Tuesday, August 16, 2011

The Phantom Tollbooth

The Phantom Tollbooth was one of my most favorite books when I was a kid...still is one of my favorites in fact! :)

Michael Cabon does an excellent job of capturing the wonder of reading the book and draws appopropriate attention to the amazing vocabulary in it!

'The Phantom Tollbooth' and the Wonder of Words:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/apr/21/michael-chabon-phantom-tollbooth-wonder-words/

Monday, August 15, 2011

Roaming Free

Apparently there's a stubborn German cow evading capture after she escaped from the commune she lived on. I can't say as I blame her... :D

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/08/15/139648411/yvonne-a-cow-wrapped-in-a-mystery-inside-a-forest

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Encouragement

Habakkuk 1:2-
O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
   and you will not hear?
Or cry to you "Violence!"
   and you will not save?

But the Lord replies in verse 5-
"Look among the nations, and see;
   wonder and be astounded.
For I am doing a work in your days
   that you would not believe if told."

No, we can't always see what the Lord is doing right now, and it may appear that everything is against us, but He is doing wonderful things that we don't even believe possible. :)

(As an interesting note: neither Firefox nor Blogger flagged "Habakkuk" as being misspelled! That's impressive.)

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Take a Challenge

I came across this the other day. It's kind of a cool idea, though I wish there were a website like it that wasn't just "world-improving" challenges, but rather a wider variety of things, because it would be kind of fun. Does anyone know of a website like that?

Discover new experiences that improve your world: http://bolder.is/

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Quality of Design

Interesting thoughts on quality of design vs. quality of manufacture.

Defining Quality: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/07/defining-quality.html

One thought that occurred to me is that on a very basic level you can apply the formula [(result of work effort)/(total costs)] to making something yourself as opposed to buying it. At some point the cost (time/money) outweighs the quality of results you get by making x yourself, at which point, unless you have unlimited amounts of time, you would probably be better off purchasing x product.

Monday, August 1, 2011

New Endeavor

This is my new (newest?) blog. I've pretty much deserted my other blog because I simply don't have time to write long posts about what's going on in my life. (Besides the fact that I'm doing good to keep up with life, let alone write about it!)

But I felt like posting something and having some blog presence again, so I set this up. It will mostly be a place to share links and my thoughts on them (rather than posting all of them on Facebook), and also the occasional post from me if I have something to mention briefly.

It's something along the lines of what most people are using their Tumblr pages for, but I like Blogger's system and I'm used to it, so unless I think of some good reason to change, I will stick with Blogger. You do have the advantage on Tumblr of being able to post music files, but I have a Tumblr account/page somewhere so if I feel the urge to post something that's not on YouTube I can just link to it.