breebop.com

I love old ads.

Found via Crooked House.

Glitter Graphics (Via BoingBoing)

Blogged with Flock

This morning I poured coffee into my cereal bowl. It took me a moment to notice, and when I did, my first thought was, ‘Why is the milk brown?’

Wesley has declared 6 a.m. to be the most fitting time for a gentleman to arise. I wheedle and plead, but he spurns all my efforts to sleep until 7 a.m. It doesn’t sound like much, that humble little hour, but believe me - oh yes, it makes a difference.

I have tried putting him in the crib with some toys for a bit while I sleep nearby. He indulges me for about eight minutes, but as far as Wes is concerned, waking up doesn’t count unless he does it with me. I’ve tried distracting him with morning cuddles. They are fine, he says, thank you very much, but I think I’d rather try crawling off the bed now.

Then an hour later he starts yawning. My little master of torture may look tired, but just try putting him to bed then. Go on, I dare you. But only if you’ll be babysitting tonight. One mistimed nap, and Wes is yawning and cranky all day, and bedtime is a marathon rocking session, like a finger in the dike to keep the screaming at bay.

He is not best pleased with sleep, my little man. No, he is not entirely convinced of the need for it.

At the same time that we have an increasing use of interruptive advertising and more incidents of misuse of personal data we also have fluff going and growing big time, the best examples being YouTube and Facebook. While there is definite value to both, they are overwhelmingly about brief, slight diversions. Both are designed for people in cubicles who are bored mindless during yet another endless teleconference. They’re about having maybe five minutes to break up the tedium. There is very little that is substantive to either and, let’s be honest, nothing of substance would fly on either, at least in the majority of cases.I wouldn’t have a problem with this – the Internet has been filled to bursting from the beginning with the irrelevant and superficial. But so much marketing is tied to it now, so many big companies are throwing their all into developing more of these fluff machines, and with such an increase in annoying ads and the numerous personal data issues that keep cropping up, it strikes me that the Web is killing itself.

- Writelife » Blog Archive » Marketers at the Gate: The ever more annoying Web

Oooooh, nice rant, Bill. Personally, I don’t think all this fluff is killing the Web anymore than dancing babies and ‘funny’ email forwards have. The fluff is just Internet faddishness. It will eventually give way to a different kind of fluff, and we will all continue wasting time on our PCs until the end of time.

• Handmade 2.0 (NY Times) - Interesting summary of DIY culture online, including Etsy and stitch ‘n bitch parties
• Google and the Wisdom of Clouds (Business Week) - Fascinating story about tapping Google’s ‘cloud’ computing for research and business
• How to … make felt from cat fur (getcrafty.com) - gross, but kind of neat all at once …
• ROUSes in Indonesia (BoingBoing) - Who knew those Princess Bride critters really existed? Five times the size of a city rat …
• Vacuums kill fleas dead (Reuters) - Works even better than pesticides to get rid of fleas in carpet. “No matter what vacuum a flea gets sucked into, it’s probably a one-way trip,” the researchers say.

1. When you walk in your front door, which room do you enter?
A hallway.

2. Do you have a dishwasher?
Yup. It’s old and verrrrry loud.
3. Is your living room carpeted or does it have hardwood floors?
Gross, grungy carpet, which we will endure until we move or can afford hardwood.

4. Do you keep your kitchen knives on the counter or in a drawer?
Neither, we have a magnetic, wall-mounted Ikea knife rack.

5. House, apartment, duplex or trailer?
Apartment

6. How many bedrooms is it?
2

7. Gas stove or electric?
Electric.

8. Do you have a yard?
Nope, but there is a pretty courtyard, as well as a grassy fire lane on one side of the building.

9. What size TV is in the living room?
Not sure … 32″?
10. Are your plates in the same cupboard as your cups?
No.

11. Is there a coffee maker sitting on your kitchen counter?
Yes.

12. What room do you keep the dead bodies in?
We had to Craigslist them all because we ran out of storage space.

13. What room is your computer in?
The living room. The tower is on an antique dressing table and our four laptops (!) don’t yet have a home, so they just kind of float around. Two are for work, so they live here part-time

14. Are there pictures hanging in your living room?
Yes, one that I painted and three framed vintage line drawings from 1890s-era newspapers. We also have some family photographs on the wall.

15. Are there any themes found in your home?
Not really. It’s mostly a mix of antique furniture and Ikea!

16. What kind of laundry detergent do you use?
Whatever’s on sale.

17. Do you use dryer sheets?
No.

18. Do you have any curtains in your home?
Yes, white curtains from (you guessed it) Ikea
19. What color is your fridge?
White.

20. Is your house clean?
Well, it’s not dirty … I do my best to spot-clean the floors and vacuum regularly now that Wesley’s crawling, but we’ve got lots of little piles of clutter, mostly stuff that has nowhere to live.

21. What room is the most neglected?
Our bedroom. It’s the last room I tackle, since I can just close the door if it’s untidy, but since I never seem to quite get every room clean at the same time, I just keep putting off getting it in order.

22. Are the dishes in your sink clean or dirty?
I’m stealing Donna’s answer, who stole Cassie’s answer, who stole Dave’s answer: Who puts clean dishes in the sink?

23. How long have you lived in your home?
Since May 2006
24. Where did you live before?
A lovely old brick apartment building downtown, which my sister actually just moved into (right next door to our old suite!)

25. Do you have one of those fluffy toilet lid covers on your toilet?
Ugh, never
26. Do you have a scale anywhere in your house?
No, I haven’t ever owned a scale. It’s too crazy-making.

27. How many mirrors are in your house?
Four if you include the two mirrored medicine cabinets. The other two are the bathroom mirror and a dresser hutch.

28. Do you have a garage?
Nope, just a parkade for the building.

- Via Donna 

Some good career advice from Kiplinger.com (via Free Money Finance):

If the personal growth industry had a motto, it would be “Follow your passion” or “Do what you love and the money will follow.”Sure, if your passion is a rare one, like entomology, or even a moderately common one like accounting, money may follow. But if you are like the many people whose passion is shared by half the continent — for example, activist or performer — you’re in trouble. Millions of people are competing passionately with you for the small number of decent-paying jobs. That’s the reason the word “starving” so often precedes “artist.”

<snip>

My advice? Unless you’re a driven superstar, pick a non-glam career that you’d be good at. Then do a competent job search so you have multiple job offers. Pick the one offering as many of these characteristics as possible:

• Moderately challenging
• Meaningful work
• A kind, competent boss
• Pleasant co-workers
• Learning opportunities
• Reasonable pay
• Reasonable work hours
• A short commute

A job with even half of those will make you more likely to love your job than if you had pursued a longshot career.

- Do What You Love and Starve - Kiplinger.com

When I was first setting out in my career, I found it very hard to decide which path to take, partly because I felt so much pressure to fall in love with my career. I had never actually done anything for work aside from being a cashier at A&W. I knew that I was basing a major decision on fantasy, half-truths and media hype, with a large helping of ignorance.

Instead of spinning my wheels for several years while trying to ‘find myself’ I decided to plunge in. I evaluated my skills, interests and talents and tried to imagine what job might be a fit. I came up with book editor, because I love to read and have always been good at spelling. I ended up in online media instead of books, but I still think it was a good move. I enjoy the industry I’m in, the people I work with and the kind of learning I get to do on the job - and I’m not starving to do it.

Trying to ‘follow my passion’ was too abstract for me. I probably would have ended up going to art school. Not a bad choice, and I would have enjoyed it, but I would certainly be making a lot less money, and I doubt I would be happier. Instead of trying to chase after passions, I
watched for, and embraced, interesting challenges. Even when I didn’t love parts of my job, I have always found something in the industry or corporation or big picture that captured my imagination, and sought out ways to learn new skills or relevant theory, adding value to my work and keeping me engaged in what I was doing.

The book Live Rich promotes a similar philosophy to work. It’s not so crazy to work to live instead of living to work, so long as you are generally happy with your life. I don’t believe anyone should stay in a job they really hate - after all, there are lots of other opportunities out there - but I don’t believe that fulfillment can only be found in your career.

Blogged with Flock

crooked house: Printable Gift Tags with Built-In Clarifications

Yay Christmas!

My favourite is,  “Shopping for you is so hard you should give me a gift for even trying. I mean that in a loving way.”

Blogged with Flock

Will and I favour all things non-battery-powered when it comes to Wesley’s and Solomon’s toys. We’re not nazis about it, but we try to buy toys with more imaginative value than lights and sounds. I’ve had many a daydream about the day when Wes will build (and knock down) big towers of blocks. Like feeding him sweet potatoes and banging on pot lids, it’s just one of those simple baby things I have looked forward to. What’s more, a recent study showed block play may actually make kids smarter.

Children who played with blocks scored on average 15 percent higher on language tests — an early indicator of cognitive development — than their peers who didn’t get a chance to stack and pile, according to research released Monday by the Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute.”Many toys make claims they are actually educational for kids,” said Dr. Dimitri Christakis, who led the study. “The interesting thing is that things like blocks never made such claims.”

- Old-school blocks prove best for brains (Seattle PI)

Wes is getting his first set of blocks (lovely soft ones to crush and mouth) for Christmas, and maybe for his first birthday he’ll get a nice set of classic wooden ones to stack and build with. I’m partial to the vintage-y kind carved with letters and either carved or painted pictures.

Blogged with Flock