ego trado (#13)

As I get deeper into thingdom I realise that it is only when I actually use the thing in question that I get it, get it in the sense of having a clue I mean. I was a little resistant to the idea of another account/username/password so when I got to thing number 13 I was rather pleased to find that learning not joining was the thing. Except I didn't get it. I followed all the links, I learned the mechanics of del.icio.us but I really didn't get the point. So after faffing around for five days I pushed the dread join-me-up link. IE didn't want to display my buttons but I beat it into submission and then I was ready to play. I tagged my favourite NCIS site first. It looked very nice, the tags listed neatly, everything worked. It was only when I followed up by tagging an online serial story by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee that the light finally dawned. Other people had already used Liaden as a tag. I followed the tag, I followed the links, I learned nothing new about Liad but I definitely got the idea. So naturally, given my current obsession, I tagged Ellen Emerson White's blog and went exploring. The tag trail led me to a blog by someone who had actually read the new book and reviewed it; a blog which included insightful little comments by EEW herself! So I admit it. This is another Good Thing. But I really, really don't want to have to join anything else for a while...

Tick

My rss feed to Ellen Emerson White's blog resulted in me being notified of a Publisher's weekly interview with her about the new book - link as follows: http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6482982.html?nid=2788

This is not something I would have been likely to have come across otherwise so it's definitely a tick in the plus column for bloglines. The ebay feeds also continue to produce leading me to wonder how many copies of Cherry Tree Farm and Judy Patrol Leader were actually published.

Long may she reign

I've been searching for rss feeds and having some fun. Obviously my preference would have been to look for good, quality library science sites but I'm on holiday at the moment and felt ethically challenged at the idea. Instead I have compromised by finding author sites with rss functionality. The best so far is a feed from Ellen Emerson White's blog which I never knew existed so now I can share her angst about something called The Red Sox. I'm counting down the days until her new book is published - Long may she reign - which comes about twenty years after Long live the queen but who's counting.
I looked for Lois McMaster Bujold too but the Dendarii site doesn't appear to have an rss thingamabob. However my visit was not wasted as I employed the quotation generator to come up with the following gem:
A beautiful lady named Rian
hypnotized a Vor scion.
The little defective
thinks he's a detective,
but instead will be fed to the lion....

Miles gets limerickitus!
(Lois McMaster Bujold, Cetaganda)

I'll look for a Bujold blog next and hope for more luck re the rss thingy. And speaking of things, Thing #9 is now complete. I knew nothing about rss feeds when I started and there are still holes but the feeds from ebay are working brilliantly and I can see them having a life byond the scope of this training exercise.