I found this via boing-boing while looking for something else: The Kowal Portable Typewriter and Adding Machine, which is the creation of one Mary Robinette Kowal, who is a professional puppeteer and sometime writer.
I wouldn’t want to copy exactly what she did here of course, but this does get me to think. I have an iBook which has been sitting largely idle since I set up my fine dual monitor desktop set-up at home and since I’ve made use of a very sweet 17 inch Powerbook owned by EMU. But this is just the kind of thing that I could/should do to my slightly older but still quite usable G4 iBook to make it a very groovy writing machine.
I came across this via one of my former student’s blogs: “Showering: The differences between men and women.” Google doesn’t allow for imbedded videos, so you’ll have to go to the link to see. Funny stuff!
Via Boing Boing comes the news that Ikea in Oslo is opening up a hostel-like/hotel-like space so that shoppers who just don’t want to leave can get up the next morning and keep on shopping. Yikes! By the way, that link above also has lots of other cool Ikea links, including this one, Ikea Hacker, which is a blog space about making various mods with Ikea products.
Will and I went out to the Canton Ikea yesterday. Originally, we were supposed to meet up with Bill HD and family, but the timing was off and once we got there, my cell phone didn’t work in the store, thus thwarting our plans for meeting up. But alas, another time. Anyway, Will and I first had lunch where Will ate 13 out of the 15 Swedish meatballs we ordered (I had two and a salad) and about two-thirds of the cake-like thing we always get. I bought a magnetic white board (note the cheesy painting of Will in the right part of that image, the hat collection, and other “basement boy” office decos), a Billy book case (I’ve moved over some of my snow globe collection to this shelf), and a few other things, including cardboard magazine holders like the ones in the picture of the book case.
It’s been a while since I bought an Ikea book case, and it seems like the quality of materials and ease of assembly has improved a great deal. On the other hand, it turns out that the white board function of the metal bulletin/white board isn’t quite like the white boards at school. I wrote on my new Ikea purchase with an old dry erase marker from school I had around here, and it is most certainly not wiping off. This picture of the stain is after much elbow grease and rubbing alcohol. Not good, though easily concealed behind some photos, so as long as I use the official Ikea markers, I should be fine.
I played at Pierce Lake Golf Course yesterday with Bill HD, Jim K, and Bob H (a former administrator returning to faculty at EMU), and I had a 93 (see below), a new low for me.
However, there are many asterisks that must be noted:
We did play the usual house rules, which did include a mulligan on the front nine (though I didn’t need one on the back nine).
None of us were happy with our play on the front nine; I had a 54. So we all agreed to play the back nine from what I guess I would describe as the “old man” tees: they weren’t the women’s tees, but the next one back. I’ll admit that we were all happier with our play–the other fellas knocked off between 5 and 10 strokes on their game, and I had a 39 (see below) back here– but it did feel a little like cheating. There are some significant carries off of the that these closer tees simply avoid.
Bill kept score, and I think he added wrong– I actually had a 40 on the back, giving me a 94– still my lowest game ever.
Anyway, with all of that, I still played really well, and it probably could not have come at a worse time. For all kinds of sabbatical related reasons, I really need to not play a whole lot of golf and spend my time reading and writing, and when I’m not doing that kind of stuff, I should be doing stuff around the house (e.g., painting, stripping wallpaper and painting the bathroom, etc.). And yet, after golfing like I did the other day, I feel like I need to figure out a way to sneak some more golf in….
I saw these on boing-boing. Supposedly, they feel like walking barefoot only with a shoe-like protection. I think I might need some of these, though they might be a bit creepy to see me in with my Hobbit-like foot and all.
In more local line-waiting news, there was the Ann Arbor Art Fair (which we avoided entirely, though yesterday would have been a nice day for it weather-wise), and the grand opening of an Apple store in Briarwood Mall. I’ve been waiting for this arrival of a branch of computer Mecca right here in town and the first 1,000 customers got a T-shirt. So since Will and I had some errands to run anyway, we went out to the mall. A lot of other people had a similar idea. At 9:30, a half-hour before the store opened, the line looked to me to be over 1,000 people (though the newspaper suggested it was a lot less), which seemed like a lot to go through to walk through a store and to get a T-shirt.
So Will and I wandered down to the EB Electronics game store. There was a small line there and we got in it, and, by about 10:30, I had spent way WAY too much money for the Wii that Will and I had sought for so long. It turns out that Nintendo, the Wii’s maker, had asked retailers to hold Wiis until Saturday this week. Lucky us.
On the way out of the mall, we walked back past the Apple store. There was still a gazillon people patiently waiting to walk through a store in the mall. Crazy.
Anyway, there wasn’t much Wii-ing until late in the day because we needed to get ready for some friends coming for dinner and to continue the housecleaning for the in-laws who are arriving today. But we did finally hook it up and it was good. Here’s Will this morning playing Wii tennis:
There’s a ton of other features with this that we’ll have to figure out, but so far, it looks like the Wii is delivering on what it promises: a different and group-oriented approach to the video game experience. Wii on, my friends, Wii on.
This was when we were in Traverse City and at the Cherry Festival. BTW, you can see other fine and similar video products at http://youtube.com/stevendkrause
I actually wrote about this in more detail on my official blog here if you’re curious, but I kind of think that for the unofficial space, the video is probably enough:
This is the first time I’ve been up near Traverse City when I actually didn’t have a whole lot to do with Traverse City. We were staying out at a place near Lake Ann, and we actually only went into to TC one day, in part because we were up there during the dreaded Cherry Festival. Mostly, we hung around Glen Arbor, Empire, and the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore.
My parents rented this gigantic vacation home/cabin called “The Eagles Nest.” We never inquired, but hopefully it had nothing to do with Hitler. Seriously though, it was a great place. Slept 18 people comfortably, great views, very comfy, etc., etc. It made me appreciate cabin aesthetics, too.
This is the first trip I’ve taken like this where I’ve thought about how it would be cool to have a cabin. Nothing like this place we stayed of course, but just a place a few hours away in the pseudo-wilderness. It’d be nice to have a place like that to go and write and read and hang out. Maybe someday.
Lotsa hiking around with friends (John and Karen M!) and family, mostly through good weather.
Some fun golf at a place just down the road from us called Mistwood which turned out to be just a fantastic course. My dad and I played there one day with Will and one of his cousins (just 9 holes, and Will spent most of the time reading), and then the next day me and him for 18, and then my mom and dad the day after that for 9 holes. There’s a lot of great deals up there– my regular golf friends and I might need to check out some of the deals up there.
It probably was a good idea for me to not have regular Internet access up there. Relaxing. I might have to figure out how to ration my WiFi access in “real” life, too.
And now we’re here in Ypsi-Arbor for the rest of the summer. No European travel this year, but maybe some gardening.
