RAK

It's been a while since I've really enjoyed Christmastime. It's become so commercial and so chaotic and so stressful that I just haven't been able to get in the mood. With annoying Christmas music starting November 1st and no measurable snowfall in quite a while, it's just not happening for me.

One thing that I'm trying this year to get a little of the Christmas Spirit back is to share more of what I have with people less fortunate. I like giving. My job situation has changed a bit recently and though I still have a long way to go to feel financially secure, I wanted to do something a little different this year.

I was inspired by Robyn Bomar's birthday outing post. As she turned 38, she decided to perform 38 Random Acts of Kindness (RAK) - one for each year of her life. With her kids along to help, she spent the day dispensing goodwill to unsuspecting, but very surprised and grateful persons. These were not the acts of handing out $100 bills to everyone they saw, but rather more meaningful, in the moment, acts... Whether it be helping shoppers load their groceries into their cars, handing bottled water out the car window to joggers, sprinkling coins around a playground for the little tikes to find, paying for the person in line behind them at a store/restaurant or handing handwritten thank you notes (and donuts :-) ) to local law enforcement.

The kids and I have made several $100+ grocery shopping trips to donate to food banks. We also spent several hours working at Gleaners Community Food Bank sorting food for donations. One day this week (while I'm off work between holidays), the kids and I are going to do our own RAK day. We've started making a list of things to do. Just the planning is making me feel good.

One of the things that my daughter latched onto was a story where one party paid for the car behind them in a drive through line. And then, the pay-it-for..., er um, backward plan kicked in, and the recipient of the first gift, paid for the car behind them, and they paid for the car behind them. I'm not sure how long it went on, but the cynic would say that they were all just passing the original money backward. I would rather see it as all of those people continued a good deed and likely felt inspired and good about their own good deed. She really wants to do this one.

We started a little preparation for this (or something similar at least) by buying a few McD gift cards while we were there the other day. I stuck them in my pocket. As we were walking between stores today I noticed a young mother loading groceries into her van. I also noticed that she had three young children all probably less than 5 in the van already. I pulled a couple of gift cards out of my pocket and walked up to her (trying not to scare her - people are not used to people walking up to them in the parking lot). I asked her if they ever ate at McDonald's (with three young children I thought the odds were pretty good). She said "occasionally." I handed her the cards and suggested that maybe she could take the kids for a treat sometime. She thanked me and I replied with "Merry Christmas" and walked away.

I can't even describe the feeling that I felt as I walked away. It was a small thing, really, but a big gesture. I hope that I gave her a little smile and notice that there are still nice people around. I can't wait to spread more cheer and kindness this week.

Ms Bomar received so much feedback and support for her "birthday project" that she has setup The B'Day Project to inform and inspire others. Remember that birthdays are not the only days to spread goodwill. :-)

ocupado

Whenever I sit down to write a new post, I always seem to get distracted. First my mail then by Pinterest or Google's Reader Play, our Youtube.

Recently it's been the Pinterest (pin your interests) that's been occupying my attention. I'm not a really social person (in real life or online), but I love being a lurker in other people's lives. Pinterest allows people to pin/post things that they find on line that they like / find interesting / want to share or even just save for themselves for later. They can pin them to different boards, arranging them by topic for instance. It's been on a huge growth track recently so there are more an more people posting more and more cool findings!

There are people posting cool sayings and motivational quotes, recipes, humor, images, crafts, libraries, showers, tips, and just about anything else you can think of.

I don't think I've been able to scan through the site any one time without finding something that I want to share. I have a Gmail this bookmarklet that I use to send the sites to my wife (usually humor or really cool crafts), or daughter (quotes, recipes, etc), or others (a potpourri). I should switch to my Blog this bookmarklet instead so that I can share with everyone instead. Some people would suggest that I use a more global social sharing method, but I'm fine with my little circle of followers.

I'll try to do better about posting some of my finds here...

Today is under construction

Today is under construction.

A little bit of wisdom

I try to impart a little wisdom on this blog. Sometimes I'm more successful than others. When I fail and you feel that you need a little more to get through the day, feel free to check out the Bits of Wisdom site.

Copyright 2010

Unless someone else has thought of this, I hereby copyright this idea... :-)

There are many sites on the web that allow you to create "Ransom Note" style text where each letter you use is presented in a different font, or substituted with a different picture representing that alphabetic character. My idea expands on that a little (but significant) bit.

My idea is to replace whole words (where possible) instead of the individual characters, but by using images of signs from each specific locality. For instance, if someone was to type "Come see our Saturday Performance at 12345 Mainstreet, 10 o'clock am" and tag the location as Detroit-area, each of the words would be replaced with the image of that word from a picture taken somewhere around Detroit. The images would be crowd-sourced like the Human Clock site after being seeded with some Creative Commons images.

• Obviously not all words would be available, especially at the start of the project, so when that happens, the word would be replaced by random letters for each character, though still from local pictures where possible.
• Logos, recognizable signs, etc would all be fodder for the collection.
• The images should be able to be submitted by anyone, but would need to be moderated.
• Submitter should specify which word/letter they are submitting.
• Submitter should be able to cropthe image upon upload so that it isolates the intended area.
• Submitted images should be commonly sized.
• File formats should be restricted.
• Multiples for each would would be allowed and encouraged to provide more randomness.
• A needs list could be presented based on the most common words.
• A needs list could include the ones that are being used that we need to replace with characters instead.
• Users of the site would be allowed to specify a metro area or allow images from the global catalog of images.
• Once presented with a refined image, the user would be able to refresh for a new set of images if desired.
• The final image should be presented to the user as a single image for download.

Any code hackers out there that want to take a shot at this?

Lest there be any doubt...

I am NOT smarter than a 5th grader. Well, that might not be technically true. Maybe I should say 7th grader. No wait. She didn't get it either. I should say that I'm not smarter than some one on my wife's internet buddy list. That much would be true at least.

I called my wife on the way home from work and was confronted with a math problem that she was trying to help my daughter with. It had to do with solving the following equation for a:

a(2x+3) = 9x+12 -x. I got the right answer, but I couldn't show my work. Even the Wizard of the Internet didn't provide an exact answer. It may have provided the answer if we'd dug a little, but nothing came up in the one box :-)

I had the right idea, but couldn't complete my train of thought. I guess that's the first thing to go ... the mind? Maybe that's 'cuz once the mind goes it can't realize what else is already going as well.

Anyway, back to the ice cream story. No wait. Math! Yeah, that's it.

My wife used her own little "Wizard of the Internet" -- the collection of friends she met on-line when she was pregnant with our daughter that have stayed together on an on-line bulletin board. People from all over the world and, apparently with mad math skills. Within a few minutes she had the answer to our problem - factor out a 4 from the right side (after combining the x values). Once we did that, all became clear.

Maybe there is some value in the "social network." Speaking of which, has anyone see that movie - The Social Network? I missed the free screening that I saw on Film Metro. I'm not a Facebook user (I know... I know), but the movie has been getting pretty good reviews.

FINALLY!

This is EXACTLY the what I've been looking for! Anyone looking for a Christmas present for me? :-)

I've always wanted something like this. Maybe if I'd had this on today I would've captured the JERK that cut me off on the way home.

A world without borders

Our world is defined by borders. Country borders. City boundaries. Job parameters. It's all about keeping us from one another. But what it those boundaries didn't exist? Could you still function?

Fat Morgana is a term specifically applied to mirages, but is used more generally by Damon Zucconi on this map page in which he has removed all of the normal boundaries, and lines, etc from a Google Map of the world. He's left the city labels, and even the road names, but everything else you expect from a map is gone. You interact with the map just like any other Google Map -- zoom controls, dbl-click to zoom, drag to pan, etc, -- he's just removed the borders.

I'm not sure of his philosophical intent when he created this site, if he had any at all, but it's an interesting exercize in what happens when the borders don't exist. It's a lot harder to navigate like this than you might think.

Though we should live our lives as though there were no boundaries in some situations (ignore the socio-economic, racial, class divides), perhaps some borders are a good thing.

New addictive game

Entanglement is a deceptively simple game of placing and rotating tiles. Starting from a central source, you must place and rotate tiles in such a way that the path from the source continues as long as possible while staying within the bounds of the game board.

Real 3-D

There's a lot of buzz about 3-D nowadays. Seems like every movie coming to theaters is in 3-D. 3-D TVs are getting a lot of press. To really see 3-D with that technology you've gotta wear special glasses, or buy more advanced TVs, etc though. Not so with this collection of 3-D. This is pure creative expression at it's best.

Little Red Paper clip

I am lucky enough to have a really good monitor (actually two) at work -- large, vibrant, crisp display. I use them extensively throughout the day as I shuffle between applications I use to perform my job duties. I also use them for something else though. I use them to remind myself of different things. Sometimes those things are represented by pictures of my family as a wallpaper, but more often than not I use images that I find on Flickr to express my mood (a tranquil sea-shot perhaps or a beautiful shot of lightning), alter my mood (a funny animal picture, or nice nature shot), or shout encouragement (see below) whenever I have a little desktop showing. I change them several times a week usually, and I let them scroll randomly through on their own as a screen saver when I'm away from the desk.

The image I have on my desktop this week is of a little red paper clip. It's a little philosophical to most, but when I see it, I remind myself that little things can turn into big things -- for better or worse.

"What the heck is he talking about?!" I know you're thinking it :-)

Several years ago, a brilliant, but eccentric Canadian decided that he was in need of a house, 'cept he couldn't afford one. So he took what he had, a little red paper clip, and decided that he was gonna trade up -- all the way to a house. Kyle MacDonald was that man.

According to the Wikipedia article:

• On July 14, 2005, he went to Vancouver and traded the paperclip for a fish-shaped pen.
• He then traded the pen the same day for a hand-sculpted doorknob from Seattle, Washington, which he nicknamed "Knob-T".
• On July 25, 2005, he traveled to Amherst, Massachusetts, with a friend to trade the Knob-T for a Coleman camp stove (with fuel).
• On September 24, 2005, he went to San Clemente, California, and traded the camp stove for a Honda generator.
• On November 16, 2005, he made a second (and successful) attempt (after having the generator confiscated by the New York City Fire Department) in Maspeth, Queens, to trade the generator for an "instant party": an empty keg, an IOU for filling the keg with the beer of the holder's choice, and a neon Budweiser sign.
• On December 8, 2005, he traded the "instant party" to Quebec comedian and radio personality Michel Barrette for a Ski-doo snowmobile.
• Within a week of that, he traded the snowmobile for a two-person trip to Yahk, British Columbia, in February 2006.
• On or about January 7, 2006, the second person on the trip to Yahk traded Kyle a cube van for the privilege.
• On or about February 22, 2006, he traded the cube van for a recording contract with Metal Works in Toronto.
• On or about April 11, 2006, he traded the recording contract to Jody Gnant for a year's rent in Phoenix, Arizona.
• On or about April 26, 2006, he traded the one year's rent in Phoenix, Arizona, for one afternoon with Alice Cooper.
• On or about May 26, 2006, he traded the one afternoon with Alice Cooper for a KISS motorized snow globe.
• On or about June 2, 2006, he traded the KISS motorized snow globe to Corbin Bernsen for a role in the film Donna on Demand.^[2]
• On or about July 5, 2006, he traded the movie role for a two-story farmhouse in Kipling, Saskatchewan.

In less than a year, a piece of metal less than 6 inches long (or, I guess, 15.25 centimeters since this guy is from up north), it turned into something so much bigger! And the journey was worth just as much as the final trade I suspect -- the people he met, the press coverage, the travel...

But back to my little world. My point is that often I let the little things get in the way of my accomplishing the big things. I let some little jerk ruin my day because of what s/he did or didn't do, or did or didn't say. I let those little things add up to a much bigger thing, but in a much different way than Kyle did. I need to remind myself that it's up to me what that little paper clip turns into. It can turn into a piece of metal all twisted and contorted or even broken into pieces, or it can lead to something much nicer and more fulfilling, even if it's not a new house.

My "in-your-face reminders" don't always work, but I've gained some notoriety for my desktops and now people stopping by ask me what they mean. Even the discussion with my coworkers aims to reinforce my goal. It gets them thinking a bit too... It's worth a try anyway.

Don't Mess with Math Nerds!

In yet another tale of David, er um, Mike versus Goliath, the little guy wins, and shows there is value in staying in school and doing all your homework!

"Would you please join me in saluting Mike Mogil, a math tutor from Collier County, Fla.? Mogil is clearly that rare man who puts his math where his mouth is. And, indeed, where his wife is."

Make 'em move!

Someone had too much time on his hands. Let the site load; it'll take bit. :-)

Do you know who YOU are?

My wife and I (and the kids too actually) have been watching NBC's Who do you think you are? that follows several celebrities as they explore their genealogical history. It's actually a well done show, mixing the stories of the stars, the aspects of genealogy research and the excitement of "the find." Not everyone who searches their roots will find out that they're related to English royalty, or a commander in the Civil War. Some might actually document their relationship to Kevin Bacon. But whatever the discovery, it's the road, not the destination, that makes it fun.

Ancestry.com sponsors the TV show, and though I've used their site in the past, it had been a while since last I really did anything there. After getting engrossed with the show, my wife decided that we should once again pick up our proverbial digital shovels and go digging for our roots again. This time, we set off in search of her relatives. Through my research in the past, I've documented connections on my side of the tree to Samuel L. Clemens (aka Mark Twain), and a General in the War of 1812, as well as a story about land sale by a relative to Abraham Lincoln's grandfather. I was curious to see where this new journey lead us.

I've used Family Tree Maker in the past for documentation and a number of on-line sources for research, but I was interested to see what, if anything, I could find that would bring me closer to Web 2.0 than the dated version of FTM I had been using. An updated FTM version might be OK, but I wanted to see if there was something that was cloud-based that I could access without the local software install.

A quick Google search yielded a few hits, but nothing really promising...except Ancestry.com. What the hey! Guess I'll give them a try again and see what's new...

Armed with only a couple of recent generations from my wife's tree that we had previously documented, I started inputting her tree. No subscription fee, no commitment. Just an email address and quick registration to track all my work against. I started with her father and then his father. By the time I had entered her grandfather and moved to continue on to her grandmother, I saw a little leaf on her grandfather's entry (literally in less than 1 second). It indicated, I would learn, that the site had already found additional information about her grandfather. Clicking through would yield birth and death records, census data, and other public docs as well as links to other family trees contributed by other members who chose to make their research public (mine is still private for now). BINGO.

Though we had only a couple of generations of her ancestry documented (thought I think I have more that had not been typed in yet), in about 5 hours total work, with great kudos to Ancestry.com we've added 962 people and gotten her lineage traced back to the 1100's! There are many interesting people mixed in there (and we're learning about them via stories others have attached to their trees), but so far, no one that you would know :-(

One interesting thing about Ancestry.com though, is that if you contribute your tree to the OneWorld Tree (and you possibly need to subscribe as well), they'll do the research for you and identify the "famous people" in your tree. What that means, I'm not sure, but once we've gone as far as we want to for this time, I might just see what it spits out.

There are certain things that the FTM client software does much better than the site (full graphic family tree navigation, maps, showing relationships between two specific person, etc), so we'll likely end up upgrading the software as well. But the Ancestry.com site is certain a boost as far as filling out the tree.

With my lineage, finding Twain has led to a stronger interest in history, and Twain himself, for my kids. We've read about William the Conqueror and other figures related to our trees too. I can't wait to see who else we find.

Happy digging!

What's in your garage?

These make it a little easier to keep up with the Jones, or just have a little fun... Just cover your old boring garage door and leave them wondering...

See more at the ToolMonger site.

Fresh idea

Read more...

Kids say the darnedest things...

I've posted before about the need to keep track of cute things that your kids say. You never know when it'll come in handy... Say for a reminder of just how cute they are after they've written all over your walls with permanent marker, or as bribery when they get older, or so make a ton of money by publishing them in a book for all the world to laugh at. Don't worry, I've not really started it yet either...

But... I found another site that IS collecting and publishing those funny things. Heard on the Playground is a free, no-registration-required site that you can use to share those funny thoughts, observations and even pictures that come about by living in a world filled with wonderful children! You don't need to hear it on the playground to share. You don't need to share to read. You don't even have to laugh out loud when you read. You should, however, take a moment to visit the site and be reminded of the ingenious, intellectual, hilarious thoughts crammed into those little bodies we adore. Take a break and go get your daily chuckle!

A new measure of time

Each of the clocks represented below are actually animated. These pictures don't really do justice to the ingenious artwork of their creators. Click on each of the clocks to see them in their full glory.

Interactive Haiti videos - Streetview on steroids

You've probably see Google's StreetView shots when you're looking at Google Maps. It's cool to be able to pan around, zoom in, and "take control of the camera" while looking at images taken right outside your door. Now, imagine the same thing in Haiti after the devastating earthquakes recently. Now imagine doing that with video instead of still snapshots. I'm not sure exactly what technology was used to capture these interactive videos, but it sure looks like the next big thing. Fascinate (is that a word?) with the technology, then place yourself in the car, driving through all that ruin. Watching people wander dazed, confused, lonely and afraid. It's so sad.

You can see four videos including a walking section at CNN's site

Have a Picnik!

I've written before about free on-line photo-editing site Picnik, but looks like it's worth yet another look. I was reminded of this site the other day by one of my web search bots that caught a reference to a bookmarklet that Picnik has. By using this bookmarklet, you surf to any page you want, and when you see an image you want to edit in Picnik, simply click the bookmarklet on your toolbar. Picnik loads and presents you with a gallery of the images on the site you came from for editing. Select the one you want, and edit away. Pretty cool use.

The actual bookmarklet is:

javascript:void(window.location.href='http://www.picnik.com/?import='+escape(window.location.href));

but you can grab it more easily from Picnik's site directly.

The site and the bookmarklet have both been around for a while, so I'm not quite sure why my alert bot triggered it, but it gave me a good reason to check out the site again. You should too!