Thursday 31 January 2013

Thing 5 & 6 - RSS Feeds

Well that was jolly easy to learn and do - I had always wondered about RSS Feeds and how you got to read them - it was always the "how do I read them" part which I couldn't understand. Now the use of Netvibes seems good because I'm able to link RSS Feeds to that. However you'll also notice if you scroll down enough that I've managed to put an RSS feed onto my blog (it's on the left at the towards the bottom) and this links through to the Sot23 Things Blog. One thing I want to find out now is if I can subscribe to RSS feeds via my smartphone...

Thing 4 - What is Netvibes and do I like it...

Well I've had a go, I've played around and I've set up my Netvibes account. It's a good idea and having what I would term my favourites all in one place seems quite good. However I think after this week I may not look at my page again. As stated I'm happy to open up my favourite tab and have a look at BBC news from there, or go to my Facebook page. I also have tabs at the top of my internet browser wth my favourites on there too. So this just seems another tool too much for me.

However saying that I have seen how the Health Services Library has used Netvibes and that seems really good and is really helpful. So for a work tool I think this could be of real use. As far as a cataloguer right now I'm not sure how I could put this into practice - but it's something to think about.

Right now onto learning about RSS Feeds...

Wednesday 30 January 2013

Neville's Birthday

Neville's birthday - each year we celebrate Neville's birthday this is a tradition which started with my line manager who has now retired. In her own words this is how Neville's birthday became so widely celebrated:

"About twenty years ago I was reminiscing at work about my youth and my first job. I told them about Mrs Barter who was in charge of the office I worked in (the Clinic in East Park Terrace which has recently been demolished). She had a son called Neville and she used to say 'On Neville's birthday I can get home in the light'. This was the end of January so pushing it a bit I think. Anyway the next day I walked into the office and there was a lot of giggling going on and on my desk was a cake with Happy Birthday Neville written on it.

So it's a celebration of the lighter evenings dedicated to Neville and we always have cake. It has spread to Aberystwyth, Loughborough, Leicester, Frankfurt and Berlin, and other places probably I don't know about."

So I thought I would show you a picture of the delights we had on offer this year. Sadly I didn't get the picture taken soon enough and a lot had already gone!! They were so tasty though.


Sunday 27 January 2013

My allotment

So as well as 23 Things, knitting and generally living I've decided I'd take on the allotment I was offered. Well half of what I was offered as it was a huge plot. So today Lee (my husband) and I went to divide it up so that our half was marked out and have a general look at the state of it. There's lots of work needing done but I'm looking forward with planting some fruit trees and seeing what veg I'll be able to grow!!

Wednesday 23 January 2013

First Week of 23 Things!!

So far I've been helping my office get going with their blog - some things I'm quite able to do (like removing their profile from their blog page) whilst I'm unable to give advice on how they hide themselves - although I've noticed another 23 Things participant has managed to hide their name :)

I'm off in a short while to give some feedback to the staff meeting about 23 Things, and I'm worried I'll get a question that I'll not know the answer to. Hopefully though everyone will laugh (well chuckle) when I mention about how well the food went down and it'll all be over within a minute or so!! Sometimes though I do start to waffle...

Introducing my Kitties


I just wanted to introduce you to my kitties - Jaffa is the old boy and ginger and Zimba is coming up for 3. We rehomed both these boys almost 2 years ago from Barbara's Cat Rescue I added the one with Jaffa near the fridge as he's always getting in there to see what he can grab - sadly I've never managed to actually get a picture of this!




Thursday 17 January 2013

23 Things Launch

We just had our 23 things launch which we're running at the University of Southampton and it went with a bang with a real good vibe going. I think everyone enjoyed the intro to our 23 things and the nibbles we had seemed to go down a treat too!

We just need to keep this momentum going. I took some fab pictures of the launch and I'll post these on our blog tomorrow (I hope) - I've just got to figure out how to get the pictures off my phone, and sadly I'm quite excited at the thought that I can use Google Drive for this. Google Drive is one of the 23 things we're looking at here at the University of Southampton and it's the one I'm writing instructions for, so I guess it's good to actually use it!

Friday 11 January 2013

Here's one of my first baby blankets I made. It should really have been knitted all in lace, but I unpicked it too many times and I was starting to no longer like the blanket, so I put in the large knitted section in the middle. I loved this in the end :)

Gearing up for 23things round two

It seems that I never really did get round to getting very far with 23things last year. This time however I'm part of a team (well I've only just come on board - after all the hard work has been done!!!) who is running the 23things programme here at the University of Southampton for Library Staff, so I better get with it!

I have continued with the same blog name, even though at that time I was working as a Librarian, but on maternity cover. I'm now back to being a Principal Library Assistant in the Cataloguing Office here, but I'm vain enough to want to keep it as Dowling Knitting Librarian - also I think it sounds kind of cool - but am I too old to worry about being cool???

Right onwards with 23things, and finishing my first item of clothing for my friends new baby!