The Sign of the Four

A Wordle I recently made of the entirety of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Posted to Tumblr AND Pinterest, natch.

The last couple of weeks have been particularly vivid and that may have to do with the following in no particular order:
Battlestar Galactica
TheHusband and I began watching Battle Star Galactica several weeks ago and we’re almost finished with S3. He has remarked BSG is “…like Downton Abbey, except in space,” which I can totally get behind. When I almost accused a student recently of treason when they asked for books on Cicero AND I had been mildly hallucinating the parking lot elevators are Cyclons, I told TheHusband we needed to take a break from the action, though for the last few BSG-free nights he’s been a titch antsy in not getting his fix.

Pinterest
I’ve become slightly addicted to Pinterest. I blame Jessica, whom I met recently in California while we were in a nearly week long training workshop together, for this problem though to be fair I should actually blame Amy because it was because of her that I obtained a Pinterest account many moons ago to stalk her shopping choices since our tastes are so similar, even though the only thing pinned on my boards these months was a Doctor Who inspired hoodie until Jessica rekindled that Pinterest fire. Regardless of whom I blame, I’ve started using it heavily these last few weeks to track all things visual, much as I used to clip visual things to Evernote. (The problem with clipping things to Evernote, however, was that for visual things it is almost (but not quite) useless where textual, Evernote rocks my socks.) With Pinterest, I’m starting to see patterns emerge (I’m love things that are orange, for example) but having that visual pinboard is making it a lot easier to track wants/needs for things to buy or wish for AND I’m also going to start using Pinterest for several of my departments that I liase to at work, such as Fashion and Interiors and the visual arts. THAT last bit is why I’m super excited about using Pinterest since it will be awesome to interact with students on the site to create projects and what not.
Plus Pinterest is great for keeping track of my future husbands.
Tumblr
The best way to describe Tumblr is that it’s for those things that are longer than 140 characters but does not quite warrant a full blog post. I’m certainly not new to Tumblr as I’ve been trolling that site for ages, but I’m not very active in posting to the site though I am a heavy reader and follower. Tumblr is great for getting that fandom fix (i.e. Doctor Who, Downton Abbey, Cabin Pressure, et al) but I’ve never really used it for curating content until I stumbled upon this article to litify my Tumblr dashboard. This article cinched that Tumblr is more than just a bunch of teenagers reposting animated gifs of various fandoms all over the place, so it’s nice to new content being added that does not contain an OMG or ballz reference somewhere.
I’ve often described Pinterest as Etsy’s Treasury function married with Tumblr, but in terms of curating content beyond just images, Pinterest isn’t robust to do that while Tumblr handles video AND audio in addition to text and images. How to decide to post what is what? Images get cross posted to both sites, while links/videos/songs/etc are posted to Tumblr. I’ve started feeding my blog into Tumblr after the Blog Disaster of 2011 because there is a built in community aspect to Tumblr that doesn’t exist (yet) in Pinterest or even in Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. Tumblr’s tagging and search makes it so easy to find and follow topics of interest that it’s almost criminal. Pinterest is great for finding visual inspiration and ideas in digital boards of my choosing, while Tumblr is for that get-quick fix tapping the multimedia vein of fandom delights.
Google Reader
I decided 2012 was going to be the year of simplification and ditching the very high signal to noise ratio. I started by cleaning up my Google Reader account, in which I was hoarding subscriptions to sites like Imelda Marcos hoarded shoes.
After doing away with my ultra narrow categorization method in which I had dozens of tags, I lumped the feeds into broader groups and removed content that I was getting duplicates from. So if I followed them on Twitter, Facebook, and had a RSS feed to their site, I removed/unfollowed/unliked the method I was least likely able to get info. Much how many Tumblr accounts I followed were reblogging of other Tumblr accounts, I also ditched sites that were link feeders and rebloggers. I also marked READ all stories older than a week and if that was stil unwieldily, older then a day.
With my Reader account now squeaky clean, I find I’m more apt to read (and post items of interest to Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook) and stay more up to date with news and events before, specifically in blogs and sites that are geared to interests that I don’t follow anywhere else (fairy tales, calligraphy, and other such things).
biblyotheke.net
Last, but not least, I’ve been spending a lot of time hacking the backend of my website to make it just so. While I love the original theme, my few tweaks to move some objects around has grown into a almost redesign that looks almost nothing like the original theme that it is based on. I also found a color palette that I just adore that I’ve also started incorporating into here. Some things are stil a bit off, but I’m excited as it starts to come together.
And that is what has been consuming me as of late. What about you?

2 thoughts on “The Sign of the Four”

  1. I like a lot of these things too! It took me years to finish BSG due to life changes and moving, but I am so glad I did even if sometimes I was all, WTF?!?! I think by season 3 you are seeing Fat Lee right? So then you know what I mean. There are a few more total mindbenders to come, where I wanted to jump up and scream, WHAT WHAT WHAT?!!? I love that one of my favorite songs (Dylan) becomes a huge part of the show. And Mark Lucas who was in Firefly as Badger shows up and he has a cat! Love the cat.
    I am also loving Pinterest. I have about 9000 pins now (my user ID is meadow68). I believe I was the first person to post dead bodies on there (archaeology major). But I mostly started with pictures of my man candy. Since then I have actually done some of the ideas I’ve repinned with great success. I’ve also use it for work, like when my boss wanted me to spend some grant money on office furniture and technical equipment, I created a board with all the options and shared the link with the dept for ease of comparison. Worked GREAT.  I also have seen some trends I would not have known before. I was pinning a lot of this favorite color of mine, then I realized I had a lot of peacock stuff (love dark irridescent blue) and created a board for it. With all the organizing to do on there I can be obsessed!
    However as a librarian somewhat obsessed with putting original sources on my pins. Tumblr is the bane of my pinterest existance!!! If something is pinned from Tumblr forget abotu finding out what it is or where it came from origianlly. I flipping hate that. 
    Anyway. I am currently planning my first ever trip to Grand Rapinds, Mich. for early May. Going to see an event at a big arena downtown. Hoping to find a cool place to stay that is not too expensive. Any recommendations welcome!

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