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.