June 2007 Archives
My recent addiction to choking hazards must make me even more predisposed to adore the Tiny Animals on Fingers Flickr group.
1. Ladybird, 2. nailfrog.jpg, 3. Happy li'l terrapin, 4. Chameleon, 5. DSCF0213.JPG, 6. IMG_1636, 7. Face to face with a small copper, 8. snails in my garden, 9. Gecko II
I have a reputation for being unflappable, but I was flapped today and now I'm all discombobulated. I'm going to feel weird for the rest of the day if I can't recombobulate myself.
It's so like me to post a "this is the beginning of my website" entry as the fifth entry. I never seem to do things in the expected order.
So... welcome to smattery.com. Make yourself at home. Please play along.
Tired from staring at this screen all day. Must shake myself off, step outside, and breathe some fresh air for a few minutes.
I wish I were this Andrea, because then I would have thought of this.
My officemates and I recently moved into our newly renovated offices. My team was the only group that didn't get individual offices; because we spend so much of our time working collaboratively, it was decided that an open plan office would work better for us.
This works great and I wouldn't have it any other way. The only problem is we ended up with these refurbished cubes that aren't exactly brimming with natural good looks.
So one of my coworkers decreed that every day we'd spend at least a few minutes engaging in "pretty time", where we would try to beautify our office space in some way (can you tell I work with a bunch of women?). When I discovered magnets would stick to the cube walls , I found 50 rare earth magnets for cheap on Ebay and started wallpapering my cube walls with Nancy Drew book cover postcards.
I've run out of Nancy Drew book postcards, and I have 20 magnets left and another four cube wall panels. Oh yes, I will cover up every square inch of bland gray cubicle fabric. Next I have to figure out what to do about the bland gray cubicle desk surface.
This is the best clock ever. I wish I could have a physical version of it to hang up in my house.
I'm flying away tomorrow on a trip for work and I haven't started packing yet. I spent my evening going out to eat, drinking beer, and taking photos of my eyeball.
I could go into all the reasons why I dread traveling for work, but instead I will simply make faces.
Continue reading "It's 9:37 and I haven't started packing yet" »
I'm going to blame my mood on being far away from home, Brad and cats. The older I get the closer I want to stay to those three things. Call me boring, but they're comforting to me.
I Sold My Soul on Ebay - Hemant Mehta
Mehta is "the eBay atheist," the nonbeliever who auctioned off the opportunity for the winning bidder to send him to church. The auction winner was Jim Henderson, a former pastor and author of Evangelism Without Additives. Since then, Mehta has visited a variety of church services--posting his insightful critiques on the Internet and spawning a positive, ongoing dialogue between atheists and believers.
Paper Pilot: The Paper Airplane Pilot's Manual
Packed with colorful photographs and illustrations, historical facts about famous aircraft, and nostalgic looks at the eternally popular pastime of model plane building, Paper Pilot is aviation history, coffee table cool, and paper plane kit all rolled into one fun package.
Tord Boontje incorporates a romantic, artisanal sensibility to contemporary industrial and product design, drawing from a rich graphic tradition to create objects of exceptional beauty and delicacy.... Lavishly illustrated with over 300 sketches, concept renderings, and photographs, the book is a comprehensive visual document of the designer's work and an art object in itself, featuring a number of custom printing effects-stencils, perforated and die-cut pages, and textured and woven details-that capture the intricacy of Boontje's approach to pattern-making.
1. Who's a good boy?
2. Who's got a fluffy tail?
More
Zeldman writes about a topic that's near and dear (or near and toxic) to my heart: html e-mail.
When I say HTML mail still sucks, I don't mean it sucks because support for design in e-mail today is like support for standards in web browsers in 1998.I mean it sucks because nobody needs it. It impedes rather than aids communication.
E-mail was invented so people could quickly exchange text messages over fast or slow or really slow connections, using simple, non-processor-intensive applications on any computing platform, or using phones, or hand-held devices, or almost anything else that can display text and permits typing.
While I do agree with a lot of what he says in theory, in practice this post is pretty much a waste of space, a useless rant. Companies are still going to want to do html e-mail and I can explain the difficulties, obstacles and perfectly rational reasons not to use html e-mail until I'm blue in the face, but I'm still going to be asked to do it.
I wish we could all agree that html e-mail is an evil that will not go away and start thinking of real, workable solutions for not making it so utterly horrendous. And if a standards-compliance evangelist like Zeldman could get behind the idea of making e-mail clients standards-compliant, maybe we'd be a little bit closer to it. "Just don't use html e-mail" is not a solution.
Jane's treasured NASA pin reminded me of my own treasured hippo keychain.
My high school English teacher had a statuette of this hippo from the Met, but I'd never known where it had come from. It had become the unofficial mascot of the senior class, and people used to steal it and hide it in various places. So when I visited the Met in 2001, I was kind of dumbfounded when I saw this ancient Egyptian hippo statue which, to me, had always just been that goofy hippo from high school. So I bought this keychain as a little memento, not realizing I'd become really attached to it.
The keychain has gotten quite beaten up over the years, and both times I've been back to the Met since 2001, I've looked for a replacement for it, but they don't seem to sell it anymore. The more I carry it around, the more I kind of adore and identify with this little hippo.
The seemingly benign appearance that this figurine presents is deceptive. To the ancient Egyptians, the hippopotamus was one of the most dangerous animals in their world. The huge creatures were a hazard for small fishing boats and other rivercraft. The beast might also be encountered on the waterways in the journey to the afterlife. (More about the hippo)
I'd really like to think of myself as seemingly benign, but actually dangerous.
I've been reading No Impact Man for a while. Today he linked to the Riot for Austerity 90% Emissions Reduction Project. The concept being that rich countries need to reduce their carbon emissions by 90% in order to prevent catastrophe, so this project proposes some rules for daily living that could cut individual carbon emissions by 90%.
It's discouraging to me how utterly difficult it would be for me to follow some of their rules, if I chose to try. Especially this one:
1. Gasoline. Average American usage is 500 gallons PER PERSON, PER YEAR. A 90 percent reduction would be 50 gallons PER PERSON, PER YEAR.
- No reduction in emissions for ethanol or biodiesel.
- Public transportation and Waste Veggie Oil Fuel are deemed to get 100 mpg, and should be calculated accordingly.
Let's see. 30 miles of driving per workday, 5 workdays per week, and we'll exaggerate and say I work a full 52 weeks a year. That's 7800 of driving, assuming I don't do any other driving besides driving to work. My Civic gets about 30mpg, so that's 260 gallons of gas per year.
Now let's pretend I could take public transportation from my house to work and that it was also 30 miles a day (which it wouldn't be, because there aren't any direct routes). Using their 100mpg number for public transportation, I would still be using 78 gallons of gas, 23 gallons over their 50 gallon per person per year limit.
So the best way I could reduce my gasoline usage to the levels they're talking about is to move. Barring moving, maybe ride my bike 30 miles a day, or some combination of public transportation and biking? Maybe I could carpool?
I'm not sure of the math behind any of this, but I like that this project exists and that they're challenging people to see what the numbers could actually add up to on a daily basis. It definitely adds fuel (har har) to my desire to move out of the suburbs and closer to everything. But it's also kind of depressing. I consider myself a little bit more environmentally conscious and less materialistic than the average person, but according to these numbers, I have nothing to brag about.
After apparently getting a lot of feedback on his "Email is not a platform for design" article, Zeldman posts Eight points for better e-mail relationships.
1. VC Lisa2 - This was posted on Woven Thoughts today, showing how this roving was made into some beautiful felt.
2. Knit Night Cupcakes - seen on Vegan Yum Yum, an absolutely jaw-dropping display of marzipan magic. She even posted a tutorial on how to do "knit marzipan", although I prefer to believe it's magic.
3. Fiber on the Mountain Hand Spun Yarn - I like Leslie's yarn photo because the yarn is beautiful and it's on a pile of books (even better).
4. Knit Night Cupcakes - again with Vegan Yum Yums fantastic cupcakes.
(Created with fd's Flickr Toys.)
I've been inspired by a lot of fiber-related talent I'm seeing lately. I haven't been up to many fiber crafts lately (my spinning wheel glares at me once in a while in protest), but I still lurk the fiber blogs and have a pile of projects I someday want to do.
I'm wearing a skirt today. And I got a pedicure. I'm becoming downright girly; it's bizarre.
The funny thing is that I'm always intimidated by things like pedicures or make-up or anything girly in general. I always feel like I'm not feminine enough to do any of that, that I would stick out like a sore thumb. You'd think I'd learn after a while that it doesn't actually happen that way.
I think I've just aways shied away from femininity in general because I don't want to come across as ditzy or overly frivolous. But I have to admit that sometimes it's nice to feel pretty.
"Smackdown flattery, or an underhanded compliment, as in 'You're not nearly as stupid and sweaty as I remember!'"
Who wrote this one? I seem to have deleted the email it came in, and I realize I missed giving credit to whoever wrote it. I'm not trying to dis you, I swear. Email me (andrea at this domain dot com) or leave a comment and I'll right my wrongdoing.
Today Brad and I went to the Stone Arch Festival of the Arts, where I bought two lovely presents for myself and Brad wondered why he'd come along because it was 90 degrees and really humid.
I haven't been to an art fair in a couple of years and I was really noticing how commercialized they're becoming. There were booths for several major corporations that have nothing to do with art. And this isn't even one of the largest art festivals in the Twin Cities. As infuriated as I was over the infiltration of corporate America into the festival, I was still sucked in by a Sun Country Airlines booth where they had fake political campaign signs that said, "VEGETARIANS FOR CHEESEBURGERS".
Huh?
Continue reading "Vegetarians for Funny" »
I woke up this morning suddenly, with a distinct feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. I refused to start out the day in the kind of self-fulfilling-prophecy bad mood that would have been so easy to fall into, so I got up and went on a 6-mile bike ride. Sometimes physical exertion can banish the dread. I would have gone for a run, which would have been even better because I would have been dead tired by the end of it, but I knew that if I'd gone for a run I wouldn't have held back and I would have overdone it. Since I haven't run in a while, I knew that I'd have either injured myself or, at the minimum, ended up in pain for the next three days.
I would like to think the exercise helped a little with the feeling of dread, but it's still here, nagging at me. When I feel like this, I want to run far, far away.
I've always been tempted to take photos from the car, but it's generally a disappointing endeavor. Especially those that are taken out windows. You see something interesting, and by the time the camera is out and a shot is hastily taken, the moment has usually passed. Moments like that just pass more quickly (by 30-60 miles an hour) than moments on foot.
But today, the urge struck me again. I was driving home with the windows open, listening to Edward Herrmann's soothingly deep voice telling me all about the life of Einstein, the sky was surprisingly blue and there were these cheerful puffy clouds floating above me. It's been in the 90s and thickly humid for days, and some fat gray clouds and heavy rain this afternoon unexpectedly swept it all away and left us with this glorious mild day. And I was stuck in the car.
So despite my experience that taking photos out car windows is a waste of energy, I snapped away. And for once, the exercise actually captured what I was experiencing. They're not beautifully crafted photos, but they capture the feeling I had as I looked out the windows on my way home from work and was so much more interested in focusing on the sky than the road.
This. And this. This Schnozz is one smart cookie.
Thanks to Jane for sending this to me and Trasherati for sending it to her, which led her to send it to me.
Just as Flickr renewed my flagging interest in photography, I can already tell that Ravelry will fan the flame of my fiber love. It's still in beta, so I can't try it out, but when it launches, you can bet I'll sign up as soon as possible.
Lifehacker has 13 book hacks for the library crowd.
I like this one: DailyLit. You can sign up on DailyLit to have small chunks of books emailed to you every day so you can eventually finish the book. I am signing up for The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit, which I will finish in 94 days.
I'm curious to see if this will be an enjoyable way to read a book. I almost signed up for Crime and Punishment, because I've always meant to re-read that book, but I'm afraid Dostoyevsky in small chunks might just be too confusing. I'm not sure if just a few paragraphs a day would be enough for me to remember all those characters' names.
Because it would be embarrassing how often I look at my own pictures.
We had some really dramatic skies tonight. It was kind of perfect, because the really bad storms missed us. They came just close enough to give us a good view and some satisfying thunder rumbles, but not close enough to be scary.
I wasn't actually lucky enough to capture this lightning bolt the instant it happened; I was recording some video of how fast these clouds are moving. The video is sort of boring. I mean, nobody really cares about the weather you have, it's sort of like talking about your dreams a lot. Although it's vivid at the time and may make quite an impact on you, it seems as though the average person really doesn't care to hear about it. But since I captured a lightning bolt in the video, I hunted through the video until I found it.
I wrote this almost exactly a year ago. It's the beginning of a story (or, I guess I was really ambitious and thought it was a novel) that I never finished. I got about six pages into it and stopped, and I barely remember writing this. I certainly don't remember where I was going with it.
Continue reading "Things I write that I later forget about (or block out)" »
I got this new monster poster from my coworker for my birthday. It's the best.
I also have this at work. I have a huge thing for funny monsters like these, although so far I have resisted the urge to acquire a bunch of monster stuff.
My birthday present to myself is getting all this hair cut off. I thought I'd better document the "before" so that when I have a nervous breakdown about having cut off all that hair, I can look at the photo and realize it wasn't that great to begin with.
In an event unprecedented (at least on this scale) in our five years of relationship, Brad completely and utterly surprised me yesterday. It was a surprise that was weeks in the making, and all the more difficult for him to pull off because I tend to be a bit flighty about my birthday, so he wasn't sure what I was going to suddenly do to foil his plans unexpectedly.
Continue reading "Best birthday ever" »
- I have no idea how I obtained songs from Grease in my iTunes. It seems like everywhere I go (stores, etc.), I hear songs from Grease. It's like some kind of bad disease.
- One side-effect of actually getting some exercise on a regular basis is that I can no longer sit through an 8-hour workday without crawling out of my skin out of sheer antsiness. My lunchtime walks will have to recommence, starting today.
- After a week of working at less than my usual productiveness at work, due to inexplicable amounts of distraction, I am finally getting something done today and it feels so good.
- It's sad that the inspiration for my haircut was so obvious, but I've gotten more than one comment about it today.
- Speaking of which, I really need to get the movie Stranger Than Fiction. Who knew a movie with Will Farrell in it could actually be that good?
I just noticed this archive feature at Flickr. I can't believe I never noticed it before. The calendar view of photos is really quite appealing. I think the number of photos I've posted per month since I started using Flickr has gone up exponentially.
So who's right? National Weather Service, who says it's 82 degrees, with a humidity of 74%? Or Weather.com, who says it's 95 degrees, with a humidity of 38%?
I just don't think the weather could have changed that much in the eight minutes between Weather.com's report and the National Weather Service's. Incidentally, the Star Tribune currently says it's 91.
I know there's a lot of science behind weather prediction, but still sometimes I think the weather people just consult their Magic 8 Balls.
Which is less boring -- not talking, or talking about nothing?
- Actually being in shape enough that exercise feels great and a 20-mile bike ride is leisurely fun.
- Blueberries from my neighborhood produce stand.
- Polka-dot fabric which I am going to try to make into a skirt even though I have very little clue what I'm doing.
- Being around a friend who's had very happy things happen in her life lately - it's like a breath of fresh air.
- Pixar movies
- Babysitting my neighbor's mysterious geranium (yes, she got one too at the same time as I did! In fact, she thought I was the mysterious benefactor, but I wasn't) while she's out of town.
- Finally making it below age 50 in my Wii fitness age.
