Friday, November 19, 2010

The Guinea Blog

For those of you who don't know or haven't guessed, I am a bit of a fan of small furry critters, especially the rodent variety. Guinea Pigs (cavies) are a particular favourite and I have had the pleasure of getting to know a few of the little chaps in my time.

Recently my much loved Boys, Iggy and Chestnut died after just over 4 years of chomping, nibbling and scurrying around as well as rotund guinea pigs can. They were considered seniors so while sad, their passing wasn't unexpected.

And this has what to do with week 3 of the course?  Not a lot really, but it's as good a reason as any to post pics of guinea pigs (they're so cute!) and offer a small tribute to the Boys who gave our family lots of joy and plenty of giggles.



This is picture of Coco found on Flickr. She looks remarkably like my Boy Chestnut but without the chomp out of the right ear he carried for most of his life - the legacy of  the standard cavy testosterone surge at 10 weeks old  that saw him and Iggy suddenly battling with each other over just about everything.  It only lasted a couple of weeks and they were soon great chums again ... with a few scars each.

Iggy had hair like this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoesa/3255754983/

looked a bit like this

http://www.flickr.com/photos/geebs/484762264/

and was generally pretty laid back and cruisy (aside from the earbiting incident - but I'm sure he was provoked).

As far as using flickr to find these pics goes ... it was pretty time consuming and hard to come across pictures to upload. I guess guinea pigs have rights, too!

Unfortunately, entering the search phrase "guinea pigs" also brought up some unsettling images of caviekebabs and guinea pig barbecue which - while a staple part of some diets, I'm sure - were a bit much for this rodent loving vego to handle. The lesson is that there's a lot of info, images and thoughts floating around in W2.0sville put there by a lot of random others with different ideas about what's good, bad, interesting or (in this case) tasty. So beware!

Miss

Sunday, November 14, 2010

At last!

I am enjoying the course so far (week2!) The biggest hurdle  has been putting finger to keyboard and actually posting to this blog. Making it was fun and as I learn more it will become a work in progress.
So – taking my cues from the list kindly provided by our tutors the blog begins ....
What would I like to learn? How to use this stuff well enough that creating/posting takes is as close to effortless as possible. Becoming familiar with what’s available and how it’s being used so I can use it myself and understand other people who are more familiar than I when they talk about their experience. Of course, in our line of work it’s important to be able to address (and understand) the information needs of the people that access our services. Part of that is pointing them in the direction of 2.0 products (if they don’t already use them) and understanding they way use them (iof they already do)   
Lifelong learning? ... Isn’t learning lifelong ... if it isn’t, when does it stop exactly?
Can I stop now? (blogging - not learning)
Miss