A day late, but a very appropriate email for my site from Credo:

http://corp.credoreference.com/


Three Reasons Our Greenwood Love and Courtship Collection Beats a Box of Chocolates on the Reference Desk for Valentine's Day

1. Users can't cite a Ferrero Rocher on their history term paper. They can cite the six interdisciplinary works published by Greenwood that are included in this collection. 

2. This collection won't give your users a toothache. These titles cover human love, courtship and many other "sweet" topics in a variety of contexts from the Ancient World up through the 21st century but won't prompt a visit to the dentist.   

3. Dark chocolate truffles won't connect your users to your library's other subscription resources. Credo's combination of authoritative content with innovative, customisable technology links users of this collection through to all of your library's relevant resources. 

 Though I think I am still leaning towards the chocolate option to be honest.

Thing 10

Twitter.  Was really not looking forward to this.  I have never seen the point of twitter and felt very strongly that I did not want to use it.  However, it would be good to know if my experience justified that feeling, so log in I did.  It felt like I was pressing the Destruct button and I was betraying all my instincts, which was to scream and run.  I expected this:



which to my mind is some of the most boring chocolate in the world.  No names.  I expect I am in enough trouble as it is.
However, after successfully registering and trying to think of people I wanted to "follow"  (nobody), I feel I am really struggling to comprehend what is going on.  I thought I was doing it right, but could not see my post on the feed and did not find Twitter Help much help either.  Obviously my difficulty is at such a basic level that even an idiot would not expect to seek help with it.  After an hour of feeling I was drowning in mud, and still unable to get my posts to show on the sot23 page, I gave up, went home and doodled a meeting with my son who is a twitterer of long standing.  Oh, how I love thee, Doodle - you  are so easy to use and so useful!
I feel a one to one to iron out my inadequacies is called for.  The harmless looking chocolate pieces had become distorted in my fractured mind:



Each twitter from another user taunting me with their ease and confidence.  And yes - boring me too (Sot23 excepted of course!)

I battled again this afternoon on the Enquiry Desk, and actually glimmers of light are beginning to come through, but am still looking forward to my one to one. Yes, dear Enquirer, that was indeed me with the hunched shoulders and haunted look.  I was right.  I shall never twitter again after this week.  And Hugh Jackman never replied to me.

Actually it is a very different experience at home, I realise over the weekend.  My default browser here is Mozilla and I very rarely have any problems with it at all.  It also obligingly updates itself every now and then, improving my flash player and speed of access considerably.  However, if I log on to Internet Explorer, I have to wait for ages, annoying messages about things appear which never go away, and the flash player crashes after a few minutes.  So I avoid IE like the plague at home.  The difference is that our version of Mozilla at home is up to date and supported, and I miss that at work.

Thing 9

Browsers.....At this point I have to confess to being a very shallow person and that, like my choice of car, it all comes down to colour and appearance.  For years I was a fan of Netscape, despite the cruel jibes of my colleagues, and I continued with it until it fell over and died.  Why?  Because the logo was my favourite colour - a sort of eau-de-nil.  I was never a huge fan of Internet Explorer - a blue e - how boring is that?!  But then I was introduced to Mr Mozilla and the love affair started - the bold orange and swirly blue planet - you roped me in hook, line and sinker, despite the same cruel colleague (now left) who taunted me for my pronunciation every time I spoke his name.  I vowed never to desert Mozilla, but fate had a cruel trick up it's sleeve.  First it started with My View when it refused my log in.  It turns out that My View does not like Mozilla and refuses to play ball.  This happened with more and more applications - "Yes - I am afraid if you are using Mozilla we have had problems....." and in the end I turned to that blue e in desperation.  But I was not happy, oh no.  I now have a new love and he is called Google Chrome - that bright interesting swirling circle of fun.  Although I do occasionally get things that refuse to work on Chrome and have to go back with my tail between my legs to IE, which unfortunately does appear to be the most robust of them all, certainly for the things I want to do.  But that blue e has to go.  I choose my browser on its appearance first and secondly its ability to do the job.  As I said, I am very shallow. Even as I write this on Chrome, I am getting warnings that an error is occurring.  This would not happen on IE, darn it.

Thing 8

Grrrrrrrrrr- frustration for the first time.  Not so fun now.  Tried following the link to install Doodle by looking at sheet of instructions which contained a link to Uni of Warwick instructions?  Don't know how up to date these were or if we were meant to look at them, but that is where the instructions led.  None of the pictures or instructions remotely fitted what I was looking at - then noticed it was to install on iGoogle not Netvibes which would have been more logical.  Asked for help and help was promised but never arrived.  Wasted an hour, then found more instructions to install on Netvibes instead.  Lost the will to live.  Went home.  Came back this morning and after 20 minutes of trying to log into Netvibes (I now have a serious memory issue with all my new email addresses and passwords), finally manage to do it, though it seemed longwinded.  And why is it called a 'widget'?  Is this in the OED - why not just say it is a link?  Quite cross now and snarly, but maybe it is because I have not had any chocolate all week.




It might be twisted, or it may be me, but I still love you Creme Egg, and I love Doodle too.

Thing 7 

I think today that the novelty of trying out new things is beginning to wear a little thin.  I have now so many log ins, passwords, tabs open that I yearn to bang my head on the desk.  It started off reasonably well.  I overcame the torpor that descended with the start of a new working week, and tried out Doodle - scheduling a knitting meeting with fellow knitters.  I was actually amazed how quick and simple this was to do, and how effective.  A couple of days ago, I had tried to set up a social gathering with 5 other people outside the University, and this would have made it amazingly easy and less time consuming - going backwards and forwards with emails.  So hats off to Doodle - short, sweet and could prove to be very useful indeed, like this little beauty - a couple of bites of loveliness.......

Thing 6 - Installing RSS feed

Again?  Installed already the University one as part of the Netvibes set up.  However, I gamely plow on and hope for more interesting (and not quite so prolific) info from the Sot 23 feed.  Nice and easy, and I feel I am getting there but then I spot the dreaded news on my shiny new Netvibes page that I have 3233 items waiting to be read due to my 2 feeds and the BBC News.  The BBC news also duplicates its feed by classing 2 identical items as BBC UK and BBC World.  I am feeling overwhelmed and panicked.  There is not time enough in the world to keep up with this.  My head is spinning......Can 2 RSS feeds and 2 BBC News feeds be too much of a good thing?  It is just nuts.

Thing no.5

It never stops, does it?   Drip drip drip - RSS feeds.



Why would anyone want a constant dripping of information all the time, reminding you how little you know, how little time you have to read it all, and ultimately - how little you care.  Seconds after setting up the Netvibes page, I have hundreds of feeds to read.  When I tried to delete/tick them - I got a pasting fron Netvibes.  "Do you really want to tick these unread messages as read?" it scolded.  I shuddered with guilt - of course not - so now I feel guilty that I have hundreds of messages that I have no desire to read and no time to do so even if I wanted to.  I should make clear that I am talking about the University RSS feed and World news (or something like that) - not of course the Sot23 RSS feed, which is Thing no.6.  But I am reminded why I do not buy a daily newspaper - life is too short.

And so to Netvibes.  I am not sure what I feel about this.  It was quite fun to set up the page, and did not take too long to do - am I getting the hang of this at last?  However, it felt like so many techy things these days - a way of keeping all your favourite things together - a bit like iGoogle, or a smart phone.  Or lots of tabs on your web browser. So a bit deja vue.  I don't know enough about it it to see whether it is so much better than the others, and maybe it is, we will have to see.  But it does look like a mixed bag of goodies.  Will I use it though, or is it easier just to go the website you wanted in the first place.  Hmmm, she said reflectively.........
Also, thought I would keep up my theme and selected the food background images, but the existing ones remained.  So I typed in chocolate - no results were returned.  Oh well, too much of a good thing maybe - let's try Spring Day (the sun was actually shining at that moment) and lo and behold, the chocolate images appear instead.  A little confusing.  However, the page is now adorned with chocolates as is only right and proper.  Thing 4 also involved installing Thing 6, so it has all become a little twisted now.

So, already I feel I have made strides.  From a very unpromising beginning where I could not even log into my Google account (using .co.uk instead of .com!), I am now enjoying working on my blog.  I have started with a simple template but in time this may be developed.  I have even considered tagging my (2) posts - things I would not have contemplated on Day One.  I have had a look at some of my fellow bloggers and enjoyed Emma's knitting pics and Nick's diary reminiscences.  As my blogging experience grows and becomes richer, so too my previous chocolate bar has developed a more interesting twist


and my blog has also taken on a new shape!
I certainly feel a little more aware than I did before, and am also enjoying creating this much more than I thought I would.  Maybe if I ever had anything interesting to say in the future, I may even consider writing a blog about it.  I am also very much looking forward to new challenges over the next few weeks.

So the first 2 tasks are completed and time to explore other blogs.  I suppose in the chocolate world this would be like starting with Cadbury's Dairy Milk  - very basic and I can only hope that there will soon be a big improvement!

So here we are at last - struggling to get this started, without the benefit of strong coffee.  There is no denying 

that this is tough.  Would I prefer to be familiar with 42 types of chocolate, or 23 technical advances?  Hmmm......