Amsterdam and Germany

Loving the Eurpean contiki tour, different type of set up to the American, but fun anyway. Went to Amsterdam yesterday, that place is crazy. Went to a Dutch cultural experience show, I will let you figure out what that means (remembering that Amsterdam is famous for its red light district!!)
In St Goar Germany today, travelling to Munich tonight. I think we are then heading down to Austria or Switzerland, then into Venice.

Cant believe that I am home in under 2 weeks. Sorry all, but that is totally depressing!

Got to go now, heading off to a beer stein presentation.

Kel

Goodbye USA - hello UK and Europe

Well my time in the USA came to an end a few days ago. Sooo sad to leave, had an absolute ball. Saw so much, met great people. My favourite places were (in no particular order) Seattle, Vegas, New Orleans, Washington DC and New York. Went to see a broadway show on my last night in New York. We saw Mary Poppins. Awesome!

In London now with my youngest brother Matt. He is having a ball here, even though it is always freezing. He took me to a Halloween Party at his work last night. There were such awesome costumes there, he was Chopper Read, and I was Morticia Adams. Feeling pretty seedy today, but it was a great night. We did some of the tourist things today - we got one of those red buses that take you to all the tourist places. We saw Buckhingam Palace, Big Ben, Tower of London etc. The problem is that is so cold, that we were not too motivated to hop on and off the bus, so we only got off at Buckingham Palace, and saw the rest from the bus!

Got to go now, see everyone in about 3 weeks!

Kel

Memphis

Got to Memphis yesterday. Went to Graceland this morning, I am not that big an Elvis fan, but it was still pretty amazing. You get to walk through his house (but not the upstairs part). You also see his and his parents graves (if you believe that Elvis is buried there and not walking around Forest Lake somewhere!) Also went to Little Rock Arkansas yesterday, the place where Bill Clinton was governor before he became president.

Memphis is pretty cool, music is obviously pretty big here, everything focuses on Elvis and soul music.

Off to New Orleans tomorrow, going on a river boat cruise for dinner, after a swamp boat ride, where we will apparently see alligators!

All is good, will post soon. Here are a few photos. I am actually in Memphis Public Library using the PC at the moment, so I should be able to post a few photos.

Kel

Seligman, Route 66.

Me with the Grand Canyon behind me, the photos totally don't do the Grand Canyon justice.

Ricki, Sarah, Nicola, Liz and I on the jeep tour. I can't remember where (I have been to so many cities and states lately, it was somewhere in Colorado.) There was snow in the mountains there, it was pretty cool.

At the NBA basketball game last night. Memphis Grizzlies beat the Indiana Pacers by about 15 points.

At the front of Elvis' mansion. It is pretty surreal walking around inside. You don't get to go upstairs though, but you get to walk through all other areas.

Texas

Hi
In Dallas, Texas tonight. Heading out shortly for dinner, hoping to find some Texas ribs somewhere. Went out to a cowboy bar last night in Amarillo Texas. That was fun. The only bad thing is that Texas is one of the few states in the US where you can still smoke inside bars, which everyone knows frustrates me, so I came back stinking of smoke.
Oh well.
Going on a tour of the Dallas Cowboys football stadium tomorrow, and going to a NBA game on Monday night.
See ya.
Kel

Colorado, Grand Canyon, New Mexico etc

Hi all
What a busy few days. Am currently in New Mexico. Spent most of the day in Colorado, did a jeep ride which was awesome. It is quite amazing here, the first part of the day we were in desert territory in Cortez Colorado, then around lunch time we were in mountain territory in Durango Colorado (which had snow capped mountains) and tonight we are Albarquarqe New Mexico. Seeing and eating heaps. Was in the Grand Canyon and Vegas a few days ago, did a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon. (I did do a post a few days ago, but it seems it didn't save). Have heaps of photos, but it is really hard to get to a computer to upload stuff, so will show them when I get home.
All is good. Hope everyone is ok back home.
Kel

Inside the Seattle Central Library. Fantastic looking building.




The famous Pike St Fish Market. I only saw them throw a very small fish!




Sun setting in Seattle. Taken from the Space Needle

Greetings from Seattle

Hi
I finally made it. The plane only left 3 hours late. To all those people who made comments about the Qantas plane falling apart, and me saying that it would all be fine, I apologise. There was something wrong with the hydrolic brakes. I guess it is better that they found out before we left as opposed to after!

The flight was pretty good, as well as long haul flights go I guess. I had the row to myself for the first half of the flight. I felt pretty guilty, as the people behind me had 3 strangers all together in the row. A lady moved to the aisle seat in my row about half way through, I wasn't too concerned. The middle seat was still free, so I could stretch out a bit.

Anyway, made it to LA without dramas. Got through customs much easier than expected. I thought they would go through my luggage and play 20 questions. But I got through without being stopped, not as if I had anything to declare - so it wouldn't have been a problem anyway. The flight to Seattle was fine. LA airport is a bit of a dump though.

So that brings me to Seattle. Beautiful city, a lot like Melbourne. Old buildings mixed in with cutting edge technology. I did a behind the scenes tour of the Seattle Central Library this morning, oh my god that place is amazing. I fell in love with the place. Unlike Brisbane Square, they designed all the floors separately. I won't go into too much detail, but have a look on the web for photos (or check some of mine out below). Pretty amazing. Got to love the red section!

I also did an Underground tour of Seattle today. This shows the history of Seattle, and how it was rebuilt after the great fire of around 1889. http://www.undergroundtour.com/ I also did the Space Needle last night. I am going to do Pike St Fish Market, the Seattle Centre and Ride The Ducks tomorrow http://www.ridetheducksofseattle.com/

The hotel here is great! Free internet access. Wasn't expecting that. jetlag is catching up with me, it is only 5pm here, but I think I will go out and grab some dinner, and then have an early night.

Will blog again soon. Here is a photo of the Space Needle taken yesterday. Will post some more tomorrow hopefully.
Kel.

Mashups

How cool is this!!!!

This is a mashup of the photo that I uploaded a few posts ago.

Looks awesome, I am going to have fun playing with that one.

It would be good to be able to Mash Google Earth with Councils website, so that all the libraries are on Google Earth.

Too advanced for me, but maybe in the future....

LibraryThing

Here is the link to my catalogue in librarything. Feel free to add books that you think I will like to read.

Enjoy.
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/lionkel

Social Bookmarking

Well I must admit I don't really understand how to link anything of Delicious into my Blog. Bit confused by it all really.

I can see benefits to using this sort of thing as part of the library catalogue or even Felix - Websites that are used often by staff/recommended websites to customers. It would also be useful for people who use heaps of computers, ie our customers who use the public machines could save their favourites so they didn't lose them each time they logged out.

Kel

The fun of videos

Today I covered videos online as part of my 23 things journey.



I have used You Tube occasionally, not often, but is interesting to see how normal people can become stars in their own right by posting a video on You Tube.



Here is a video I got off You Tube. It is of the Seattle Library. Now I am going to other places other than Seattle, but Seattle is at the beginning of my trip, and I am just sooooo excited to be going there. Once I leave there on the 3rd of October, I can start thinking about everywhere else (everywhere else includes LA, New York, Grand Canyon, Vegas, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, London....)

Here is the video.

RSS Feeds

I have just gone into Bloglines and subscribed to 5 RSS feeds. The ones I chose were:
Library Link of the Day 3 (0)
NYTimes.com Home: 1 unread" href="http://beta.bloglines.com/b/view?mode=addsubs&siteId=13328#read-74008770" bl_id="74008770">NYT > NYTimes.com Home 1 (0)
Powerhouse Museum - Photo of the Day 0 (0)
USATODAY.com Nation - Top Stories 8 (0)
Yahoo! News: Sports News 0 (0)

I don't think I would be going into this much. I tend to enjoy just searching the web, but it is certainly interesting to see how they work.

We could have a library one, to pass on information. Eg, CSI could use RSS feeds, everyone could subsribe to the feed, and when there is information to share, we would add a new feed in.

I am enjoying my 23 things experience!

This is where I am going

This is a photo of Seattle. I will be there in a little over 3 weeks. It looks pretty awesome, a little like Circular Quay in Sydney. Can't wait to see things like the Pike St Fish Market, the Library, the Seattle Space Needle, the Apple Superstore etc. I will write more in my blog when I get there!

Kel




(Photo from Flickr - taken by Dean Forbes)

Taking the plunge

Well - I think I have a basic handle on most IT related things, but most of this web 2.0 stuff still has me a little bewildered.

I have a facebook page (how fun is facebook!!), and I podcast the Nova 106.9 breakfast show to listen to at the gym and when driving, but that is pretty much the extent of it. Juice is great podcasting software - I find it so much easier to use than iTunes.

I am off on my big adventure in a few weeks (2 months away in the US and Europe) so that fact that I am learning to blog is so timely right now. I have to learn if you can post pictures to your blog. I guess that will come next.

I can't wait to start holding classes in Web 2.0 technology. I think there is a real need for us to go beyond our basic internet and computer classes. This is fun stuff to be teaching.

Ok, will go now. Will blog later.

Kel