Techy-Feely

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Nerdy Chicks Rule

January 31, 2012 ajwms One comment

Some of my best summers were spent at Lutheridge, a summer camp outside of Asheville, North Carolina. I went there as a camper and then worked several summers while in college and when I was teaching high school. It was a great, creative and energetic time in my life.

One of my friends from that time is Kami Kinard, who is now a published author. (Check out her book, The Boy Project). She also has a blog called Nerdy Chicks Rule. I was surprised and honored when she asked me to be interviewed on her blog. So, I got to share some of my techy-feelyness with other folks around the world!

And, I got to share my love for Song Charts one more time!

fun, Links, personal blogs, interview, kami kinard

RIP Steve

October 6, 2011 ajwms No comments

I have really only cried when two celebrities died: Roberto Clemente and Jim Croce. I was much younger then, of course, but while I have been saddened by the loss of a favorite singer, actor or other celebrity, I have not really been moved to tears in a long time until I heard this morning about the death of Steve Jobs.

I am an unabashed Apple fangirl and I have been since my first experiences with the Apple II during undergraduate school and the time that a friend brought over this new computer called a Macintosh..it was cute. Small. “Portable”. And this mouse thing was really something else. I was hooked and have been ever since.

Several models later, a few iPods, iPads and so on (except for the iPhone – never had that), I remain brand loyal and a big Steve fan. Yes, he has an ego. Yes, he sometimes pushes things that I don’t think are the best move but by golly, his vision wins and then all of the sudden we realize that we didn’t know we needed (fill in the technology here) but we certainly cannot live with out it now!

His vision of technology is one of beauty, simplicity, power, creativity and fun. How can you not love that?

Some things to share about Steve Jobs:

A nice video tribute from Gizmodo using the text from the Think Different campaign

Lovely tribute photo and text

An oral history interview from the Smithsonian.

11 Best Steve Quotes (via Huffington Post)

His Stanford commencement speech:

Image via Tom Davenport

Feely, personal, ruminations apple, fangirl

Free Range Social Media and Linking to Others

September 15, 2011 ajwms No comments

I am continually inspired the more I read and learn from Brene Brown’s work on vunerability and whole-hearted living. Then, the other day, I was visiting her blog and noticed this badge:

I was intrigued. In a nutshell, Free-Range Social Media encourages you to share yourself openly, use others for inspiration but not for wholesale copying and not to hide behind the easy to use anonymity that many social media/networking sites allow you to do. You can read more at her FRSM page.

I have shared her TED talk earlier here and I just re-watched it yesterday. It really speaks to me and I think I need to watch it a few times a year just to remind myself of how I need to work on being open and honest. At the first part of her talk, she states that we are all hard-wired for connection. This is the same conclusion that the author of the common book we all read last year at my college drew in his book: The Geography of Bliss. It is all about relationships and connecting.

In this hypertexted/hashtagged world of social networking, I began thinking about how we connect beyond just the basic communication tools like texting, comments, email (oh so 2009) and so on. We also link to each other’s work, pass along URLs via Twitter, post YouTube videos on Facebook, etc.

Brene Brown also links to another person’s badge called Link with Love, which has this badge:

This reminded me of Alan Levine’s definition of “linktribution“, which I latched onto right away, of course, this approach’s definition is much more “feely” so it works on a different level, I suppose. It is about accepting responsibility for what you do online, respecting the intellectual property of others and yourself and protecting those rights.

And, it also seems to ring more true for the connections and relationships. If you choose to link to something, it makes sense to share it in the world appropriately and with respect to whoever created it. You would expect the same from someone else.

I think I have always tried to follow the precepts of the Free-Range Social Media but I will be aware even more.

featured, Feely, personal, ruminations

My Auto History

June 10, 2011 ajwms One comment

A friend bought a new car this week. Well, new to her. And, my “new” car is about 4 months old now. Made me think about the progression of cars in my life and I thought I would capture it here:

First Car: 1969 Plymouth Satellite (with a huge dent in the trunk lid) – we could cram 8 folks in there and make it to the Rocky Horror Picture Show during college. Great fun. This car is the one that taught me the importance of paying attention to the Oil Level warning light.

1980 Plymouth Horizon – with awesome louvers on hatchback. Thanks to hail damage during a tornado in South Carolina, I paid college tuition that year with this car

Volkswagon Dasher Wagon – loved it! I could fit my entire life into that station wagon. Looked a lot like this one:

Image: ‘Volkswagon Dasher‘

1984 Volkswagon Rabbit – equally loved it. Sunroof that cranked open

1990 Geo Prizm – I liked the scientific name

Acura Legend – bought from my parents. Fun car to drive

1998 Honda Civic – the purple juicebox

2010 Honda Insight – my current car which is a techy-feely dream.

Image: ‘Gone ~ Econ‘

fun, personal

My life in Pummelvision

February 15, 2011 ajwms No comments

Thanks to Alan Levine aka CogDog (who I get to meet next week at ITC eLearning 2011!), I have fallen for Pummelvision, which takes the last 2000 photos in our Flickr account (or DailyBooth Dropbox Facebook and Tumblr) and makes them into a movie that is then auto-magically (if you give it they keys) to YouTube or Vimeo. Sweet!

As they say, your life flashes before your eyes and I see that I have been some places (or at least I only upload photos of places i have been). Give it a shot if you take shots. I might have to revisit my Project 365 set and give that a whirl as well.

fun, infographic, multimedia, personal

Science Videos – appealing to all sides of the brain?

November 16, 2010 ajwms No comments

You may or may not be able to tell that I am a science nerd. I used to teach high school chemistry, physics and math, so it seems only natural. Even though my career path has taken me away from science education, I still really do love it. So, when I saw this video called “Chemical Party”, I just thought it was a brilliant mix of the joy of teaching science along with solid educational concepts within the content.

Enjoy.

It reminds me of the other science related media that I have loved like:

The Element Song by Tom Leher

And, of course, any Schoolhouse Rock like Electricity (although their science entries were weaker than the math, politics and grammar ones). I was privileged to hear the creators of the series at a conference a few years ago. They related that the idea came from observing that one of their sons could not learn the multiplication tables but could memorize the lyrics for every Jimi Hendrix song.

And, the wonderful tunes from They Might Be Giants:

Feely, multimedia, personal, Techy

Blog Action Day: Have you done your calculations?

October 15, 2010 ajwms No comments

Here at Techy-Feely, if you spend anytime at all looking over past posts, you will see that I am a big fan of the online quizzes found, well, everywhere! While I have pretty much stopped doing them in Facebook because they are smackdab full o’ viruses and crud, they are still pretty fun.

But, the most useful of these quizzes are those that allow you to reflect and record your use of our natural resources and calculate how much impact you have on this earth of ours. The Water Calculator from H2OConserve is a great example of it.

I just ran through it and got these results:

Your Water Footprint
Your total household water use is 1,601.84 gallons per day
Your individual water use is 800.92 gallons per day

This is ok. Below the average for Americans but, frankly, I expected better. I have low flow faucets and I have low capacity toilets. This summer was HOT and the garden was watered a good deal as were some other plants in the yard. I am going to take these results and try to commit to do even better. Shorter showers and shutting off the faucet when brushing my teeth are two places to start. I also need to look at a rain barrel so I hope to do that shortly.

Have you calculated your water use?
What are you doing to help save water, our most important resource for life here?

This post was part of the Blog Action Day 2010. Join in!

Image: ‘websters falls revisited‘

Take Action!

Change.org|Start Petition

personal, ruminations

What’s in your collection? Is it changing?

August 1, 2010 ajwms No comments

At a recent unconference I attended, the “keynote” speaker, closed his remarks by listing some things that can help you live, in his opinion, an “authentic” life. He said these actions help you create a Point of View that is yours and yours alone.
These were:

Create memories (his suggestion was to participate in a Project 365 kind of activity and post it publicly) = Done!
Have a blog = Um…Done!
Make things (real things not digital) = Hmmm. I make messes. Does that count?
Have a collection. He said something like collect something that is unsung because that elevates it to important. He also said, while you needed to be passionate about whatever you collect, you don’t want to be viewed as crazily obsessed. (He said this all much more eloquently)

I starting thinking about collections. I was always collecting things as I grew up. I had my Dad’s stamp collection for a while and I added to it a bit. I collected rocks and bits of other natural materials during treks to various spots on earth. More recently, I enjoyed the 10 year run of collecting the state quarters. I tried to do it with my nephew as he was turning 1 when it started but he really didn’t get into it like I had hoped.

One thing that I have always collected, though, were the tickets to concerts, plays and, sometimes, movies that I have seen. There are some prize ones:

The ticket to see Hal Holbrook’s one man show, Mark Twain Tonight. We got to go backstage and he autographed it. I was in junior high school at the time.
A ticket to the Newport Folk Festival. After the concert, my friends and I went to eat and Emily Saliers from Indigo Girls came in shortly after. As she was walking by, we caught her eye and told her how much we enjoyed their show. She was very kind and signed the ticket at the end of our short conversation
The ticket to see Bette Midler back in 1983 at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. I didnt’ think I would ever see her. (I have since added the ticket to see her in Las Vegas earlier this year)
Front row seats to Yaz (aka Yahoo in the UK), a favorite group from the 1980s that I also had abandoned hope of every hearing live until my youngest brother found out about their short reunion tour in the US and we met in Chicago to catch a show.

And the list goes on.

I kept them in large manila envelopes for years and a few years ago, I dismantled a toy drum set I had also had for years and now I store the tickets in the bass drum of the set in a “sculpture’ I created (hey, I do make things!) for my office.

Why does this even matter, you may ask? Good question. The most recent concert I attended (Mary Chapin Carpenter in a great downtown smaller venu) didn’t really have a ticket. I bought the ticket online and chose the “Print at Home” option to avoid having to pay mailing fees. That makes sense and I didn’t really think about it until I got home from the show and thought abou putting my ticket in the drum. I have a piece of paper with a barcode on it and the seat assignments. Not a cool rectangle of paperboard with colors and such. Not even a thermal printed ticket. Just a regular piece of paper out of my printer.

Hmmmm….

Certainly, I love the convenience of buying tickets online. I like being able to pick seats (if possible on the site) and I like not having to stand in line. But, do I want to trade that in for losing my beloved collectible? I can pay the extra fee so, I guess the decision is more – is my collection worth it?

Do I want to keep getting this?

Or just keep going with this?

I just am wondering what other collections folks have that could possibly be replaced as technology moves forward. Will we keep having stamps? Perhaps coins will go away too? There will always be those who will continue to collect these items, it will just be harder and more expensive so new collectors probably will be fewer.

What will replace it? QR Codes? Media Storage formats (replacing the LP and cassette collections of today?)

I guess the point is to have a passion for something but I am not sure you can keep changing the focus of that passion with the pace that our technology and what it produces is changing.

featured, personal, ruminations

Circle of Life

June 8, 2010 ajwms 2 comments

It’s the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life

I took a workshop a few years ago about finding your life’s purpose. It was an appeal to my Feely side and it turned out to be much more beneficial than I dreamed it could be. The end result of the day-long seminar was to create a personal mission statement. It was supposed to be short enough and easy enough to remember if you were being held at gunpoint and asked to recite it. After going through several worksheets to help identify verbs and values that should be included in the statement, I eventually derived this statement:

My life’s purpose is to illuminate, celebrate and participate in the circle of life with friends, family and the Universe.

I like it. The verbs really resonate with me and what I find valuable, useful and important in life- both at work and not. It also was important to me to recognized the Circle of Life as I know it is constantly moving and must be a part of how we live in this world.

Parts of the circle of life are easy for celebration and participation. Birthday parties. Graduation. Weddings. First bike ride. All kinds of things. And, some parts are harder.

Yesterday, I had to participate in one of the hard parts of the circle of life as I said good-bye to my dog, Haleakala. From a post I wrote back during my Project 365:

Back in March 1999, this skinny scared dog showed up in our yard upon returning from a trip to Hawaii. We named her Haleakala and on April 22, 1999 (Earth Day) she came inside the house for the first time. So, we declared Earth Day as her unofficial birth day. She got some treats from a vendor at yesterday’s Earth Fest. She loves them!!!

Saying good-bye to her was one of the hardest things I ever have had to do. She was diagnosed with cancer three months ago and the decline started shortly after that. It is a gift that we can prevent suffering and pain but it is a hard gift to give.

But, I want to celebrate her life and what she gave to me.

I went through my Flickr account and pulled together a slideshow of good, bad and ugly photos of her over the past 4 years or so. You can see what a pretty girl she is.