October's Links to Love

Artsy:

Well-timed photos.

Creative breakfast lecture series.

Look for subtle movement in these cinemagraphs.

I never knew science could be so artsy:

Whale Fall (after life of a whale) from Sharon Shattuck on Vimeo.

Mini book jewelry.

Dam.

Cheese or font?

Words as image:



Quiz: telling Arial and Helvetica apart (I only got 3 wrong, yay!).

We need more of this kind of dancing:



Can you do this with stills?:

Landscapes: Volume Two from Dustin Farrell on Vimeo.

Minimalist fairytale posters.

Beauty of dance:

Danse(s) from Sosh on Vimeo.

How well can you kern?

Emotional revolution of typography.


Literary:

Small Demons, connecting stories for literature buffs.

Insult like Shakespeare.

Cliffnotes meets Twitter meets book club.

Haiku for the single girl:

Haiku For The Single Girl from Dan Meth on Vimeo.

Fake English:




Mormon:

Funny reasons why Mormonism is not a cult.

Steve Young birthday flash mob:




Yes, I Love Technology:

Wouldn't you rather text business with your questions? (Y'all know I'm not a fan of phone calls.) TalkTo:

Stash stuff you find online at Pistashio.

See what happens when you scan your barcodes.

Meaningful conversations at Roundtable.

Finally, Apple's going to work on their map technology.

Prescreen: Indie movies online.

Meet Gatsby: meet nearby people based on shared interests.

Panoramic ball camera (don't drop it!):



Integrating technology and education at Imagination.

Employees and potential employees using Twitter to sway businesses.

Using social media to gang up on Bank of America.

Play with the history of Google Earth.

Google's 3D Amazon.

How to conduct personal networking in a new city.

Freecycle for your computer files! Bwa ha ha:



QR code for your roof (satellite usage).

Mix tapes and Hallmark turned QR code cards:

Playlist Cards from Stupid on Vimeo.

Shoebox: photographing memories:



YouTube insult generator (seriously, though, what is it with YouTube comments?).

Adidas online fun.


Random:

Subscribe to receive mailed packages from influential people.

Apparently I have 22 slaves working for me. (I was shocked at the amount of clothes the site assumed I had!)

A candle to take care of your smell-the-newspaper needs.

If I actually had health insurance, I would use Cake Health to help me figure it all out.

Slow-motion, flying dogs with laser lights:



A German advertiser records his parents' reactions to the latest ad technologies.

Touchscreen gloves that won't leave your fingers cold.

Soapy fruit stickers.

Punjammies look divine.

I've often said that if I had a lot of money, I'd donate trees to cities. I like the look. But the "calmed traffic" of complete streets? I don't know if I want people to drive even slower.

Along the same lines, obligatory green roofs.

Cobra Weave Exploding Stick Bomb:



And, happy Halloween--photos of people in a haunted house!

Oops. House sold with corpse inside.

Patagonia and eBay get together.

Peel garlic easily:

How to Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds from SAVEUR.com on Vimeo.

Shopping guide to live by.

A sister's eulogy for Steve Jobs.

Fake or Real, They Still Gross Me Out

Random dislike: almost as bad as ants or spiders in my living space are the creepy ant and spider pictures on ant and spider sprays. And when you have to look at the dead ants and spiders gathering somewhere and eventually remove them . . . yeck.

"A Nosty Fright" by May Swenson

A Nosty Fright

The roldengod and the soneyhuckle,
the sack eyed blusan and the wistle theed
are all tangled with the oison pivy,
the fallen nine peedles and the wumbleteed.

A mipchunk caught in a wobceb tried
to hip and skide in a dandy sune
but a stobler put up a EEP KOFF sign.
Then the unfucky lellow met a phytoon

and was sept out to swea. He difted for drays
till a hassgropper flying happened to spot
the boolish feast all debraggled and wet,
covered with snears and tot.

Loonmight shone through the winey poods
where rushmooms grew among risted twoots.
Back blats flew betreen the twees
and orned howls hounded their soots.

A kumkpin stood with tooked creeth
on the sindow will of a house
where a icked wold itch lived all alone
except for her stoombrick, a mitten and a kouse.

“Here we part,” said the hassgropper.
“Pere we hart,” mipchunk, too.
They purried away on opposite haths,
both scared of some “Bat!” or “Scoo!”

October was ending on a nosty fright
with scroans and greeches and chanking clains,
with oblins and gelfs, coaths and urses,
skinning grulls and stoodblains.

Will it ever be morning, Nofember virst,
skue bly and the sanppy hun, our friend?
With light breaves of wall by the fayside?
I sope ho, so that this oem can pend.

-- May Swenson --

Hilf einem "älteren" Menschen

Have you ever read The Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks? It might only be funny for people who like to edit things, but it's certainly worth a look because of the witty meanings sarcastically gleaned from unnecessary quotation mark use. Ever since I first read it, I've run into things I thought would be great to send in. Like this one:



This faux-pas was committed by none other than the Leipzig Institute Student Council in a document about living more spiritually as a group for a few weeks. "Hilf einem 'älteren' Menschen" means "Help an 'older' person." Is the definition of "older" to be decided by the individual helping--so would a roommate or coworker who was older than I count, for example? Or was the student council afraid of offending by calling someone "old," so they substituted a quotation-marked comparative to soften the adjective's negative connotation?

Despite the hilarity of the vague definition of "older," I loved the idea of the program and read the assigned scriptures and completed suggested activities each day during our Holy Weeks Program. At the end of the few weeks, we were supposed to do a write-up about how we liked the program, which I promptly wrote and sent. Interestingly enough, not another thing was ever said about the program in institute. Apparently only one person participated. (No, not even the brain child's parents participated. Too bad; they missed out.)

Sniffin Sticks

Before I had sinus surgery in Germany in 2009, I had to go through some tests. Everything on the list looked perfectly German except for one suspiciously different item:



Sniffin sticks? Ha. They were exactly that--sticks that were held up for me to sniff and identify. But how funny that they couldn't come up with their own German version of that name. And even funnier to me is the fact that they left off the G. Did someone just write it the way they heard an English-speaking person say it, dropping the G? Or did some doctor feel witty as he gave it that official name? Or is it a typo? I'll never know. But it still amuses me.

Some Inspiration from Steve Jobs

"Sometimes, life's gonna hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith." -Steve Jobs

Adventures of Late

Tiburon and Sausalito:





Here's a video of the same bubble guy:

Oakland A's Game with the Glausers and Bankheads:





Half Moon Bay:







Hiking El Capitan in Yosemite:







Getting a nearly-perfect pumpkin from the garden (still no great tomatoes, though there were several small good-tasting ones this year):





Playing soccer once a week: no picture. :(



Saying goodbye to my Belgian friend, Adeline:





Learning to use Michael's fancy camera:





Lake Tahoe:





Saying goodbye to my German friend, Patrick:





Celebrating Uncle Al's 98th birthday:





Running 15 miles in one week (record distance for moi): no picture. :(



Hiking Mt. Olympus:

Hamster Art

When I was (how old was I? I don't remember) some undetermined age, I decided I wanted to get a pet hamster like I'd had when I was younger. My grandma said she'd let me pick one for my birthday. At the pet store, I asked, "Is it a boy or a girl?" The store employee picked up the hamster, took a look at its parts, and said, "It will be a boy."

Will be? How strange. And how strange that we didn't really ask for an explanation.

That hamster was easy to name. He became Wilby.

A few weeks later, rushing out the door to piano lessons, I glanced into Wilby's cage. To my surprise, there were things that looked like maggots in the corner of the cage. My first thought was that I had just cleaned the cage and it couldn't have possibly bred maggots that quickly. Then I realized the wiggly pink things were hamster babies.

Wilby was called Wilbyetta after that.

I don't even remember what we did with the babies, but Wilbyetta produced quite the second brood later. Watching those babies grow was fascinating. I learned about separating parents and babies and did so by building elaborate walls for the many-leveled cage I owned. I loved watching their shading develop, and I even recognized personalities. Most memorable was the tiny one I named Boo. He would always get so scared when I opened the cage that he would cower in a corner, holding his paws in shaking fists. (Boo ended up belonging to my next-door neighbor, who loved him until the day he died of cancer. Really. Cancer.)

After the second brood, though, two things happened: there were more babies than we knew what to do with, and an obnoxious and seemingly strategic comment about the smell of hamsters given by a classmate one morning made me a little hesitant about my hamster hobby.

My family joked about giving the babies to someone with a snake. I think my mom was finally the kind one who asked the elementary school teachers if any of them would like to have a class pet.

All of this background information is so you can look at only a tiny sampling of the thank-you notes I received from the elementary school kids. Before I finally toss them, I had to share some of them with you so you can appreciate the cute things kids say and their awesome artistic skills.





(Than cuw=thank you, get it?)




(What an evil-looking, but tired hamster!)




(I just really liked this one.)




(So the teacher told the kids about the horrible ending the hamster might have faced. But isn't that a just-having-eaten lump on that snake? And why is there a dog but no hamster in sight?)



(Nice drawing! And you've gotta love the "hole" instead of "whole.")