Blog – page 15 of 16

Try Garfield minus Garfield the book.

My race is “American”

applearts:

szymon:

Tales of the Alhambra

Real Life Buzz Lightyear

Why killer whales should not live at marine parks: a tragic reminder - Orlando Sentinel

Killer whales: Other SeaWorld attacks - Orlando Sentinel

Alps

Survival tracks via www.woosk.com

During World War II the Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant to protect it from a Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage netting and trompe l’oeil to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air. (via Think or Thwim » How To Hide An Airplane Factory)

Cheetahs play with little Impala - Pic - Gear

Möbius Ship by Artist Tim Hawkinson - Design Cove

Encyclopedias Are Still Helpful - There, I Fixed It

APOD: 2010 February 9 - Night Launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour

In the digital world, space is unlimited. Writers in the digital space do not have to deal with the constraints of the newspaper or the pages of a book. They can write thousands of words on a page, and have thousands of pages on their sites.

The constraint however, is the attention span of the reader. When the content gets longer than that you’ve lost.

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But then, one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.

— Woody Allen Quote Book:

Island seen from space. via earthobservatory.nasa.gov

Face painting art - Boing Boing

via farm4.static.flickr.com

Girl, nose to nose, with a tiger

SWINE FLU (H1N1) « GraphJam: Music and Pop Culture in Charts and Graphs. Let us explain them.

Cool Pics: Best Hand Painting Art Ever

LEGOs Bring Historical Figures to (Miniature Toy) Life - WebUrbanist

Campo de maíz (via alba_faura)

The 10 weirdest physics facts, from relativity to quantum physics

To be or not to be.
— Shakespeare
To do is to be.
— Nietzsche
To be is to do.
— Sartre
Do be do be do.
— Sinatra

— (via mnmal)

Routine works. Establishing one does not make life boring or formulaic, but it does set up guide posts where true freedom and excitement can take place.

A routine I recently established was getting up at 6 a.m. This guide post has given my days structure. It has established a time where I can write this.

Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin

Dounut Seeds

A Mona Lisa Created from Motherboard Bits

SURPRISE!!!

Self reliance is a myth. Humans are social creatures that need interaction for emotional well-being and sustenance. The concept of self reliance, however, implies that we can make it alone.

True self reliance would involve a complete withdrawal from society, a Thoreau-like retreat to Walden Pond or a John-the-Baptist-like wandering in the desert. However, even there the fish of the lake or the locus of the wilderness provided what they could not provide for themselves.

It’s easy to get down on yourself when you’re not perfect. Being less than perfect admits a shortcoming, a failure. It’s humbling.

A common cliché used to make someone feel better after a failure is to remind them that no one is perfect. However, this condolence provides little or no consolation. That’s probably because it doesn’t take a perfect person to avoid the particular screw up that’s getting you down. It only takes a better person.

Consciously or not, I’ve found myself drawn to a number of lifestyle design blogs over the past few weeks. They’re filled with stories about individuals actively pursuing unconventional ways of thinking and living.

Part of this desire may stem from feeling that my life is becoming to ordinary, too formulaic. I want something drastic, something radical to break up the mundane. There shouldn’t be anything ordinary about life.

(The following is from my 2005 book of poetry, Ordinary Time, which provided the inspiration for the title of this blog. I will be republishing the poems here over the next several weeks in their original order)

Remember Memory

The water, turning over on itself, the shifting of a formless mass, swirling in and against itself, and refusing

There seems to be no shortage of encouragement available if you look for it hard enough.

However, words from other can be, at times, in short supply. This can lead to one desperately fishing for encouragement from friends and family, which can cheapen what is caught.

I understand I have a lot of work to do to become the writer I want to be. Words and pages are not enough. Although, that would be a good start. No, thoughts and well expressed ideas are what I’m after. I am not sure that I am prepared to think like a writer. I know I don’t have the habits developed yet. One step at a time, I know. But I have in mind what I want to be: I want to be able to sit quietly and think to myself about my subject and then open up a blank document and write what I think.

I have a problem with unfinished business.

I had some issues with my computer a few weeks ago. It was late but instead of letting it go, calling it a night and saving the trouble shooting until morning, I felt an uncontrollable urge to fix the problem. Nothing could distract me from my desire to fix the problem and make things right again.

I can see how this trait could be harmful. Stubbornness can easily distract me from what may really be important.

(The following is from my 2005 book of poetry, Ordinary Time, which provided the inspiration for the title of this blog. I will be republishing the poems here over the next several weeks in their original order)

A World of Mind’s Creation

A world of mind’s creation stands unhindered in a darkened sleep, while night hours fall to morning, and dawn gives breath to day, but first, the cloud must hover upon the veiled mystery of dreams.

I just struggled through my pushup routine. Over the past few weeks of preparations for my 5k run, I have completely neglected all of the muscles in my upper body and today it showed. However, I’m preparing to turn that around.

A few months ago I had printed off Steve Speirs’ Hundred Pushups Training Program and started working on the routine. I got through the first few weeks of the program without too much trouble, but near the end of the third week I began to realize my weaknesses.

88 Examples of Incredible Aerial Photography

A participant in the annual Rubik Cube Hungarian Open Championships solves nine 3x3 cubes blindfolded after memorizing all of them in Budapest, Hungary, Sunday, Oct. 18, 2009.(AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky) (via Rubik’s Cube Hungarian Open Championships - Yahoo! News Photos)

Perception

I want to start getting up at six. I did it this morning, but I want to do it every morning.

The conventional wisdom says that baby steps are the best. Break down your big goal into manageable action items. Forget it. Radical change has to be more like ripping off a band-aid.

However, keep it to one big change at a time, or you may go into shock.

10 Revealing Infographics about the Web

Kramer’s Entrance (via tylercreviston

)

The 10 Biggest Misconceptions We Learn In School - Manolith

So, I ended up doing much better than I expected in my 5k run on Thursday. I was so nervous going into it. I’m not sure why, but I think it was because I haven’t engaged in any competition at all this year, and also because I was convinced that I would embarrass myself in front of my co-workers, who were all expecting fantastic times.

As it turned out, I came in first at my company, and 20th out of 150 some men. It was quite a shock to me, but in the process I learned a lot about myself and my body.

Storm Trooper: Singing in the Rain

(The following is from my 2005 book of poetry, Ordinary Time, which provided the inspiration for the title of this blog. I will be republishing the poems here over the next several weeks in their original order)

Care for the Dead _

To sense the life

My struggle is the beginning, middle, and end. I have a hard time coming up with what I’m going to write about. Once I’ve figured that part out, I have a hard time putting my thoughts into words. And after I have something down on paper, I have a difficult time accepting that what I have written is of any value.

However, this is my only obstacle to becoming a writer. It doesn’t take as much time as I once thought because, it seems, no one is out there trying to write the next Moby Dick. It no longer takes 1,000 pages to tell a story or to make a philosophical point about the human condition. I don’t know that it ever did, but the way most readers consume information now has changed, and writing has had to change to keep up.

Fresh Pics: Free-Falling Art Of Li Wei

Greg Mankiw’s Blog: First-Year Grad Student Wins Nobel Prize in Economics!

The three elements of full employment

Oh Shi- [PIC]

Dropped by rushmaven.

Twitter Talking Separately to Microsoft and Google About Big Data-Mining Deals

Unbelievable: “123456” Most Common Hotmail Password

Motivational Posters: Winston Churchill Edition (Part I), The Art of Manliness

There’s 19 of these and they’re all great!

What’s the Point of Education?

teacup-sized pigs

Procedure List + Monday Refocus Form

Weird Wonders: 15 of the World’s Strangest Animals

After a few more workouts over the past few weeks, today is the day of the 5k run. I think I’m ready for it, as ready as I could get in the short period of time between when I found out about it, when I started training, and today. I’ll be writing a post about my experience and how it turns out.

Caring for Aging Parents - Dealing with Aging Parents

The art of brief emails - mnmlist.com

Rubikcubism on yay!everyday

Creative Art in Fly dead body - 15 Pics - Curious, Funny Photos / Pictures

This is kind of twisted, but still an amazing project.

Telescopic Text © Joe Davis 2008

Focus on your Personal Strengths, Not Correcting All the Weaknesses

How Jonathan Slayed the AlligatorShare – Monday, September 14, 2009 at 11:04am

Best story ever. So on our way home from Rock the Universe in Orlando, Florida, Jonathan and I had the hardest time staying awake during the drive. It had been a long day, Orlando is 2.5 hours from our home, and it was midnight when we left… so yeah, we were pretty exhausted. We were about 45 minutes away from lovely Fort Myers, and simply praying to God that He allow us to remain awake just one more minute, and then one more minute, when all of a sudden we catch glimpse of something in the road ahead. I was prying my eyelids open with pliers, and Jonathan had the air on full blast and was playing smooth jazz - which he informed me would help keep him awake because of its complicated melodies. After miles of empty black pavement, it was startling to spot something ahead, inevitably doomed to one-on-one time with my car. Yeah, it was a alligator. Not a log, or piece of tire, or deer (for you Northeners)… but an alligator that was minimum 6 feet long… I say minimum because we could only see half of his body (the half that was 6 feet long), and the other half was in the bushes ten feet from the road… he was a monster! How dare he try and keep us from the blessed sleep we so desperately craved, that waited a mere 45 minutes away in our bed? I wish I could have seen the look in Jonathan’s eye. We both knew impact was inevitable, cause clearly swerving poses a potential risk to our safety lol. All I know is I felt the car accelerate as Jonathan gleefully achieved a longtime dream: killing something fully capable of killing him right back. If he would have had his wish, we would have stopped, pulled out the gator’s jawbone, and bagged up his flesh for a barbecue. But no, sleep outranked that dream. We couldn’t believe it. It was of those iconic moments in your life. WHAM. and that alligator was toast.

Little Soldier Girl “Didn’t Want to Let Go” - NBC Philadelphia

So many events, images, sounds, and smells hit our minds every day, but not all of it sticks. We don’t remember much of it, yet there is so much that we do.

Events that seemed insignificant at the time stay with us for our whole lives. Moment we promise ourselves to cherish grow foggy. Random episodes in our lives replay themselves in our heads, triggered by sounds, smells, or nothing at all.

There does not seem to be any set of rules that determines what you will remember and what you will forget. There is a science behind it, I suppose, but that is not what I am interested in exploring in too much depth. However, to be fair I offer the following.

I’ve made some radical changes to my blog template, and I think I’ve just about configured it the way I want. That’s kind of a scary thing. I mean, once I have the template figured out, the only blogging activity I’ll be able to participate in is actually writing.

So far I’ve successfully avoided the actual work and thinking that this hobby and project will require. However, I’m ready for the change. I think it will be much more fun to write, create, and market my creation than it was just to pick out the template and fiddle with the colors and configurations.

My wife and I made a pretty cute kid. I just have to figure out how we’re gonna get a return on our investment.

— Favrd.

Writing in specifics

Idée Labs

TweetPsych

TweetPsych uses two linguistic analysis algorithms (RID and LIWC) to build a psychological profile of a person based on the content of their tweets. The service analyzes your last 1000 tweets and works best on users who have posted more than 1000 updates. It also works best on accounts that are operated by a single user and use Twitter in a conversational manner, rather than simply a content distribution platform. For more information read the blog post or follow the creator Dan Zarrella

Federer between the legs shot at US Open

family portrait

Boy with a tiger. I’m not sure I could get that close. The tiger looks hungary

Sesame Street Channels Mad Men

Home Sweet Home

I need to find some white furniture for my son to color on when he gets a little older. (or I might get out the crayons myself…

Favrd.

Star Wars: Uncut

I’m so excited for this project to get finished. Such fond memories of this movie. I can’t wait for the internet to flub it up…

I plan to integrate this into my main blog and use it for a platform for sharing fun and inspiring things I find on the Internet.

It’s not the job of the writer to rehash old ideas, and consolidate them into broad general statements, as much as it is to uncover new ideas through the general and collective knowledge that is already present in the world. Now finding that new knowledge, within the collective knowledge, is a skill that is not natural to the thought process. It takes a conscious uncovering in order to develop and nurture the traits before one can effectively find those new ideas even if they’re in plain sight.

Yesterday, I ended the battle over the remaining money my family owes the hospital for my son’s birth. After an insurance review that went nowhere and several months of waiting and nerve racking phone calls, it’s finally over. And I won.

It ended with the hospital settling and discounting the balance we owed by 45 percent. This is a tremendous financial relief, as well as a major ego win for me.

It felt wonderful to confidently ask for a discount and get it.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I am preparing for a 5k race. I use the word preparing loosely. I have only run three times in the past several weeks. However, I have been gradually ramping up my time and intensity with each successive attempt. On my first outing, I ran 15 minutes, on the second 18, and last night I went a full 20.

The race is on October 8th so I think I’ll still be able to fit in a few more runs and work my way up to 30 minutes. I think I should be able to finish the race in that amount of time, even at the slower pace at which I train. Hopefully, with the adrenalin the competition stirs up, my ego (which will do anything to beat out my slower co-workers), and the training I’ve completed, I’ll be able to make a good showing at the race.

I made it to work by 6:32 a.m. Not to the office, but to the laptop to begin writing. I’ve been trying for a few weeks now to wake up earlier in the mornings to no avail. It seems like every week night, I’m able to set my alarm for 6 a.m. with no problem, but when it comes to morning I’ll hit the snooze button repeatedly until 7 a.m., which is last call for getting up and getting ready for work.

This may not seem like any great accomplishment, but for, me, a new dad, whose decided to become a writer, it is a real milestone because it creates for me a new 30 minute block of time in the day. I’ve been developing more goals for myself in the last several weeks, more things I want to do and accomplish on a daily basis. However, to even start working on those goals, I needed to create some more time in the day, so this was a major step forward.

I’m trying to reduce and simplify my inputs. I spent a lot of time the other day unsubscribing to feeds in my Google Reader. I’m trying to get more focused. I also took steps to reduce the number of bookmarks in my browser and programs in my system tray. This is all in the interest of making technology a less noticeable part of my life. Don’t misunderstand. I love it and am not sure that I could live without it. However, technology is a tool and should be treated as such. If I can comfortably move it to the background and not give it as prominent of a place in my daily life, I’ll be able to free my mind to engage in other pursuits: really think and not just browse, which is what I have realized that I do with a lot of what I read on the web when I’m “computering.”

My personal goal is to make it more about the writing–the words and the language–and less about the technology and the medium.

Technology brings many gifts to life. But it also bring many new burdens. The next step forward will be learning how to best integrate the modern marvels of technology, but to not let it get in the way. My question is how to let technology work in the background, to be able to benefit from it fully, appreciate it, but not have to think about it or let it get in the way.

One step is to figure out exactly how much technology is needed to complete a particular task. It is easy to upgrade to the latest version of a super sophisticated word processor, only to get so caught up in the new and improved features that you forget what the program was intended for in the first place.

I’m trying out a new tool for writing. Rather than using a complicated program like Word or Open Office, I’m now just using Windows Notepad. There are almost no functions or options, just a full white window with a blinking cursor.

But the software is only half the story. I’m also using an old Gateway laptop that I bough off a college buddy for $20. There’s no Internet connection or media player. Later, I plan to wipe the hard drive as well to get rid of any possible distractions. I want to have a tool that is entirely dedicated to writing.

Each night I sleep between seven and eight hours. Out of 24 that is one third of my day. I never feel like I have enough time in a day to do all the things I want, and so much of my time is eaten up by sleeping. Its seems like such a waste. But it doesn’t have to be.

Every night, the body goes through several distinct stages of sleep. These stages are divided between rapid eye movement sleep (REM) and three stages of non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM). The body goes through several cycles of this. The phases vary in length but as the body has been asleep longer the third phase of NREM lengthens and the REM phases become closer together. It is during the REM phase where dreams occur. REM sleep takes up 20 to 25 percent of each night’s sleep or about 90 to 120 minutes. Now this phase usually occurs several times per night, and within each phase the brain weaves intricate plots and unique worlds which we sometimes remember as dreams.

Debt is a heavy burden. Large, unexpected bills are worse, when they come due all at once. Even though I have the money stored away, it is still stressfull to know I’ll have to part with so much of it so quickly.

I’m not sure I’m ready to be a grown up just yet. The weight of responsibility sometimes seems more than I can hold. But I am an adult now, and I have three people, including myself, counting on me. Now is no time for weakness. Now is no time to falter or back down.

Distractions are the undoing of any effective time management scheme, right? They are bad and should be avoided at all costs. They should be stomped out. I am about to unwind this conventional wisdom that I’ve displayed in a straw-man argument.

Distractions do not need to be bad. They don’t even need to be kept under close scrutiny. Distractions can be the source of inspiration and creativity.

I don’t feel any need to point out the fact that I am easily distracted. I easily stumble out of what I should be doing into unneeded activity that does not move me any closer towards checking off any of the items on my to-do list.

This is quite possibly the most useful productivity blog of all time. Check it out below:

http://productiveblog.tumblr.com/

That big idea always strikes unexpectedly and with little warning. There is a flash of inspiration and the burning desire to act.

Recently, I had the inspiration to start this blog. It emerged from my memories of how I loved to write in high school and college. In high school I fancied myself a poet, and that continued through college, where I majored in writing. As a newspaper reporter, I felt right at home writing every day for a living.

For all that is out there in writing and speeches about the secret to happiness, and for all the time, effort, and energy spent on its pursuit, I don’t know that the question, “How do I know when I’m happy?” has been adequately discussed.

This is a dangerous question to ask. If, after reflection and some introspective moments, I find that the answer is no, I’ll realize that I need to make some changes in my life to continue the chase. However, the real danger in this question lies in another answer: Yes.

I’d write more about myself, but I’m really not that interested in the subject. I’m worried that will show up in my writing and bore my readers. So, rather than take that risk, I’ll stick to a wider range of subjects to deliberately exclude talking about me. What will those subjects be? That is still to be determined. But, by avoiding talking about myself, I think I’ll be able to keep things interesting and keep the audience engaged.

That’s rule one. Until I become an interesting subject, there’s no use writing about me. Maybe in the course of writing about other subjects I’ll emerge as a subject of my own. However, I’m not counting on it and neither should you.