Saturday, October 27, 2007

decorating - color schemes

I just found this site: http://www.colr.org/

It seems like a more automated way to do some of the color scheming that I've been doing manually. I'd take a digital picture of something I wanted to coordinate, then pick out colors and make rectangle samples of them. In the above site, if you keep clicking to create color scheme from the picture, you eventually get a representation of the colors that you imagined.

Here's an online discussion of the site: lifehacker.com

Friday, October 26, 2007

I am not a tourist

I went to a conference this week in a town which is a popular tourist destination. Mostly, I think, because it has great weather and landscape and some intriguing history.

At the end of the conference, I had some time on my hands. I was not very interested in touristing, but, after talking with my husband on the phone, relented and went out and about a little.

One thing that is popular for a tourist is to go shopping. I would have to suspect that this is popular for people who like to go shopping in the first place. That is not me.

Another thing people like to do is "sight seeing". Looking around for the sake of looking around. I get bored with that as well.

So, for my afternoon out, I did go to a couple of cute places. But I only started enjoying myself when I tried to do "home things" there. I found a library to go to. I read some magazines and got ideas for decorating the family room (we just moved into a house and want to paint it now, instead of right before we're trying to sell it; lesson learned from the relocation).

My laptop battery had died, so I looked at some email, sitting alongside gobs of teenagers. The library had a pretty "tree garden" park around it, so I took a hand-drawn map they'd done of the garden and walked around looking at the trees and learning what their names were.

At a corner there was a sign for where all the different types of churches surrounding the park were. I sought mine out, drove to it, looked at and saw that it was good, and parked there while I went over to another cute shopping area.

In the shopping area one of the first storefronts was an intriguing bookstore. I lost myself in the books, deciding to purchase one called Lost History. My knowledge of Sunnis vs Shiites has increased exponentially. I took the book to the restaurant next door and read it while having a happy hour.

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So, as described, this was not touristing. Probably some of the nicest "not touristing" I've done in a long time. ;-)

Friday, October 19, 2007

flying sandhill crane

I posted about the prevalence of sandhill cranes in my neighborhood recently. Today I was driving down our street, on my way to work, and I saw some of them flying. No big deal, but then I got a great view of what they look like underneath when they fly. It was very funny, because their legs just kinda flap around the sides of their tail. So, they look clumsy when they're walking and they look clumsy when they're flying. They're great!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

space coast

I just read an article about how fun images on the Space Coast website are going to change because of the following concerns. In order to form my opinion of the images before reading about the concerns, I went to the site. I found the images fun, and that they imply that you can not only enjoy the space center, but the other attractions in Central Florida as well.

Concerns include:
  • "when you see the spacemen walking down the beach, it's hard to picture yourself as one of those"
  • "the issue is for groups like the Brevard Cultural Alliance is that groups who receive cultural marketing dollars, they must use The Zimmerman Agency, and they have to put the little spaceman on ads and brochures. It's difficult for the groups that have wonderful designers. Because the TDC gives the money to Zimmerman, all advertising has to go through the agency. Everything has to the spaceman, and if we contest it, Zimmerman says, 'The spaceman is the brand.' "

Well, I put a comment on the Florida Today Forums that it seems just fine to have astronauts on the page. It's called Space Coast, after all.

What do you think of the spacemen? If you have any strong feelings, you might even want to comment on the forum. Oh, and make sure you say you're from somewhere else.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Sleep vs IQ

from Arts & Letters Daily:

Overstimulated, overscheduled kids are getting at least an hour’s less sleep than they need. It’s lowering their IQs... more»

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Can an MRI See God?

from Utne Web Watch:

Neuroscience and the mystery of religious experience

By Brendan Mackie, Utne.com
Research in neuroscience has focused on the biological nature of consciousness. But does science explain away religious experience, or is there a deeper mystery at work?

The entire story may be viewed at http://www.utne.com/webwatch/2007_320/news/12803-1.html

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Shoe Lacing Methods

Who woulda known?!

There's a site that is all about tying shoes. It has good diagrams of ways a person might like to lace his/her shoes:
http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/lacingmethods.htm

The author also has some other interesteing sites.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Reading is hard work for the brain, as this book proves.

from the Washington Post:

Anyone who reads is bound to wonder, at least occasionally, about how those funny squiggles on a page magically turn into "Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang" or "After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain." Where did this unlikely skill called reading come from? What happens in our brain when our eyes scan a line of type? Why do some of us, or some of our children, find it difficult to process the visual information held in words? [the article]