Woodpress

Today I made an origami bird for one of my children, and came up with the idea of printing a bird pattern on the paper prior to folding it, so it would look more realistic. Here’s the end result:

I’ve made a few. My kids really like them.

I made the pattern by marking up a folded bird, unfolding it, scanning it, then assembling pieces of various photographs. The wings are my least favorite part. I am pleased that the bottoms of the wings match up as well as they do, though.

Here’s the pattern:

Maybe eventually I’ll put together folding instructions, as an exercise in photographic documentation. In the meantime, you can use the wikihow instructions, although they don’t include the little beak fold. I’m also considering refining the pattern further.

I made a maze for my youngest daughter. She had me make one before, but it was too easy, so I made a harder one.

A friend of mine pointed out this article about the importance of eyebrows in recognizing people:
http://jenapincott.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/why-are-eyebrows-crucial/

It made me wonder what Whoopi Goldberg would look like with eyebrows, so I decided to find out:

I wonder if people would be able to recognize her WITH eyebrows in a similar test.

I’ve had some creative energy lately, so I opened a Cafe Press shop. I have one whole product so far. Check it out!

I hope to add other products soon.

A friend of mine recently bought the new Imogen Heap album online, but it was DRMed, so he can’t play it from his Media Center Extender. In my opinion, this is not a problem with the Media Center Extender–it is a problem with DRM. Now he will probably end up “pirating” the album he bought.

I found out recently that it was possible to buy downloadable DivX movies, and I was kinda excited that I would no longer have to rip my own DVDs before streaming them to my TV. Then I noticed that they were DRMed, so I stopped short of ordering The Watchmen. Sorry, guys. You lost a sale because I wanted to actually be able to WATCH the movie I bought.

What are they afraid of? That people will share copies of the movie illegally?

Does it really make sense for it to be harder to legitimately buy and view a movie than to pirate it? I’m not encouraging piracy–I am in favor of rewarding creative efforts, but why punish the people who pay by burdening us with DRM?

MPAA, if you’re listening, please let me pay you money for the same level of convenience that the pirates get for free. Thanks.

Tuesday was our office’s annual Lagoon party. (Lagoon is a local amusement park.)

I took many photos of my family and other Lagoonishness.

I think this is my favorite:

I posted a selection of other favorites on Flickr.

I recently took a picture of one of my mother’s cats.

Last night I spent a few hours experimenting and touching it up, and came up with a version that I really like.

Detail:

Today I got an 8×10 print from Costco, and I think it turned out really nice.

In You can’t verb Live Search I criticized the name “Live Search”. Microsoft has announced its new search portal… or “Decision Engine”, Bing.

Yeah, you can verb Bing. Kind of. People can say “bing it!” instead of “google it!” (and it only sounds SLIGHTLY profane)… but what’s the past tense of bing? Binged? That might work in speech, but not in writing. Written, it’s past tense for binge, which has strong negative connotations (the present participle is similarly troubled). Will people be comfortable blogging/chatting about how they “binged” for something?

When I mentioned Bing to my wife, she almost immediately came up with bung as a past tense verb. Ack! I am NOT Cornholio!

It’s only a name though. The name Bing definitely seems like an improvement over Live Search, and it IS very easy to type. I’m interested in seeing how people like the way it actually works.