All Links All The Time

So I heard this story with Martha Stewart earlier in the week on NPR.  


All you need is this line from the interview 

"...up in Maine at my summer house...built by Edsel Ford, by the way..."


to know that the woman remains completely insufferable.  


I found Tumblr. Because seriously, I need another digital time killer. Where has it been all my life? I cannot believe the gems lurking around on that site.  


To wit:


Mind-blowing things students write and have the nerve to turn in to their professors. And by "mind-blowing" I mean "unbelievably inane." 


Animals Talking in All Caps. Hilarious.  


And then there are the hungover owls. Priceless.  


Art 


All Hipstamatic cats all the time. (One of mine made it over there. Go to December 8th and look for the super-close up, as I can't get it in a separate window. You can also see her on Flickr.) 


I could go on, but you get the idea. 


Naturally I started one of my own, because I don't want to be left out. It's only pictures, and nothing I post here. I'm trying to get more proficient with my DSLR and my best attempts I'm hanging over there (along with Flickr, of course.) It's a wee bit light right now, but I'm trying to post an average of one a day. 


Speaking of pictures, The Geek informed me of this wicked camera app called Paper Camera. It takes pictures only in weird modes, giving your results an arty, surreal quality.

Still Life

How cool is that? 


Oh, one other cool blog, but this one is on Blogger. Men who go to strip clubs baring their souls. You can't stop reading, I'm warning you. 


Song of the week:  

Friday Flow Flub

 So I discovered flowcharts.  


Well that's not true.  


I haven't discovered them per se, so much as I've discovered them as a blogging tool.  


WHY on earth has it taken me this long to realize flowcharts are a blogger's dream for communicating?  


My first mistake, however, was making one in stupid effing MS Word. 


After trying and failing numerous times to simply cut-n-paste the damned thing (which,I'll have you know, is easier said than done once you've drafted an entire flowchart that's taken--I'm not exaggerating here--HOURS to make) and trying and failing to turn the document into a blog post from Word (it posted nothing but a blank space) and trying and failing to save the document as a web page and then work from there (it only grabbed about half the chart), I finally just scanned the damned thing thus turning it into a picture.


I KNOW how to post those here.


I'll know better than to trust the most updated version of word processing program for my blogging needs next time.  


What was I thinking? 


Behold my first flowchart!  Rest assured it will not be my last. I'm already working on one for the holidays. Believe me, one of the boxes will have the word "vodka" in it. 


Also, The Geek pointed out that technically questions in a flow chart should be in diamond-shaped boxes, but really! it's no big deal.  


Isn't he cute? 


He remains under the illusion he's getting some action this weekend.


Click on it for your viewing pleasure. 

Song of the week:  

Chaos Abounds

I'm schizophrenic obsessed both schizophrenic and obsessed with blog design this week.  I've worked out no less than five different custom headers in the past two days and have rejected them all out of hand.  


And before you start with me, YES.  That new one up there is a reject, so don't get too attached to it.  


So is this blog template, frankly.  Don't get attached to it, either.  I think the only thing about my blog I'm happy with are my color choices right now.  


Therefore it's OK to get attached to them.  Although they might change too. 


But only if I discard Andy's gun.  And I really don't think I'm going to do that.  Because I like that too. 


So aside from those two items, the color scheme and the gun, I'm unhappy with basically everything about the blog.  


Oh, the content.  I like the content of my blog.  I think that can be pretty entertaining. 


So other than those three things: The color scheme, Andy's gun and the content I hate my blog.  


Except for the followers and the blog "likers" on Facebook.  I LOVE all of you.  And I love all of you for regularly returning to what is, essentially, the mess that is my mind.   


So I like three things: the colors, Andy's gun, the content, I lurv my readers.  


But that's it!   


Other than those four things, I totally hate my blog.  


When I think about it, though, I do like the fact that I've been blogging for over four years now.


But that's REALLY it! 


Other than the color scheme, Andy's gun, the content, my readers, and the time invested, I seriously HATE my blog.  


SM: Wanna see the headers I made? 
SY: Not really. 
SM: I thought not.  But I'll throw them out anyway. If you want a larger view of them, click away. 


Here was the original one:  

Here's what happened when I discovered the other design tools in the program. What? Circles and squares and text boxes?  And I can change their sizes and colors?  WHEEEEE!!!


I'm not going to lie: It wasn't pretty and never really a contender. 

Then there's the one I have now, which doesn't seem God-awful after I've had some time away from it. I'm posting here because it will likely change: 

One that's close to what I have now, and I even tried it out. But the tag line clashed with the navigational tabs I have up top: 

And one I was seriously considering yesterday but now I'm not so sure:  

I just don't know what to do!  


Other than whine. 


And drink.  


But that's not currently an option.  


I mean I guess drinking is totally an option...but then you might judge me and think I have an alcohol problem.  Can't have that.  So I'll just keep popping the dark chocolate covered almonds and guzzling the Diet Coke (to, you know, erase the damage I did with the almond calories) while I wile away my hours working on this Very Important Problem.  Because it's totally OK if you think I have a Diet Coke and dark chocolate almond problem.


I suppose I could design my OWN template.  The Geek said he would help me.  


But that would be work.  


Bah.  -> 

Music choice because of this week's earlier entry.

Friday Fun

NEW PHONE ARRIVES TODAY.  WOOT!!! Not that I'm all that excited about it.  I'm really not.  I'm just saying.  


While rearranging items in my purse(s) a few days ago, I fished out no less than five gel pens.  Plus a package of six that I've yet to open.  I think it's fair to say I have a problem.  


Geez.  I thought The Geek was bad.  I wonder what Mr. Blogger would have to say about this particular cloud in the sky I saw this week?  Go and click for a larger view:

Me, to the Boy: What does this look like to you? The Boy: Umm...Jesus holding a baby?

You know what?  Forget it.  I can't imagine he would have a pithy, witty response for a mere collection of ice and water particles. Not when compared to his wife wielding a hammer. 


Now that I'm in a photography class, I'm going to be uploading gratuitous pictures with abandon.  Because it turns out I don't have a clue as to what I'm doing.  Lucky you!  You get to see all my failures.  


Case-in-point: 


I blow up Diet Cokes. In the freezer. A lot.  


Say you: Come again? 


I like my Diet Coke WAY cold.  Teeth-hurting cold. Pop-the-top-and-there's-ice-crystals-floating-in-it cold.  Until I'm able to install one of these bad boys in my home, the freezer, and more specifically the ice bin, is as close as I can get. Sometimes I sorta forget about them. 


Yesterday's explosion was particularly note-worthy for the sheer spread of the beverage post blast.  And since my photography teacher told me to "find a scene and capture it" at the end of my last class, I figured what better scene, right?  Who doesn't want to see frozen Diet Coke on a freezer ceiling emulating stalactites*?  Worthy of Life Magazine, I say.  


I studied the inside of the freezer and determined the lighting was low.  So I thought I needed to go for a slower shutter speed to, you know, let in more light.  The instructor warned us we should probably invest in a tripod post-haste. He told us they were especially helpful when the shutter speed was at a slow setting because humans move despite our best intentions not to. Meaning those teeny, tiny movements translate to blurry, terrible pictures.  


Pffftt.  


Other humans may move, but I got this staying-still- thing down pat:  

Yeah.  


After several tries, it turns out whatever settings I had to begin with were the correct ones after all:  

Ta-da!!  You know you're clicking your "pin it" button right this very second so you can add this to your Pinterest collection and display it for all your friends and followers.  Undoubtedly it's going on your board titled "Beautiful Things" or "Our Wondrous World".  


I can't say I blame you.  


Here, I have another one for you:  

This is Bob.  His frontal lobe is made of red skittles.  


I will thank you not to refer to my coke-exploding episode and make some crack about me having Bob's brain.  ->  


Song of the week:  

*I had to consult The Walking Encyclopedia, AKA, The Boy, for a reminder of the term.

Friday Fun

My heart broke just a little bit when I read this.  Then I found out it was fiction and frankly?  I want slap the little shit for pulling me so completely in to his tale.  Well played, Kid.  


Gold.  Too bad her last entry was over a year ago.  


All music all the time.  Nice.  


Me Pop.  


My cat started huffing and wheezing and making horrible sounds this morning, which only means one thing: an epic vomit is eminent.  I yelled "No!" and he took one look at me and had the nerve to run away.  I literally chased him down the hall and grabbed His Furriness (well, he does have that bald spot on his tail right now) mid-heave and unceremoniously tossed him outside.  I woke up The Boy in the process, but I consider this an acceptable loss.  Because now I don't have clean up cat vomit.  


The New Look: I was forced into this new appearance by default.  I tried on one of Blogger's New! Dynamic! Viewing! templates, and decided for a lot of reasons not to pull the trigger (the first comment on the link pretty much sums it up, though).  When I told Blogger to go back to my old layout, however,  it got rid of ALL my special instructions and I essentially had to start the design process from scratch.  The resulting teeny-need-bifocals-to-read print is Blogger, not me.  When I returned to my old design, my Blogger editor now considers this size "normal". What's more, that print is on EVERY entry I've written since last year.  And sorry, but I'm not going back and changing the font size on 400+ entries.  I'm anal, yes, but I'm not that anal. This current print seems a bit too large, but I don't have middle ground as it's the next size up.  I suppose I could not do the letters in bold print? 


R.E.M. calling it quits.  Bastards.  I do believe I'm at the anger phase of grieving at this point.  None-the-less, I shall offer you one from a favorite album:  

Of Interest, Week of September 3, 2011

This NPR story aired Sunday, September 4 (11 minutes.)  It touches the trend that I'm sure many of us in the mental health and law enforcement fields have noticed for decades: more and more mentally ill people are finding themselves in jail for various and sundry reasons.  The photographer featured in the story went all around the nation documenting old mental health asylums.  We have one of those "castle" like buildings here in our town.  I wonder if he came here?   


I got sucked into watching this entire film on urban spaces.  It was utterly enthralling.  I thought it was filmed in the late 60's or early 70's--the color, music, and narrator lead me to believe so anyway.  But then Darth Vader made a cameo appearance, so obviously it was later than that.  I guess he's not considered an "undesirable" the narrator referred to a few times. 


Another time-consuming listen, but I loved this Freakonomics podcast.  Every parent should listen to it.  


Obama gave his Public Works Act, Phase Two! speech last night.  Save our schools!  Fix our bridges! Reform Medicare! Raise Taxes on the rich!  Close those corporate tax loopholes!   All sounds great in theory, Mr. Obama.  But I doubt any of it will pass.  Because you're a socialist who's killing our American way of life.  


Blogger has a new interface.  It still trips me out. 




Song of the week: 

Thanks Social Work Blogs!

Oh my. Even though my new blogger home is only tangentially related to social work for many months now, Dana at Social Work Blog still felt mine was worth a mention in her "Top 50 Blogs by Social Work Professionals" article.  


Thanks, Dana!  


I sorta feel compelled to write a social-worky entry now, so here goes:  


On tap for August, after I finish my consumerism photo project, the next project that I have lined up in my head will not be a photo a day.  It will, however, be a social work themed project and will include pictures and perhaps quotes.  


Stay tuned...

In the meantime, music: