Purchasing Fairy

Her wish is your command…

Purchasing Fairy

Twenty Fifth Thing

Now is the time to say goodbye;
Now is the time to yield a sigh…

Questionnaire completed so all done and dusted now. Confessed once again to being a female member of the CS Purchasing Team so still as anonymous at the end of this lovely journey as I was at the beginning.

Grateful thanks to those of you who put this course together – don’t know how I’ll cope with all the empty Mondays up ahead.

 

Twenty Fourth Thing

Well, it’s been lovely. Mondays won’t be the same without a fresh set of Things to look forward to and I’m already hoping the team will imminently announce “25 More Things” as a post-graduate option. Have spent many happy hours at home exploring areas it would never have occurred to me to investigate and have also enjoyed the virtual contact with other 25-Thingers whose paths don’t often cross mine.

Some of the Things were already familiar – had long been addicted to Facebook and Google Earth and my eccentric musical tastes led me to You Tube years ago. I’d dabbled in Flickr but never looked at it properly and had also flirted with Wikipedia and bounced off the world of Podcasts.

Knew about Blogging but hadn’t expected it to be for me, definitely thought RSS feeds were a waste of time – how wrong can you be? I can’t live without Bloglines now and all the goodies it delivers to my desktop. Don’t think I will continue with the PurchasingFairy blog, though I will miss her, but will definitely start blogging from holiday destinations, partly to offer friends and family an ongoing virtual postcard and partly as a memento for myself. Reading the other 25 Things blogs has been entertaining, motivating and informative  – and thanks to Desimeleon’s musings I now enjoy a blossoming relationship with iGoogle.

Delicious and Google Docs were new to me and are both now indispensable – I regularly switch between PCs, Mac and laptop in various locations and having my bookmarks and documents to hand anywhere is a great timesaver – no more wondering whether my USB drive is still on the bus or having to wait till another time to complete a particular task.

Mashups, image generators and Library Thing are all fun to play with and I probably will in an idle moment though I don’t have many idle moments these days.

And I’ve tried with Twitter and Technorati, really I have, but sadly am unable to see the point so have dropped them from my repertoire.

Whether or not any of the above will be useful for work is debatable – Google Docs would be the obvious candidate had we not been warned against it with regard to work use. 25 Things has resulted in new arrivals on Facebook and thus enhanced my work-related social networking– I used to work in the Library and the opportunity to share space with former colleagues is particularly welcome. Also, some of my tecchie RSS feeds might well turn up information relevant to my job over time. On the whole though, it’s been more of a pleasure than a duty for me and I’ve loved it from start to finish.

Twenty Third Thing

Last summer,  I downloaded a series of podcasts to accompany me when jogging to work (yes, difficult to believe but more credible if I admit that it ‘s downhill all the way).  A useful tool courtesy of a US runner who had originally made them for his own use.

Podcasts for Running

I stuck with them for a while but finally couldn’t live with the unrelenting electric disco flavour so used Audacity software to create my own versions using songs I could keep up with.

Audacity

From the BBC podcast pages I found myself signing up for podcast.com as a result of which I am now apparently recommending the entire output of Radio 4 though the widget won’t show up here as it only works with self hosted WordPress blogs. Have found it tricky to work out how to add RSS feeds here though they magically attach themselves to my Bloglines account (how could Iever have believed I could live without Bloglines??). Surely it can’t be as easy as drag and drop?

Friday Night Comedy

Evidently not!

Not sure yet if podcasts will be for me on a regular basis but can see it will be useful for catching up if I miss an episode of the  News Quiz or even the Archers if I’m feeling particularly masochistic.

Twenty Second Thing

You Tube is great for finding footage of brilliant but obscure acts that would struggle even to make it onto BBC4. Click below to watch the ever wonderful Roy Bailey at Fylde in 2007

Song for David

Equally great for sharing home-grown (or in this case office-grown ) epics – herewith the legend that is Aubrey, eating dinner:

Twenty First Thing

Library Thing – something else to make the mouth water. Had read about it – in Grapevine I think – but never got round to investigating before. This is something I will go back to more seriously in future but for the purposes of 25 Things,  have just added a few of my own books for now.

Purchasingfairy’s Library Thing

Twentieth Thing

Google Docs are new to me – great idea in the same spirit as Delicious, now I can access all my documents from any computer as well as being able to access all my bookmarks. As I move between three different computers on a regular basis, this is something I will find very useful.  I rather like the sharing feature too – have invited CammyZ, Ukemee, Desimeleon and Jubaru to share their Desert Island Discs with me via a Google spreadsheet. So far Ukemee has responded with her 10 must-have tracks – just like me, she has exquisite taste.

Nineteenth Thing – Online Image Generators

Tried all of the suggested generators and quite liked the South Park one but was unable to save/download my SP Purchasing Fairy so can’t display it here.

Exploring a little further took me to a Face Transformer at the University of St Andrews, which was a lot of fun though vaguely terrifying http://morph.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Transformer/index.html

So now I know that this is how I would look as a man…

 

as an Afro-Caribbean woman…

as a painting by Boticelli

and as a drunk (and no, this isn’t the original picture, in case anyone was wondering)…

 Forgive me for not uploading the Chimp – that was just one nightmare too far.

Eighteenth Thing – Twitter

Have had a dabble in Twitter, following and being followed by one or two other 25 Thingers. Can see the attraction of short and snappy posts but as Facebook offers a similar feature along with many others, I don’t think Twitter will last long in my affections. Unless I am missing the point?

Seventeenth Thing – Facebook

Facebook – I love it. This is what I do:

Scrabble.

Stalk student offspring, godchildren, nephews, great-nephew, friends from the 1970s, globetrotting offspring of  friends from the 1970s, the Head of Computing Services.

View photos of drunken antics of student offspring, families and friends of the family and friends and any other content they see fit to upload.  Publish own photos and tag friends in them. Admire wedding photos of son of Cornish cousins before even the bridal party gets to see them.

Scrabble – there’s always someone who wants to play, even at 2am.

Likewise Scramble..

Chat/email/message – public and private, very conveniently all from one page.

Search for long lost friends and occasionally find them.

Communicate with people I am too lazy to walk upstairs to talk to.

Communicate with people I am too lazy to walk next door to talk to.

Keep an eye on Wayne in Oldham.

Did I mention Scrabble?

Fifteenth & Sixteenth Things

I’m  a big fan of Google Earth and Google Maps having used both to plan driving/walking routes from home and to explore in advance places we expect to visit. The satellite pictures must be pretty ancient as the  University still has a Great Hall and we still appear to have the people carrier that trundled our 15 year old son and his rugby team all around Yorkshire. He’s 22 now.

The attractions search is a useful feature though it didn’t find our favourite curry house  in Elland – fortunately we already know how to get there. Google Rides was not accessible to me despite having JavaScript enabled and Google Transit was highly entertaining, proposing a 12 hour 27 minute coach trip via London if I decide to visit my mother 150 miles away in Worcestershire. Think I will stick to the old fashioned timetables. Or walk.

This is a map of where I grew up in the country:

Aston Somerville