Podcasts

As this weeks Green Guide says - podcasting has taken off in 2007!

A really good series of podcasts combined with a walking tours is available from ABC Radio 774. The one about food and the history of Melbourne is fascinating. It would be brilliant for locals and tourist alike. I think I'll try to do the walking tour over the summer. See below

Eat, Drink Melbourne

Presented by Derek Guille with food writer Stephanie Alexander.

Let Derek Guille take you on an exploration of Melbourne’s culinary hotspots as Eat, Drink Melbourne takes in the great eating and drinking sites of today and decades past, interspersed with cooking hints from Stephanie Alexander.

Highlights Include:

• The story of Australian food icons, like Vegemite, the Freddo Frog, and the Dim Sim, which were all invented in Melbourne.
• The site where the Prince Alfred caused Melbourne’s biggest food-fight involving 100,000 Melburnians.
• Rollicking yarns about Melbourne's famous pubs and vineyards.
• Stephanie Alexander’s advice on how to select a good cheese or cut of meat.

Route: Starting at Federation Square this podtour winds through the lanes and arcades of the inner city to Chinatown and the Greek precinct to finish up at that foodies haven, the Queen Victoria Market.

Download the walking tour audio Download (Right Click & Save As) 27.7MB MP3

Download the walking tour map Download (Right Click & Save As) ~1.6MB PDF

photos from the Flickr photostreams of gLiTTeRbOi, forbescreative, fazen, jrossmanjr, released under creative commons share alike licenses.

Pet photo on the wiki

I put a photo of Mattie on the pet wiki page a little while ago.

She looked worried in the photo but yesterday she was really beside herself during a severe thunderstorm and chewed off half of the back door frame!

Google docs

Had a play with the spreadsheet which seemed pretty much identical to MS excel - and as I'd just done an excel course I had some point of comparison/sameness between the two. Although I couldn't make charts using the F11 key like in excel.

The potential for being able to use the app through the web and not confined to the pc or other hardware is nice. And the ability to share too. Really useful to know about!

All things Google -ly

Google Maps - I had seen my local street map in Melbourne before but this time I looked at the area I grew up in - Derrinallum.

For those unsure about the location of this small town it is in south western Victoria on the Glenelg Highway. The most notable feature of Derrinallum is Mt Elephant which makes up part of the volcanic plains of the western district. On Google Maps you can see the perfect volcanic cone and also the breach, or saddle, of the volcano when it erupted. Also around the area are some white striations across the satellite image which I'm not sure what these are - could be the "stoney rises" which is also a feature of the volcanic activity of the area. Quite fascinating!

MySpace and Facebook

I had a look at the Jasper Public Library entry on MySpace: pretty cute but doesn't seem to have been overwhelmed with "friends". As a device for marketing the library to a particular segment? -libraries still have a geeky image - but then I saw a "vote for pedro" T shirt this morning and thought about Napolean Dynamite and the charm of the film. Does "geeky" + " integrity" = "charm"?

Who knows, but you have to be in the sandpit if you want to play....

I joined Facebook with minimal personal info - (which may to may not be correct info, you decide!) but at least I'm Tony's friend. Thanks for asking Tony!

RSS feeds

I've joined up to Google Reader which was easy peasy since I used Mozilla and because the Google account was already set up.

I've subscribed to the "Technology" folder that was available on Google Reader and that includes digg as well as wired top stories. Also added Librarian in Black and Lorcan Dempsey's blog too - but those already existed in my favourites folder in Mozilla.

Rather underwhelmed by digg at the moment but I might need to have a look further...

Flickr group

Ok, nearly caught up with all my tasks.

Just joined the 1950's Interior design and residential architecture group. Fantastic photos and group discussions about all sorts of 1950's related design books, sources, homes, colours...

Library Thing

Library thing - interesting in that I found I have some fairly obscure reading tastes (Like the Feng Shui dectective) but 1 person had 5 titles that are in my catalogue.

I followed up and got some more titles to check out from the good old public library down the road. See my list by searching seahorse23

Other people's blogs

So many blogs to choose from: I've commented on Shibuya 109's image generator. Lovely retro Disneyland photo.

Sara J kindly offered another blog for me to look at - must do that in the next few days.

Sea of Memes has an artistically dead flower in her Flickr account, and then found there was a group for like minded dead flower enthusiasts - as she says in her blog "Who knew?" As I mentioned there is plenty of potential entrants for this group in my garden.

Lots of great blog names, showing individuals personal interests and the fascinating things that are being put up on their blogs - I'm learning about 2.0 AND a whole lot of other things at the same time. Great!

Image Generators

Must say I'm not feeling very witty today (not that I'm making a claim for wit at any other time either!)

Flickr time...

Well, I've been off the air for a few weeks...

Time to catch up with Flickr - the photo I've put up is Mattie-the-wonder-hound. She's wondering what I'm going to do next...she's trying to pretend she's asleep...

Pitti Palace - Florence

This is an image from inside the courtyard of the Pitti Palace in Florence.

I like the image because of the different textures of the buildings surface are so intricate, and somehow tactile....

I wanted to add an image from a folder and see how I could add to my blog. Will also help when I join Flickr.

"At the beginning..." said Alice

Hi everyone,



As part of the 23 things team we have just launched the program at Swinburne with a "roadshow" to all the campuses letting people know how to get started, and about some of the activities in the coming weeks...



Great fun with Clare, Tom, Andrea and Cleve as we raced from one campus to the other. And for Andrea it was a great opportunity to visit the other Swinburne libraries that she hadn't seen.

Lucky Cleve will be leaving soon on his overseas holiday (and a world breaking attempt at visiting the most number of countries in 12 weeks) and then Mary will be the 23 things champion at Prahran.

I'll have a look around the settings and the template and see what I can add but I think I'll put this up now, and make my blog prettier later.