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Inspiration

Up Close and Personal
Inspiration

Links for the Weekend

Sometimes the best way to play trains is up close and personal.

I continue to be flabbergasted by the number of American politicians trying to send women’s right back into the dark ages.

Read 10 Reasons the Rest of the World Thinks the US is Nuts, the best article I’ve read yet on the insanity of this debate.

Then read Twitter’s Tales of Sexism and why feminism shouldn’t be a dirty word.

9 Books on Reading and Writing

Try this gesture based calculator for the iPhone.  I didn’t know the calculator needed to be reinvented but this is pretty cool.

What Apple’s Money Could Buy

Sea urchins?  No.  Elaborate life-like pencil sculptures

5000 Books Pour Out of a Building in Spain

It’s so easy to send an email, people rarely send handwritten notes anymore.  I know I don’t.  But this essay On Letter Writing might inspire me to get pen and paper out.

Submission Guidelines for Our Refrigerator Door

Have a happy weekend.

x

March 23, 2012
Inspiration

Inspired To Do a Little Spring Cleaning

Well I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that I’ve had a facelift.  A blog facelift that is.  Mom, dad, grandma, and the handful of you that stop by regularly have surely noticed the change over the past few days.  I’m sorry if I made you dizzy.

Those of you stopping by for the first time, well, hello, and welcome.  It’s a new year so the site’s got a new look.  But then you’ve never been here before so just assume it’s always looked like this.  iWeb?  Don’t be silly, I never used that.

What’s brought about all this change?  Well, I guess it’s all about why I put the time into this thing in the first place and how those reasons have evolved over time.

When I moved to the UK several years ago, I just thought having a “blog” would be a good way to keep in touch with family.  I didn’t even know what having a blog really meant.  At the time, I just thought it was posting photos online with little writeups saying “Look!  We did this!”  But in the early days, well, I never really embraced the blogging thing.  I did the best I could but I was working a demanding job and getting around to writing up a post felt like a chore, something I had to do for someone else, not for me.  And posting 4 or 5 times a year really isn’t going to do a great job of keeping your family in the loop never mind get you much of a following.

But having my little man and the opportunity to take some time away from the corporate treadmill I’d been on for about 20 years, well, it’s opened my eyes.  It’s allowed me to visualize a more creative life and it’s opened my eyes to world of interesting and inspirational people who share their stories and life experiences online, writers and photographers.  Until just a short time ago I had no idea these people existed.  Seriously, no idea.

And it’s because of all these amazing people who I’ve come across that I’ve been inspired to make this space something more than just photos of our latest family outing.  It’s inspired me to create something that’s my own little piece of the Internet where I can nurture the creative side of me that’s been dormant for a long, long time.

One of the people who has inspired me on this journey is Susannah Conway and I’m taking her Blogging from the Heart course.  And last week she inspired me to revisit some of the design elements of my blog.  It needed a bit of a tidy-up, a little more whitespace, and a cleaner, fresher look.

I also cannot say enough good things about Katrina at Pugly Pixel.  Her creativity and sense of design are just brilliant and without her graphics and tutorials I couldn’t have come this far.

So welcome to the new space.  Take your coat off and stay for a while.  I’ll put the kettle on.

I’m always interested in constructive feedback, so if you’d like to share any thoughts on the new design, please feel free to post a comment.

Iphone Processing:  Shot with Hipstamatic:  Libatique 73 lens, Blanko Freedom 13 film.
March 14, 2012
Inspiration

Links for the Weekend

Sometimes I feel like everything revolves around the weather here.  Maybe it does.  I certainly talk about it enough.  And this week is no different.  It’s been just nice enough that we broke out the sandpit, cleaned out last summer’s sand, and filled it up again.  And the little man loves standing out back digging in the sand and just chatting away to himself.

If you’re a Simpsons fan, you will soooo appreciate this.  Who Said It:  Mitt Romney or Mr. Burns?  Just goes to show you how absurd the political debate in America is.

Your Most Important To Do List

I always find it funny to read the reviews that people post online of various products, books, places, etc.  This web site has compiled some of the least helpful (and funniest) reviews on the Internet.

There are some just stunning photographs in this year’s Smithsonian Magazine photo contest.  Go take a look and vote for your favorites.

I love Oreos and the day I found Double-Stuff Oreos in a UK supermarket, that was a good day.  So in honor of this week’s 100th anniversary of the Oreo, here is some amazing art made from Oreos.

Revelations that the Steve Jobs’ biographer intentionally left Apple TV product development out of the book.  I cannot wait to find out what Steve was up to.

Maternity leave: American Mothers Deserve Better.  If I’d been living in America when I had my little man and had to go back to work full-time after 12 weeks, I would have LOST MY MARBLES.  (Not that I didn’t anyway.)

How magical is this?  Berndnaut Smilde’s cloud creations magically appear inside rooms.

I love Brian Cox.  He makes science accessible and is usually is able to blow my mind.  See him explain Why Everything is Connected to Everything Else

How can you not enjoy looking at the Happiest Animals in the World?  I want me some of that crocodile.

And on that happy note, happy weekend! x

March 9, 2012
Farmoor Sunset
Inspiration

Links for the Weekend

It’s only the very beginning of March but we’ve had enough mild(er) weather the past few days that I’m hopeful for Spring.    “Here comes the sun, and I say it’s all right.”

I certainly wonder what my little man will become when he grows up.  Paris-based photographer Malo has this humourous way to look a your child and the possibilities of what they might become when they grow up.  I’m a little scared of the butcher though.

OMG!  I am not alone!  There are other people in the world whose children eat like this.  Actually, I could probably relabel the whole food pyramid “beige.”

Where do you fall on the Geek vs. Hipster scale?  I call myself a Geek but according to this I may fall a little more on the Hipster side of the coin.

Full Spectrum Reading List: 7 Great Books by TED 2012 Speakers

Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma was such an important book about food.  Watch this amazing animated stop-motion video of one of his other books, Food Rules

I’m always interested to read about the photo-taking process of other iPhoneographers.

Tilt-shift is one of my favorite styles of photography.  This tilt-shift video of the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro is pretty darn groovy.

Stop Stealing Dreams.  Seth Godin’s excellent manifesto about transforming our schools and education system.  Cause they’re broken.

I’ve newly discovered a passion for journaling.  I don’t know why I didn’t start doing this years ago.  Why you should carry a notebook too.

When Parents Text.

Happy, happy weekend! x

March 2, 2012
Juanita Weasel
Inspiration

How a Stuffed Weasel Can Make Your Day

The Internet is fully of amazingly useful stuff.  I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a student in today’s world when all the information you’d ever need for a homework assignment is at the other end of your computer.  I remember looking things up in the dusty volumes of an encyclopedia set, suffering disappointment when I discovered that World Book had only allocated a mere paragraph to my chosen topic.  How to you write a five-page paper on something that even the encyclopedia thinks only merits a few sentences?

But in addition to all the important informative content, the Internet is also full of things that serve absolutely no purpose at all.  And you know what?  It’s this stuff that draws me in and captures my attention.  Life is full of daily challenges and I love that the Internet provides a constant stream of material that will make me laugh out loud.

One of the people who always make me laugh is The Bloggess.  She is clever, and witty, and just damn funny.  She might not be everyone’s cup of tea.  But, if I drank tea, she’d be mine.  She has a book coming out this Spring and I can’t wait to read it.  And, she has this amazing ability to get other people to do things in the name of silliness.

And she’s right.  She got Wil Wheaton to collate paper.  Simon Pegg (LOVE!) and Penn Gillette sent in photos holding twine.  And Jeri Ryan held a spatula.  For a good laugh, read the whole story.

So how does this relate to me and a stuffed weasel?  Well, the thousands of strangers?  I’m one of those.  I follow The Bloggess on Twitter and saw this in her feed a couple of weeks ago.

Dead weasel math?  How can you not read something with that title?

In this post she included a picture of Juanita Weasel challenging her followers to caption it and I had a random flash of how I’d do it.  So doing something completely out of character, I spent 5 minutes in Photoshop adding a caption and I sent it to her.  Now, I’ve never participated in an Internet meme.  Heck, I didn’t even know what a meme was.

And, Dude!  More people have now viewed this photo than all the other “serious” photos I’ve posted combined.  In the span of about 24 hours, there were over 4200 views of this photo on Flickr.  Which, in the grand scheme of things isn’t that much.  But to me I was like Holy Cow!  This just proves to me more than anything the power of the Internet and social media in particular.  How can traditional media even keep up when stories spread in a matter of seconds via Twitter?

So a stuffed weasel made my day.  It made me laugh and smile and feel happy about being part of a group of complete strangers just embracing the silliness in life.

February 28, 2012