#391 - Pop Candy Featured Reader

As I think I've mentioned before, my favorite blog is USA Today's Pop Candy. Author Whitney Matheson has tons of great suggestions for people like me who love all things pop culture, and though I don't always agree with her (I'm not a big comic book fan, for example), I get a kick out of her writing and suggestions. Well, a couple of weeks ago she decided to start asking readers to submit pop-culture related "Top Five" lists. Of course I had to write one! I'm proud to share today's new thing: I am today's featured reader on the USA Today Pop Candy blog! I wrote a list of dream (fictional) high schools I wish I could have gone to, including the schools from TV shows Friday Night Lights, Glee, Gilmore Girls, Saved by the Bell, and finally Freaks and Geeks. I'm so proud!

#334 - Wordle

I stumbled on wordle.net today, and so of course I had to make a "wordle" from this blog! What is a wordle? Well, to quote the website, it's a word cloud that gives prominence to the words that appear more frequently in the text. I tried to make this image larger, but it just won't work, so you'll just have to visit wordle, type in my blog address (or any address you like) and see what happens for yourself! You can change the colors, font, directions of the words - it's like an art project with words! I think it's pretty neat!

#330 - Map O' Readers

Many, many posts ago I tried to install a blog visitor counter, which never quite worked properly. So today I installed a new widget: the Feedjit Live Traffic Map. This suggestion came from my friend and fellow blogger, who was part of our mini-reunion over the weekend, since she enjoys the map on her blog. I found it on the web easily, downloaded and had it installed in two shakes of a leg. Now I'm interested to see where all of you are located (since I hardly ever get any comments from anybody, maybe this will give me some perspective on who's keeping up with us!)

#247 - Photoshop Disasters

In the past few weeks, I discovered the website Photoshop Disasters. Since I took a class in editing in college, and have a little history with desktop publishing, I love this site. Photoshop can do amazing (and scary) things! Tonight I sent in a submission to the site, taken from page 45 of the July 7, 2008 People magazine (see photo). I think the singing girl's right leg looks like somebody erased half of it, and it's creepy to look at. I hope they agree and will post my submission in the future - but in the meantime, take a look at the site for some other terrible things that have been published... I always get a good laugh.

#216 - Pop Candy Hotline

This afternoon, I called and spoke with Whitney Matheson, author of my favorite pop culture blog on USA Today. Like today, Whitney occasionally hosts a call-in hotline for crazy pop culture junkies like myself to call and talk about any subject we like. It took about 15 minutes to get through being on hold, and she told me I was the last caller she was taking today. I was a little nervous, since I knew she'd be recording all her calls... but after thanking her for helping me achieve my new thing of the day (!) I asked her if she thought today's audiences would like the new Muppet movie or the new Fraggle Rock movie better. We chatted for a few moments about each franchise and decided no matter what the public decides, we'll probably both like the Muppet movie better.

#180 - LOL Dog

This afternoon I created this submission to icanhascheezburger.com featuring a photo of our girl Penny. I love this website, and if you have never visited, give it a shot because some of the stuff people come up with crack me up.

#157 - The Tax Man

My fantastic husband has finished our taxes. But for the first time ever, we used one of those computer programs you purchase to help with your taxes, and we filed online! In years past, we've done it on paper, and once we hired someone at one of those companies to help. But not this year... he worked on-and-off most of the day, with a miniscule amount of help from me, and we were both impressed with the level of ease it afforded us, and we're both so glad this project is done for another year.

#144 - TLG Loves the Computer

Our little guy has used the computer before, but always carefully supervised, sitting on my lap. Today, while my hubby was out picking up dinner and I was hanging laundry, I logged on to the Curious George website through pbs.org and set up our laptop on TLG's small kitchen table. Then I handed him the mouse, showed him how to start a video clip and take "pictures" through one of the games, and I walked into the laundry room, giving him free reign of the computer. This is another small step in TLG's growing up album, and I took a photo because it was just so darn cute. We don't usually watch Curious George on TV because it's on at a funny time of day, but he was enthralled with the video clips and thought it was fun to click the mouse to take a still-frame photo. Adorable.

#123 - You're on Candid Camera

You're not really on Candid Camera, but since nobody ever leaves any comments here I thought I'd install a site tracker that will tell me how many people are visiting this site. There's a website called createblog.com that assigns unique counters to blog sites like this one, so I figured out how to sign up and hook it up this evening. So from now on, I can feel like I'm not just writing for me but I can see if anybody's paying attention! (It would be much easier if you just wrote to say hello once in a while.)

#118 - Memory Exercises

This evening I was talking to a family member who has noticed a change in her memory retention over the past few months. In an effort to help, I decided that a new thing for today would be to research short-term memory exercises. Unfortunately, many of the things I came up with are things that wouldn't help in my family member's case, including pneumonic devices, concentrating harder, and engaging your brain to remember simple things like numbers. There were also plenty of memory games like I played when I was young, using pictures, logos and audio clips... again, not terribly helpful in this case. I did stumble across a few studies about the links between exercise and short-term memory... if I lived closer to this family member, I'd volunteer to walk together, because really, who couldn't use a little more exercise?

#100 - On a Soapbox

My hubby and his parents tease me about when I'm going to run for mayor because of my involvement in community issues. I've never really been one to take an active interest in politics - I usually have more of a critical, what-have-they-done-now view. But I am registered to vote and I always participate, even in the primaries. A few days ago, I took an online quiz that matched my opinions with the current candidates running for President. With the Nevada primaries only 11 days away, I was interested in the candidate who supposedly matched my views the closest. The answer: Barack Obama. So tonight, though I've never been this interested in the presidential race before, I visited Obama's website to see for myself. (In the past, I usually relied on my local newspaper and my own gut reaction to help me choose.) After looking through many of the issues I'm opinionated on (in?) I'd have to say I'd consider voting for him... his views on Iraq, immigration, education, and health care all mirror my own. I've been wholly unsatisfied with the current politics on these issues, so it would be a relief to have some change in sight.

#69 - Language translator

I've been thinking about how strange it is to have so many languages on the same planet. I mean, when Adam and Eve came to the garden of Eden, there was only one language. Somewhere along the line different languages became necessary. And now, many people only speak one language. Today I played with an Internet-based language translator to see how different languages really are from one another. I asked it to translate the phrase "I try to do one new thing every day." and here's what I got:

Intento hacer una nueva cosa cada día. (English to Spanish)
J'essaye de faire une nouvelle chose chaque jour. (English to French)
Ich versuche, eine neue Sache jeden Tag zu tun. (English to German)
Eu tento fazer uma coisa nova cada dia. (English to Portuguese)
Provo a fare una nuova cosa ogni giorno. (English to Italian)
Я пытаюсь сделать одну новую вещь каждый день. (English to Russian)
Προσπαθώ να κάνω ένα νέο πράγμα κάθε ημέρα. (English to Greek)
私は毎日1 つの新しい事をすることを試みる。(English to Japanese)
나는 매일 1개의 새로운 일을 한것을 해본다. (English to Korean)
我設法做一件新事每天。(English to traditional Chinese)

None of these seem particularly similar to me, though the Spanish and Portuguese have a few words in common. No wonder people across the globe don't get along - we can't even communicate very well.

#9 - The internet has taken over my life

Today, not only did I use the internet to talk to friends all over the country via e-mail, catch up on the news, and use a blog to communicate... I used the internet to apply for something big (this post has been specifically kept vague, just in case). I remember the days when I was worried about sending personal information over the internet, and it wasn't even that long ago that I didn't really navigate the web often (or easily). These days, though, it's second nature, and I hardly even bat an eye at being asked to do new things. Isn't it interesting how the internet has been so sneaky as to take over my life?!? Today's activity was actually really easy and a lot less stress than the traditional way. Wow.