Tag Archives: Tech

Video Games for People Who Don’t Like Video Games

24 Nov

Recently I decided that, seeing as I am married to a die-hard video gamer, it was only right for me to gain a little more exposure to the sport.  My husband passed the comprehensive exam for his PhD just last week, and to celebrate, I dusted off the Wii and finally played it with him for the very first time in the 10 years that we’ve known each other.

I did veto Legend of Zelda (too action-adventurey), Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (too role-playee), Super Mario Sunshine (too platformery), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (too beat-em-uppy), Medal of Honor (too first-person-shootery) and Madden NFL (too sporty — wow, how is it that Aaron even actually loves me??), but I did find a few in his collection that I was willing to try, and in fact actually enjoyed.  I guess I’m what you’d call a casual “party” gamer–quick and dirty, in and out!  Here’s what we played:

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
Bananas, hell-ooo!  With the added bonus of monkeys, ladybugs, and aliens, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz is a collection of 50 exciting party games, including “spear the fish,” “shoot the UFO,” and “catch the ladybug on a stick.”  What I like best is that all the games are short & sweet, with a variety of Wii Remote actions to keep things interesting.
Wario Ware: Smooth Moves Wario Ware
Wario Ware is essentially a big collection of super fast, super silly, repetitive microgames.  I appreciate the corny scenarios, from fanning giant robots off a cliff, to dislodging bananas from your nose (again with the bananas!). The pace speeds up as you progress, adding a nice frantic dimension to gameplay.
Rayman Raving Rabbids Rayman Raving Rabbids
What is not to love???  Crazy little bunny rabbit games, including cow-tossing, plunger-shooting, and disco-dancing.  I was skeptical about having to use the Wii Nunchucks with this game, but it ended up being super fun.  We had the hardest time with the “keep the bunnies in the bathroom” game and, surprisingly, the jump roping game.

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Readers’ Advisory 2.0

24 Mar

I’ve already written about why I don’t like Readers’ Advisory here on this blog.  Yet I was still pleased to get a lot out of Jody Wurl and Michele McGraw’s presentation — “Readers’ Advisory 2.0″ — at last week’s Library Technology Conference at Macalester College.

Wurl and McGraw kicked off by asking “why should Readers’ Advisors care about Web 2.0 anyway — what does the Internet have to do with books?”  Trick question!  On the Internet, Librarians can go where the readers are and connect with them there.  The Hennepin County Library system, where both Wurl and McGraw work, has developed an online presence called Bookspace (powered by Adobe’s ColdFusion software) where Librarians can do just that — and for popular titles, the conversation often starts before the book comes out, from the moment it’s been cataloged.  Here are some of the other tools they like:

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One Tweet at a Time

23 Mar

Twitter can help library users draw the connection between pop culture, current events and library services.  This is what Rudy Leon argued last week during her presentation — “One Tweet at a Time: Developing Critical Thinking, Library Connections & Information Skills with Twitter” — at the Library Technology Conference at Macalester College.  (Her presentation slides are available here.)

Leon is a Learning Commons Librarian at the Undergraduate Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).  Earlier this decade, UIUC conducted a study in which they learned that: Freshmen are totally smart! And they will circumvent the system in order to work around whatever they can’t figure out at the Library.  At the time, the Undergraduate Library (UGL) system was extremely decentralized, and Leon and her colleagues were trying to figure out how they could revitalize their services and help students.  Fortunately for Leon, her predecessors had already embedded a Twitter feed for @askundergrad into the front page of the UGL Website, and she was able to repurpose this feed in order to centralize information about the Library in a highly visible location.

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Naked Photos, Bloody Hands, & the Chili Chopping Incident

23 Mar

It was lunchtime, I was hungry, and Michael Porter from WebJunction was projecting graphic photos of his bloody hand.

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Librarians Can Wear Superhero Costumes, Play World of Warcraft

23 Mar

Spock, Playing the Harp

Spock may be half Vulcan and half Human, but he definitely knows what’s up with the Library Computer Access Retrieval System (LCARS) and the Personal Access Display Device (PADD).  This was the crux of Michael Porter’s keynote talk — “Libraries, Technology, Evolution, Change and Success” — at last week’s Library Technology Conference at Macalester College.  Porter, aka LibraryMan, argued that although librarians love serving our communities, we often do a terrible job with electronic content distribution!  He urged us to glean a little inspiration from Star Trek and to actively develop digital strategies for electronic content access.

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Quick Links to LibTech 2010 Write-Ups

22 Mar

Last week I had the privilege to attend and present at the 4th Annual Library Technology Conference at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, on March 17-18!  Check out write-ups of the following sessions right here on Librarian in a Banana Suit:

Twitter Cheat Sheet

13 Mar

Totally psyched to have my Twitter Cheat Sheet ready to go for next week’s Library Technology Conference at Macalester College! So psyched, in fact, that I’m making it available to you, right here, right now. (Just click here for the pdf.)

RACHEL’S TWITTER CHEAT SHEET

Basic grammar:

@username = reply / mention
“@bananasuit Nice bananasuit!”

d username = direct (private) tweet
“d bananasuit Want to meet up and go bananasuit shopping?”

RT @username = retweet what someone else said
“RT @bananasuit 5% of Americans now own bananasuits”

#keyword = hashtag
“I think I’m ready to take the plunge and get a #bananasuit”

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Library Technology Conference 2010

7 Mar

My colleague (& partner in crime) and I are currently putting the final touches on the workshop we’ve been preparing for the Library Technology Conference at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, in little over a week.  We’re giving a 90 minute hands-on workshop called “Second Life and Twitter for Librarians: Virtual Tools for Building Local and Global Networks.” Angela will be speaking about Second Life,and I will be speaking about Twitter.

I’m excited, but also pretty nervous!

I’m really looking forward to visiting Macalester, which is where I earned my undergraduate degree.  Sad, though, that my most favorite professors have all already retired or moved on to other Universities.  It really wasn’t that long ago, guys!

Anyway, I will surely be posting more about the conference before, during and after the fact.  Next Wednesday March 10, SLIS is hosting a dry-run of our workshop at noon in the U of I Main Library Computer Lab 3092, with cookies!

(click here to see more links for LibTech 2010)

Fabulous Ways for Librarians to Use Twitter

21 Jan

Twitter

Clive Thompson from Wired Magazine — one of my favorite techno-journalists — writes that tools like Twitter can help us develop a “sixth sense” about the people in our networks.  All those seemingly mundane facts like “having homemade bagel & lox for breakfast!” and “reading Vonnegut during flight delay…” can add up to give us a picture of what’s happening in the lives of those around us.  As librarians, we can use Twitter to help our communities develop a sixth sense about who we are and what we offer, and we can also use it to develop our own sixth sense that will help us tune into the wants and needs of our communities, too.  For instance, if you see a lot of chatter in your network about the recent PBS documentary Copyright Criminals, you can schedule a showing at your library and then send a tweet about the event to all your Twitter followers!

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ICPL Technology Petting Zoo 12/11/09

11 Dec

The Iowa City Public Library put on a fantastic Technology Petting Zoo today!  ICPL’s Emerging Technology Committee offered an inservice session to expose library staff to new gadgets, including the Sony eReader, Overdrive eAudio, iTouch, the CanoScan Scanner, and eeePC.  I presented on Flip Video, which I’ve used with ICPL teens in Teen Tech Zone to help them produce their own YouTube videos.  You can check out my Flip Video presentation notes below, or you can click here to download the pdf.

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