I’ve just now decided that today is Stellaaa’s birthday.
I’ve also decided that we will change Stellaaa’s name on her birthday.
Please change her name in your address books to … Physics.
Thank you.
(If this is upsetting to you, remember, she’s deaf.)
This is WAY better than Talk Like a Pirate Day. Well, I think its way better.
When Rob posted a comment featuring Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day, my first thought was the anachronistic/historical setup. I’d be in a Victorian whalebone corset, and occasionally faint on the couch.
Then I went to the website, and realized just how much more the whole thing could be. My favorite suggestion is to hand somebody a trinket and a phone number and say “Call this number in 30 years – you’ll know what to do next.”
And I would of course walk up to a computer and use the mouse as a microphone (my favorite Star Trek movie moment of all time).
It sounds like a custom search that interjects ‘izzle’ where appropriate, or perhaps a custom KKK search. Or like ‘backles’, a word I learned while reading the new Miranda July book.
But it’s not. It’s a crunchy, hippie computer thing!
A high schooler showed this to me today (for me, this denotes a change in my information sources – it used to be BoingBoing and Jason, and now it’s 17-year-olds).
It’s straight-up Google, but with a black background and white text. From the about page ” Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. ‘Image displayed is primarily a function of the user’s color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.’ Roberson et al, 2002.”
Lordy, lordy, look who’s 29.
He spent the day hard at work, beta testing the project he’s been working on. If you like organizing competitive things like euchre tournaments or champion blood letting, you can look at it. I guess. [Game On!]
I think I might have been dressed as one of the Chicago Bears, circa Superbowl Shuffle. Leener is Rainbow Brite, and Antron is a cowboy.
This year, I was thinking of being Mrs. Whatsit. You know, from A Wrinkle in Time. Hopefully it’ll be a dark and stormy night, and we can heat some milk on the stove in a pan. I could sew a plastic ant to the hem of my skirt.
This weekend was the last in a long string of events that PROVE that Jason and I are married. We certainly are now, after a long weekend on the farm, complete with a Green wedding reception (one that includes the community center and an announcement in the paper in lieu of sending invitations).
I’ve learned that going to my own wedding reception is hard, because I know everyone there, and they’re all there because of me, and I can’t spend enough time with any of them. Awwwwkward. Oh well. There was cheesecake, so that makes up for it. A little.
On the upside, it was fun to see lots of relatives and friends, and to hang out on the farm, and eat HyVee chinese and Hungry Hobo subs (comfort foods) and Exotic Thai (high-quality comfort food) and scratch John Edwards behind his ear. (He is a dog.)
Pictures to come.
Madeleine L’Engle is dead, long live Madeleine L’Engle.
She introduced me to tessering 
in A Wrinkle in Time, and provided me with a quote that lived on my wall in high school and college. (Frustratingly, I can’t remember it, nor can I find it in the Interslice.)
Last night, Jason and I drove to Boston, and on the way, I read aloud the first two chapters of WiT. The consensus was that Charles Wallace, in all his infinite wisdom, is a little annoying. Still, the book holds great re-reading value, and we both enjoyed it.
I’ve discovered a new neat thing. Letterboxes. You may have heard of them, but I never have. They’ve been around since 1854 (according to letterbox lore).
It’s kind of like old-timey geocaching. Legend has it that a bloke in Dartmoor, England left his calling card in a jar in a remote spot, with a note directing anyone who found it to leave their card as well.
Considering the lack of Nintendo Wii and Internet, this was a pretty fantastic way for people to enjoy themselves, so the idea caught on, and more people began leaving other letterboxes throughout the moor. There was a catalog of clues, but you had to find enough letterboxes on your own to get ahold of it, which is why it took so long for the fad to spread beyond Dartmoor.
Smithsonain magazine ran an article [full text] about the British fad in April of 1998, and by the end of April, letterboxes began springing up in the U.S.
At this point, how it works is you have a blank book, a stamp of your own, the clue and maybe a compass. You get clues from Letterboxing.org, and go have an adventure. Many of the letterboxes are in a natureful area, although I can think of one letterbox that isn’t.
When you find a letterbox, there will be a book inside for you to stamp your personal stamp on (the modern-day equivalent of leaving a calling card. Or you could make up calling cards, which would be very Heathcliff of you) and you take the site stamp to your personal book. WoOt.
Unlike geocaching, you don’t NEED to have a GPS unit. And you get to take constitutional strolls. I used to be into orienteering as a Girl Scout (I secretly want to set up an orienteering course some day when I own land) and I like that the clues are either riddles “the book who’s name the owl can pronounce”, or by orienteering.
And since I’m living in a new area, this is a spectacular way to explore. And I get to make a stamp! And collect things, like country stamps in a passport!
This is a nonfiction post, and here is my source:
Randy Hall (2004). The Letterboxer’s Companion. ISBN 0-7627-2794-2
There’s been a recent discussion, in my e-world, about children’s books online. Could you blog a continuing picture book for children? Sure – there are blog comics and stories that exist, and children’s stories are usually compact in their plot and have lots of pictures anyway.
That’s when someone mentioned an Email Mystery. It’s a mystery story, told in emails, but instead of reading a bound book of emails (I just finished Donorboy, which has a lot of emails-as-narrative) it’s actual emails sent to your inbox, every day. It’s called The Daughters of Freya, and it’s sent, 4-5 installments a day, over three weeks. The plot seems to involve a sex cult, so it’s probably pretty interesting (if not actually good).
I love that it’s parceled out, so you can’t stay up till 4 a.m. ravishing it. Inherently, it gives you time to think about the plot. It’s $5. I think I may have to try it out. And then maybe write my own?
This just in from Hottt Karla: “B.E.T. PSA causing controversy–the creators say it’s aimed for an older audience; parents are pissed”
I did laugh out loud, so it is funny. Satire, even. And I can’t argue with the message. Read a book, brush your teeth, buy land, put on a little deoderant – these are all things that make life better.
This is completely not worksafe.