How to survive a Zombie Uprising
Wisdom from the bathroom wall:
Zombies!
- Know who's a stand up dude in the event of a zombie crisis.
- Aim for the brain pan.
- Always save a bullet for yourself.
Rules to live by.
(PS - if you haven't seen Shaun of the Dead yet, rent it now. Sara and I were skeptical, but it turned out to be one of the funniest movies I saw last year.
The beauty of sharing
I posted a bunch of photos to DeviantArt as free stock photography back in 2001-2002. I've since mostly forgotten about them but occasionally someone uses one of them and it just makes me smile. It's collaboration not only across the globe, but across time.
I just got a message today that my spooky tree photo was used in this beautiful piece below.
Sleeping Fairy by ~hemalitanna on deviantART
Sometimes, the most beautiful things are right at your doorstep.
This amazing giant sunflower is growing in the garden across from the door to our apartment building. It's at least 10 feet tall and when you look up at it from the street it's so tall that all you can see is sky behind it and you get this incredible mix of blues, yellows and greens.
Aesthetics: A hidden gem on Wikipedia
When spell-checking a word, I often just type it up in the google bar of firefox. It generally gets the job done, but it's not the most reliable way of finding the correct spelling. For example, looking up "ordourves" brings up plenty of confirmation that you're correct, but in reality you'll just be joining lots of other people in mis-spelling hors d'oeuvre.
This morning, I was checking on the word Aesthetic using the "just google it, I'm in a hurry" method, and found this lovely article on wikipedia.
Not only did it list the correct (and alternate) spellings, but it also answers some heady questions:
* What counts as "art?"
* What should we judge when we judge art?
* What should art be like?
* What is the value of art?
I thought it was a nice little early-morning treat, so I figured I'd share!
Happy BlogDay 2006 – 5 Great blogs you’ve got to check out!
About BlogDay
What will happen on BlogDay?
In one long moment In August 31st, bloggers from all over the world will post a recommendation of 5 new Blogs, Preferably, Blogs different from their own culture, point of view and attitude. On this day, blog surfers will find themselves leaping and discovering new, unknown Blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.
My Picks
- Copyblogger
- Copyblogger gives "Copywriting tips for online marketing success." I love copyblogger because it's unapologetic about its purpose. While Brian writes amazingly helpful tips on how to structure headlines, write content, and generate buzz and publicity, he's busy doing it himself right there on copyblogger, and you can see it working. I've already picked up quite a few gems from him myself!
- Images of Life
- I added this little photoblog to my daily read list a few weeks back just to see the amazing images come through. Some of the most amazing portraits and nature shots you'll ever find, and Courtney is always busy creating more (and is available for hire if you're in the Utah County area)
- information aesthetics
- I'm constantly working with databases and datasets, creating ways to add information, and occasionally, extract it. Extracting it is the hard part, as it's equal parts engineering and design. Often, an access report is woefully deficient, but it's what we've got, right? Wrong! Information Aesthetics show you what you can really do with data. Each day, Andrew finds more tools, tricks, and just plain cool ways of turning dry data into inspiring infographics and even, dare I say it, art.
- http://www.shahine.com/omar/
- Omar's been on my blogroll forever, but I figured I'd highlight him here, as he's been a bit more active lately. He's one of the smart folks inside Microsoft working on the "live" series of products. When I first caught up with him, they were making some changes to hotmail to keep up with gmail, and they've been stepping it up ever since. It's great to be able to peek behind the curtain a bit and see what's got the people that work at microsoft excited.
- brooklynvegan
- I recently tuned-in to brooklynvegan when looking for blogs that covered the music scene here in NYC. Keeping up with everything and looking for great bands to feature on The Alternative Music Show (AlternativeMusicShow.com) can be a big job, but brooklynvegan (whose real name I couldn't dig up!) covers so much stuff that I barely have time to read it all. It's amazing to have such a great compilation of music news from NYC all in one spot.
74 free desktop wallpapers
A few days back, I got some nice encouragement from my mom. Moms are perennial cheerleaders by their very nature, but this particular compliment on my photos got me thinking that I should collect my best desktop oriented shots and make them easily available to download. They're already freely available through flickr under the creative commons attribution-shareAlike license, but I wanted to assemble my personal favorites.
Download the wallpapers as a self-extracting zip file.
Just run the file in the directory where you want the photos. The package is also available as a straight zip file
I highly recommend "John's Background Switcher" which allows you to select specific photos to rotate on your background and even lets you specify a flickr user, tag, or set.
Here's a preview of what the photo package contains:
One of my photos turns up on WNYC.org
I release all of my photos (and just about anything I do, actually) under an open source license in the hopes that people will like what I've done and pick it up and use it elsewhere. I got a flickr message today letting me know that WNYC.org was using my picture of the Astoria pool. WNYC is running a story about NYC using pools and large airconditioned spaces as "Cooling Centers" during the heatwave, and decided my photo fit the bill.
I love that they used the photo, and I love that they sent me a note on flickr to let me know they used it. This is a media organization that gets it!
Happy Tax Day
Taxes are due by Midnight tonight - which means that the annual scramble to get them done and postmarked begins around, oh, I don't know, 10pm?
Luckily, Sara and I finally got ours polished off a few days a go, but college-style procrastination certainly takes hold of few New Yorkers each year.
The giant US post office on 34th and 8th is open till' midnight, and as you can see in Amit's photo to the right from last year, it becomes a mob scene of tired New Yorkers, all waiting to turn in their homework.
Considering it took 30 minutes to get an express label from the slowpokes there a week ago, I don't envy those waiting there tonight, but it does sound a lot like a convention: lots of people doing the same thing you are, standing around and chatting.
Except, instead of Star Wars or Comics, it's taxes.
(P.S. while you're having a look at Amit's photos from last year's tax melee, be sure to check out his and Kara's awesome review of tiny and ingenious tripods over on PhotoJojo)
So close!
I literally just yelled out "son of a poop!" in my office. I got so excited about Tara mentioning Felt Up that I missed 123456. After all that hype!
Our first internet coverage!. Tara (aka miss rogue) is an marketing genius in the new, community based, cluetrain driven sense. She's the major muscle behind Riya's successes so far and this is a very very nice compliment indeed.