Task 13: Acid Jazz

For this task, I searched for a quail sound. Is that too much to ask for? Well, no quail sound came up so, filled with disappointment, I decided to find an elephant trumpeting sound (perhaps this was an original thought on my part, or perhaps the fact that the icon for the animal noises is the outline of an elephant had something to do with that choice). I wasn't horribly impressed by the elephant noises, so I decided I'd listen to some music loops. I found one that was called Death Trombone. The name intrigued me, so I listened to it. I was impressed by the way it looped (I had to push play again really fast to make it loop)--the end went right back into the beginning very nicely.
I tried looking for a dolphin sound affect, but all I found were two strange ambient/electronic clips. Where are the Flipper sound effects?



I read about their stringent guidelines for being able to be a contributor to the Soundsnap collection. Let's just say, don't expect to record things on your cell phone and be able to upload them to that website. As a side note, I'd just like to say that they don't have a single dolphin sound, but they do have "Large metal dumpster door latch movement with an impact and sliding." In fact, there were five pages of results for "dumpster." And let's hear it for one minute and eighteen seconds of "Scrabble game with hand in bag and tile movement," which can be found under "Sports." I suppose we could have sound effects on our website, but I'm having trouble imagining it not being cheesy. I did find some sound effects of "Handling and turning thin pages of a hardcover" though!

As for the other part of the task, I liked Artist Server for its list of genres and sub-genres. Under the heading of "Various" I found Acid Jazz and Game Soundtracks. I also found Melodic Trance (which wasn't really what I was expecting from the name), and under Rock, the oh so "Psychedelic." Other than that, however, I wasn't too impressed with Artist Server. It's just not very visually appealing (and don't say anything about what my blog looks like). I sampled some Acid Jazz--it was pretty acidic and yet jazzy. I think I like Amie Street the most. It seems more user-friendly than the others.

Why no quail sounds?

Task 12: NoveList Plus

I looked for the Harry Potter series and I also looked for Twilight, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and A Series of Unfortunate Events (I apparently only look up series that have been made into movies). I've always used KDL's What's Next to look up the order of books in a series and I've often found that it has holes, so I'm happy to see that there is another resource for that.

I was initially a little confused by the Author Read-alikes part. I think I figured it out though (I have used it before, but it's been awhile). I don't have a whole lot to say about it--I'm just glad that I figured it out. I think it needs more authors. It didn't even have J.K. Rowling in there.

Recommended Reads was ridiculously extensive. There were so many genres and sub-genres. I was blown away.

Task 11: Author Resources

I'm not sure that I really had a favorite as far as The Book Report Network goes. I think if I was looking for a review of a teen book, I would use the teen reads page and if I was looking for a review of a Christian book I would look on the faithful reader page (and so on and so forth). I'm not sure that the Author Yellow Pages is necessary since I would just google the name of an author if I wanted to find their website.

So I looked up J.R.R. Tolkien in the Biography Resource Center (again) and read an article on him. I didn't really learn anything new since I wrote a research paper on Tolkien in high school and read his entire biography (but you did specify "favorite author").

That's it for this task.

Task 10: EBSCO

I was excited to use this discovery task to look for an article for a paper
for school, but then I saw that we were actually given specific tasks to do,
so I did those instead (and, as a result, I didn't make progress on my
homework and will probably flunk out of school).

For the Consumer Reports search, I really wanted to find information useful to
me, so I searched for articles about pizza stones (mine, that I have had for
two months, broke the other day), but Consumer Reports has apparently never
done anything on pizza stones, so I decided I would verify that my pots and pans are great. The most recent article that confirmed the greatness of my pots and pans was from 2005. If I searched for only the most recent articles, it gave me a little side-note piece that rated cookware without distinguishing between non-stick and stainless steel cookware (they apparently didn't take into account the fact that it probably won't be safe to eat off of the non-stick pans in 50 years because the top rated pans were non-stick). I also ended up finding an article confirming the great and wonderfulness of my KitchenAid Mixer. (And yes, as the picture would imply, it is white, not purple. My whole life I wanted a purple KitchenAid mixer, but they just don't make them anymore. I try not to let that interfere with my feelings for the mixer that I do have, because she is wonderful and kneads bread for me and just looks so nice in my little kitchen. Also, when I was looking for the picture for this post, I found a picture of an absolutely gorgeous purple KitchenAid mixer and it was in a lady's blog that was from 2007 and she mentioned that she had had the mixer for 3 years--I can't believe they stopped making them in purple. Why, why did they stop?)

In the Biography Research Center I searched for C.S. Lewis and found ten articles. I also searched for J.R.R. Tolkien and found eleven articles. How exciting!

Task 9: Creation of a website

Okay, if you've been following my blog (yes, I mean you, David) then you know that I'm not into the social networking/blogging, etc. world. Well, you would be surprised to know that this was not the first time I have made a website. A few years ago (before I had declared a major and knew what I should take that would actually count towards a degree), I took a class called Computers in our Society (I also took a class called Chemistry in Society that same semester, which I was routinely 5 minutes late to). In my computer class she had us make websites, but I don't think we were allowed to use templates. We actually had to make the links ourselves (it didn't do it for us, but after all, this was a few years ago). Anyway, I'd let you see that website (it was about purple), but it is no longer up and running.

I enjoyed making my website for this project. I struggled initially with what it should be about. I figured something out, though. Take a look for yourself: http://sites.google.com/site/purplekitchenaccessories/home

It was really easy to make. My husband and I made a website for RSVP's for our wedding when we were engaged: that was really easy.

Task 8: Creative Commons

I found this to be an interesting task. It's hard to find anything that is truly unique and genuinely doesn't take inspiration from any other source--seriously. So I think Creative Commons is a really good idea. To be able to use and build upon someone else's work without having to worry about being sued is a good thing.

If I, or a patron, needed a generic picture of, say, a bassoon, I could just use Creative Commons to find a picture that is okay to use (since I don't have a bassoon and wouldn't be able to take my own picture of said bassoon).
I hope no one minds that my picture is so big. I found it using Google Images on Creative commons, but then I had to go to normal Google Images to be able to get the url for it so I could share it with you all. I think Creative Commons is really neat. Yay! Now we can safely use the internet as a source from which to build upon.