Princess Layla the Bubble Killer

Just a quick post, to introduce Layla, hunter of bubbles. She has to catch every one, and we need more bubble solution to help burn off her excess energy.

This is one good photo I took out of 40. She decided to play Blur the Picture.

I think it might be a favorite game of hers. Others include:

• Steal Stella's Shoe and Prance Around With It
• Chase the Ice Cube
• Run Flying Puppy circles Across the Room for No Apparent Reason
• Leaping Lick the Face
  and
• Wrestle the Kitchen Rug.

Now all we need is the flying cars

The future is now! As we were just saying on the phone :D

First of all, Philips introduces "Lumalive" Fabric, which is just, as a concept...

0_0

There's also a youTube vid.

Now if only they could crank up the resolution... but still.


So as I was saying - the future is, kinda, now. Ipods have finally gone way down in price, *and* are with video. In 2003 my parents paid $500 for a 3rd gen 30GB! Playstation 3 and the next Nintendo system (HTH does one say "Wii" and not sound like an ass..?) are actually finally COMING OUT. Wikipedia is for better or worse becoming the effective repository of all human knowledge, which gives me oddly giddy geek I-told-you-so feelings for some reason, and mapquest and maps google have totally changed the way everyone I know navigates. And you can zoom in on your HOUSE. Our neighbors have some crazy pools apparently. Suddenly *everyone* has a site on the internet, thanks to MySpace & co., no matter how Ba-Dong the design can be.

Google has become a freaking VERB.

And of course there's the Best ScreenSaver EVER - Electric Sheep.

Now you don't even have to download nuthin to see check it out, although personally I think in terms of sheer *pretty* the current flock WAY outstrips these videos. I just found that some of the sheep guys are now on MySpace - They have some youtube stuff, and some google vids. (Tons of free video and image hosting - yet another flyingCarsIsm.) Also hifisheep.com did what *I* was wishing for all along.

Creator of Electric Sheep on MySpace


He also has a google vid somewhere where he did a lecture at google, it was lengthy at an hour long, but so very informative. It answered a ton of questions I had about the sheep.

Awesome Sheep designer's myspace

Opposite of a desert tree at sunset

Opposite of a desert tree at sunset
Originally uploaded by Kusmeroglu.

I've been looking through pictures tonight, a little cruise down memory lane, and found this one, which I always meant to put up somewhere. I think it's a unique sort of play on the familiar desert tree picture. The background is the shops along college ave, picture taken in a winter storm twilight at penn state, 2005.

Research Project

I'm doing an undergrad research project on combining social bookmarking information with internet search. I'm trying to determine if adding tags to search results speeds up the process of finding the page you are looking for. Please help out by filling out this 5 minute questionnaire, I need all the responses I can get.

Thanks!

Aikido

I've taken a couple Aikido sessions with Penn State's local Aikido club, and I have to say that it's a lot more interesting than I originally thought. I've always been big on cross training, but Gung-fu always has the sweet spot in my heart. Gung-fu and all the other circular arts resonate with me much more. (I guess I'm just not a brute force linear kinda girl) At any rate, Aikido seems to have perfected the circular-ness of martial arts. It's so good, that even having some experience in martial arts (though I'm still very much a beginner), it still seems like magic when you execute a move right, and your partner just falls over. (Likewise, when someone gets a move right on you, and you find yourself on the ground) I also really like Aikido manner: they don't have any aggressiveness to them at all, no hands up in guard position stances, they just chill out and wait for the attack to be their opportunity. I'll have to drill breakfalling more, so I don't break any more collarbones, but I definitely suggest anyone that's into martial arts to at least try Aikido out, or practice with an Aikido student and let them show you what it's all about.

Disturbing things in the newspaper

I picked up a copy of USA Today to browse over lunch. (Apparently the new policy of not eating or drinking in classrooms means that people aren't leaving newspapers around for me to read second hand) It's been a while since I had the time to look in a paper, and I was surprised as some things I found in there. The article on higher education statistics, for one: The US only has a 35% college participation rate, and a measly 17% completion rate. 17%! I assume that community colleges and the like are a larger part of this than Penn State, but that still seems like such a low number, especially coming from my point of view. Craziness.

The other thing that I thought ridiculous: A book review of 'World War Z' by Max Brooks (review by Deirdre Donahue). I've never heard of the book, but zombies are always interesting, unless you say this about the book: "Brooks' clever premise is that a virus has turned people into the undead. Hordes of flesh-devouring zombies roam the earth, hunting down and infecting the living. Governments, armies, doctors, economies collapse in turn." Wow, how original and clever! Wait.. I must have missed something, that's the same premise of every zombie story I've heard of. (Doctors collapsing?) I'm going to go ahead and assume that Brooks' way of telling the tale might actually possess "more creativity and zip than entire crates of other new fiction titles", but still.