Blog Award

This blog has been nominated for a Liebster Award courtesy of Helen kielt. Part one of that means that I have to answer a few questions.

1. How do you think blogging has benefited your personal/professional development?

This blog started as part of a digimedia course in university and I am really surprised that it is still going. I thought that I had no interest in blogging. I didn’t think that the world needed another one. I have three other blogs on the go but this is the most consistent. I did not mean it to be. I was using it as a reflective tool when I left college and I kept on running up against new platforms and tools that I needed to get my head around. That is still my main reason for blogging today. Along with reflection, I find the blog very good for networking with others in the information profession. I tend to blog about stuff which interests me but which does not fit in with the work or studies that I do. From connecting with other bloggers I began to see patterns and communities that opened up new areas for me. For instance, I never heard of digital storytelling until some of my blogposts started to get picked up by that community.

2. What is the most recent book you have read?

I read lots of non-fiction but I don’t consider that reading. That would be just looking for information. The last time I was in the library I probably picked up an archaeology book, a dummies guide to digital photography and a recipe book, because that is what I normally do. The last fiction book I remember reading was probably City of Bohane by Kevin Barry and it was wonderful. I really miss lying on a couch with a book and just feeling the world within the book settle down around my consciousness. I find it hard to read fiction in fits and starts, so I don’t bother unless I can be uninterrupted. This means that I don’t read much fiction anymore and that is ok because I spent enough of my youth lying on couches. When I am old and no longer need to know how to fix and explain things, I will catch up on all the cool books I am missing now.

3. Describe yourself in three words.
reliable, pleasant, calm.

4. Who inspires you (in library land or otherwise)?

I recently watched a two hour video lecture on information by a teacher called Michael Wesch. I cannot believe that I sat through it. He had some very interesting things to say about information and he finished by talking about love as a method of teaching digital literacy.

5. Quote a line from a piece of prose/poetry that you love.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different. – Kurt Vonnegut

6. If you could live for a time within any novel which would it be?

I would love to have lived in Tortilla Flats, the wine-drenched Californian peso community written about by John Steinbeck. They just lay about and cheated as much as they could, but in a very principled and honest way. Otherwise, for a change of pace, any dystopian science fiction novel would be fun for a while.

7. What is your biggest ambition?

To live by the sea.

8. Who would play you in a movie about your life?

Hugh Laurie

9. What song(s) would be on the soundtrack to that movie?

For the night travel scenes, anything from Music for a Jilted Generation by the Prodigy. In the bit where I learn how to send an email, anything by Underworld apart from Born Slippy. The rest of the movie soundtrack would be taken care of by Esbjorn Svennson Trio except for the slo-mo sad bit which would have a classic 50s doowop girl band in the background and which would be rereleased to great success, albeit too late for the girls.

10. Where are you most likely to be found on a day off?

Sitting on a surfboard in the west of Ireland if I could, but most likely sorting out the wash basket upstairs.

11. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve heard?

Do what you say you will do