Mamma Mia, what a laugh!

Last night, I took my 8y.o. twin daughters, to see Mamma Mia. We went with my sister, and her 10y.o. twin daughters, my other sister, and my sister-in-law. It was a girls night out!

The movie was fantastic! So much fun. I have not laughed so much literally in years (and I always enjoy a good laugh, and have a giggle whenever I can).

I see Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan in a new light now. What talented people that they can turn their hands to comedy and music, after all the previous roles that they have played over the years.

We all had sore tummys at the end, from side splitting laughter!

At the end of some of the most outstanding numbers (Dancing Queen for example), the audience erupted into quite spontaneous applause. Very unusual for the movies, I think you would agree!

I thoroughly recommend this movie to everyone. Men and boys as well as us women and girls will enjoy this. It is NOT the girly movie / chic flick that I thought it would be.

If you've not seen it – go see it now!

Having a play!

Well, I've had a wee play around. Changed the template on my Blog page. I've altered the order of the page elements. And altered the colours on the background and the types: heading, subheadings and text. I have a pink and red thing going on as you can see.

The controls are easy enough to mess around with.

I've also added a link to the NS Libraries Facebook page, and may add others as I think of them. I've been interested to see what other Bloggers have done with their pages. Some of them are quite personal, adding pictures of their children for the whole world to see.

I have similar types of photos in my own Facebook page, I have to say. But these can only be viewed by people who I give permission to – not the world's multitudes!

I just saved this post, and went back to visit my Blog. Then had a little panic when I couldn't find the draft again. Fortunately, I found it easy enough - didn't take too long. But I'm sure you are familiar with the vague panic you get, when doing something new "oh, no - where is it? Have I lost it?"

I wanted a profile pic to go with my identity and the name of the Blog. Having found a suitable image (thank you Google Images), I added it to my profile.

I thought "Following the White Rabbit" was a suitably creative name for the Web 2.0 process. Alice, after all, was very curious – followed the White Rabbit, even though she didn't know where he was going – and learned lots about herself along the way!

Anyway, I am sure that I will fiddle around loads more with the look of my blog! Once a designer, always a designer!

GMail

I've had a GMail account for about 7 years or more. I started it up when I was returning to NZ from UK.

I didn't like Hotmail, at the time it was annoyingly restrictive and I hated the user interface.

Having a webmail account like GMail was very handy:– it meant I could use whatever ISP I wanted, without having to notify contacts of changing my email address.

Now I can access my GMail account via WebMail, or via my email client. I have it set up, as a POP account on my home computer, so it checks and downloads email several times an hour (I have broadband).

I can also check my email when out and about via WebMail.

In the past year, I have explored and expanded my GMail usage. On WebMail page, I can create "Labels" for individual email addresses or subjects. And create "filters" or rules, to have different emails going into different folders.

For example: I have a label set up for my family; a label for my work; a label for my husband's family and one for his work. Using labels, means that an emailer can belong to more than one group.

If I click on a label, it finds all the emails designated as belonging to that group.

GMail also ensures that "conversations" on the same topic, are grouped together.

I like GMail, and periodically look at how I can improve my usage of it.

International Computer Drivers Licence

Signed up for this today. Doing the first five options, out of the seven on the list.

Ideally would like to do all seven. Hope to do Information Systems, an OP paper, towards a L6 in Records Management a bit later on, and the full ICDL would set me up nicely for this.

As I mentioned before, I have nearly always been self-taught. As an ex-typographer/graphic designer, I learned all the major graphics programs, and by default learned all the MS programs too - self-learned again.

Course, there are lots of little things I don't know how to do. Or stuff, that I KNOW there is a better way of doing. Being used to the flexibility of graphics programs (especially Adobe), I find MS software incredibly frustrating. They don't do what I want them to do, and are full of little glitches and traps.

I plan to conquer MS completely, with the ICDL!

Semester Two started on Monday. Tidied my office at home in readiness for it, but done little else towards it so far! Will start in earnest next week - its my twin daughters eighth birthday this week, so my week has been filled with plans for this!

Not procrastinating - promise!

Thats it for now . . . more later

Still counting down …

Still waiting for start date … OP starts back on Monday, so no doubt I will be busy beavering away soon enough on that. I've just completed my L5 diploma, so now I am on my way to my L6!

Its an exciting time of learning for me … two OP papers, Web 2.0 course, and we are also starting the ICDL course as well! Not to say all the exciting workplace training, that we get at NSL anyway. I'm so lucky – I've never had such great training in a job before.

I am the typical "learn-as-you-do" type. Chucked in the deep end, sink or swim (I never drown LOL).

Often the trouble with this method of learning, is that you end up with little gaps in your knowledge. Eventually they may get filled in, but it takes a long time. Its great to be given the opportunity to learn something properly, in a disciplined way. Learn how to do something correctly the first time. Much better in the long-run!

So, I've already been messing around with Web 2.0 for ages now. Learning by trial and error as usual – its good to now go through and "plug the gaps" in the learning, by going back to the beginning and learning from start to finish, how to do things.

Well, that's it from me today!

Nine days to go!