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Below are the 50 most recent journal entries recorded in
Estel's LiveJournal:
- make and deliver dinner to a friend/family member/neighbor
- write up and exchange wish lists (not presents, but things you can do for one another)
- take a family photo in front of the tree
- create homemade cards/gifts - have a craft night
- pop and string popcorn to hang on the tree (inside or out - makes a nice treat for the birds)
- watch "Mupppet Christmad Carol" or "Scrooge" and sing along
- bag up donations of toys/food/blankets/coats for appropriate charities
- create homemade cards/gifts - have a craft night
- pop and string popcorn to hang on the tree
- snuggle under tree while looking at lights and listening to A Child's Christmas in Wales (or some variation there of)
- make Christmas lj icons for friends
- Voyages
- Yellow Violets
- Virga
- Valleys
- Venus
- Violins
- Vinland
- Vireos
- Vacations
- Vanilla
| Monday, June 27th, 2011 | |
| 3:23 pm | Photos from the Marin Headlands This was my first time hiking the Marin Headlands since I was a young child. I've been missing out all these years! You can click on each of these photos for a larger view. I took the pictures with my iPhone, which is all I had on this hike. ( Photos from our hike ) Current Mood:  rejuvenated |
| Tuesday, December 21st, 2010 | |
| 1:33 pm | A Winter's Solstice Eclipse I was really worried that there would be no chance to see the lunar eclipse last night, as it was scheduled to be cloudy, possibly even rainy, all night. But there were periodic breaks in the clouds and I even got a decent photo or two of the Moon coming back out of Earth's shadow.  Current Mood:  happy |
| Saturday, December 18th, 2010 | |
| 6:12 pm | Don't Ask Don't Tell is going DOWN One more step forward in the Human Rights movement. Today is a good day. Current Mood: happy |
| Wednesday, October 13th, 2010 | |
| 9:57 am | Gay vs. Straight Some interesting (and amusing) data on the habits and personalities of straights and gays based on their habits on a popular online dating site. Although it's not strictly scientific, it may help to debunk a few myths: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/gay-s Current Mood:  amused |
| Friday, September 10th, 2010 | |
| 11:07 pm | Peace, Love and Understanding (re-post) Why can't we declare tomorrow International Read The Koran Day? Buy it, read it, understand it, and work on tolerance, love and understanding. Read the Bible too, if that's a book you haven't read. That's my wish for tomorrow, a day where we also remember terrible things that humans did to each other, back in 2001. Let's stop with the bad stuff, m'kay? *peace* eta: I meant this morning to post this public on both LiveJournal and Dreamwidth, but technology conspired against me and it was friendslocked on dw and private on lj. It's open now on both...I hope. Current Mood:  sad |
| 11:05 pm | Peace, Love and Understanding Why can't we declare tomorrow International Read The Koran Day? Buy it, read it, understand it, and work on tolerance, love and understanding. Read the Bible too, if that's a book you haven't read. That's my wish for tomorrow, a day where we also remember terrible things that humans did to each other, back in 2001. Let's stop with the bad stuff, m'kay? *peace* eta: I meant this morning to post this public on both LiveJournal and Dreamwidth, but technology conspired against me. It's open now...I hope. Current Mood: sad |
| Sunday, August 29th, 2010 | |
| 8:52 pm | Personal Tong Mania Is Only a Matter of Time Many years ago, when the world was younger than it is today, there were no tongs at all. In those dark days, our ancestors had to pick up food with their bare hands. They were brutal times. Civilization has come a long way since those forgotten days....or has it? The idea struck me the day after I had been home with a cold. I don't think I was contagious, but maybe I was. I was in line at the cafeteria, eyeing the chocolate chip cookies, when I decided (of course) to purchase one. I grabbed the handy tongs that sat by the cookie bin, grabbed a cookie with them, and placed the cookie on my tray. Then it hit me. Every person who had procured a cookie that day had touched those tongs. Every one who purchased a cookie after me would be holding the tongs that I had touched. The tongs weren't making cookie grabbing safer, they were actually making it more dangerous. And so, even though I have absolutely no paranoia about disease, and in fact I think this concept is somewhat silly, I am here to announce that the day of Personal Tongs is about to arrive. It's time for all corporations that want to Bamboo tongs, collapsible stainless-steel tongs, Swiss Army tongs, hand-blown glass tongs, recycled plastic tongs, biodegradable tongs, teak tongs, pleather tongs, mastodon tusk tongs. The time has come for hygienic personal portable tongs. And, hey, this idea makes way more sense than bottling tap water, shipping it across the country and selling it at a 5000% markup. I'm sure you are skeptical. But if you think about what you would do if you had your own personal tongs with you at all times, I think you'll come around to my way of thinking. Give it a year, maybe two. Keep a weather eye open. Personal tongs are coming. They're practically here. You read it here first. |
| Thursday, August 12th, 2010 | |
| 3:03 pm | |
| Friday, October 23rd, 2009 | |
| 1:23 am | 'cause Linaelyn has a shiny brain too Linaelyn linked to this awesome video after Mukkamukk pointed it out to her. Which made me want to see this one again. And this oldie but goodie (I remember seeing this in high school around about 1978). And that inspired me to search and find all these. Science is so cool. Current Mood:  geeky |
| Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 | |
| 11:52 am | In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit Amazon has finally made available in Kindle format my favoritest book of all time! ( Here of old was Thrain, King under the Mountain... ) Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. My Kindle bookshelf is starting to look respectable. |
| Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 | |
| 10:51 pm | Where books are headed I took this picture today, showing a page from the first printing of the King James Bible, printed in 1611, and a page from the Kindle version of the English Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 2007. It graphically displays something I've been thinking about for a while now. ( Changing technologies ) Before long I expect that we'll be able to reproduce book pages in e-ink form rivaling the quality of the old great books. The Kindle is a wonderful piece of technology, but it's still in its infancy. Notice that the text on the Kindle covers less than one column of the text of the edition published 398 years earlier. Fast forward a few years though, and you'll have a larger, higher contrast touch screen surface with even tinier ink pixels. The first edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica, Steven King's latest release, college textbooks or today's New York Times will be equally available at a touch. Searching, cross referencing, leaving notes to yourself will all be effortless. You will be able to carry your entire library with you. That's where books are headed. We are in the midst of another revolution in publishing. Books are increasingly becoming available in electronic form - you can already download for free a huge body of copyright-expired work from Project Gutenberg which has over 28,000 titles, Amazon's Kindle store which has 250,000 titles available for sale so far and Google Book Search which lets you view and search the entire text of over 7 million books. The dead tree book that we know and love is going to become a collectors' item. As sad as it will be to see more bookstores disappear, the joy of having so much knowledge available so freely overwhelms me. I have books in my collection that I hesitate to read for fear of the pages crumbling and losing the information forever. Now I have confidence that those books will come back to life in electronic form, more durable, more accessible and potentially more long lasting than any physical form could promise. And publishing and distributing them won't waste trees in production or gallons of gas in delivery. Dead tree books will dwindle, and the written word will experience another renaissance. Current Mood:  optimistic |
| Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 | |
| 9:03 pm | Words Setting: Lin is in the kitchen, making Alsatian Kugelhopf Lin: "Place the currents and raisins in a small bowl and cover in wine. Macerate for at least one hour at room temperature." Me: "Macerate? I thought that meant to chew." Lin: "No, that's masticate." Me: "Oh. I thought that meant to grow breasts." Lin: "No that's... (pause) ...I just went two steps ahead in this conversation." Me: "Yes! We were this close to the fun part!" |
| Saturday, December 13th, 2008 | |
| 12:43 pm | Coolest iPhone app evar I just bought Smule's "Ocarina" for my iPhone. I love this application. You blow into the microphone and with your fingers play a melody. You can share the melody with the world, and you can send little ♥s of love to others on the planet. And others can send ♥s to you. An application that increases the amount of love and music in the world. It brings me joy. Apparently you can also get together with friends and play "Stairway to Heaven": Current Mood:  content |
| Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 | |
| 10:46 am | |
| Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 | |
| 1:47 pm | The logic is inescapable California has just defined the term "marriage" as being "between a man and a woman." Although I am a man and ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small} linaelyn is a woman, the union between us is not something I feel is exclusive to men and women.Therefore, until this constitutional amendment is struck down, I do not wish our bond to be called "marriage." Let's call it a partnership. Current Mood:  outraged |
| Sunday, September 21st, 2008 | |
| 11:56 pm | Random remembery While doing dishes tonight, I found myself smiling while thinking of a song from long, long ago... Since we're neighbors let's be friends, Come in and meet us anytime. Why don't you stop in and say hello? Since we're neighbors let's be friends....Safeway This was the advertising Jingle of Safeway grocery stores in the early 1970s. When the song started playing in my brain, I had a vision of Safeway moving into small towns, erecting giant shiny modern supermarkets, and driving all the Mom & Pop grocery stores out of business. The way Whole Foods is driving all the health food stores out of business now, or the way Starbucks drove out local coffee shops, or Border's Books helped destroy the independent bookseller or Home Depot took out our friendly neighborhood hardware store. I just never realized until now that that happy little ditty from my childhood was really the crushing anthem of a giant corporation bent on profiting at the expense of small business. I don't think I'll be smiling the next time that song pops into my head. Current Mood:  cynical |
| Monday, August 11th, 2008 | |
| 12:09 am | The Nesting Instinct There's this phenomenon that is So, today I mounted all our living room bookshelves to the wall. I fixed the lights in the family room. I repaired the pinball machine. I went grocery and craft shopping. I fed the kidlings wholesome meals of pasta rapido, tortellini alfredo, and steak & mashed potatoes with french bread and sliced nectarines. I upgraded the software on the living room computer. I helped Mom (via phone) upgrade her Mac's OS. I upgraded my iPhone's OS. I did dishes and wiped the counters. I sorted bills. I was all "Oh, I'm just bored because Lin is sick and we haven't left on our vacation yet" until I looked at the kitchen floor and said "this needs sweeping" and then while I was sweeping it occurred to me that this might not all be boredom. There could me something more sinister at work. And then YK dropped to the floor and said she might have a fever (although she seems fine now) and I thought: even if Lin gets well tomorrow, there are three other people in the house who haven't had it yet and our vacation could be doomed Doomed DOOMED. Or, I could be just paranoid. The floor really did need sweeping. ( p.s. In unrelated news, I enjoyed this bit of Science Edumacation ) Current Mood:  worried |
| Sunday, August 10th, 2008 | |
| 12:51 pm | bread  just doing a test send from an iPhone application called "Shozu" in an attempt to see if it's useful
|
| Friday, August 1st, 2008 | |
| 7:02 pm | Leon's Bookstore gone; its books scattered throughout the world When we planned our anniversary getaway, we said that one of the Important Things we wanted to do was visit our favorite used bookstore, used bookstores being Sacred in our worldview: Leon's Books. We were walking hand-in-hand down Higuera Street, high on lattes from Linnea's Cafe and reminiscing about our college past when we were stopped dead by the sight of an empty storefront. My heart stopped for a moment with the dread that this was Leon's bookstore...but no, Leon's was a few more stores down the street...wasn't it? Then I saw the gold lettering still on the window, above a sign that said "Thank you SLO county" and I knew that it was gone. I braced myself against the glass and sat down, reeling. Gone? How can Leon's be gone? We were here in March, they were doing fine. Everything was fine. Nothing is permanent. Enjoy what you have. Live life to its fullest, with no regrets. ( Before and After ) I heard from the proprietor of Phoenix Books, the other remaining used bookstore from our years as residents in town, that much of the stock left over from Leon's went to alibris.com. I like to think that a little bit of Leon's is going out all over the world and seeding new used bookstores in cities and towns that, maybe, never had a used bookstore before. And some child may receive an old dusty book that will change their life and the world may be a just a tiny bit better, thanks to Leon. Current Mood: sad |
| Saturday, June 14th, 2008 | |
| 1:01 am | unsnow there's wildfire ash falling outside - it looks like light snow covering the car. |
| Monday, May 26th, 2008 | |
| 5:28 pm | Mars: Enigma or Mystery? The Mars Phoenix lander has landed and is sending back images already! Among the first pictures of Mars is a mystery at least as big as the controversial Mars Rabbit found during Opportunity's first moments on that planet. ( As usual, I have my own theories about what it might be... ) This was prompted by the Q&A from today's press conference where one of the reporters seemed unusually interested in that "bright streak" found in one of the first pictures. Current Mood:  silly |
| Monday, April 28th, 2008 | |
| 10:30 am | CostumeCon 2008 Science Fiction/Fantasy Masquerade Contestants...all of them Unfortunately, I don't have the names for most of the entries. But I have pictures. Lots of pictures. I was sitting two-thirds of the way back from the stage, but I had a long (400mm) telephoto lens so I was able to get fairly clear shots of (hopefully) everybody. I've put all the photos on their own page. 142 photos in all. If anyone has more information for any of the contestants, let me know and I can update the web page. Current Mood: happy |
| Sunday, April 27th, 2008 | |
| 8:54 am | Totally Awesome I went to CostumeCon 2008 yesterday afternoon and evening, to visit a friend and to see the Science Fiction/Fantasy Masquerade costume contest. The contest was awesome, even with the technical difficulties involving sound ("that last five seconds never happened") and the hour-late start. The design detail and craftsmanship that went into the costumes amazed me. I will post pictures of all the contestants soon, but first I must SQUEEEE about the Space Girls because my friend magickalmolly is the oh-so-hot Ginger Space and because OMG they won BEST IN SHOW FOR PRESENTATION.( Lots o' Space Girls photos! ) Current Mood:  excited |
| Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 | |
| 1:52 pm | Zen Kōan gone wrong Knock knock. Who's there? Interrupting Buddha. Interrupting Buddha wh– Mu! Current Mood:  indescribable |
| Sunday, March 30th, 2008 | |
| 1:48 pm | California Colors On the drive home from our micro-vacation Friday, we got the bestest views of the color-splashed hillsides. ( California wildflowers ) From the bottom of the hill to the top: yellow mustard, green chaparral, purple lupine, golden poppies, blue sky. I did not play with the colors in this image, it really is that vibrant...well, my camera can't quite capture colors near the ultraviolet, so imagine the purple as being way more vibrant and you'll have some idea what it was like. *Overdoses on color* Current Mood:  saturated |
| Saturday, March 29th, 2008 | |
| 11:37 am | Earth Hour Hey, why doesn't the United States celebrate Earth Hour?!? I'm thinking that for the night of Earth Day I could turn off all the lights in the house - or just leave on a florescent light (since candles are probably worse for the environment than a florescent bulb). And shut down the computers, and turn down the heater that night. It would be nice if the U.S. would embrace Earth Hour, even though it's largely symbolic. I think being aware of how many resources we're using is important, and this seems like a way to raise awareness. They're using it as awareness of "climate change," but that sounds too indirect to me. Being aware of all the ways humans consume mass quantities of everything is what I would want to raise awareness of. Human-caused climate change is a secondary effect. Current Mood:  annoyed |
| Friday, March 14th, 2008 | |
| 12:42 am | Posted using TxtLJ ly reading The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold, because many of my friends rave over Bujold, and I'd never read anything of hers before. eta: Okay, so it's either buggy or there's fine print I need to read. It broke my message into two pieces, and it made it visible to the world, not f'locked. |
| 12:42 am | just testing I thought I'd try text-to-lj, to see how it works. Default should be friendslocked. I'm tired; I should be going to bed. I'm current |
| Monday, February 25th, 2008 | |
| 11:49 am | Symptomatic rambling Today I feel like I'm slogging through a field of invisible but pervasive Higgs particles. Or, perhaps I'm finally coming down with the cold that everyone else in the knowne universe has already had. Also, um, does it make any sense that one could take a picture of an electron? I mean, doesn't an electron absorb and then re-emit a photon and that's like how light works? Were they expecting to see detail on the surface of the electron or something? What would a photograph or a movie of an electron look like? Why would short flashes of light make any difference? The article is, perhaps unsurprisingly, short on details. eta: The real article is much more helpful. Back to work, you. Current Mood:  blurry |
| Thursday, February 21st, 2008 | |
| 1:19 am | Lunar Eclipse Not much to look at...except the moon was full tonight.  This was after totality, when the moon was coming out again. It was pretty much invisible when it was fully eclipsed, because the cloudcover obscured it pretty completely. Anyway, it was nice that we got a chance to see it at all. Current Mood:  sleepy |
| Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 | |
| 5:24 pm | Electronic Ink I have been enamored of electronic paper for many years, but only in the last year or two have devices using such technology become available to consumers. In the nearish future, I expect most of us will be reading our newspapers and novels on electronic paper, but for the moment you have to go out of your way to obtain the magical stuff. Or so I thought. Last night I realized that my little USB flash drive has an electronic ink display! With my microscope I am actually able to see the little microdots that are used to make the persistent ink. I can also see that some of the dots stay black when they're supposed to be white, and some stay white when they should have turned to black. I just thought this was particularly cool and had to share.  Lexar 2GB flash drive with electronic paper display. Actual size approximately 2 inches long. Full sized picture taken with a regular digital SLR. Microscopic images taken with an iPhone held over the eyepiece of a lab-style microscope. Images composited using Pixelmator (a lot like Photoshop), boxes and text added using OmniGraffle. Authentic wood grain background provided by the kitchen table. Current Mood: excited |
| Sunday, January 27th, 2008 | |
| 10:27 pm | The Dark Ages of Teh Internets Excerpt from my Daily Writing book, September 15, 1991: The other day I was reading an article [about the Internet] in a magazine that interested me. At the end of the article was a bibliography. There I saw reference to another interesting follow-up article. I turned to my computer and said the equivalent of "find me that article." In about a minute, I had a listing of ten places or so in the world where I could find the article. I retrieved it from one of those places and began reading the article...now that's the way our information society should work! If only it could be that way for any article on any topic. But not yet I fear...when I can do the same thing for "lemmings" or "Gorbachev" or any bibliography reference, we will truly have entered the information age. Google currently has 7,280,000 references to information on lemmings and 2,840,000 on Gorbachev. Current Mood: amused |
| Thursday, January 10th, 2008 | |
| 12:58 am | Album Cover Meme Gacked from linaelyn. This looked really fun, but it was totally just an excuse for me to play with Pixelmator.1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ra 2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.ph 3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesti ( Adams's (sic) Pipsistrelle - to fly in formation ) I'd totally buy this album. Current Mood:  satisfied |
| Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 | |
| 3:55 pm | Eek! A crown? My dentist thinks I might need a crown on one of my molars. I've never had a crown before. Can anyone tell me what to expect? Is it a long procedure? Will I only be able to eat weak gruel for 48 hours? Is it painful? Current Mood: worried |
| Sunday, January 6th, 2008 | |
| 6:05 pm | And birds of course There was a break in the rain today, so I took my camera out to the bayside to take bird pictures. Here's one I took of a Northern Harrier hunting - there are a couple of Western Meadowlarks flying away in the background. On the whole, I'm extremely happy with my new camera. Now if I could just get outdoors more often. ( Harrier hunting ) Current Mood: happy |
| 5:10 pm | First light, of sorts Last night I put my new Canon 40D onto a telescope tripod and aimed it at the Orion nebula, which obliged me by peeking briefly from the cloudcover a little after midnight. It's not a great picture. My goal was to see how well the "preview mode" worked on the camera. For lining up and focusing the subject, it worked wonderfully. Focussing is espeically important, as it's nearly impossible for me to do when looking throught the viewfinder of an SLR. Next I want to connect the camera to my 8-inch Celestron and how well I can capture Mars. But I may have to wait a while for rainclouds to clear. ( Orion Nebula ) Current Mood: content |
| Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 | |
| 1:17 pm | Google Terrain Google just added (yesterday?) a really cool terrain feature to Google Maps. It gives a much more "atlasy" view, more like a 3D relief map or a National Geographic atlas. For example, here's a spot on the Colorado River that I think is really cool - I've flown over it a few times on cross-country flights and would love to visit it sometime: Bowknot Bend - Almost an Oxbow Current Mood: beaming rays of joy |
| Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 | |
| 11:11 pm | Movie Quote, take 2 Eowyn: "The city has fallen silent. There is no warmth left in the sun. It grows so cold." Sunshine Boy: "It's just the damp of the first spring rain. I do not believe this darkness will endure." Current Mood:  hopeful |
| 9:54 pm | The comet I finally dragged my telescope and camera into the backyard to take pictures of comet 17P/Holmes. Now, a lot of astronomers think comets are really cool, but mostly I think they are blurry patches in the sky, and my astronomical love is mostly reserved for planets and globular clusters. Still, I wondered if I could take a picture that properly conveys what this comet looks like in a suburban sky. I think this one captures it best, as there are telephone lines and a decent number of stars for context. This is about what it looks like through a low-power pair of binoculars. If you are lucky enough to have a dark sky, it'll probably look a lot nicer, but it'll still just be a blurry patch in the sky. ( Comet 17P/Holmes ) Current Mood: indescribable |
| Sunday, August 12th, 2007 | |
| 6:26 pm | It's done I'm probably not the last person to have finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but it feels like it. Now a pause, a deep breath, and back to the powerful magic of Real Life. Current Mood: satisfied |
| Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 | |
| 9:46 pm | Gratuitous iPhone post Okay, so once you own an iPhone, of course you must post from it. It's like the Newton and HyperCard have come back from the grave! |
| Thursday, May 24th, 2007 | |
| 11:53 pm | In Awe of AWE Sleepy and up to late, but I got to see the movie! With friends! And linaelyn of course.( Spoilers behind the cut ) Very very tired after that. But I needed to write to wind down. Now perhaps I can sleep. |
| Monday, April 9th, 2007 | |
| 10:30 pm | How long have humans been using fire? Lin and I were cooking together on the stove and I asked how long she thought humans had been using fire. I said at least 100,000 years and she thought that was way too high. She thought that we'd been using fire since before we were humans, but only about 50,000 years or so. So, I poked on the Internet and found this abstract, Evidence from the Swartkrans cave for the earliest use of fire, that apparently proves we've had fire for around a million years. Of course, you can find anything on teh Internets. Anyone out there know of any stronger evidence? Current Mood:  curious |
| Thursday, February 15th, 2007 | |
| 10:28 pm | Cops and Donuts The girl behind the donut counter asked me this question, which I pose to you: "Is it legal to charge police for donuts?" This came up because two cops in front of me in line each bought two donuts, and she felt awkward charging them. They didn't seem to think anything of it, and even tipped a dollar, which is a pretty good tip for four donuts. I told her that it most probably was fine to charge them, but that it might be a question of courtesy or etiquette. Maybe you can charge cops for donuts, but maybe you shouldn't charge them. I don't actually know. Linaelyn thinks it might be illegal not to charge them. What do you think? Current Mood: curious |
| Saturday, December 30th, 2006 | |
| 6:56 pm | |
| Sunday, December 3rd, 2006 | |
| 9:00 pm | Little slips of paper in our advent calendar For the last several years, we've had this tradition of putting little notes in each day of the advent calendar (along with a small bit of chocolate). We generally put two or three in each day, and pick the one or two that we can reasonably do. Sometimes we'll move one to a later day, if that particular Christmasy thing didn't work out on the day we picked it. Sometimes we'll just pull a couple out of the envelope rather than having someone pre-select that day's choices. The idea is to do something Wintery/Christmasy/Solsticy for each of the 25 days preceding Christmas. I'll bet your family has some traditions we can add to this list. What have we forgotten? Christmas Notes to put in the Advent Calendar Put one note apiece on little slips of paper (like fortune cookie fortunes) and put them into the advent calendar. ( List behind the cut ) eta, from comments below, etc. Current Mood:  relaxed |
| Saturday, November 18th, 2006 | |
| 11:10 am | The letter V From linaelynComment and I'll give you a letter; then you have to list 10 things you love that begin with that letter. After, post this in your journal, and give out some letters of your own. And so I received the letter 'V' That wasn't tremendously easy, there are a lot of words that don't start with 'v', it turns out. But I'm happy with the list. Current Mood: happy |
| Friday, November 17th, 2006 | |
| 7:02 pm | Teh coolest Periodic Table evar! For all us homeschoolers...an interactive Periodic Table of the Elements http://www.popsci.com/popsci/periodicta If you click on an element it shows you a closeup of the picture with a text description. Then you can click on the "Find out more about..." link and get bunches more pictures and QuickTime VR movies and other information. It really makes the Periodic Table jump to life. I actually found this in a link from a piece of junk mail sent by Popular Science magazine. But it really is too cool Current Mood: happy |
| Thursday, November 16th, 2006 | |
| 10:23 pm | Hi-Tech™ Christmas So we're always losing Christmas lists. We make notes on scraps of paper and we put them in our wallets, or on the "desk" (an ever-increasing pile of random mail, magazines and past Christmas lists that takes over 1/3 of our kitchen counter), or in the "bill spot" (a separate ever-increasing pile in the antique secretary's desk in the hallway, where we hypothetically organize the bills for the month) or we make text files on our computers that we promptly lose. These techniques have served us well over the years - although we never find the lists again, Christmas somehow always happens. However, this year I was determined to solve the Lost Christmas List problem once and for all. So I made a wiki. All it took was learning how to enable PHP, where to find a decent wiki, uploading, decompressing and configuring said wiki, and then putting it behind a password so prying eyes wouldn't see what they were getting. Total time to set up the wiki: 30 minutes. Total time to learn the technologies sufficiently to set up the wiki in thirty minutes: 2 years. We'll see how it works out. Current Mood:  accomplished |
| Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 | |
| 11:56 am | Mercury transiting the Sun Mercury is the one on the right - the thing on the left is a sunspot. ( Photo behind the cut... ) It's happening right now, so if you have a telescope and a solar filter and the sun is out, rush outside and go see! Current Mood: optimistic |
jubilant
