Take Al Gore's Challenge at http://www.wecansolveit.org & make a difference to stop climate change before it's too late. If You haven't seen his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", I really hope you will. Please see Gore's challenge in the video below. It brought me to tears. I really do believe we can solve this if we all work together!
This video is both very informative and very sad. It shows how the large amounts of plastic trash in the worlds oceans are killing off wildlife. Some of the discoveries are really shocking. I encourage you to watch the full video. If you plan to go on a cruise try to make sure the company properly disposes of its trash. Cruise ships are infamous for dumping!
Image via WikipediaJust a quick note to tell you all about some fantastic free software from Serif. I've been using Serif PhotoPlus 6 suite for several years, and it's a fantastic free way to get a lot of the same functionality as Adobe Photoshop provides. Unless you are a professional graphic designer, check it out. It seems to only be available in a Windows .exe format, but if you have a Mac that runs Windows, it should work. I've found it totally invaluable for editing photos! They also have lots of other great free programs like PagePlus which will work for most people as opposed to the very expensive Adobe Illustrator or Microsoft Publisher, DrawPlus for vector graphics and web animations, 3DPlus for creating 3D graphics and WebPlus for web site design. I haven't yet used DrawPlus or 3DPlus yet, but based on my experience with PagePlus and PhotosPlus, I'm looking forward to trying them out. WebPlus is also a very good web design program, but when it comes to any web design program I'm yet to find anything that really meets my needs. I'd really like to find any WYSIWYG program that doesn't alter your code every time you look at it in WYSIWYG mode! Doesn't seem to make a difference whose software it is, Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe GoLive, WebPlus, NVU, they all change your code and add all sorts of random and unnecessary stuff to it. Maybe there are new updates to those programs that have improved this, but I guess when it comes to web design I'm just a TextPad and Browser girl! If anyone out there has had some good experiences with WYSIWYG editors, please let me know. I think the only way I'd really like to have a comprehensive WYSIWYG program if there is something out there that will let me take a JPG, break it into parts and create clean CSS out of it. It seems like there just isn't anything out there that will let me lay a grid over an existing image, chop it apart into different images each with their own css
sections and add text and code from there. In my wildest dreams, I'd be able to combine all of this CSS/graphic design power with a totally customizable content management system (CMS). It seems like there are comprehensive programs out there for each of the individual steps (graphic design, CSS, CMS, AJAX), but no ultimately powerful program that lets you do it all, or even combine parts from existing programs into one. If anyone out there knows of anything like that, please let me know! If not, and someone out there knows a lot about actually building such a program, please let me know and I'd love to talk ideas!
For those of you out there reading this who are less into code, please don't be scared away from any of the free Serif programs that I mentioned above. They are fairly user-friendly for anyone who likes to work with photos on a slightly more technical basis. Serif also has relatively cheap ($10) upgrades to give you even more features on the programs. I hope you find them as helpful as I have!
I recently watched a presentation by Bjorn Lomborg on the TED website that talked about an economical approach to prioritizing the order in which we undertake solutions to fixing the major problems that face our world. Although the overall concept of picking a problem like AIDS, malnutrition, war and conflict, climate change, etc. and pouring all of our resources into solving them appeals to me, I feel his concept presents lots of problems.
I must admit, I haven't fully researched his plan beyond what I've watched online and a quick Wikipedia search, but I'm concerned with the black and white approach he takes to ordering the priorities. Here are my concerns:
1. How were the 10 biggest challenges picked? I agree that they are all important challenges to fix, but no explanation as to why these are the biggest and/or most important challenges to our world is presented. For example, why is eliminating AIDS any more important than eliminating any other major disease like Malaria, or for that matter all disease (communicable or not)?
2. It's nice to use cost analysis to prioritize solutions, but what about how big of an impact the solution will have on the world as a whole? In other words, maybe solving one of the problems that doesn't have the best cost/benefit ratio is actually more important because it will make the rest of the problems irrelevant. For example, is it really more "productive" to have saved millions of people from dying from AIDS only to have them die from drought related starvation because of climate change? (Note: Climate Change is placed on the bottom of his list because it costs the most to produce smallest amount of positive change).
3. It's not at all clear what the proposed solutions to solving these problems are, or how the cost of implementing the solutions was determined. If the idea is to solve malnutrition by throwing vitamin supplements at starving children, then that will cost a lot less, and probably be way less effective, than actually implementing sustainable farming practices and stable governments to support an economy and political environment conducive to a healthy diet. Also, some of these problems just don't have a clear solution. If everyone knew how to create world peace, we would at least have a starting point, but I don't know of any "solution" to conflict and war beyond solving the other problems already on the list. That is also assuming "solutions" for the other problems actually exist!
I hate to sound so pessimistic, but I feel like he is trying to break all of the world's problems into isolated little buckets that we can just add money to, and the problems will go away. I'm in total agreement that all of these challenges need to be addressed, but they are inexorably interconnected, so picking just one and "solving it" is not only impossible, it's irresponsible! I believe we need to work on solving all of these problems at the same time, otherwise we run the risk of failure because we are trying to extricate one problem from a web of problems that are all interrelated. I think a better approach is to come up with which challenges really impact all other challenges the most and/or have the overall biggest impact on our world, create a real plan for action on those challenges (keeping in mind all challenges are impacted by the solutions) and get to work. Of course the difficult part is to get everyone to agree on which is most important, how to actually solve the problems and getting the necessary funding.
I'm in total agreement with him that a scientist, politician, humanitarian, etc. are not individually equipped to determine what the biggest challenges are, or to determine which should have the highest priority, but I also don't agree that economists really hold the answer either. I think it's as a community working together and careful analysis of the interconnections between all of the worlds challenges that we can come up with better priorities.
I wish there was a quick solution to all of these challenges, but even if there isn't, I'm glad to be a part of the discussion on how to help make the world a better place for everyone and everything! I'm really encouraged by the new "green is cool" movement. Overall, I do think people are more aware and concerned about all of the problems we face. I think it is everyone's responsibility to help solve these problems. While a coordinated effort across the nations of this world would have the biggest and probably most effective impact, every small step helps!
Image via WikipediaOk, so I must admit, I like to hang on to a lot of stuff for sentimental purposes! For years, whenever I've totally worn out a t-shirt or sweatshirt that represented something fun or meaningful in my life, I've tucked it away in a box. My plan has been to use the logos to make a "memory blanket" that I could take out on picnics or use to keep warm on the couch in the winter. It's become one of those projects that I've always been meaning to do, always wanted to do, but frankly I'm unlikly to ever do. So there sit all of my memories in a big box on a shelf in the basement!
The other day I was poking around some of the online photo websites (KodakEasyShare in particular), and I noticed that one of the products they sell is a photo blanket where you can upload a picture and they will print it right onto the blanket for you. This gave me the crazy idea of using my fladbed scanner to scan high resolution images of the shirt logos, import them into one of the online photo sites, make a collage of the images and have it printed right onto a blanket. Frankly, I'm still not likely to get to this project for a while, but it gives me a much higher probability of actually getting it done when I'm not faced with the prospect of using my barely basic sewing skills to design and make a blanket myself! Hopefully the idea will work and the images will come out clear and nice on the blanket itself. I figure I can always use the actual old t-shirts as rags so I'm not just throwing them in the garbage! If I ever actually get around to this project, I'll let you know how it goes!
I ran across freecycle online not too long ago and decided to give it a try. We had some large pieces of fence that we didn't know what to do with and felt awful about just cutting them up and throwing them in the garbage. I remembered that I'd heard about an online movement where people could give things away they no longer wanted and could often find things they needed for free.
I signed up for my local freecycle yahoo group, posted the fence pieces, and within several hours I had over 20 people saying they would be happy to come pick them up. We ended up giving the fencing to the first couple that got back to us. They were going to use it for additional fencing for baby goats they were raising on their farm. It's a great feeling to really help people out, and all for something we were about to throw in the garbage! I actually started feeling bad that I couldn't give the fencing to everyone who emailed me!
We also really lucked out in getting a large bunch of beautiful ferns to plant in the shady part of our yard. We'd had it on our list for ages to get over to the garden store to buy ferns and next thing we knew someone posted on freecycle that they had tons of ferns they wanted to get rid of. We emailed them back, and were able to go get them the next day! The trick to using freecycle is that you've got to be quick to reply, otherwise you'll loose out on getting something you really want. Also, get use to people posting things that they would like, rather than what they are giving away. Although it can get annoying to see all of the "I want" ads, it has given me a lot of ideas for things I could get rid of to help unclutter our lives a little more.
Pros
1. All Images are open source so it's easier to add pics to posts without having to search multiple copyright-free image sources
2. It is great for generating ideas for new tags, images and links to items I wouldn't normally think about linking to.
Cons
1. More images and links should be available to choose from and many times a lot of the images are pretty irrelevant
2. More media types should be easily available (ex. video, sound)
3. The articles section should provide pop-up previws and more options to choose from (ex. major news sources, blogs, etc.)
4. The ability to add more than one image to a blog from their interface is a definite must! Currently only one can be added at a time without switching to html view, copying the code, adding a new image via their interface, going back to HTML mode and pasting in the earlier copied code. Definitely not user friendly!
5. When I click on a link to add to my post, it should give me the option to add the link to all instances of that word in my post or just the first occurrence. Currently it only adds it to the first occurrence.
Despite my rather long list of cons, I'm really excited about the tool and hope the Zemanta team keeps adding new features. It's a great concept and makes blogging a lot more fun!
I just learned of a new website called Zoomii. It's like going to an actual bookstore where you can browse the shelves by section, see covers and even read more detail about the book. Nice thing is, you get Amazon.com prices and it all links to your Amazon account so you can save items to your Amazon wishlist, or even navigate to Amazon to "look inside"the book or read user reviews. All you need to do is brew up a nice pot of coffee and you can even skip Barnes and Noble :)
Image via WikipediaThe New York Times has just reported that several pro-Hilllary opposed to-Obama blogs may have been blocked by Google. Luckily my blog didn't seem to get impacted, however that subject is just a small part of my blog unlike some of the blogs that appear to have been blocked. I don't care what your political views are, even if I disagree with them, you still have the right to express them! Lets hope they set this straight.
On a slightly related note, it's unfortunate that McCain has become even scarier than he was before. His switching around his position on offshore drilling and his potential influence over the Supreme Court are pretty scary. It's unfortunate that our only real choices for president are two people who seem to do whatever is politically convenient for themselves at any given moment. Not that most politicians are any different, but I feel I'm stuck picking between flip flopping lunacy and total inexperience with immaturity. We'll have to see what happens, but I'm still leaning towards writing in Hillary. I'll only vote for Obama if the McCain prospect is just too overwhelmingly dangerous for the country. If that happens I'll certainly not be voting for Obama, just against McCain. It's sad!
Image via WikipediaJust a quick note to tell you all about some fantastic free software from Serif. I've been using Serif PhotoPlus 6 suite for several years, and it's a fantastic free way to get a lot of the same functionality as Adobe Photoshop provides. Unless you are a professional graphic designer, check it out. It seems to only be available in a Windows .exe format, but if you have a Mac that runs Windows, it should work. I've found it totally invaluable for editing photos! They also have lots of other great free programs like PagePlus which will work for most people as opposed to the very expensive Adobe Illustrator or Microsoft Publisher, DrawPlus for vector graphics and web animations, 3DPlus for creating 3D graphics and WebPlus for web site design. I haven't yet used DrawPlus or 3DPlus yet, but based on my experience with PagePlus and PhotosPlus, I'm looking forward to trying them out. WebPlus is also a very good web design program, but when it comes to any web design program I'm yet to find anything that really meets my needs. I'd really like to find any WYSIWYG program that doesn't alter your code every time you look at it in WYSIWYG mode! Doesn't seem to make a difference whose software it is, Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe GoLive, WebPlus, NVU, they all change your code and add all sorts of random and unnecessary stuff to it. Maybe there are new updates to those programs that have improved this, but I guess when it comes to web design I'm just a TextPad and Browser girl! If anyone out there has had some good experiences with WYSIWYG editors, please let me know. I think the only way I'd really like to have a comprehensive WYSIWYG program if there is something out there that will let me take a JPG, break it into parts and create clean CSS out of it. It seems like there just isn't anything out there that will let me lay a grid over an existing image, chop it apart into different images each with their own css 
Image via WikipediaOk, so I must admit, I like to hang on to a lot of stuff for sentimental purposes! For years, whenever I've totally worn out a t-shirt or sweatshirt that represented something fun or meaningful in my life, I've tucked it away in a box. My plan has been to use the logos to make a "memory blanket" that I could take out on picnics or use to keep warm on the couch in the winter. It's become one of those projects that I've always been meaning to do, always wanted to do, but frankly I'm unlikly to ever do. So there sit all of my memories in a big box on a shelf in the basement!
I just learned of a new website called Zoomii. It's like going to an actual bookstore where you can browse the shelves by section, see covers and even read more detail about the book. Nice thing is, you get Amazon.com prices and it all links to your Amazon account so you can save items to your Amazon wishlist, or even navigate to Amazon to "look inside"the book or read user reviews. All you need to do is brew up a nice pot of coffee and you can even skip Barnes and Noble :)
Image via Wikipedia
Image via WikipediaThe New York Times has just reported that several pro-Hilllary opposed to-Obama blogs may have been blocked by Google. Luckily my blog didn't seem to get impacted, however that subject is just a small part of my blog unlike some of the blogs that appear to have been blocked. I don't care what your political views are, even if I disagree with them, you still have the right to express them! Lets hope they set this straight.
