. I had no idea she collected handmade perfume bottles!] Anyway, I logged on to YouTube. Oh--My--God.
Maybe I should've waited for the link. Or, is this what confronts everyone who logs into YouTube? Porn, porn and more porn. More tits 'n bums on one pc screen than I've seen in the last ... pffff, pick a number of years. 'Booty' is obviously the er.. 'hip' word for 'shake that thang, grrrrl' and I lost count of female derriere sites sporting names like 'BootyBucket' and 'BootyContest'. Scrolling further, desperately hoping to stumble across something like a sane handmade perfume bottle site, I got "Atheism must be destroyed - pest control for the 21st century". And "Cute Asian Girls". And "Fluflix - Inspired to share your view of influenza?". And "Get free radar on your mobile" "FeetFetish" "Feetgirls" "Sleeping is Fun" Yadda yadda yadda Ad Infinitum. I just couldn't stick with it anymore, and attempted to move on to PodCasting.
Yahoo! has a Podcasting tools site, and there was a 'listen to this update' widget. I started to have a listen when I noticed a dialogue box stating "Sorry, but this site is closing on October 31". My personal God of 'Give a Girl a Break' really needs to crank his act up I thought, and moved on to the lesson's next task - the World eBook Fair site. I was delighted with the introduction, particularly the 'Message from Michael Hart'. Check it out for a dose of the WOW factor. It's a very visually busy site, but I finally got to where you can bring up a free eBook. And, you guessed it, Murphy's Law is alive, well and living in downtown Cranbourne. You can only dive into these eBooks during the month of August unless you're a paid-up member. *Look at calendar, scratch head, yep, it's definitely October*.
So I figured as I logged out, it just serves you right DT, you should've waited for the links to be activated instead of stumbling through all that drivel.
Week 9 Take Two will hopefully make for more inspiring reading. Stay tuned.

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."-- Groucho Marx

Week 8: Oh oh, Zoho a No No

Hi fellow bloggers, Zoho this time eh? Good grief, another username and password! Aaarrrrgh! Just as well I invested in a block of sticky notes, as each time I join up in something, I stick a note in my folder with the login details. It's beginning to look like what I did to Marika's office when she was overseas - see pic at right.

OK, this is PART ONE of the lesson.

This Zoho Writer thing is a bit on the wimpy side, isn't it? I added one emoticon [see above], which is called an "emotion" in the tool bar, resized it and it looks like it's been run over by a Mack truck!

I also started a Slide Show instead of this doc, but the screen froze when I went to move the heading. As far as I know, it's still frozen, which is why I'm here at Zoho Writer. Anyway, I've played around with the tools - Under 'Format', the Padding tool downsized this para by 5pt, and the background's now gone blue. Gee, what can I say "^ ^".

IF you didn't have access to the Microsoft Suite I guess you could use this, but if you've got access to a pc, isn't the software already there? I digress ... Being able to send straight to our blogs is good, which is what I'm about to do [so fingers crossed]. A bientot mes ami .. .

PART TWO: We are asked to check the Awards site, and how spiffing to see now familiar names up there in the stratosphere - Technorati, Bloglines, Library Thing, PBWiki, Flickr, Rollyo and Del.icio.us. Isn't it nice to know we've been put on the right learning path, nay, the award winning learning path!!

PART THREE: We are asked to check out Web Tools at www.go2web20.net WOW and then some! There must be sooooooooo many bored, unemployed people out there! I'm mind-boggled. Ooooh, there's a i.Foods.tv site for foodies and, wait, what's this? SpicyPipes.com? Another food site?? Nup, a creative mashup site. Heh heh heh, get a load of this, I'll quote the 'inspiring' introduction: "Why to send greeting cards to friend while you can create beautiful slideshow". *Sigh*, must be another bored unemployed person a couple of chops short of a barbeque in the English language stakes. Moving right along "^ ^" ... Aaaaaah, 'music on demand' at Deezer.com. Read, read, blah, blah, 'create your own play list', 'search for song, artist or album', and more! [hold the steak knives ;o)] OK, I'll give it a whirl. As they, ahem, say in the classics ... "stay tuned"...

These online image generators are sooooo addictive! Here's a line from my fave book of all time - A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. Plus the Doppelme exercise.

T.G.I.F.

The aroma of Saturday won't be a happenin' thang this week at Chez Traylz as we will be out at a friend's 'big hole in the middle' birthday bbq all day. But do not despair, fellow gastronomes [hmmm, sounds like a term we came across in Week 6], there's always Sunday :o)
During the week we flagged a recipe that seems perfect for a lazy [insert hungover] Sunday brunch. It's a, ummm, *much wracking of memory here* individual Parmesan baked ricotta wrapped in pancetta and you bake them in a muffin tin! I found it in the October issue of the Donna Hay mag and if you want to have a squizz, it's now on shelf at your local library :oD In my head I'm picturing ... around 11ish we'll kick start with a large Bloody Mary each, sans celery. Then hopefully these gorgeous little savoury tarts with possibly some fresh spinach or asparagus on the side, followed by copious amounts of freshly brewed coffee and some thick chunky toasted bread drizzled with honey. Aaah yes. Then we can resume our regular Sunday habits - a leisurely dive into Saturday's Age, natch reading all the bookie news, then we do the 9 Letter Word thing, the Code Number thing, and the "this is soooooo not a General Knowledge" General Knowledge crossword. If you're any good at Bolivian Mythology, quotes from obscure plays from the 15th century, and the middle name of the mother of the person who invented the Synchrotron, then this is definitely for you! "^ ^"

Taking a left turn at Albuquerque here ... the feeds I put on all our blogs are working fine, and I've been diving in and out as updates come through, ooohing and aaaahing over what everyone is getting up to. What an amazing lot we are! So many quiet achievers, so much creativity, so many cats and sunsets ;oD In all honesty, I think we should crank up our own CCLC awards and not wait for our brilliance to be stumbled upon by others. How's about the CLOG Awards? You know, a hybrid of CCLC and BLOG. :o) We could have 31 awards, or however many bloggers we've got, and could stamp each one with this: The awards could be the "Black is the New Black Award", the "Flickr Fanatic Award", the "Master of Understatement Award", the "Feathers Fins or Fur Award", the "Very D&M Award", the "So Focused It's Frightening Award", etc. etc. Man, I can think of heaps! Or, *insert lightglobe*, we could do the Ribbon Thing, like back in Lesson 5? Let's see if I can generate one; hopefully it will appear across the top right hand corner.
Anyway, I'd be interested to hear what you think. Maybe Michelle could be the Honorary Bestower of awards???
OK, back to work. Have a great weekend everyone.
My VIP Noticeboard quote of the week?

"Birthdays are very good for you!
The more you have, the longer you live!"

Week 7: The Wonderful World of Wikis

Week 7 brings us to the Wiki Sandbox, and if you're a wordsmith like me, the potential to go nutzoid is huge :oD However, well aware of my waxing lyrical just a tad too much, it's straight to the point for me, if only I could get a firm stranglehold on my sense of humour first! I'm still giggling, as after viewing the xlent YouTube vid extolling the virtues of Wiki over receiving hundreds of emails, I jumped into PBWiki and THE very first message that comes up is" "PBwiki will send you an email when someone edits a page, by default no more that one email per 1 hour. You can customize these settings once you log in." Ah dear me, I wonder how many of us will get so immersed in what we're doing that we'll totally forget to customize the settings. Don't ya just lerve technology! :oD
OK, humour aside, I think Wikis are great! I've long been a [wary] fan of Wikipedia and after reading some of the Library Wikis, I think we could ease the burden from the shoulders of our Web Gurus and get something happening to benefit us all. The Intranet seems to be still on the drawing board; Chit Chat has faded into the misty moonlight; and Ho Ho Ho, Christmas festivity planning is already underway. Food for thought? What say you, fellow WikiWunderkind?
Part of this lesson was to also add to a Wiki. If you like, you can click on this widget below and dive into My Favourite Leisuretime, but don't bother if you've read my last couple of posts ;o)

*Clunk* ... Monday again

Groan, Monday already? What are we facing this week ... Sandbox Wikis or some other techno gobbledy-gook which will no doubt prove just as eye-popping as our Saturday night dinner. Over morning coffee, we salivated over our "You Wish" folder - a large D-ring binder that yours truly has divvied up into sections: appetisers, soups, seafood, poultry, meat, vegetables, pasta, desserts and 'multiples', you know, those mag pages that have about four or five different recipes on them for a whole dinner party. [We initially wanted to call it the "To Die For" folder, but thankfully, sanity reigned!]
We could not choose between two polar opposites - Hot Drunken Beef, to my mind a rather bizarrely concocted curry, or French Daube Lamb Shanks, so we thought, hang it, let's do the curry tonight (Saturday) and the shanks on Sunday. Hey, what else do I have to do on the weekend apart from cook, I thought to myself as I changed Flynn and dressed him, fed him breakfast, stuffed HQ's tea towels into the washing machine, swept floors, and D'Oh! noticed the light wasn't working inside the fridge. "Darling, can you come and check this out?" "Hmmmm," said Mr Engineering 2007, "seems like the globe has blown." Well bugga me, I thought, this man is a potential Rhodes Scholar. It only took two hours of head scratching, saying "this old fridge, glory only knows if you can even buy replacement globes these days" and "how are you going to get that plastic thingy out to access the globe" etc to finally twig the freezer was not, you know, FREEZing. Honestly. Dingbat here had replaced the broom in its posi between the pantry and fridge and knocked the double adaptor from the socket. Pfffff "^ ^".
Back to cooking ... As we do, we made a list in preparation for our shopping trip. This was a very interesting exercise as Hot Drunken Beef had ingredients that even WE don't stock. We have three kinds of vinegar for crying out loud - your normal fish 'n chip vinegar, white wine vinegar [for court bouillon, sauces etc.] and balsamic vinegar [for salad dressings etc.] but no, this needed Red Wine Vinegar. "A teaspoon of green peppercorns". Nope, we've got black, and white, but no green. "Three fresh chillies, one birdseye, one red, one green". Dammit, we've got jalapenos in a jar, but not what was required. Ditto for buying a ginger root and Kaffir lime leaves, both jars nestled in our well-lit fridge. "Whisky to flambe". Nope again. Apart from lean beef, green beans and garlic, it also required fish sauce. Phew, luckily we had a bottle of Nuoc Mam. As we set out to shop, I said, "this is one really weird combo".
The upshot? Wow, Zingo, Shazzamm, Zowie! [thank you Batman]. After grinding up a paste of shallots, garlic, the three types of chillies and the slices of ginger, we fired up the pan, and whammo! Downtown Mornington turned into Morocco or Marseilles, can't quite work out which, but the aroma was full-on! After adding all the other stuff, we disconnected the smoke alarm [experience has taught us this deafening lesson before] and poof! doused it all in whisky and set it alight. Unreal! Served it up with Naan bread [not needed], a crisp bottle of white burgundy, and ooooh'd and aaaaah'd our way through this fascinating dish. We sat back, amazed. Did we really do that? A la Bob the Builder ... "Yes We Did!".
In case you're wondering how I make time in my working day to type all this up, heh heh, I don't. I wrote this on Sunday, saved it to disk, and cut 'n pasted it in here, so dear Management, don't freak out!
Have a great week everyone! Ciao for now.

The Aroma of Saturday

Aaaah, TGIF and bring on Saturday. That's the day that Brian and I get into some serious cooking, so this blog will alas not be extolling the joys of Learning 2.0 "^ ^" as I can almost smell the aroma of Saturday.
Over the last couple of years we've had some spectacular successes in our foray into the Gourmet world, including a memorable poached trout. We actually went out and bought a fish poacher just for this one dish, and mmmm mmmm, was it ever worth the effort! Gently poached in a court bouillion and served with a lemon and caper sauce, dauphinoise potatoes and baby carrots and whole beans tossed in butter and torn flat leaf parsley, accompanied by a chilled Frascati, aaaah, 'twas enough to make Rick Stein's baby blues weep with joy.
Another fabo fishy meal has become a BBQ regular - it's sooooo easy and is a knockout in the flavour stakes. Just grab some alfoil, make a bed with some flat leaf parsley stalks and whole spring onions, lay on top a salmon steak, top with a few prawns, sprinkle with virgin olive oil, a dob of butter, a slurp of dry white wine, a large squeeze of fresh lemon juice, some rosemary and thyme leaves, a hefty grind of rock salt and some flakes of garlic. Wrap it up into a parcel and drop onto the barbie for about 20 minutes and voila! The most sensational salmon, complete with a gourmet sauce! How easy is that!
We often thank the Library [and my eagle eye] for providing us with Saturday fodder. Doyle's seafood cookbook 641.692 DOY recently appeared in HQ, and then disappeared via a speedy reservation by yours truly. Their Fisherman's Wharf garlic prawns were to die for! But there are sooooo many magz ... so many photocopies :o) and only so many Saturday nights! :oD

Mind you, we're a bit spoilt on the Peninsula as we DO have a local fishmonger whose seafood is so fresh, the shop just zings with ozone, and we have a brilliant coolstore where the fruit, vegetables, herbs, cheeses and other delectables are so enticing you want to take a photo of them! And yes, we even have a real butcher who stocks King Island beef, so no wimpy supermarket frozen/pre-packed/artificially enhanced anythings for us. We enjoy making a list and setting out to buy all fresh ingredients for our Saturday afternoon cook up.
Which brings me to tomorrow ... the weather is all over the place at the moment. Perhaps a beef and Guinness pie? [One of Brian's faves with a fabulously velvet rich filling and a super flaky pastry] Or maybe a steaming bowl of Mussells with a chilli and vermouth sauce? A rack of lamb with the cutlets separated with a pungent mix of feta/black olives/oregano and rosemary, basted with oil and lemon juice till it just sings hillside Greece? Or ... a french provincial chicken casserole laced with wine, garlic and a smattering of truffle? [Sadly just used the last of our jar of these gems. Note to self: Must, must, hunt down some more.] Ah, decisions, decisions. There's some serious retro menu items back in favour at the moment. Think Coq Au Vin, Tornedos Rossini, Osso Bucco and Coquille St Jacques. I absolutely adore scallops, so maybe... And Houghton's wines have recently released one very nice drop - it's a blend of Verdelho and Chardonnay, crisp, dry, and very very easy on the palate.
Ah well, all will be revealed next week.
Now, taking a totally different tack, the sun is coming down on the 'famous' sunset series of pix [my daughter Michaela said: "OMG, not those bluddy sunset photos again! Crank your act up Mum."] so just for the fun of it, [and because these are already saved here at work] up pops a new series of 'what's hangin' at home' :o) - a bit of a peek into the seriously whacky, creative, and seaside domain of Brian, Deb & Flynn.
Have a great weekend everyone. I will leave you with another word of wisdom from my noticeboard:
"If the world is my oyster, how come I'm allergic to them?"

Week 6: The exponential growth of Biddelonia

Get a load of the following … ‘Tagging’ ‘Folksonomies’ ‘Technorati’ ‘Del.icio.us’ "Blog your thoughts about Web 2.0 and Learning 2.0"
OK, no problemo. Just need a dictionary and I’m on my way. “^ ^” [Do you like my personally-designed emoticon? It expresses me rolling my eyes to the heavens.]

Moving right along, a little click and … hmmm. Where’s that dictionary again?
‘Zeitgeist’ ‘Meme’ ‘Avatar’.
Maybe I should pop into the library, yes, a real bricks and mortar library, to look these up as the first two resulted in a big fat zero with Shift F7 in Word!

Do you know, the above may as well be written in Biddelonian. If I said to my parents even the word “blog” they’d look at me as if I was speaking a foreign language, which of course, I am. Now I have a good grasp of what my Grandmother went through when, in her words: “that rotten stinkin’ government changed our money!” Dollars and cents just about sent her skidding off into the hereafter with one foot on a banana skin. My husband, only four years older than I am, continually battles with kilos, centimetres, hectorPascals, Newton meters, joules and hectares. The 'undermining' of his life's education is regarded as a personal affront.

A funny thing happened last night. I caught a snippet from Rove’s Grade 5s vs Millionaire or whatever the hell it's called, and the subject chosen was “1st grade computer studies”. And there you have it in a nutshell!! Your future mouse-moving Meme-meisters are being indoctrinated to sit in front of a screen before they’ve even lost their first front fang.

That, to me, is the fundamental flaw in this whole shebang; that we are teaching the people of our world to withdraw from warm, human and personal interaction to sit in front of a plastic screen so they can search for warm, human interaction on a global scale. They then need blogs, tags, RSS feeds, cloud groups, folksonomies and all the other linguistic gymnastics to keep up with their fellow cyber-Jones's to know what they’re talking about. Pfffff .... What the hell are we doing!

After reading numerous articles suggested on the Week 6 site, plus viewing the video, I’ve peeked into the future and even if I could parlez the lingo, I don’t like it one little bit. After reading about a pathway from VR to AR (Virtual Reality to Augmented Reality - need that dictionary?), I took a reality check myself and logged out.

My VIP Noticeboard quote for the day?
“I don’t have an attitude problem, you have a perception problem.”

Week 5: It's a Library 'Thang'

Play week hey. Like who the hell has got time to "play". This little black duck will be in and out so fast I won't even get my feathers wet ;oD
OK, this online image generator one was easy - a million thanks to the God of 'give a girl a break'. Picture me as a Blues singer [honestly, why do people think these things up?] At left is my, ahem, online image and stage name. If you wanna have a go at this, click on this link and knock yourself out ...
http://www2.capitalgold.com/staticweb/EdFeatures/goldblues/

Moving right along, next on the To Do list is Library Thing "catalogue some of your favourite books". Yes! I should like this *she says with major optimism*. Ten of my five-star, ok some are 4 1/2 star but let's not get pedantic, fave reads are now in Library Thing and the God of 'give a girl a break' must be having a nap because I'M STUCK! I've successfully created a catalogue -click on this link for some ripping reads :o) http://www.librarything.com/catalog/myotherwordfx

I also 'successfully' created a you-beaut widget [see green thingo below], but where it says "paste this HTML into your HTML", there is nothing but fog. Thick, wet and damp, it has enshrouded my brain and I can't for the life of me come up with something that might even remotely look like MY HTML. Ah God of etc. etc., [see above] c'mon already ... pretty please? OK, dammit !!!!
*Ding* ... ring the Guru of Learning Two point freakin' Zero ... "Hello, gulp, Linda?"

I wonder who survives in this cliff-hanger .... Me or the PC!
My noticeboard saying for today is apt:

"Accept that some days you are the pigeon and other days you are the statue".

Week 4: Flickr'd 'n Fed

Hi fellow bloggers,
I did it and survived it! I flickr'd, like the proverbial moth to a flame. I doubt I will ever do it again, but I have ticked that off the TO DO list and moved onto FEEDS. As readers of MyOtherWordfx will doubtless guess by now, this feed bizzo DROVE ME INSANE!

Aw, I feel terrible as I did make myself a promise to be more positive this week. It's very difficult when one is constantly pushed for time (dear me, I sound like Prince Charles with the use of that pronoun), and what makes it even worse is when one inadvertently clicks on that pretty little red box with the white X in the top right hand corner instead of the window you thought you were in, and "alexaboolah-mitchykazoola-bippetty-boppetty-boo *poof*", it's goodnight Irene and you're back to the brochure you were working on half an hour ago. Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggh.

I believe Ashley & Martin salons should be seriously sponsoring all of us over this 12-week period - I for one need their services in replacing all the hair I've been metaphorically pulling out!! As for feeds, I much prefer the other one, you know, with garlic, a grind of rock salt and light squeeze of fresh lemon juice, served with a chilled Frascati. Hmmmm ... whoops, sorry, nearly wafted off there.

So, RSS (boy, have I dreamed up some ripper alternatives to Really Simple Syndication!) and feeds and tags and all the other whizz-bang/you beaut box 'n dice can all stay out there in neverland while I get on with my REAL life.

http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs

Week 3: Freakin' frustrating Flickr x four

Frivolous fab fun this Flickr. Not. I've created the Yahoo! account, which now makes me the proud owner of four email addresses *sigh, tear hair out, unscramble brain to remember which password goes with with address*, and glory only knows how long Yahoo! will take to register it because I've tried four times to log into Flickr and four times it keeps asking me if I've registered.

I think I'll register for a nice padded room somewhere quiet. Somewhere with some nice water to laze in, a bar fridge stocked with Verve Cliquot, and the most taxing thing to do will be to press a button for room service. Aaaaaahhh ... luvverly :o) I'm feeling four times better than I have been in the last freakin' forty minutes.

Blogs hate Spellcheckers

Hi you happy little Bloggers you,
If it wasn't for one of the Admin's emails reminding us to keep blogging each week, this riveting message would've (that's would have, not would of as some illiterati subscribe to) still be languishing in my little grey cells.
Damn infuriating that I still haven't made it onto CCLCs list of blogs ... What's with the latest blog that has nothing in it??? I don't get it. *Sigh*
Next lesson on the hit list is Flickr. As I'm constantly on the image trail, this could be potentially a very handy thing! Tune in next week to check out whether [a] this is a handy thing [b] a really annoying thing, or [c] just another tick on the Things to do list.

Oh, another pearly word or two from my notice board?

"If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get
done".

Ciao for now,
PS - When you run a spellcheck on these blogs, best to have your sunnies on ;o)

Phew, what a day ...

I have many Very Important sayings on my notice board, and the way today has gone, this one is truly appropriate.

"I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing
sound they make as they go flying by." :o)

Hey, I'm in. As in IN, writing this blog. Who would've thought after my rantings yesterday! There's hope for me yet.
Nighty night, I'm outta here. *yawn*

Week 2 + Blog 1 = Rage

Hi fellow bloggers,
My thoughts at this stage? It's the blind leading the bloggy blind. Week 2 introduction says "Listen to this podcast". Yeah. Right. Not a peep, not one lousy little Yankee honey-drippin' drawlin' word. Good start hey!
I have created this blog and have no idea what/where to go next. I wanted to test out a few blog names, you know, to get the 'right fit', but I can't get back to the beginning again. I'm frustrated already, particularly after reading some of the Help files. Do you know, if I leave off typing here and click on something else ... that's it. Whammo. End of this blog. I know this because this is the SECOND TIME I'VE HAD TO TYPE THIS. *Sigh* :o(

I'm a journo and on deadline for our monthly magazine, Pages, so enough of this frivolity, it's back to work for me. What on earth does "labels for this post" (below) mean? Ah, whatever .... ciao for now.