tweaking twitter

Today's twitter takeaway is a simple search filter which shows your true timeline without any algorithmic influence.

Apparently the url is realtwitter.com, but I noticed that what this did was apply a simple search filter.

Typing "filter:follows -filter:replies" into the search box achieves the same result.

This is handy if I forget the url.

The doggos turn 3

What's a blog without dogs and cats and wildlife??
Today is my doggos' birthday. They are 3 years old.

Way back in October 2015 these darling little bundles joined our family and life has most definitely never been the same. Such innocence, such cuteness, much mayhem ....... Here's a link to their very own Instagram.

Along the way they have grown ... and so has the height of my backyard fence. Thor and Loki are mostly dingo. Their mum is dingo and their dad is dingo-kelpie cross. They are litter brothers and yes Thor is the blonde one and Loki is the black one. My husband chose Thor, I chose Loki. In retrospect I would warn against choosing a black dog simply because he is so jolly hard to see at night and the number of times I have fallen over him continues to grow.

Thor is the reason I have an 8 foot backyard fence. Dingoes can climb. Dogs can jump & many dogs can jump quite high and are very athletic in this regard. Dingoes can also climb. They can bear their own weight on their fore-paws and pull themselves up. It's uncanny. Thor can do this. He has done this so many times that my fence is now a patchwork of tin sheeting & multiple layers of mesh. Loki doesn't do this. He likes his food and has generally preferred not getting out to getting out. Mind you, every time that his brother gets out the first I usually know of it is Loki carrying on a treat because he's on one side of the fence and Thor is on the other. They love to run and chase kangaroos.
Both dogs have been a huge learning curve for my family. They are dingoes. They are not dogs. They do not behave like dogs. They will sit on command (because there's often a treat involved) and will come when called (even if they're chasing something but only if I crouch down). But don't be fooled. They are large dogs. Dingoes are deceptively viewed as being medium sized animals. Not these guys. Loki especially packs a bit of size and weight.

Recently my eldest son brought a new puppy home. A rather pretty border collie named Ollie.

When it came to introducing Ollie to Thor & Loki we decided early on that he could not be left alone with them until he was a lot bigger. Their favourite game is attack-kill-maim and they rarely let anything that gets into their yard survive to get out again. The red-bellied black snakes I can handle though the shock of seeing headless corpses still gives me pause, but the birds that Loki kills are something I work with him every day on (ie, don't do it, killing birds is bad). Prior to Ollie's arrival the dogs had recently killed a juvenile possum that had ventured into the yard and given that Ollie was roughly the same size and pretty much the same colour...... we decided that small doses and separate yards was the way to go.

Now that he's bigger he can share the yard with them & we can leave them alone all day without fear of dead puppy. Ollie is a ball dog. Loki is a water dog. Thor is a chase-all-the-kangaroos dog. Thor wants all the pats & Loki wants all the treats. Ollie just wants you to throw the damn ball again, and again, and again, and again. Today is the first day he has actively sought hugs and pats and attention from me and happily climbed into my lap. Ollie loves anyone who will throw the ball for him but especially loves my son who still collects Ollie every night after work & lets him sleep in his room with him. Thor and Loki are very social animals in terms of those they consider part of their pack. They're not great with other dogs straight away but whenever any family member arrives home the dogs immediately demand attention, to such an extent that we jokingly ask "have you begged forgiveness from the puppies yet?" Because you must.

In three years Thor and Loki have taught us to rethink what we knew from our previous dogs (Pepper & Spook were white English Staffordshire Bull Terriers; and Gunji was a blue cattle dog). They have shed a small light on what it means to have dingoes in your family and to be part of a dingo pack. Their capacity to run and run and run and run is incredible. And while I have an 8 foot fence so that I can rest easy from the worry of Thor getting out and running onto the road (we live on a 100 km/hr stretch of country back road) each walk into the bush with them is an experience I am grateful for having.

Happy birthday boys!

PS: I realised I didn't mention cats ... my daughter has kitten named Kharjo. recently she visited with said kitty and while we stayed on the inside we made sure the doggos stayed on the outside. They coped.

resting between breaths

Blogging here has fallen way down on my to-do list, which is a shame as it's an ideal platform for sharing the journey.
Ideas are teeming at the moment so I'm hoping to be able to gather them here again. No promises though.

As always, life is an ongoing journey and the road weaves its way ahead of us; surprises await.

Digital Skills in higher education as a metro map

This is rather cool.

All Aboard is a project funded by Ireland's National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning, which aims to identify the wide range of skills and knowledge that students, and all those who work in higher education, will need to feel confident and creative when learning, working in and exploring the digital world. They have produced this rather lovely interactive map showcasing a range of useful skills and their applications.

A year of reading - 2015

I like tracking what I've read and of course Goodreads is perfect for this.

Apparently in 2015 I read 67 books with a total of 21,475 pages - go figure.

    

  

SWITCH 2015 - NSW Public Libraries Conference ... a series of tweets

I spent most of last week in Sydney attending the NSW Public Libraries Association conference (SWITCH). It may be a little while before I fully collect my impressions (and photos) but I thought I would at least put up the few Storifys I put together rather hurriedly yesterday. There's probably some tweets I missed and huge thanks to everyone who tweeted and shared and are now collected here together. Enjoy.

Pre-conference: the bus tour
We visited Gordon, Bankstown, and Burwood Libraries. I quite like Gordon and was impressed by the sheer scope of Bankstown. Burwood was also quite nice. Each has its unique character and communities that they serve so there's a lot of little things from each that could be taken away and implemented in other libraries too. Lots of good ideas.

Day One: an interesting day, begun with a heartfelt and warm Welcome to Country. Themed around Sustainable Partnerships and Brand Sustainability, we heard from the NSW State Library's Dr Alex Byrne, Siobhan Reardon of the Philadelphia Free Library, David Dale, Paula Pfoeffer, Jack Goodman, Annalisa Armitage, and a delightful panel of Librarians from Adelaide City, City of Sydney, Gold Coast, and Hume Libraries discussing their unique partnerships.

Day Two: today's themes were Financial Sustainability and Sustainability of Libraries. After hearing from Sonia Toussaint and a large panel of libraries sharing their popup library stories, interspersed with a keynote presentation from Mark Hynes, the Director of Corporate Affairs from the London Borough of Lambeth, we then heard from Jackie Bailey, and finally Jane Caro.

Day 2 closed with the conference dinner held in the rather glorious setting of the Australian Maritime Museum on Darling Harbour and themed, rather appropriately, on Pirates, Privateers, and Buccaneers - the majority of the crowd dressed accordingly. Some photos can be found on Facebook here. 

Reference @ the Metcalfe library bags

For the 2015 Reference @ the Metcalfe seminar (and for the first time for RISG) the range of marketing materials made available by the NSW Reference & Information Services Group included RedBubble bags. 

This particular bag was designed using an image available from the State Library of NSW featuring a rather appropriate poster, niftily titled Item 609A: Photographic copy of poster advertising the free lending service to country people /NSW Government Printer.

Rather neatly, it was possible when creating the final design for the bags & shirts to include the details & hashtag for the day as well as provide source attribution for the image on the item - it just goes to show that with some careful work & planning you can make excellent use of historical images available via creative commons.

The anatomy of a grammar nerd (via Grammarly)

Doorways into science and science fiction reading

This is my presentation from last week's Readers Advisory seminar at the State Library of New South Wales: The Librarian's Guide to the Galaxy.
You can catch the Storify of the day's tweets here.