Analyze your writing style: I Write Like
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: miscellanea

Ok people.  Here I am checking in just often enough that they don't delete my account...Oh wait, my steady payments probably do that.  Well, I finally got to looking at things besides work and my own projects and I saw this handy/funny/interesting/whatever little analysis tool for telling you which writer you write like.  Since we all love it when other people, or logarithms, tell us about us, I decided it wouldn't be in the public's best interest not to share.

So go to I Write Like: http://iwl.me/ and find out who you write like.  Judging from one of the blog entries on this here very blog.  I write like Ursula K. Le Guin.  I have to admit I have never read her work, but I like her name.  It's snazzy.

language randomness
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Noisettes - "Count of Monte Cristo"
Topic: miscellanea

Did you ever wonder about these? - 'cause I have had to look it up repeatedly...

 i.e.

"I.e." stands simply for "that is," which written out fully in Latin is 'id est'. "I.e." is used in place of "in other words," or "it/that is." It specifies or makes more clear.

 e.g.

"E.g." means "for example" and comes from the Latin expression exempli gratia, "for the sake of an example," with the noun exemplum in the genitive (possessive case) to go with gratia in the ablative (prepositional case). "E.g." is used in expressions similar to "including," when you are not intending to list everything that is being discussed.

 

Mail Me Art Two!
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: miscellanea

 

I just remembered to check to see if my envelopes made it to  Mail Me Art Two, and if you look see, you'll see that they did.  That's what I saw anyway.  I was lucky enough to be included among some fabulous artists in the first book that this project generated, and honestly, I had never considered dressing up my envelopes until this project, so I'm thankful for the enlightening.  You'll see there, the second envelope is Levi Levi and his assistant--he's gone all international and stuff --guess I better get back to drawing him.

Blast from the Past
Mood:  bright
Topic: miscellanea

More past than I am actually.

 "Doesn't
Kiss you
Like she useter?
Perhaps she's seen
A smoother rooster!!
Burma-Shave"

More slogans here.  Why can't advertising be this comfortably corny today?

Compulsion
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: miscellanea

I had a irresistible desire to hear this quote from the movie Tombstone, and I discovered that the internet has become THE COOLEST THING EVER!  I went searching, but honestly didn't think I'd find a cute, embeddable little snippet of exactly the phrase I wanted to hear.

 Oh yeah, I'm still here.

 

Reading dictionaries
Mood:  spacey
Topic: miscellanea

I'm still trying my best to Japonese but, just like there is no time to write--I'm sure you noticed--there is very little time to study.

Anyway, I was digging around in Denshi Jisho (awesome Japanese online dictionary) to find all the different ways to say but--you know, like however, although, yet, in spite of-- and I came across some proverb type entries.  This one really stuck with me.  I mean, I suppose I like the meaning behind 'you can't judge a book by its cover' but the phrase has been so over-used, I'm kind of tired of it.  So when our language gets too cliched, lets move on!

提灯に釣り鐘

(ちょうちんにつりがね) means : paper lanterns and temple bells (esp. as an example of two things looking similar on the outside, but of a completely different nature); you can't judge a book by its cover.  I especially like how the whole proverb has boiled down to a grouping of two nouns unlike most of ours that are still doled out in complete sentences.

I do do stuff when I lapse in writing, I do.
Mood:  bright
Topic: miscellanea

astonished in library land
Mood:  chatty
Now Playing: "Ride Bent" -- Asakusa Jinta
Topic: miscellanea

Its time for one of those rare trips into my professional brain.  As I was working the other day I came across something that had me absolutely flabbergasted.

First, a little background:  OCLC is a shared catalog that lists the holdings of libraries all over the country and beyond.  Not every library is in it, but its enough to find just about any book you'd ever dream of.  The public side of this massive system is Worldcat/Firstsearch, and I was here when I found a record for a blog. 

I am well aware that anything can be cataloged, and I suppose that by cataloging web material into library systems, libraries can fight back against the giant shadow of Google that we're constantly told to be afraid of.  But, but.....really?  I expanded my poking around a bit more and found cataloged in Worldcat/Firstsearch a website and blog about a book club.  Is it just me or does this feel like spiraling into a worm hole? 

Is this bad?  I dunno really.  Librarians are all about indexing and organizing and this could be a normal evolution of that in an environment that is increasingly online, but we should also be about helping the patron to the source as quick as possible.  I find that when people look at a library catalog--especially one with little request buttons and links to Interlibrary Loan services--they tend to request the item the long way around and may not find out till the following day when library staff have had a look at the request that they could've accessed the material last night when they first heard of it.  This lag time is not good.

I have, however, forgotten to praise Worldcat for their public initiative.  A while ago Worldcat.org was launched as a public access multilibrary catalog.   What previously was only accessable to signed in library patrons can now be used by the general web-going public.  This is huge as databases like this are usually subject to contractual agreements and a whole lot of money and consequently can only be accessed by members of institutions that pay for them.

LeEMS on TV: watch LeEtta on HGTV's That's Clever!
Mood:  energetic
Topic: miscellanea

It is with crazy nervousness that I announce my first television appearance.  I think it was a couple years ago now, I was all excitement and work getting ready and getting filmed and now on February 19th, at 8AM on HGTV I will be one of the crafters on That's Clever!  There's a little description of the HGTV That's Clever episode on their site. 

For a while we all (me, friends, and family that is) thought a full on cancelation of the show was coming and my TV spot would never be seen, but hooray for HGTV, putting the show on the air again.  It was always something I liked watching--sometimes crazy, sometimes embarrassing, but always filled with great ideas and wonderfully good editing.  Hope they  made me look good too.  You all may even get to see my husband and one of my cats.

Happy Blogiversary to me
Mood:  bright
Topic: miscellanea

It's that time again--the Bean is now two years old.  Thank you to everyone who's found me out and decided to stick around for my informational consumption and regurgitation.  I'm going to keep plugging away of course.  And I'm still wondering if I should entertain the idea of setting up the blog through another service--one that is index-able and more easily searched.  But aaaaah, I really kind of like the idea of having everything under my own domain. 

So anyway, it's a bear!  Happy birthday.

Thanksgiving Holiday
Mood:  hungry
Now Playing: "Repressed Hostility Blues" - Katie Lee
Topic: miscellanea
Thanksgiving, for me, has always been either a time loaded with family and tradition or a scrambled race for something that tries but always fails to look like it.  Have you seen that Thanksgiving episode of the Gilmore Girls- where Rory and Lorelai run around to four different Thanksgiving dinners in order to please everyone and end up over stuffed and burnt out?  Yeah, my mom and I have done exactly the same thing and its enough to turn you off to the holiday all together.    Then I remembered all the relaxing one dinner holidays I had growing up, and now, no matter where it is, I've decided there will always be only one Thanksgiving dinner.   That said, I like the sentiment, and the traditional foods, the left overs, and I will be going to my one Thanksgiving dinner at family's out of town.  So, goodbye until Monday--or Wednesday for those of you who's feed reader takes its time with my feed (like mine).  Have a happy Holiday.

Heart to heart
Mood:  chatty
Topic: miscellanea

I've talked about it before, November is National Novel Writing Month and I've just realized that I only have 10 days to get to my 50,000 words!  I'm not even half way there!  And I had the audacity to not write last night!  Can you tell I'm freaking out?  I really want to get there, I do.  I am going to be writing my behind off for the remaining days, except for the holiday where family is going to take away precious writing time.  Ack!  No, really I like family and Thanksgiving.  It will all be ok.

So, lovely people.  I know already, Bean readers aren't ones for a bunch of commenting or feedback, but if you were going to comment on something--which topic would it fall under anyway?  I mean, what stuff to I talk about that you guys like the best?

 

Patterns more patterns
Mood:  spacey
Topic: miscellanea

I made them for you.
Topic: miscellanea

I've been fiddling around with pattern making for a little, and after some unhappy moments with high humidity and cheap paper I managed to come up with a couple that look pretty good, I think--especially the green one.  So I am sharing them with you and you can tile them on your desktops as much as your little heart desires, just don't make any money with them--I'm terribly greedy and relatively, constantly low on cash.

Holidays and Language Studies
Mood:  cool
Topic: miscellanea

So, I am enjoying another long weekend thanks to Veteran's Day and an impromptu vacation day request.  It feels good, especially since it gives me time to catch up the writing I didn't do for NaNoWriMo over the weekend because of the Stephen Chow marathon we had (more on that later). 

But before the long weekend and the moviethon kicked off I spent hours and hours searching for some one to four cell daily style comics in German and Japanese to help me study.  I figure the more bits, and the more formats you can add of your foreign language of choice into your day the better, right?  I found some easily in German (I'm a little farther a head here so overall its getting less of my attention)--a really awesome daily, by the way, here and here and here.  I had some terrible trouble, however, finding any daily comics in Japanese.  I'm probably running into the trouble because 'comic' would be translated to manga in the translator I use (I haven't fixed my computer to type in Japanese yet), and manga just brings up a whole bunch of long and involved stories.  Hmm, closest I found was the Yomiuri children's weekly, which does not have an RSS feed.  If anyone knows of any more, please let me know, yes?

Anyway, the end of this story is, I drew up a few comics of my own using some of the language books I had checked out of the library.  I've devised a whole comics page of the website dedicated to the language comics and a couple matchbook stories I made.