Thing THIRTY-TWO

This thing was a mashup of a created-by-me map. This was definitely a stretch for me. I suppose I should have tried to do this with Firefox, but instead I worked on my son's MAC laptop while I watched game 4 of the Eastern Finals of the NBA. The little line to follow a road wasn't running consistently, but I got it together - I think. So since we were going to the Black Hills this summer, I thought I would make a map of the road tour from Keystone to Hill City, which runs past Mount Rushmore Monument - a very pretty trip. It really did have the trip mapped out - but it was having difficulty the day (entire 4 hours) that I was working with it, and I was ready to scream and start breaking things, so here it is, as good-as-it-gets:


View Mt. Rushmore Tour in a larger map

Thing THIRTY-ONE

Twitter becoming more useful was the theme of thing thirty-one. I have enjoyed a few things on twitter. I follow the Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Vikings - both prolific tweeters (?) I also enjoy this very upbeat and positive teacher at a school in Pennsylvania~Dr. Stephen Jones ~ always a Good Morning with an inspirational message and a Good night wish that it makes you feel the guy really knows you. I have also enjoyed Ellen DeGeneres and her tweets. I was following her when she had about 20 thousand, and now she has over one million. She is pretty prolific also. I joined the twitter directory under the name Empty-Nesters. I still don't understand mobile twittering, but then I think my life is too boring for anyone to care to read about. I put Tweetsnap on my blog, so maybe I will be more inclined to tweet more often, since the latest tweet is there now as well as the date I twittered - or is it tweeted - never could get that right...

Thing THIRTY

This thing is using RSS feed Readers for more productivity. Since I have been using my RSS feeds on a limited basis - mostly because TIME is at a premium, I decided to check out a little more refresher info on RSS. I found an Oprah Winfrey description: The technical acronym for RSS is "Really Simple Syndication", an XML format that was created to syndicate news, and be a means to share content on the web. Now, to geeks and techies that means something special, but to everyday folks like you and me, what comes to mind is, "Uh, I don’t get it?"
So, to make RSS much easier to understand, in Oprah speak, RSS stands for: I’m "Ready for Some Stories". It is a way online for you to get a quick list of the latest story headlines from all your favorite websites and blogs all in one place. How cool is that? Now, that I like - to think of it as gathering stories. I will continue to find uses (and Time) for my RSS feeds and Delicious,but I will think of them differently from here on out.