Deliberate.Serendipity

spur-winged plovers

Originally uploaded by Brenda Anderson.

Picnik has released a new Clone Tool (found in the Advanced tab). The fun thing is it lets you both clone & erase, so for this one, I was able to place the birds and clone only the bird itself, so that it blended into the background. Can you guess which 2 birds are in the original photo?

Figured it out, so I’m moving to my own domain.

See you at deliberate serendipity at curiouskiwi

Got myself some new blue shoes yesterday.  No, they aren’t Converse, but  BOC – Basic Original Canvas.  Not sure how original though.

Edge

Originally uploaded by curiouskiwi.

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

" 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.

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

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.

Technorati Tags: Paris, claudecf, flickr

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:

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

Ford Prefect with Girl

How’s this for another Flickr coincidence?

The other day, I joined the 42 Life the Universe and Everything Flickr group, dedicated, of course, to Douglas Adams and his Hitchhikers’ series of books. One of the forum threads asked us to post our “42nd most viewed photo” on Flickr. I duly went to my most viewed page and scrolled to #42. Imagine my laughter when this photo was my #42. Note the title.

Those of you who haven’t read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy probably won’t recognize the coincidence. Those of you who have, hope you enjoy the chuckle.