Gary Green to have keynote speech at Pancakes and Mash

Gary Green is the Keynote speech Lincoln's Pancakes and Mash. The speech, entitled Loud Library Voices: Campaigning, The Web, Journalists & The Offline World, will look at the his work at Voices for the library. The rest of the event will look practical mashing session about using Web 2.0 tools to help save libraries.

700th entry and off to support Marcus Garvey to support

This is my 700th entry and today is Save Our Libraries day. The following link is a live blog on the Guardian site. I'm going to Marcus Garvey later, as its the first library I worked at and there supporting them for the day. Listened to radio five have been following it to.
Therefore, a big shout to all the team from voices for the library who have helped make this a great idea.

Yahoo pipes and Spectrum Software

As mention previously, I've been reading about gaming, and have a fond memory of my ZX Spectrum years. On top of this I wanted to combine it with my trying to learn Yahoo Pipes, especially after reading Information twist result on 'this made me' project, using Pipes.
Therefore, I've presently used nearly all his code trying to make one for Spectrum Games companies, and use a map to show where they are. Results can be seen here (its early days yet).
What I wish to do, is then have another map showing each companies games, and perhaps use world cat to indicate if these companies have been tagged etc.
Thanks to Gary for the twitter assistance to..

5 years on....the 7 year itch strikes early

Five years tomorrow two important events occurred. One important and one I look on with declining interest. The important one is meeting my German girlfriend at a friends 30th birthday. I opened our conversation with the following joke:-
What did the German watchmaker say to the clock that didn't work? Ve have vays of making you tock.
OK, not funny.
Anyhow, the second event was getting on the MSc in Library Science. The only thing I had to do was get some experience of working in a library. This was achieved when I was given an 8 hour voluntary role at a public library in North London. I enjoyed the course and my time there. I brought a fresh breath of air and outlook to the library.
I've since moved on from there and in with my girlfriend. I work in an academic library on a short-term contract. Idea's and fresh approaches are frowned upon. Cynicism being my only release from the drudgery of my role that still exists (for the moment). Training is usually self taught, as there is no training at work. The only time I feel fulfilled is blogging, reading the learning. Gary Green's recent post made me look at changing direction and learn some new skills (which I'm slowly doing). I'm also looking for a role within as an SEO or something where my mind is used.
The good thing is at least I have one thing to celebrate tomorrow. Thank god for my girlfriend.

Fun with Yahoo Pipes.....but not me

I've been reading Gary Green's twitter feeds about his 'this made me' idea on Yahoo pipes. The idea was quite simple but very ingenious and set out on his blog:-

I wanted to put together a visual representation of things I consider influenced me throughout my life and made me the person I am today, just as an experiment to see what I could come up with.
I’ve actually managed to turn that idea into something concrete using Yahoo Pipes to pull through information I added to a Google spreadsheet. Yahoo Pipes then automatically created the map with markers and details of influences in those markers.

Anyhow the result can be found here. Its a really good use of maps though. Impressive.