Deliberate.Serendipity

thoughts of an expat American making her way in New Zealand

Archive for October 2005

Edge

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Edge

Originally uploaded by curiouskiwi.

If you’re not living life on the edge, you’re taking up too much space!

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October 27, 2005 at 1:45 pm

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flock

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I’m just trying out Flock and wondering how well it’s going to work for blogging photos from Flickr. I should just be able to drag and drop it. Here goes. Let’s hope I don’t get into a big mess:

Flickr Photo

Hey, it worked, and I’ve also managed to import my blog from blogger over to here with just one push of a button. Nice!

But! For some reason, I can’t use Flock to edit my blog entries, so I’ve just switched over to Firefox to edit this entry. I’ll have to check whether there’s a bug out there for this.

Technorati Tags: flock, flickr, photography

Written by delipity

October 25, 2005 at 1:10 pm

Posted in stuff

” What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?” Jean Jacques Rousseau

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" What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?" Jean Jacques Rousseau

" What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?" Jean Jacques Rousseau,
originally uploaded by **ANNE.

Found this lovely photo of a barn owl on Flickr. Rachel is currently reading the Guardians of Gahoole series of books, and she wants to dress up as a Barn Owl this halloween. So she really liked this photo too.

Written by delipity

October 22, 2005 at 8:44 am

Posted in Uncategorized

Best Toys of the 70s

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I was just reading on the TVCream website about their readers’ choices for the top toys of the 70s and 80s. At number 35 was one of my favs, the Spirograph.

What was your favourite? Do you still have it?

TV Cream’s Top 100 Toys (via boingboing)

35 SpirographWhen fun and geometry collideAn awful hybrid toy/drawing implement, with the flimsiness of construction putting the emphasis firmly on “toy”. Spirograph comprised of many plastic discs, each with tiny teeth round the edge and tiny holes round the centre. With those cogs came rings of plastic, teeth again protruding from the outside and inside edges. The idea was to lay the rings onto a piece of paper, tack them down with drawing pins and then roll your chosen disc around the ring, pushing a pencil through one of the holes. The resulting unimpressive spiral on the paper could be reproduced to create more unimpressive spirals on top. This carried on and on with different-sized plastic pieces – eventually producing something akin to a flower, every single time. You may be surprised to learn that spiral-graphs have a basis in maths, being used to solve polynomial equations of a higher degree. Their application as a toy, however, whilst perhaps giving kids a tiny bit of insight into advanced mathematics, has to be called into question. For instance, no one ever explained what you should do about the little holes left in the paper by the drawing pins. Of course, you could try to hold the ring in position, but only the slightest movement meant that the spiral effect was ruined completely. Even more obscure was the confusing Rotadraw; this was a red plastic disc, which you placed on top of a piece of paper and then pinned to a board (or, indeed, mum’s fine oak dining room table). Next you rotated the disc, Spirograph-style, filling in the stencil-like holes. When you’d gone all around the wheel, bingo! There was a picture of Goofy (or whoever). We can’t even begin to imagine what this may have looked like.

Technorati Tags: toys, 1970s, spirograph, boingboing

Written by delipity

October 22, 2005 at 6:57 am

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Moved

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I’ve got this blog running on delipity.wordpress.com, as well as here at curiouskiwi.com/delipity. I haven’t decided yet if I want to continue hosting it myself or leave it at wordpress. So I’m playing with different themes, etc. here.

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October 21, 2005 at 3:10 pm

Posted in asides

Memories of Paris

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Flickr Photo

Claudecf, on Flickr, has posted several photos of Notre-Dame de Paris.  It takes me back to my visit there in 1989 with my mother.  It was my first trip overseas; we went to London and Paris.  I had a great time, and was so pleased to be able to use my “French” from school.  We visited all the major Paris churches and some of the smaller ones as well, always lighting a candle at the altar.  Thanks for posting these, Claude.  You’ve brought back some nice memories.

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October 20, 2005 at 10:53 pm

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Flock

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I’m just trying out Flock and wondering how well it’s going to work for blogging photos from Flickr. I should just be able to drag and drop it. Here goes. Let’s hope I don’t get into a big mess:

Flickr Photo

Hey, it worked, and I’ve also managed to import my blog from blogger over to here with just one push of a button. Nice!

But! For some reason, I can’t use Flock to edit my blog entries, so I’ve just switched over to Firefox to edit this entry. I’ll have to check whether there’s a bug out there for this.

Technorati Tags: flock, flickr, photography

Written by delipity

October 20, 2005 at 10:04 pm

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g’s eyes

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g's eyes
g’s eyesOriginally uploaded by curiouskiwi.

: We were looking at the photo of Sophie taking a photo, with her hand covering her left eye, when it suddenly (after all these years) dawned on me that I always use my Left eye to compose a photo. Gary showed me the test to see whether I was right- or left-eye dominant, and it turns out that I’m left-eye dominant. I find it amazing that it’s taken me this many years of using to camera to realize that the reason I always ended up with smudges on the LCD screen from my face was because I was using my left and not my right eye (for which the camera is designed).I held the camera to my eye to show Gary and he stared straight into the lens. So I snapped it. :) Oh, and Gary is right-eye dominant.

Written by delipity

October 8, 2005 at 11:10 am

Posted in stuff