January 29, 2009, at 6:20 pm
While I’ve seen many winters before, this year, as I’m taking pictures and spending more time really looking at winter, I’m struck by the sparseness. Everywhere the branches are bare, the lakes are frozen expanses of empty white snow, the walking and biking paths devoid of people. The is a lot of beauty in the sparseness if one can get bundled up enough to enjoy it. I think when I moved to Minnesota I was so shocked at how cold the winters were that I forgot how pretty it was when the world is blanketed in white and the city sounds are muffled by the snow. So I’m setting a goal for myself for the next couple of months – I will look for that winter beauty, noticing the intricate forms that the branches of the oak trees make, or the winter feathers of the little birds that frequent those trees.
January 29, 2009, at 3:02 pm
Spinning Medium is a new blog comprised of a number of different people from different walks of life and different parts of the country posting on pretty much whatever they want, from sports to politics to art. The idea is to stimulate conversations on a number of different topics with people coming from different viewpoints and life experiences. I’ve been helping to get the project off the ground and am looking forward to seeing where it takes us. If you’re looking for a new view on the world, head on over to check it out.
January 28, 2009, at 11:53 am
I picked up this book a few weeks ago to help me loosen up at the keyboard, to journal better, and to blog better. If you read this blog frequently you know I need all the help I can get! While Writing About Your Life is more about writing memoir than blog articles, I’ve still found it a huge help, and hugely entertaining.
William Zinsser is the author of On Writing Well, which is widely respected as the classic guide to writing non-fiction. He started his career at the New York Herald Tribune, has written for a number of magazines and has 17 books in publication. He has a lot of knowledge to share about writing, to say the least. But while the writing advice that he gives is fantastic, my favorite thing about Writing About Your Life is that he uses examples from his own writing to illustrate his discussion points. He interrupts his own fantastically written memoirs to explain why he chose to use certain bits of his story, or how he made certain decisions for the piece. The memoirs are so engrossing that after I finish a chapter I have to go back through and re-read the skill sections – I become so interested in the stories he’s telling I forget I’m supposed to be learning! I can already see that this is a book I’ll be revisiting many more times to come.
January 25, 2009, at 10:50 am
Amy Kingman at Drawings In Motion has posted a fantastic series of articles on making her own lightbox out of foamcore and poster board. The supplies for the design are extremely affordable and the whole thing breaks down for storage when not in use. She mentions in the article that the foamcore and poster board cost her about $5 altogether, but I was wondering how much she’d spent on the lamps she used for lighting, as those can get expensive. No worries – I saw similar clip lamps at the pet store yesterday for $15 each. For someone like me without a lot of cash or space, this design sounds fantastic. I can’t wait to get started!
If you have your own experiences with do-it-yourself lighting please share. Thanks!
January 22, 2009, at 10:41 pm
It seems that my hosting provider is migrating my site to a new server. News to me… it’d be nice if they told me these things before they did them. In any case, the site might be down for a bit so for that I apologize. Once the migration is done (hopefully by tomorrow morning US central time) I’ll be installing a software update which might cause some issues also, but this should be the last site update for a while. Unless, of course, my hosting provider has something else up their sleeve.
I’ll update this post when all the site updates are complete, and I apologize for any annoyances that this may cause. Thanks for your patience.
1/24 UPDATE: No downtime this weekend. Whew!
