Week 1 Refreshing

I decided to make my new learning on ofmerebeing2.

I've developed another blog on the same account. You know you can easily doing so.
Then I actually searched my own photos that were posted on Picasa. I wanted a green color. I don't know why when I read 'refreshing', I instantly associated it with color green. So the photo of trees around a lake was chosen, a photo of my own.

The next step I used 'bighugelabs' to custmise my photo into a blog head. I also selected few gadgets that I liked, such as 'my links' that links my first version of ofmerebeing, a link to Parra Reads (well, it's a library blog that ran by me).

Of course I wanted to show some beautiful photos taken by my friends, so came the slides. Adding one more photo taken by mobile - Leura Garden Festival was also done easily.

I'll develop more gadget, but only if necessary. I don't like a blog makes people dizzy because you want to put everything on. I want it looks clear and 'refreshing'.

I didn't stopped blogging since I fished library 2.0 course in April 2008. I started blogging before the learning program. I have so many friends in China and the best way to know what we're doing and how are we doing is we all go to blog.

1st I got one at blogspot but hardly any of my friends were on it. So later I changed it for the first learning program. (I still update it from time to time). I set up a blog at yahoo.cn. And I soon developed a new one on sohu, a biggest website in China. Most of my friends then all have started blogging. I've got so much info from them. We read others post and comment on it. The best outcome of that is I've made a lot new friends. Well, they are not entirely new but a little complicated than this.

Thirty some years ago, during the cultural revolution, we were all sent to a farm - Yellow Mts Tea and Forest Farm. Of course when I went there, a lot of them had already come back to city. We never met at the time over there. We only found one another by social networking. That's why I say they're not new friends but old friends, who I've never met personally (not every now) but we all drunk the water from the same creek and climbed the same mountain at the time.

Those friends are few years older than me, but they've done great jobs on their blogs. They post videos, photos and write great deal of articles about everything, virtually. They go back visit the Farm that no longer exist but the Mts and places that still has our youth spirit there. Then they post everything onto their blogs for people like me who never have a chance to visit there to re cherish our memories.

What I've learnt along the way is that there are virtually millions things you can do on a blog. You can be a very sophisticated web designer after a while. You can learn from everyone on how to smash, and mash up things, like photos, videos and audios, as long as you'd like to learn, as long as you are motivated.

I usually go to my personal blog once a week, read few others, and write my own. If I'm in a mood I write a few articles in one day. I hardly write things about myself, but basically only articles in certain topics. By the way I'm a writer, a little bit above average in my mother tongue.

This year, I've developed a blog for the library which I blog at least once a week. There is a limitation there as I don't have the highest control of the blog after the council has taken over the control, but I'm still able to do a lot on it. The council has allowed us to use other social media, such as youtube, flickr and twitter as long as we stick on the protocol. So the library blog has posts, photos, and videos as well. We have some plans and hope we'll be able to do more. Now there is at least over 100 people view the library blog everyday average, the highest time was 880 viewers per a day.

So that keeps me going.