Monthly Archives: July 2013

31 days of geocaching

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The folks at Groundspeak, who administer the geocaching.com website, have announced the 31 days of geocaching challenge. The idea is to go on a geocaching streak and try and find a cache every day in August. I guess it’s the equivalent of #blogjune or #commentjuly for geocachers. As a reward for taking part in the challenge, Groundspeak are giving away one of their souvenirs for each day that you find a cache. These are a bit like badges which can be earned in some online games. Some geocachers love them and try to collect as many as they can, whereas others (like myself) don’t actively try and earn them.

This isn’t something that we will be able to do, but we might try and break our current streak, which stands at four days. International Geocaching Day falls on 17th August this year, so we might try and include that day in our streak. I’ll let you know how we go.

A new home for the Geocaching Librarian

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A little over a week ago, my wife and I bought a new house. Our cooling-off period finished on Friday, so now we’re locked in. Our moving date is set for late August, so we’ve got a month to get the house packed and ready to go. We did a big cleanup a few weeks ago in preparation for selling our house, so we shouldn’t have to do much sorting prior to packing.

It’s been a busy few weeks for us looking for a new house. We sold our house very quickly, so we knew we had a deadline to find a new place. It took three weekends of looking at about 20-25 houses before we found the place we bought. It’s a bigger house with a nice yard for the boys – it had the best yard out of all the houses we looked at. The location is good and it’s within walking distance of shops, parks, and the primary school.

We’ve enjoyed living in our current house for the last 6½ years, but we’ve outgrown it. I bought it for me to live in, but now that there’s four of us in the place it’s getting a bit cosy. We can’t wait to start the next stage of our family life in our new house.

#commentjuly fail

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I’ve realised that I’m probably not going to be able to complete the #commentjuly challenge. We’re in the process of selling out house and looking for one to buy, so I’m a bit distracted by that. I’ll certainly do my best to post some comments during July, but I doubt I’ll be able to do one per day. It’ll be more of an ad hoc approach, where I’ll comment on something that I come across via Twitter or some other way, rather than seeking out posts to comment on. It’s a great idea, and I’d like to keep up my involvement.

The first week of #commentjuly

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It’s the end of the first week of #commentjuly, and so far I’ve managed to keep up and post a comment each day. I probably should have planned the process a bit better, and started noting the posts that I wanted to comment on as they were published. I’m kind of going at it a bit randomly at the moment, but that does keep it exciting! So, here are the posts that I commented on this week, along with a quick explanation of why I commented.

July 1st – Future Library

This is a blog run by La Trobe University Library, and many of the posts discuss issues that are relevant to academic libraries across Australia. I commented on the post about how e-books affect the browsability of library collections.

July 2nd – Where the Rivers Meet the Sea

Moving away from library-related posts, I commented on Sharon’s post about trying to find a balance when it comes to allowing your kids to explore technology, and making sure they get enough exercise.

July 3rd – Librarianville

This comment was in response to a post about developing a Personal Learning Network (PLN). My PLN has certainly expanded since I’ve started using Twitter.

July 4th – Everybody’s Libraries

This blog is maintained by John Mark Ockerbloom who works for the University of Pennsylvania libraries. He’s developed a tool which allows links to be made from Wikipedia articles to library resources.

July 5th – Audacious Fizz

I was looking at the blogs where @JuliadeRuiter had commented as part of her #commentjuly challenge, and came across this post which mentioned hiding a geocache in your library. Seeing that I’ve done this, I felt I had to comment.

I can’t wait to see what next week will bring. I’m going to do my best to finish the challenge, but I’m already thinking that I might not be able to keep up. Somehow #blogjune seemed easier than this.