After a conversation with my friend Katherine (<--- see stage left) about Zygmunt Bauman's sociological theory, I've come to realize that we all may have Wasted Lives. Oh dear! That's what you get when your friends are Soci/Criminology grad students!
In order to combat the sinking realization of my somewhat redundant and outcast position in life, I've decided to add Google products to my blog. Think about that one, eh?
Attempt 1.0: GoogleMaps Tag Mash-up Thingie
Sweet honorable god; using Tagzania is making my hair gray. Apparently attempting to tag anything whatsoever just makes the longitude revert to 0 (the only non-option). I think it hates me. After 25 painstaking minutes, it worked!! I'm going to blame this on my mother's clunker of a computer, and move past swiftly and effortlessly.
After the inital horror of things just not working, the Tagzania business was really quite simple. A few clicks to become a member, and an easy form to create tags, and there now exists a map tagged with my mom's house! Adding the tagged map to the blog as also super easy; Tagzania offers a "paste this map on your site" option that is fool-proof! You take the code and paste it into Blogger's "Add a Page Element" HTML/Javascript option, and away to go! I really like this option of adding in external coding to create new elements of the blog page; it just seems right!
I can definitely see how this mash-up feature could be useful for a Young Adult library page: indicating where the library branches are, tagging places in your area that are YA friendly, and just randomly adding interesting things about the neighbourhood. Also could be great to use a world map and tag book setting locales as a group! Could be fun trying to pin down EXACTLY where Hogwarts is located! This could also be an interesting way to promote local authors, as people may be more willing to try a new author when they know the book is set in their own backyard. I'm sure there are many more ways to utilize this technology.. any ideas?
In order to combat the sinking realization of my somewhat redundant and outcast position in life, I've decided to add Google products to my blog. Think about that one, eh?
Attempt 1.0: GoogleMaps Tag Mash-up Thingie
Sweet honorable god; using Tagzania is making my hair gray. Apparently attempting to tag anything whatsoever just makes the longitude revert to 0 (the only non-option). I think it hates me. After 25 painstaking minutes, it worked!! I'm going to blame this on my mother's clunker of a computer, and move past swiftly and effortlessly.
After the inital horror of things just not working, the Tagzania business was really quite simple. A few clicks to become a member, and an easy form to create tags, and there now exists a map tagged with my mom's house! Adding the tagged map to the blog as also super easy; Tagzania offers a "paste this map on your site" option that is fool-proof! You take the code and paste it into Blogger's "Add a Page Element" HTML/Javascript option, and away to go! I really like this option of adding in external coding to create new elements of the blog page; it just seems right!
I can definitely see how this mash-up feature could be useful for a Young Adult library page: indicating where the library branches are, tagging places in your area that are YA friendly, and just randomly adding interesting things about the neighbourhood. Also could be great to use a world map and tag book setting locales as a group! Could be fun trying to pin down EXACTLY where Hogwarts is located! This could also be an interesting way to promote local authors, as people may be more willing to try a new author when they know the book is set in their own backyard. I'm sure there are many more ways to utilize this technology.. any ideas?
Look forward to more additions and therefore more metablogs soon!
2 comments:
In true "waste" style I am posting here to recommend Zygmunt Bauman's work as oppose to focusing on my own task at hand. His thoughts on liquid modernity and his insight into people as wasted products of modernity call into question the purpose of being. Living in such a fluid society it becomes evident that in the wave of modernity some will survive but most will be drowned at sea. The very system we have created is pushing others into redundancy. The creation of a new employment insurance system is placing seasonal workers and those with unstable employment out into the fringes of our social system. In the creating of any system parts must be left out, they become the waste of our quest for modernity. These peoples do not live on far away shores but are right here at home. Zygmunt Bauman's Works Liquid Modernity, Modernity and the Holocaust and Wasted Lives is a sociological examination of the systems modernity has created and how certain peoples become the waste of those creationa.
CHEERS
Kat
B.A (Sociology/ Criminology & Religious Studies
Memorial University of Newfoundland 2005
Candidate for M.A Sociology/Criminology
Memorial University of Newfoundland 2007
your blog makes me laugh hysterically.
"sweet honourable god" is a phrase i think i might soon begin to use. :)
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