Week in Review: 10.19.2013

I think this will be my last weekly recap post, at least for the near future. Now that I'm working a 9-to-5 job, my weeks all pretty much look the same, so I'm finding these posts to be a little repetitive. I plan on switching to a monthly recap instead (similar to what I used to do, but with an updated format), but I'll be finding other ways to share my most popular Instagram photos and posts each week, whether that's on social media or elsewhere. I hope you enjoy my final Week in Review post (for now)!

Get this: I only posted two pictures on Instagram in the past week! Whaaaaaat? I know; insane in the membrane. I guess I just didn't think my life was very Instagram-worthy this week. Here are the chosen two that made it to my feed:

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Week in Review: 09.28.2013

Good morning/afternoon/evening, everyone, depending on your corner of the globe! I'm back in the hometown again this weekend for the wedding reception of a family friend, so I'm writing this while alternately trying to drink my coffee and fight off my adorable but persistent mutt from laying his head right on my keyboard.

This week's "best of Instagram" feature is a little different than usual. Instead of showcasing my four most-liked photos on Instagram during the past week, I'm going to show you my non-#bookphotoaday photos (which happens to be exactly four photos!). I'll be doing a recap of the entire Banned Books Week photo challenge on Sunday, so you can see all my bookish photos then. (Or, you can follow me on Instagram at @mcstroup and see them now!)

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New policy on images.

Photo via Photography King on Flickr

I decided I'm going to start being more responsible about the images I use on my blog. This means (a) taking more of my own photos and (b) being more careful about copyright and proper attribution. I have always provided sources for the images used on this blog, but sometimes that's only to Pinterest, and not everyone links their pins to the image's original source.

For example, tonight I logged onto Pinterest and searched "camera" for a nice photo for this post. I found a ton of great images, but the first photo I traced from Pinterest to its original source—and the second—was not available for my (legal) use. Then I remembered the Creative Commons search engine I use at work, and I finally found the image you see above. Instead of the fifteen seconds it would have taken me to embed the first image from Pinterest, it took me more than six minutes to find this one. But I feel better about myself, and that's what counts, right?

Newest discovery: Pocket

I have this habit of starting posts, saving them as drafts and never finishing them. Example: On Nov. 16, I started a post called "Newest discovery: The Next Button." I never finished it. On March 28, I started a post called "Newest discovery: Read it Later." Well, I'm finally finishing that one, but it's taken me so long that Read It Later has changed its name to Pocket. I'm also going to combine it with what would have gone in the post about the Next button. So here goes....

First: Pocket. I am always finding cool articles at work or seeing interesting links in my Twitter feed, but I obviously don't have time to read everything that looks interesting right then. So, I just put it in my Pocket! It's a simple button you can add to your web browser that automatically saves that web page into a list for you to peruse at your leisure. As shown in these images (borrowed from the Pocket site), you can then access these articles on pretty much any device:

I already have it downloaded on my home laptop, work computer and Android phone, and I'm planning to add it to my PiPad this summer, as well! (That's what the Leadership Consultants like to call their iPads. Because it's Alpha Delta Pi, get it?) But the best thing about Pocket is that it automatically adds a button to my Google Reader, as well. So if I see something interesting in my Google Reader and don't have time to read it, but I also don't want to leave it unread, I can add it to my Pocket and then hit "Mark All as Read" at the top to save me some time, like so:

All the yellow arrows are things I've added to my Pocket, and the empty arrows are things I don't care to read. Then I hit "Mark All as Read" and I have a nice, clean Google Reader!