Did you know you could fly

Does anyone here use Weblogimages.com to host image files? If so, are you having problems? None of the images I have hosted there are loading (witness the ugly white background). I can see the thumbnails when I log into the service, but if I pull up a full screen view all I get is garbled code. And they won't answer my email, gorram it! So I don't know if it's their whole system or just my account that's having the problem.

Has anyone else gotten an email introducing Amazon.com's new Askville? Looks like their attempt at Yahoo!Answers. I haven't looked very closely, but it might be interesting to see if it works out, where the others didn't.

Of course as a librarian I'm skeptical of these kinds of things because there's no guarantee of accuracy on any of the answers you receive. Besides, why use something like this when thousands of libraries around the world have free chat reference where you can get a *librarian* answering such questions for you.

I realised when typing an answer to a comment earlier that I type nearly as fast as I can talk. It's not quite there yet, but it's *very* close. And I don't think about it much. I don't plan where my fingers are going to go -- most of the time I'm barely aware that there is typing involved at all. I think what I want to say and it appears on the screen.

Could typing then be considered to be a foreign language, in the same way that American Sign Language is considered a foreign language? And if so, is typing not (like ASL) a performance language - based on movement, rather than sound?

Not entirely sure where I'm going with this, but as I've just taken my meds, that is understandable. It may make sense in the morning . . . or it may not. Until then, I'm just throwing it out there.

Communication without sound . . . real time . . . and not just limited to a tiny portion of the population. In fact, for many people, email or chat is probably their primary means of communication. Which means they type more than they speak.

That's got to have some sort of sociopsychological impact on human culture.

I'm currently reading a book for work on the use of social software (blogs, podcasts, etc) in classrooms, both high school and college. Some people are excited about the possibilities, and report positive results, while others feel that social software is just a fad that holds no place in serious education.

So, what do you think? Anyone have any experiences with using this stuff in the classroom? Let the discussion begin!

Ok folks -- I've been asked to test out alternatives to the current virtual reference service the library uses. That means that, in fact, I have been told, by my boss, to chat online.

I love my job.

So assist me, please. Chat with me:

AIM: gwyncorbae
Yahoo!: corvid7
MSN: gwynhefar@hotmail.com
Jabber: gwynhefar@jabber.org

I'm currently testing GAIM, so IM me on any of the above :)

I don't know if such a thing exists, but I'm looking for a way to measure how many people visit my reference blogs, including those that subscribe to the RSS feed. Does anyone know of a program that will do that?

Where do they come up with these names? I just got some spam from someone named "Peskiest I. Lustily". And it wasn't even anything dirty -- it was for cheap office software. I have no idea why anyone thought a name like that would make anyone buy their stuff.

On a cheerful note, it looks like my internet connection has stablised. I only had a few issues with connectivity today, and none after about noon-ish.

And since I spent most of the weekend in front of the TV folding cranes, I made quite a dent in my "still to be watched" list of shows. All in all, not a badly spent Labour Day :)

And now off to bed. I have that thing called work tomorrow, unfortunately.

So my computer doesn't have Flash installed. And apparently I'm not allowed to have Flash installed, because when I try, I get an error message saying I don't have access to the drive. Do you know how many websites I simply cannot get to because they require Flash? Flash is all well and good, but there really ought to be non-Flash versions for those of us who are Flash impaired. Speaking of which, I don't suppose anyone can check out the Serenity Movie Website and see what they say about upcoming releases, premiers, etc.? Anything in the Louisiana area? I hate not being able to look for myself.

So I have gone back and tagged all my entries since the start of this year. I find the tags a little awkward in implimentation, but I really like being able to look back and see all the entries where I talked about my car, for example (instant repair log). Now the ongoing project will have to be tagging everything from 2002 on. But I figure that'll take awhile :)