EDGY, WHOLESOME
Nathan Gibbs took Mike and I around KPBS this afternoon.
I got to meet Tom Fudge, host of These Days. He put up with our fan-ness long enough for me to snap a photo.
I saw what is coming up on the schedule. It’s like I can read the future.
We ran into Doug Myrland who is one of the nicest, busiest people ever. I took a photo of Doug and Nathan pretending to work. Good actors, no?
Look – this is where the excitment of the call center happens.
Tomorrow night = home sweet home.
Maggie wrote a great book. No One Cares What You Had for Lunch, 100 Ideas for Your Blog. But each one of those ideas has its own ideas and variations. So, it’s actually like 1 Million Ideas for Your Blog. (You can use that, Maggie.)
In chapter 4, Take Your Time, which, incidentally, has the darlingest, tiniest picture of a glass of wine and a burning cigarette next to the page numbers, idea number 63 is: Make Contact.
You miss real mail. The kind with a stamp placed on the corner of the envelope and your address scrawled out in human handwriting. Get a P.O. box and turn your readers into pen pals. You can send postcards, bookmarks, photos, and small tokens of affection. Agree on themes for swaps and post photos of the results on your blog.
It might be cheating to take this challenge since I already have a P.O. box, but I’m not going to let that stop me. For a long time I’ve wanted to do a painting that has contributions from all over. If you aren’t familiar with my paintings, you can view them here. You’ll see that I use a lot of found objects like leaves, seeds, papers and twigs but I could also be using things like buttons or string or any small bit of a thing you have around the house.
So, send me stuff! Maybe only what fits in an envelope. I don’t want anyone having to pay lots of shipping. Make sure to include your name and where you live so I can give you credit both in my blog and on the final painting. I’ll post periodic shots of the painting getting done here so you can all see it coming together. I’m so excited!!
Send stuff here:
Leahpeah
543 Country Club Dr #B 538
Simi Valley, CA 93065 Updated to add: this address no longer works. Please email me for the address.
1. Jon has a thoroughly uber-rad step by step post up about how to get your photos looking awesome using Photoshop.
2. Tampon Crafts. Need I say more? Well, no. But I feel compelled to tell you that this information will very soon find its way into conversations with my kids. Some parents show naked baby pictures in front of friends. I talk about guns that shoot tampons at the dinner table. (via Schmutzie)
I don’t like Halloween. I know. Shut up.
Pretending to be someone I’m not is not fun for me. I tried for years just to figure out how to be myself. But beyond that, I don’t like to be scared. And there, my friend, goes pretty much all of the fun of Halloween. I try to be supportive. I want my kids to have a good time. But holy hell, I don’t do a very good job. You know that guy? That smells something bad? And you know it and even if he says, ‘Nope. I’m only smelling roses right now. Are you kidding me?’ you just know what he’s smelling is BAD because his face is in a grimace and his nose is squished and the look on his face says: This Smells Bad. That is me, people. That is me around Halloween. And no matter how much I try to pretend that I’m 100% behind the ghoulish mask my son wants to wear or the only slightly-not-slutty skirt my daughter wants to wear with the thigh-high tights (but there is a bow in my hair mommy! and a cane! it’s a bo beep outfit, not a streetwalker!), I just can’t deliver. I will never be a famous actress. Please wake me up around November 3rd after people have had a chance to take down their asinine decorations. I seem a bit petulant in this area. I cannot disagree with you.
1. Have you met M. Kennedy? I love her. And she is hijacking the entire month of November simply because she can. NaBloPoMo is your blog’s way of saying Wake Up! Write Me! I Love You! You might notice that I am not committing to the month long love fest but that is only because I am petulant and lazy, as noted above. But you might not be able to refuse her. She has badges. Badges!
2. Suebob wrote about a site the other day and I could not stop thinking about it. Who wants to help women? Me. Who wants to do what they can, even if it is >30$ a month? Me. Who cares about the state of the world? Me. Go check out Women for Women International.
1. Here is my video interview with Arianna Huffington. You can tell by the rosy-red hue of my makeup that I’m positively tickled to get to speak with her about her new book On Becoming Fearless.
2. Cooper Munroe’s article is very compelling, as is the video she links to encouraging women to get out and vote. More info at the WomensVoices, WomensVote website.
3. Are you looking for more accurate reading material for you and your children to share at bedtime? Sweet Juniper! has you covered. So worth the read.
1. New changes and updates over at Blogger Network. Thanks, Digital Pixie.
2. Have you seen the new JPG Mag? It’s a totally new way to appreciate your contributors. In my opinion, Derek and Heather are really on the cutting edge of the way things are going in online media to print. I love the new format of JPG and can’t wait to contribute. And, it’s not just photos. Are you a writer? Ya, they want that, too.
1. Tom Coates at Plasticbag.org highlighted the new Flickr cards from MOO.com. I ordered the free set of 10 which you can get if you are Flickr Pro. I can’t wait to see the quality and $20 for a set of 100 doesn’t seem unreasonable if the quality is good. I think they are fun. The discussion here in the comments is funny to me since no one said the cards were meant to exude professionalism. They are fun and the application makes it easy to crop and zoom to get the look you want.
2. I use Rock, Paper, Scissors all the time with the kids to decide important matters such as who sits shotgun, what tv program we watch and even who gets the last bit of ice cream. Nice to know I’m in good company. Via Kottke
I was lucky enough to speak with Gloria Steinem about Greenstone Media the other day. She and Jane Fonda, among other great women, have created a national radio network owned by women and featuring women. You can read what I took away from the call over at Huffington Post.
Also on the call were these classy ladies:
Que Sera Sera
Mommy Needs Coffee
Motherhood Uncensored
Her Bad Mother
Three New York Women
Brazen Careerist
Mom 101
Almost Literary
Pamela Slim
I did an interview with the amazing Amanda B of Very Zen once upon a time and while we were emailing back and forth, she promised me that at some point, she would get some music online for me to hear. And she did! And it’s here! And she’s good! And you should go listen!
Oh, Amanda! Thank you! Please, go to the recording studio or go sing at a nearby place so I can come and listen to you because I need MORE. Your voice is amazing!
1. The Geek dinner was great. Heathervescent has done a really great job of keeping the LA geeks together every month. It was nice to see her at Bogher in San Jose, too. And Danah, too!
While at the dinner I sat by the very funny Michael and I was lucky enough to meet lots of nice and smart people including Eric whom you must never tell that he looks kinda like Marky Mark, because C’MON that gets old. So don’t do that, Leah. (Oh, wait. That’s me. Sorry, Eric.) But he was very adept at getting the spoons to do amazing things.
2. I met Tantek Celik (shown here with the lovely Heather) for about 5 seconds and wished for much more time to talk since I think he is great. He has a recent post on his blog called ‘8 steps to serving better (X)HTML’ . It’s a good list. I aspire to have clean code that validates on my websites. Not there yet, but getting closer all the time. I find it gets difficult the more hands in the pot, you know? Sometimes following up after a number of coders doing the same project takes time.
A long time friend of Joe’s (and then luckily, friend of mine by default) has created Dandelife, a place to store your memories. Kelly Abbott calls it a Social Biography Network. He didn’t just create this as a hobby. He believes in it so much that he actually quit his job to do it full time. You could say that Dandelife is his life. (I know. Sorry.)
I tried it out a while back and realized that I could really use a place like Dandelife. It’s different than a blog in the way that you can chronologically write in the memories and stories of your life instead of what you ate for lunch yesterday. You can capture your story so you don’t forget it, and put in the details you might not want to go into on your blog but you do want somewhere. And, if you’re like me, it’s fun to see who else was doing things around the same time and where.
I asked Kelly a few questions about Dandelife and he was nice enough to answer.
LP: What was the inspiration for you to create Dandelife?
KA: Loved blogging a little too much, you could say. That’s the short version. The less-short version? Dandelife Origins – I’ve got 11 posts and counting on our blog that create some kind of picture as to why I would drop everything for Dandelife.
LP: What does Dandelife mean to you?
KA: What is it to me? It’s my baby. It’s funny, but I’ve been giving birth to this idea for many years. You can read some of those stories here. But what Dandelife means to me deeper, I suppose, than just a business. I often joke with people that it’s the culmination of my being. I love photos. I love storytelling. I love the Internet and community building online. In a way, Dandelife is the logical progression of bring all of those desires I have into one place.
LP: What kind of mark do you think Dandelife will leave on the world or with individuals?
KA: The mark that Dandelife should leave on individuals is simple: I want people who visit to be entertained by the stories people are sharing here. For the members who’ve signed up, I want their lives to be an archive of sorts. A trusted venue for housing their memories is important to do right. Which leads to the world at large. I want the community at Dandelife.com to reflect the world as it is. The stories people are sharing are quite different from the stuff you read about in your daily news. The connections being made run deeper than those you make at MySpace. What’s happening on Dandelife is very real – even if it is “virtual.”
LP: What is your favorite part of Dandelife?
KA: My favorite part hasn’t been developed yet. Users are giving me recommendations on a daily basis. That combined with the constant loop of ideas that we have going on internally, there are some pretty creative features coming. I can’t wait to tell you about them.
If you were to put my feet to the fire, then I’d have to admit that my favorite part right now is the timeline you see on the home page. It’s what our members love the most and seems to be what the blogosphere digs the most as well. People just love the idea of seeing their life – visually – at a glance. Keep hitting refresh on the home page and you’ll start to see some pretty neat stories popping up every time. I sometimes find that I’ve wasted an entire afternoon bouncing from one good story to the next. Of course, for me, that’s not an occupational hazard at all. 🙂 For you – I hope it’s a nice diversion from the daily grind.
Thanks, Kelly.
Is there a statute of limitations on how long the dirty clothes can stay in the pile in the middle of the living room? If there is, I think I may be pushing the limit. That and the sacks of used grocery bags, the hundreds and hundreds of used grocery bags sitting by the front door waiting to go to Whole Foods to be recycled.
I could actually pick up the dirty clothes and take them into the garage where the washer is. OR I could ACTUALLY put them IN the washer. Just a suggestion I’m making to myself. Since, you know, I like clean underwear and I might need some someday.
The downstairs bathroom is not working. That is not that big a deal since we have two of them upstairs, but after a few days, it gets OLD running upstairs every time you need to tinkle. We tend to wait until the last possible second to make the trip which I’m sure is hell on our kidneys but looks really entertaining when the Jehovah Witnesses drop by and get to witness the Pee Dance.
So, you might ask, why haven’t we fixed it yet? Well, a little thing called money, as in, not enough of it quite yet. But soon! Soon there will be fixed bathrooms for all!
Tonight is Barcamp Geek Meetup in Santa Monica. I think we will go. I need more geeks in my life.
ps. Go see Amanda’s head in a cowgirl hat keep popping up in her header.
