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carla and lily on Street-painting festival this weekend, and a look at the world's best 3-D street artists steve knudde on George Carlin splits; The train that never slows; Motorized suitcase Sheila Lennon on Summer begins with chicken salad, cherry chocolate ice cream recipes John Gall on Summer begins with chicken salad, cherry chocolate ice cream recipes At Home Redesigns on Summer begins with chicken salad, cherry chocolate ice cream recipes Beth on Boz Scaggs last weekend at the Newport Yachting Center Kevin on Boz Scaggs last weekend at the Newport Yachting Center BSMC on Boz Scaggs last weekend at the Newport Yachting Center Sheila on First look: Firefox 3, and a hunt for compatible extensions Paul Roub on First look: Firefox 3, and a hunt for compatible extensions To comment on any posting, click on the word 'Comments' at the end of the item. |
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Main page June 30, 2008Blogs upgrade is under wayOne by one, projo blogs will take on a new look and new functions as we upgrade to Movable Type 4 today. We expect there'll be some cleanup, and that some new features won't be useful immediately. Blogs will remain available through the upgrade, although new postings may be delayed. I hope it goes smoothly. 7:21 a.m.: The 7 to 7 news blog is converting now, so the morning crew are publishing the news to the Projo BizBlog. The headlines at the top of the projo.com homepage point there -- it's the ad hoc news blog for now. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 29, 2008Lemonades for a hot day
Looking good to me, The Rocky Mountain News's Sparkling Ginger Lemonade and Vanilla Bean Lemonade There's more there at the link -- Watermelon Lemonade, Old-Fashioned Lemonade, Lemonade Float. Homemade Limoncello from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: 2 lb. lemons 1 quart (4 c.) clear grain alcohol such as vodka 6 c. purified water 2 1/2 c. cane (or granulated) sugar Indeed. Also from up north there, Iced Watermelon Cooler Spiked With Lime. For four people, you want 8 cups of ripe, sweet watermelon (cut in 1/2-inch cubes) with the seeds removed. Put them in a blender or food processor with the grated rind of 1/4 medium lime and the juice of the lime. Purée. Add sugar to taste. If needed for contrast, add more lime juice. Strain the purée through a sieve, pressing down to get all the juice from the pulp. Chill. Moisten glass rims with lime juice, dip them in sugar and fill with ice. Add the watermelon water and garnish with skewers of melon chunks and mint leaves. Gin, vodka or rum are all good additions.
For easy, convenient lemonade that can be made in a moment's notice, prepare lemonade syrup similar to the concentrate found in cans in the supermarket freezer case. Here's how: boil sugar and water for a few minutes, add fresh lemon peel and juice, and let the mixture steep for at least an hour; strain the syrup and keep it in the refrigerator. When you want a drink, mix some of the syrup with water or club soda. All variations spring from this.
Posted by Sheila Lennon Happy anniversary to usFive years ago today, Captain Joe Dempsey -- whom I've known since St. Augustine's School -- ferried Joe Landry and I down the river in his Water Taxi to the Hot Club, where we were married by Superior Court Justice Patricia Hurst, my attorney in a child custody suit in 1984. That child was my maid of honor, her 6-year-old son the ring bearer. It had rained for days, and would the following days, but this one wedding day was sunny, pleasant and perfect. The music floating out over the water came from Mark Taber, a Providence original, playing solo keyboard on the sunny deck as he had at Leo's for so many years. We looked out at a gathering of happy faces, people who had been part of something that got us to here; for once, we knew almost everyone in the crowd. Wes' Rib House catered. Two bands played. The head bartender asked how I wanted my drinks, weak or strong. "Very weak," I said. "I gotta last." Around sunset, a club manager asked if we wanted to keep the party private or let in customers. "Open it up, let 'em in," we said. I'm still running into people who say, "You don't know me, but I was at your wedding!" Joe and I are still having a great time. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 28, 2008Blogs upgrade on holdOur blogs upgrade, slated for this morning, will probably be postponed. A server glitch at the Texas internet provider that hosts the blogs hasn't been resolved yet. I've spent a few months building the upgraded templates and functions and want to get them launched, but it's out of my hands. Hot day, headed for a cool drink and a good novel. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 27, 2008Roots mp3s: Jimmy Cliff & Joe Higgs Live in '75
Jimmy Cliff & Joe Higgs, Live in Ann Arbor, Mich., Nov 11, 1975, from BigO, Singapore. Jimmy Cliff calls Joe Higgs, the "Father of Reggae." According to Higgs' website (www.joehiggs.com), Higgs was hugely influential in the birth of ska, rock steady and reggae forms of Jamaican music, and was widely respected as a composer, arranger, and performer, but perhaps most of all as a teacher. Among those he tutored were Bob Marley, Derrick Harriott, Peter Tosh, Bob Andy, The Wailing Souls and Bunny Wailer. The first disc starts with the five minute Drum Song, a sweet jazzy warmup that says "We're starting, people..." and sets the tone for a concert that feels as laid back as Jamaica. It's not the best recording -- Higgs is poorly miked on his first tune -- but there's a kindness throughout, with gentle percussion and Cliff's voice young and clear. A soulful, nearly nine-minute Many Rivers Too Cross is a highlight, as is the more upbeat Going Mad. The second set will be available Saturday. Jimmy Cliff holds a sweet spot in my own history: I wrote a review of the movie The Harder They Come in 1978 for the very first issue of The NewPaper, which you may now know as The Providence Phoenix. Posted by Sheila Lennon Projo blogs upgrade set for SaturdaySaturday morning we plan to upgrade the active projo blogs to a new version of the Movable Type software. All blogs will remain available during this process. Afterwards you’ll see a new look and some new features, and we’ll welcome your comments about them. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 26, 2008Tattoos; Word of the Day in Congress; Astronaut deadline; Dubai's moving skyscraper
Strange and Beautiful Tattoos. Except for a couple that build the navel into the design, most are on the broad canvas of backs. Related: The Skins They Carried: Military tattoos in the age of Iraq. Texas Observer. To Ink or Not to Ink: 10 Questions to Consider at TattooFinder.com, a catalog of designs. On the record: Capitol Words: The most often used word was on any given day in the U.S Congress. Friday's was "oil," Tuesday's was "veterans."
There's hubris in moving parts: Dubai plans 'moving' skyscraper. BBC. The world's first moving building, a 80-storey tower with revolving floors giving an shifting shape, will be built in Dubai, its architect says. There's a computer animation of the still-conceptual building at the link.
If you snooze, they really can't wait for you to get up top to your container. (It's container shipping at root.) I blogged this briefly Monday, but the idea grows on me.
Posted by Sheila Lennon June 25, 2008The day Bill Gates tried to download a Windows programFull text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant Todd Bishop, who writes the Seattle P-I's Microsoft blog, went back through internal e-mails turned over in antitrust suits against Microsoft to find the record of this day in 2003 when founder Bill Gates got to experience his own product firsthand. I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there... Todd quotes at length, and offers a link to the pdf. But Gates didn't fix it, did he? Posted by Sheila Lennon George Carlin marathon starts tonight on HBO
George Carlin, from his final special for HBO, It's Bad for Ya, which aired in March, and will be shown again Friday.
The full schedule: HBO: George Carlin: 1937-2008 Posted by Sheila Lennon June 24, 2008Free mp3s: Clapton live, '74
Eric Clapton - Laidback Live at Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York, June 30 and September 29, 1974. 30 tracks. ...The tapes for the 1974 concerts remained in storage for a very long ti me. Only over the past 10 years have they come into wider circulation through bootleg labels in Europe and Japan and from collectors.
Posted by Sheila Lennon June 23, 2008News of Marie Antoinette? (London) Times puts searchable newspapers online (1785-1985)The (London) Times -- founded in 1785 as The Daily Universal Register, renamed The Times in 1788 and now owned by Rupert Murdoch -- has digitized its newspaper archives: * Every issue of The Times published between 1785-1985, digitally scanned and fully searchable And it's free, for now. (Registration seems to have kicked in since I wrote this earlier today and forgot to publish it. Some of these links may work, others may throw you the speedbump.) It would have been spectacular if reports of the American Revolution had existed, but we'll have to settle instead for the French Revolution: Execution of the Queen of France -- Marie Antoinette's decapitation by guillotine was reported on Oct. 23, 1793. Excerpt (what looks like an 'f' is actually an "s"; "ci-devant" means "from before," the old regime.):
Later, but special, an August 13, 1868 review of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Have at while it's still free.
Posted by Sheila Lennon George Carlin splits; The train that never slows; Motorized suitcase
Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer and burn and scream until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you and he needs money. L.A. Times obit: Counterculture comedian tested the limits of speech and society, (and the source of the photo).
I think he'd have fun with his NYT obit, which manages to use the obscure adjective "splenetic" in the headline: George Carlin, Splenetic Comedian, Dies at 71. Splenetic: 1. Of or relating to the spleen. 2. Affected or marked by ill humor or irritability. n. A person regarded as irritable. Aw c'mon, George's humor was never ill. Update, 9:33 a.m.: The day shift arrived and changed "splenetic" to "irreverent." The YouTube collection of Carlin clips More: Remembering George Carlin at NPR. Passenger insertion: Trains that pick you up without stopping This is a concept for Singapore’s Metro Rail Line...The idea is that people who want to board the train get into a smaller car that piggybacks onto the moving train as it passes through the station. To get off, you get into the smaller upper car while on the train and it unhitches at the station. There's video, but I'm having fun imagining all the ways you could drop people into a speeding train, and pluck them out of it.
Posted by Sheila Lennon June 22, 2008Surreal snow globes at last; Color thesaurus online
In these globes by artists Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz there's a lot going on. We just don't know what. Shake Up The World With Creepy Snow Globes at the oddly interesting InventorSpot showcases a selection of the pair's stranger scenes in a bubble. There are many more at the artists' site.
Here's the most interesting page on the Web to fans of pinpoint precision color-picking: The full spectrum, microsliced, with the many names each incremental step is known by.
Posted by Sheila Lennon June 20, 2008Summer begins with chicken salad, cherry chocolate ice cream recipesSummer begins at 7:59 p.m., just about the time we'll be dining on our back porch. The skunks who live under our shed -- five babies this year -- will be just beginning their nightly foraging lessons, trailing mom along the perimeter of the yard while the cats watch placidly from the porch steps (Our Russian-born neighbor came by last night to tell us there are no skunks in Russia, and the babies had just come into his house, terrifying his wife.) The birds will be noisily squawking in different keys, whizzing from tree to tree and perching inches away from us, feeling safe from the humans in the screened cage. Hotter days and nights are ahead, when we'll be wanting summer dishes like these:
The important thing to remember is that you need to "cook" the curry powder in the olive oil before adding it to the rest of the salad ingredients. Heat releases the flavor of the curry. And what's not to like about homemade Cherry Garcia? Earlier, also inspired by Elise: Fresh strawberry frozen yogurt -- and how to make ice cream without a machine. I'm still looking at that machine, but I'm afraid we'd use it way too much. Posted by Sheila Lennon Discovery of ice on Mars announced first on TwitterWhoohoo! Was keeping my eye on some chunks of bright stuff & they disappeared! Sublimated! So it can't be salt, it's ice: http://is.gd/lFa about 3 hours ago from web
NASA (Bright Chunks at Phoenix Lander's Mars Site Must Have Been Ice) explains that it was found at the bottom of a trench informally called "Dodo-Goldilocks" when Phoenix's Robotic Arm enlarged that trench on June 15, during the 20th Martian day, or sol, since landing. Several were gone when Phoenix looked at the trench early today, on Sol 24.
Posted by Sheila Lennon June 19, 2008Video: Documentary about Providence teacher's aid to school in Ghana premieres tonightYou may recall that in February 2007 we followed Shawn Rubin, a teacher at Providence's CVS Highlander School and cofounder of Providence nonprofit Longitude, when he went to Akeba, Ghana during school-vacation week. (Providence teacher bringing school aid to Ghana this week blogs it.) The documentary about the trip is finally finished and will be shown tonight. Big World, Small World premiers at 7 p.m. at the The MET Black Box Theater, 325 Public Street between Eddy St. and Prairie Ave (directions). Here's a clip:
Shawn Rubin, a Providence kindergarten teacher and founder of the non-profit organization, Longitude and filmmakers John Lavall and Jessica Jennings teamed up to produce a documentary film about a school based in Abeka, Ghana that provides young adults secretarial skills. The film documents the work that Longitude supports in Ghana, and profiles the Professional Secretarial Academy of Ghana (PROFESA) and it's founder Meshach Bondzie. The film is titled "Big World, Small World" and is the story of one man making a difference in his community and his country by educating students who would otherwise have no chance to escape the perpetual cycle of abject poverty that impacts so many Ghanaian families. Posted by Sheila Lennon 25 years into his sculpture garden... Crop circle depicts pi to 10 places
South American-born sculptor Bruno Torfs has spent 25 years stocking Bruno's Art & Sculpture Garden in Marysville, Victoria in Southeastern Australia. Well over 100 of his works are on display in the rain forest. There's a Flash slideshow there, or, for a different view, a visitor has assembled a Flickr set with thumbnails. I admire people with a lifework that builds incrementally -- they end up with so much to show for it.
Most complex crop circle ever discovered in British fields. Telegraph UK. The formation, measuring 150ft in diameter, is apparently a coded image representing the first 10 digits, 3.141592654, of pi. Further elucidation follows. The symbol was identified eventually by ...Reed, a retired astrophysicist who contacted Lucy Pringle, a crop circle photographer and expert, with an explanation. I love the whole idea of this, no matter who or what makes them, for whatever purpose. As conceptual art goes, they're elegant surprises without equal. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 18, 2008Free mp3s: Bob Dylan 1963; Live air-traffic control audio; Baking bloggers' breakfast breads
Nine tracks that didn't make the official Live at Carnegie Hall album. ...earlier in June 2008, Hollow Horn released Unravelled Tales, a two-CD set of the complete Carnegie Hall show. Probably sourced from a soundboard, the sound is excellent In that cover photo, Dylan looks young and nerdy.
Use your browser's "find in page" at this link to get to KPVD, from Green Airport, where you can listen to the intermittent chatter as an m3u stream with your mp3 player. You can identify where the identified flights are heading here.
It is my pleasure to present to you the fine collection of Breakfast Breads baked up for this month’s BBD challenge. We had 55 submissions from 16 different countries - quite a variety of breakfast goodies! The photo is Cheese Kuchen from Madam Chow's Kitchen. Madam Chow has recently made cheese scallion scones, guacamole and pizza; nothing but the logo seems Oriental. While some bloggers whipped out a favorite breakfast bread, others tried a recipe for the first time, with mixed success, then reported on it. That's not how your average cookbook works, and you might have an idea of what might improve the result. Since the recipes come from many countries, you may need the gram conversion calculator or some of the other tools in the Conversion Index at Gourmet Sleuth. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 17, 2008Boz Scaggs last weekend at the Newport Yachting CenterMy colleague Beth Heaney, a projo.com designer, saw Boz Scaggs at the Newport Yachting Center last weekend, and sent me this note: I wasn't planning to go to see Boz Scaggs Saturday night, but my husband acquired a couple of tickets, so we headed out late. She shot a bit of video with her digital camera and put it on YouTube -- enough to get the gist of the gig. Posted by Sheila Lennon First look: Firefox 3, and a hunt for compatible extensionsUpdate: Mozilla.com is reachable again for Firefox 3 downloads.
During installation, it checked each extension for compatibility, which took a few minutes. Not compatible, from among those loaded on my system:
I'm hunting down updates, and necessarily publishing as I find each one -- I have to restart to be sure each has loaded properly, and I'd lose earlier changes to this post if I didn't save. The updates are usually available at the developers' sites, and are sometimes considered beta because FF3 hadn't officially released. Session Manager doesn't seem to be built into FF3. This is critical to me, so I downloaded the Session Manager add-on.
Just in these few minutes of pulling this together, I can feel it's much faster fetching pages, opening links, and loading them. Later I'll test how robust it is with my usual 85 or more tabs open. (That used to finally halt FF2.)
More later. I wanted to get that working download link out to those of you tired of banging on the servers at mozilla.com. Lifehacker is all over this: Power User's Guide to Firefox 3 and more at their full Firefox 3 coverage here. PC Magazine: Firefox 3: This new version of Firefox brings it to the head of the class in security, speed (except for startup speed), standards compatibility, and thrifty memory usage. In addition, its powerful new location bar enormously facilitates browsing. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 16, 2008'Mosquito' device that adults can't hear is banned in UK countyCouncil bans 'anti-teen' gadget. BBC: A 2006 item about the device with the tone audible only to young people (Teens share ringtone grownups can't hear) was one of the most-read posts on this blog, ever. Now comes news that "Kent County Council in south east England has become one of the first in the UK to ban the 'Mosquito' gadgets from its buildings." Some shopkeepers had been using it to discourage teens from hanging out in front of their stores. No word on whether the ringtone version -- which lets teens call each other without the ring being audible to teachers -- will fall, too. You can still try to hear the Teen Buzz ringtone, and download it. Posted by Sheila Lennon Firefox 3 arrives at 1 p.m. Tuesday: Awesome or not?I mentioned last month that the "pledge to download Firefox 3" campaign strikes me as silly. Even if their marketing geniuses have decided to try to set a record for most downloads in 24 hours tomorrow when Firefox 3 is released (beginning at 1 p.m EDT), what does pledging have to do with it? "Remind me" would have been enough. So while you're reading A Field Guide to Firefox 3 to get up to speed on what's coming, you might also want to view a skeptic's take: What have I got against Firefox 3? is a catalogue of blogger and tester Peng's disappointment with some of the "improvements": It’s a known issue that I’m not thrilled with Firefox 3. There are some nice improvements to it, but after seeing the progress of development through the betas and seeing where Firefox 3 was headed I decided it had been time to try out other browsers. Unfortunately I’m so spoiled by Firefox’s extensions that no other browser could make me happy. But I thought with Firefox 3 in the third (and probably last) release candidate I would sit down and try to express exactly what it is about Firefox 3 that makes me wish I could be working with Firefox 2.5 rather than Firefox 3... He's not alone in his objections -- there's a new and highly touted extension, for instance, that lets you skip the new "awesome bar" pictured below (officially, the Smart Location Bar), which mixes your bookmarks and browser history as you type. You can revert to the look of the Firefox 2 location bar with the "oldbar" extension.
As one oldbar user wrote, Oh boy! I thought that I need to uninstall the new FF, as I was annoyed by that "smart" suggestion on the searching bar. Now, me happy!! Yuppyyy! Nice version of FF and that's because it reacts three times faster! I think that was the only thing that was missing from this browser. Only to be faster. I had to look for the tips that will put the close button on every tab and still looking for the classic appearance. Again, I think the old FF was excellent and the only change was needed in fast reaction. I think that's all I want, too -- and better memory handling so I can zip around the 85 tabs I usually have open without crashing -- but I'm open to test-driving it all before I strip it down. If you're a true believer who wants to be fully part of the FF3 hoopla, Air Mozilla, the Internet multimedia presence of Mozilla, will be covering the release as though it were a space-shuttle launch. Links: Posted by Sheila Lennon June 15, 2008Scott Hamilton and the Blue Flames last night
Providence-born jazz saxophonist Scott Hamilton returned from his home in Europe for a reunion of the Hamilton-Bates Blue Flames Saturday night at Local 121. Original bassist Preston Hubbard was in St. Louis and booked for another gig, so he couldn't make it, but his parents did. From left, Dave Zinno on bass, drummer Chuck Riggs, Hamilton on sax, and Fred Bates on guitar. Here's about 12 seconds of ambient sound as they played, just a taste. (mp3) (My camera card was full of photos of my garden. After I recorded this -- as video too dark to see, so I just ripped the audio track -- I noticed I only had room for just one more photo. Not wanting to be a jerk, I hadn't used a flash, and I could see there just wasn't enough light in what I'd shot. On the last chance, I used a flash, just once. That's the result above.) Great to hear the sages bring it together and take us with them. Working it out and easy moments, always subtle and genuinely transporting at times, especially on their touchstone tune from the old days, Honky Tonk. Local 121 owner Josh Miller introduced them as a band he first hired 32 years ago, to play at the old Met Cafe (which he owned with Tom Bates), where I first saw the Blue Flames. My husband knew them from gigs at the Black Elks Club off Broad Street, which served up fine music and sandwiches of ribs or a whole chicken breast, with bones, between two slices of white bread. Different times. The intimate basement in the old Dreyfus could be Providence's version of the RegattaBar at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, holding five dozen or so at tables and standing at the bar. It's a nice room for sublime sounds. The $20 cover was worth it, but $9.50 for a glass of dry house-red wine puts it more in conventioneers' range than mine. But this night was special, so we aren't counting. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 14, 2008Firefox 3 expected Tuesday, 'Field Guide' out now
After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we’re proud to announce that we’re ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. The open-source Web browser doesn't actually "ship," of course. You'll be able to download it then. Meanwhile, you might want to check out A Field Guide to Firefox 3 by Debra Lynn Richardson, author of the about:mozilla newsletter. Posted by Sheila Lennon Tim Russert: At a news meeting with the greats?
He's probably trying to report on the biggest story of the day -- his own death and new environment -- but can't figure out how to file the story. The photo, of Russert in 1976, is from the Big Russ and Me Photo Album -- Russert's 2004 book about his father. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 13, 2008Video from the nest; America from RFK's funeral trainVideo from the nest: "The Internet Bird Collection (IBC) is a non-profit endeavour with the ultimate goal of disseminating knowledge about the world's avifauna. It is an on-line audiovisual library of footage of the world's birds that is available to the general public free of charge." Despite an intimidating taxonomy of Latin names, you can just search "cardinal" or "robin" to see your favorite backyard birds, as well as browse many more exotic ones. Here's a Northern Cardinal video, one of several. And a European Turtle Dove. There were no results for "bluebird of happiness," though. My screengrabber can't grab a frame, and the search results aren't linkable. You're on your own here, but it's worth it.
Witnesses: The Fallen | The New York Times On June 8, 1968, Paul Fusco, then a photographer for Look Magazine, was a passenger aboard the train carrying Robert F. Kennedy's coffin between New York City and Washington. He photographed the people along the route who came out to pay their respects. While the images have been strung together into a video, narrated by the photographer, moving your cursor along the progress bar pops up thumbnails of each shot. They can be selected, and paused.
Posted by Sheila Lennon June 11, 2008Human ovulation photographed in living color
Ovulation moment caught on camera by a bystander, really. BBC: A human egg has been filmed in close-up emerging from the ovary for the first time, captured by chance during a routine operation.... I know I've felt a twinge -- a brief sharp pain -- and suspected I was ovulating, which may have given rise to the idea of an "explosive" release. These photos are more than fascinating. I wish they were larger -- you can't really see the egg inside its coating of translucent support cells. The idea that my body does this "without me" was strong in pregnancy, and here's the beginning of that process. The woman whose ovulation was photographed was not named. Dr. Donnez's pictures are to be published in Fertility and Sterility -- fertstert.org --- according to New Scientist, which first reported their existence. There are three more excellent photos at the link.
Posted by Sheila Lennon Moodstream from Getty Images lets you tune your head
Its called Moodstream: “Any mood can take you places,” says the blurb. Sliders let you pick the mood. Here's the panel -- it's in the upper left of your screen, superimposed on the images of the moment.
You can pop out a playlist to see what that song is -- as I did after I heard a twangy country voice singing, "I can run OS X on a Dell" when I toned down the frenetic beat to the settings above.
Posted by Sheila Lennon June 9, 2008Heat wave; Found in books; Earth from Mars; Better news; Captcha's backstoryTalk of closing school because of the 97-degree heat had a gaggle of us remembering June days decades ago when we trudged off to school in similar heat wearing knee socks, gabardine jumpers and dress pants. We had fans in our classrooms, and we survived. Now we're wimps, holed up in our bedroom cool room, venturing out into the Mars-like outer world only on essential trips to the bathroom and fridge. In the cool room, we chill and read detective novels from the library. We float. At dusk we put a fan on the screen porch, and a sprinkler in the yard. There was almost a breeze. The heat of the den where I now type in front of a fan is too heavy for floating. I hate to sweat. Not encouraging: This bit of the forecast discussion for Tuesday among the National Weather Service pros out of Taunton, Mass: MAX TEMPS...CAPPED AT 99. DIFFICULT TO FCST 100 WITHOUT A WNW SFC The abbreviations: FCST=forecast; SFC=surface.
Be careful what you use as a bookmark. Thousands of dollars, a Christmas card signed by Frank Baum, a Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card, a marriage certificate from 1879, a baby’s tooth, a diamond ring and a handwritten poem by Irish writer Katharine Tynan Hickson are just some of the stranger objects discovered inside books by AbeBooks.com booksellers... This one's dear to my heart. I grab bookmarks from any scrap of paper in reach -- receipts, mail, strips of paper toweling. Last week, it was $5 bill for a day. That's nothing compared to the microwave cookbook sold from an estate by a thift shop with 40 $1000 bills inside.
3D and fluffy: Earth and Moon from Mars. We look lumpy! I knew it! Photographed Oct. 3, 2007, by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. More at NASA, including a discussion of how bright the clouds are -- NASA photo processors had to tone them down. We're probably the most reflective marshmallow-studded blue planet in the galaxy..
A short history of the CAPTCHA, the onlne test to prove you're human. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 8, 2008Wellesley reunion: A time and heat warp
Air-conditioned buses looped constantly from one building to another. We shared a ride with the oldest returning alumna, Kathryn Davis, 101, of the class of 1928 -- she's tiny, but spry on her walker. Wildest ride of the day came on the back of a golf cart, facing backwards and holding on with one hand as the driver sped up steep hills, pitting us against gravity at alarming angles. (Later: In case anyone should think I'm complaining, it was my wildest ride since I was third on a motorcycle in New Delhi traffic, trying not to faint from the heat and die under hot wheels. I loved it.) But a lot didn't happen because of the withering heat. Plans to explore and photograph favorite spots were scuttled. Mid-afternoon, we fled to Natick for a cool beer in an air-conditioned pub (Wellesley is a dry town), and returned later for the class dinner. More than 200 women, about a third of class of '68, showed up. Some faces I recognized immediately, but there was much reading of nametags followed by, "I remember you!"
There isn't really a lot to report -- it was an intensely personal, emotional experience, meeting women I'd known as girls so much later in our lives. (Reunions are, at their core, about Time.) Some had retired early after lucrative careers; others reeled from recent divorces, and life on their own so far down the road. Some brought husbands, others came alone and stayed in the dorms, reliving college life. Some who had been intimidatingly beautiful then had grown plain, some of the plain had turned stunning. Some looked essentially unchanged, others had aged tremendously. As a child, I had wondered what my white-haired relatives could have looked like when they were younger. Seeing one Barbara Bush-type now, and remembering her as a young woman, I finally understood that process.
We did snag one of the very cool fiber-optic centerpieces. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 6, 2008Skulls and roses, wine and the WebObit: Poster artists Alton Kelley, left, and Stanley (Miller) Mouse, right, in this 1967 photo provided to AP by Evolutionary Media Group. Kelley died June 1 at 67 from complications of osteoporosis. Among Kelley's work, the iconic skull and roses motif for the Grateful Dead. More Kelley posters.
Appreciation: Alton Kelley put Bay Area's psychedelic music scene into pictures. Tony Hicks in the Contra Costa Times.
I'm going to my 40th college reunion this weekend, my first-ever reunion. Some of the names on the list of those coming evoke images of young women i once knew, images frozen in 1968. I half expect to find my own young self there, hurrying off to class or to Cambridge. If I do, I intend to buttonhole her and tell her a thing or two about the roads not to take, no matter what. I wonder if she would listen to me?
Red wine does indeed explain why the French get away with a relatively clean bill of heart health despite eating a diet loaded with saturated fats, concludes a new study. I do remember hearing that French models were famous for staying slim on foie gras, red wine and salad. The Times yesterday (New Hints Seen That Red Wine May Slow Aging ) quoted an aptly named Dr. Weindruch of the U. of Wisconsin, "...a mere four, five-ounce glasses of wine 'starts getting close' to the amount of resveratrol they found effective." A bottle of wine is 750 ml, or 25.36 oz. so 20 oz. should leave you pretty tipsy by bedtime.
An Oral History of the Internet: How the Web Was Won at Vanity Fair. The Reality Tests: "A team of physicists in Vienna has devised experiments that may answer one of the enduring riddles of science: Do we create the world just by looking at it?" At Seed. If I'm very patient and awake and attentive, and read slowly, I think I could understand quantum physics from this story. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 4, 2008Free mp3s: 25 tracks of '81 Dylan; Free kids' browser; Death and cookies
"This is a re-release of the 1992 KTS CD entitled Stadiums of the Damned. A great release from the start, this unknown label has gone KTS one better by eliminating much of the white noise, and bringing out the music a tad more to give the CD a smoother, more natural feel." Opening with "Gotta Serve Somebody," its 25 tracks span gospel and earlier, with lots of classics. "Disc Two will be available for download on June 5, 2008."
The Web without tears: Grandfather builds Web browser for autistic boy. Great story at Boston.com: John LeSieur is in the software business, so he took particular interest when computers seemed mostly useless to his 6-year-old grandson, Zackary. The boy has autism, and the whirlwind of options presented by PCs so confounded him that he threw the mouse in frustration. Tailored to minimize frustration, it has some distinct advantages to a lot of beginners: Children using the Zac Browser select activities by clicking on bigger-than-normal icons, like a soccer ball for games and a stack of books for "stories." The Zac Browser also configures the view so no advertisements or other flashing distractions The Zac Browser can be downloaded or run directly from http://www.zacbrowser.com
This reminds me of my two blue-haired aunts who shared an apartment -- their motto was, "You only go this way once." Posted by Sheila Lennon June 3, 2008Convert your gas or electric lawn mower to solar powerLast Saturday I was sitting on the porch sipping a cool one, listening to the birds, watching my seedlings grow -- the perfect lazy almost-summer afternoon. Then Mad Max arrived, throbbing and noisier than standing next to the stack at a concert, roaring in to annihilate some grass blades. The world's loudest lawn mower blasted the eardrums and scattered the wildlife, including the foraging mama skunk who lives beneath the shed and the housecat who lazily watched her from the porch steps, partners in a peace treaty of long standing. Sunday morning, it happened again, from another direction. Even louder. Solar lawn mowers would make a lot of sense, I told Joe. And they could be silent. Turns out, plans to convert your gas and electric lawn mowers to solar power are on the Web waiting for you -- or for someone more mechanical than me, at least -- to find and run with them:
Easiest: Electric mower to solar mower. The author wants you to know, "I only placed the solar panel on top of the mower to snap the picture .but (cord permitting) you could put the solar panel as far from the mower as you like."
Who wants to spend four bucks a gallon to mow their lawn? Summer is here, so harness the power of the sun and convert your gas guzzling beast into an eco friendly solar powered mower. We've got three comprehensive DIY tutorials to guide you. It would be lovely if the Geek Scouts took on projects like this for the neighborhood, converting mowers, hedge trimmers and weed whackers. Posted by Sheila Lennon The Web rocks hard for Bo DiddleyYoung Bo
boogie woogie flu and Sailor Jerry are providing the tunes for the R&B wake of Ellas McDaniel 1928-2008, Bo Diddley.
Thanks for the rhythm, Bo -- I was 11, and you were right on time. NYT: Bo Diddley, Who Gave Rock His Beat, Dies at 79 Bo Diddley: The Rolling Stone Interview, 1987 Secret: "In addition to the many songs identified with him, he wrote the pioneering pop song "Love Is Strange" for Mickey & Sylvia under a pseudonym." -- Wikipedia Posted by Sheila Lennon June 2, 2008Ease-into-Monday links: Discover your musical-visual intelligenceHear: Can you hear shapes? Skilled at visual learning? Measure your musical-visual intelligence online! Fascinating and different right-brain test. If listening to a music clip and selecting the geometric shapes that represent it sounds beyond you, give it a shot. You may surprise yourself. I got an 80 without much knowing what I was doing...
Let's say your jet blows apart at 35,000 feet. You exit the aircraft, and you begin to descend independently. Now what?... Some have survived freefalls from more than 18,000 feet, all WW2 airmen. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 1, 2008Disappointed by wildlife, software, DemocratsGarden bully:
Here lies a transplanted chocolate pepper seedling, chewed off and discarded by a curious and careless critter. It was our only pepper plant.
As always, Adobe Reader takes the top honors for Inconsiderate, slowly seizing all your resources. And, Reader’s incessant updates (demanding you reset your computer — why?), thundering great list of modules to load, and hour-glass-provoking pauses for thought have given Portable Document Format a reputation for being as welcome as a flatulent camel in the kitchen. The others are spot-on, too.
decided they would give Florida and Michigan half of their voting rights -- one of the more arbitrary compromises since the 1787 decision that a slave should count as three-fifths of a person -- and voted to award Obama 59 Michigan delegates, each with half a vote, even though his name wasn't even on the ballot in the state.-- Dana Milbank, WaPo, Democrats Come Together To Tear Their Party in Half Hope! Change! Blah blah!
Posted by Sheila Lennon |
purple haze 
drab 
Breads rise to challenge: 
I have to admit, I remembered liking Scaggs many years ago, but I couldn't remember many song titles. It didn't take long for it all to come back, though, in fact, I started thinking of the ones I hoped he'd play as he moved through a number of his big hits. Some he didn't go for, but others he did. Harbor Lights, Lido Shuffle, Lowdown, Loan Me a Dime, and Georgia were all on his list, though and were well-received by the crowd. 
It was hot at Wellesley yesterday everywhere except in the living room of my old dorm. Putting my husband -- whom I hadn't yet met when I lived here -- into that scene is probably the closest I came to connecting my past and my future. Overlooking a lake, Wellesley really is that Gothic and beautiful.
Lore has it that these balconies at Claflin Hall are decorated with Alice in Wonderland carvings in honor of a founder’s daughter who was crushed by a beam during construction. They are easily the most whimsical feature of the college.
Fights fat, aging and tastes good, too: 
my passport photo blogging since 2002 garden blogs archived headlines  Sheila Lennon is features & interactive producer of projo.com, the Web site of The Providence (R.I.) Journal Rhode Island |
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