Thing 6: My trading card

My trading card
Originally uploaded by Dutchgirl73

Here's my trading card. I'm not sure how useful this "toy" is, but it's fun. I was surprised to discover that you have to upload a photo from your computer, and then upload the finished project to Flickr. If you want to use a photo already on Flickr for your card, you have to download it to your computer first. Not hard, but of course that's an extra step.

I also tried Mappr, which was nifty. This could be quite nice for students doing a report in which they need pictures from a place (middle school travel brochure projects come to mind). The color pickr would be useful if you need to color coordinate your brochure!

I wasn't terribly impressed with Montagr, as I've seen and used much easier collage and mosaic software. Andreamosaic and MacOSaiX are two programs that let you create mosaics on your own computer. Mosaicmaker, Hockneyizer and Warholizer are linked under Flickr's Big Huge Labs area.

Here's my daughter's fifth grade school picture, redone with MacOSaiX:

Thing 5: Having fun with Photos and Flickr

I've had a Flickr account for more than a year, but this has provided an excuse to learn to use a little more of it. Up to now, I've posted my pictures, and got them into Sets, and that has been the extent of it. After poking around a bit the last few days, I discovered a link to Big Huge Labs, where you can have fun with Motivator, to create an inspirational poster.

Here's mine:

There's also Warholizer, which lets you mimic the style of painting Andy Warhol used in his painting of Marilyn Monroe. You can create fun frames, desktop wallpapers with or without calendars, Hockneyize a single picture into a collage, or create a collage out of up to 36 pictures using Mosaic Maker. I tried that one with the following result:

There's a lot more there than I've listed, so if you haven't checked it out, I recommend that you go and play.

If that's not enough photography fun for you, here is a list of some other fun websites that I've found and enjoyed:

Picnik, which integrates with Flickr, Picassa, and many other web based photo services, allows you to edit, tweak and do fun things with your photos. You can save, download, or have your pics printed.

FlauntR lets you create effects, and frames, as well as edit the picture for exposure, cropping, and so on. You can link directly to your Flickr collection, which makes working with this program extremely simple, and of course you can also upload photos from your computer and then store them on the FlauntR site. Here are a couple things I have done using Flauntr:

PhotoFunia is a site where you can upload a photo with a detectable face, and then create a fun altered photo out of it, and save it back to your own computer. Here's a couple of examples:

And, if you want to make a poster of yourself in the style of the famous Obama poster, you can do that with Obamiconme. Here's mine:

I'm looking forward to reading the posts of others who are doing this project, to see what they have found!

Thing 2: Lifelong learning habits

What is my easiest habit out of the seven and a half? I think it's #6, which to use technology to your advantage. Of course it helps if the technology works well. At home, I use a Mac, iLife software, including photo, web, and music organization, and integrates all of them with simple clicks. In addition, I've got a fun program called Delicious Library, which has allowed me to catalog my entire home collection of books, CD's and DVD's.

I just recently added a small netbook to my arsenal of technology, and it is driving me crazy. It's slow, keeps wanting to update, and then needs restarting. By the time I get done with tasks on it, I don't feel so productive! (I bought it for use with my embroidery enabled sewing machine, which does not work with the Mac.) So, when the technology works, I can be quite productive, but when it doesn't, it's a huge time suck!

In that vein, my biggest challenge is #3, viewing problems as challenges. I want things to work, and I want them to work now!!! I have to remind myself, that even when things aren't going the way I want them to, the possibilities are so much greater for learning, than they were when I first started out.

I took a computer class when I was in "Library School" at UofW. It involved punching chads in cards, then making sure they were in the correct order to feed into the computer that would read them. I think the program was called BASIC. I have no memory of what kind of program I wrote, and I couldn't then imagine what I would ever do with it. I really hated that class; hard to believe, but now I'm the computer geek in my family.

Thing 1, 3 & 4: My first post!

My first post on blogger. I chose the name Spokaliciousness because that is the name of a little movie that I filmed last summer, while riding my bicycle to a library event in Spokane Valley. Since it has been about two months since I last rode my bicycle, I'm feeling rather nostalgic about those lovely late summer days!



More later!