http://woodpress.org Woody Thrower's Weblog Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:30:44 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Kim, my wife, has had numbness (lack of sensation, but not lack of muscle control) in her face off-and-on for as long as I've known her--usually correlated with stress. On December 9th, 2009 it started again. By December 12th, the numbness was constant. She went to our doctor who prescribed ... http://woodpress.org/2010/02/14/its-not-not-a-tumah/ 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 ... http://woodpress.org/2009/10/18/printed-origami-bird/ 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. http://woodpress.org/2009/10/15/maze/ 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. http://woodpress.org/2009/09/20/eyebrows/ 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. http://woodpress.org/2009/09/04/cafe-press/ 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 ... http://woodpress.org/2009/09/03/drm/ 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. http://woodpress.org/2009/08/21/lagoon-2/ 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 8x10 print from Costco, and I think it turned out really nice. http://woodpress.org/2009/08/15/my-moms-gray-cat/ 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 ... http://woodpress.org/2009/05/28/you-can-verb-bing-kind-of/ A few days ago my oldest daughter noticed a tiny grasshopper (about half a centimeter long, at most) crawling on a window inside our house. She thought I might like to take a picture of it, so she came and told me about it. Here's the best of my attempts: http://woodpress.org/2009/05/05/tiny-grasshopper/ This is what I saw when I walked out the front door this morning: http://woodpress.org/2009/04/16/the-snow-its-back/ After years of online activity, I have a reasonable sample of data that says I go quiet every winter (from about December to February). Fortunately, the sun is coming back, and I am feeling increasingly communicative. I recently stumbled across a program called MyPaint for my Nokia Internet Tablet (a handheld ... http://woodpress.org/2009/02/04/the-sun-its-back/ We had a tree removed yesterday, by the skilled and and friendly Dave "E" Tree. Here's a long-exposure picture of my kids climbing on the wood. (We're keeping the wood--my wife wants a fire pit where the tree used to be.) We had the stump removed today. Unfortunately, during stump removal ... http://woodpress.org/2008/12/10/tree-and-internet-removal/ Today on the way to work, we stopped at the fedex office so Shaun (my ride) could drop off a package. While he went in and took care of that, I got out of the car and took some pictures of Timpanogos (including this one). I went back to the car, ... http://woodpress.org/2008/12/05/camera-phobia/ My youngest child just turned 6. She had a Princess-themed birthday party. I took this picture just before the party: http://woodpress.org/2008/11/24/princess-birthday/ We tried an experiment with an egg. I knew that if you put an egg in vinegar, the shell would dissolve, leaving a rubbery membrane... but my kids didn't know that, and I had never tried it personally. I like pickled eggs (boiled and peeled eggs soaked in brine), so I ... http://woodpress.org/2008/11/13/eggsperiment/ Last night we went bowling. My oldest daughter has a high school P.E. class, and for her grade she has to bowl two games with an average score higher than 100. We spent $70 on bowling, but didn't manage to get the required score. I disapprove of that grading system, but ... http://woodpress.org/2008/11/07/bowling-and-ihop/ For my birthday, my mother-in-law gave me a crystal globe. http://woodpress.org/2008/11/02/my-world/ My dad, Allen Thrower, died yesterday peacefully at home in his sleep. He was 73 years old. He wrote many stories about his life, which I have begun to post on his posthumous blog at allenthrower.com. There's also a page about Allen Thrower for anyone interested. http://woodpress.org/2008/10/16/my-dad-died-yesterday/ I took these photos on a walk with my kids today. My instructions for this photo were "go stand by that fence." (No, he's not actually beating her with a bottle of water in a sock, but that was the effect he was going for.) Mum's the word (because I can't spell ... http://woodpress.org/2008/10/08/walking-with-kids/