Thing 2: Hello Blogging, Old Friend

I love Thing 1 & 2! Hello Blogging, old friend - it's nice to see you again!

The first thing I do when I start a 23 Things programme is to check all my settings on Blogger and see what needs updating. Once I've that done, that's when I register my blog.

I also find it handy to check the settings on the work blog I contribute to: The River-side, to see what's missing or what can be adjusted.

So a bit more about why I've been busy over the last few weeks and not blogging as I ought to have been. Firstly it's a new semester at work (I work as Special Collections Librarian in UCC Library) and we've been doing introductory workshops, launching a new website, transferring content from the previous website for Special Collections and Special Collections' Subject Support (check out the Wayback Machine to see what we looked like this time last year!), creating a new Special Collections' guide for Outreach & Engagement, groups coming to Special Collections to see what sources we have that are useful for their modules, presenting at TEL week in UCC, presenting at the Digital Humanities Colloquium and preparing presentations for HEAnet 2017 and CONUL Teaching & Learning in November. The upshot of this is at the end of the day the last thing I really want to do is stare at a computer and do more work even though I really enjoy doing CPD activities.

Now that we're heading into Halloween a reasonable number of the classes that come to Special Collections have come & gone, I'm halfway through the number of formal presentations I willingly signed up to do (!) and I can re-advertise the Harry Potter guide I created last year. Already the word is out - Martin's fabulous Harry Potter signs in the library always help.

Credit: Soto, Domingo de. Commentariorum fratris Dominici Soto Segoviensis, theologi, Ordinis Praedicatorum, Caesareae Maiestati à sacris confessionibus, publici apud Salmanticenses professoris, in Quartum Sententiarum. Salmanticae [Salamanca]: Apud Ioannem Mariam à Terranoua, expensis Benedicti Boyerii bibliopolae, 1566-1569.

 So like the phoenix rising from the ashes it's back to blogging!

Hmm! As always I haven't blogged in a while. The kicker is that I have SO MANY blog posts in draft form waiting to be published but I haven't done it...

The last 23 Things I didn't complete was 23 Things for Digital Knowledge with Edinburgh University. I hope to return to it.

I had also hoped to blog about the Teaching & Learning Cert in Higher Education I completed in 2015/2016 or new modules I was involved with in 2016/2017 or the two CPD modules I completed in 2016/2017... As they say, the best is yet to come!

For now, it's onto the return of Rudai 23 which has returned with new and interesting things as well as the opportunity to gain digital badges! No pressure then! I remember the last iteration and blogging furiously over the course of one weekend. They're already up to Thing 8 so I'd best catch up!

Slide credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/4961717384/in/album-72157620363366377/

Thing 4: Digital Security

Facebook
Recently we had two visiting librarians from Malta at work. When it came time for them to leave one suggested adding me as a friend on Facebook. The other said she didn't really use Facebook but she checked in every now and again. However when the first girl tried to find me she couldn't locate me - my settings are so strict that one has to be a friend of a friend to find me. It was easier for me to friend her.

When I first started using Facebook I was a regular user but now I mostly use it to check in with one group of friends.

Twitter
On the other hand my Twitter account is completely open but...I use it for a mixture of personal and professional purposes whereas my Facebook is pretty much for personal use bar the Facebook groups that relate to work...

Apps
I try not to think about what I'm sharing with the world. In general my locations settings are off and unless I'm using the app on a regular basis I've turned off its photo sharing abilities. Sorry Prisma.

I never realised there were ratings for apps, not unlike there are ratings for films. I guess that's what happens when you download library related apps - pretty general really.

I think I'm part of the generation where I'm really reluctant to using mobile banking. I'll log-in to my account via a browser on my iPad but only on my own home wifi. Is that safer than the bank's own app? I'm not sure but I log out each time on the browser and I don't know if I'd do it with the app considering I don't do it for the other apps.

The one app that I love when I travel in the UK is The Cloud. Without life would be that much harder!

How many apps? Well if I could get rid of the iOS ones that I don't use I'd be that much better off but while I can delete them from the screen they don't disappear from the phone. What I didn't like was when Health was installed it started tracking me automatically. Thank you to the person on Twitter who told me about that.

Phone Security
I had never hard of an IMEI number - learn something new every day!

Bonus Thing 4: About.me
How long has it been since I saw me last? Apparently long enough for about.me to have changed quite a bit! My name and interests are still the same but now it asks why do I have an about.me account. The downside - there's no back button. I had a really nice black and white account with good photography in black and white and now it's as if it's an extension of my Twitter account which is good in one way and not in another. Where is the exit button? I keep being asked questions!

My About.me page