Thanks Google.

I really appreciate the effort the good people at google.com put into celebrating lesser-known special occaisions. Two days ago, Monday, April 27, was the birthday of Samual Morse. Morse was an American painter, inventor of the telegraph, and most obviously the Morse Code. So, in honour of his birth Google put up this header:



With these interesting little images Google manages to remind, most likely, millions of people every day about some of the most important and unappreciated events in human history. The invention of the telegraph completely altered the way people communicated by making long-distance transmission accessible.

This morning I was doing a little more research into this idea of the ever-changing Google header and I came across an intersting project. An Australian graphic designer named Rhett Dashwood has been collecting images of letters from Google Earth. He managed to collect images of all 26 letters of the alphabet within the state of Victoria in six months of searching. I imagine this could turn into a very cool font in the near future. Of course, people from around the world are flooding Dashwood's inbox with Google Earth letters as we speak. O, and he also found a perfect 250 in a farm field along the way.



Later,

One more thing.

I almost forgot to mention: even though the barstaff were completely accomodating at the Grad Club tonight they delivered my burrito with *gasp* disposable utensils. The kitchen wasn't officially open except for pubfare and apparently they weren't very interested in washing the dishes. Not only did this already sabatoge my Earth Day pledge to myself, but the knife and fork were virtually useless against the toasty burrito exterior. To say the least, I was very frustrated. I have definitely learned that lesson a very hard way and I'll be packing my own knife and fork from now on. I just really didn't do a very good packing job for this trip in general.

Out of control.

I just looked over the most recent posts I've made here and I feel like I've started to move away from the original spirit of this blog. Good thing I came to Kingston today for the Ontario Ecology and Ethology Conference (OEEC). I've already ran into so many, um, very familiar faces and talked to a bunch of really interesting people. OEEC is an annual conference that rotates to different Ontario universities each year. It's mainly organized by grad students with the aim to brings together students from a wide range of backgrounds. Here we can gain some practice presenting our ideas to a larger audience than usual. I'm also enjoying the opportunity to spend some more time with my peers and people who are at the same point in their careers as I am.



Today I boarded the VIA in Guelph and came across the shore of Lake Ontario to Kingston. The old downtown part of the city where Queen's University is located is truly beautiful. The Lake is just to the south and every building is built of weathered limestone in old Ontario style. I really like taking the train because it travels in places you never get to see when you're in a car. There also isn't near as much stopping and starting. Well, and I have a soft spot for trains in general. I actually decided to stay at the one little hostel in Kingston. It is exactly 1.5 blocks from the edge of campus right near the City Park. I sort of feel like I'm visiting my grandparents, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Tonight, the first event of the conference was a mixer, of sorts, at the Grad Club. The bartenders were very nice and baked a burrito for me since I hadn't had anything to eat all day long. We drank Guelph beer and had sweet potato frites. The conference organizers gave each attendee a wooden USB key made by a cool little eco-friendly company. Which was cool, because I could definitely use one of those this summer for carrying presentations to conferences. They also handed out native wildflower seeds and I happened to receive Virginia Mountain Mint which is one of the species Paul used to plant in his quarry to alvar projects. Of course, his seeds were from western Ontario populations and these are from the east. I'll have to take them home to my parents house and find a patch of garden that hasn't been trampled by the pups.



I'm excited to see some interesting talks tomorrow. The conference programme is very well done and the more I look through it, the more interesting topics I notice. Unfortunately, mine is up against a talk called Darker, Longer, Better, so I have a feeling that might attract a larger audience than my drawn out, probably over-complicated, title. Ah well, just one of the bugs to work out before I head off to Halifax. Speaking of bugs, Kingston seems to be completely full of millions of tiny grass bugs. They cluster along the sidewalks and anyone not from around here can feel seriously swarmed. Almost everyone I talked to tonight mentioned them and they cover the fronts of all of the buildings.

Okay, I'm out, but I'm also back on track.

Cass

Talking about our ideas.

Awhile ago a friend pointed me in the direction of ted.com. Ted is an annual conference created to bring "together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives" about Technology, Engineering, and Design. The ted website was created to archive these talks and spread these good ideas across the world for free. I've been watching some of the clips and trying to find the right one to post here. Today I noticed ted mentioned on the Ravelry chat boards in the Geekyknitters group and was led to this clip:

I knew I had found the right one. This video is very interesting. I've actually seen a lot of photos of the crocheted coral reef. I love the idea of incorporating mathematics and sciences into my crafty endeavors.

More Haekel.

I'm working on my new header so that I will feel happy when people look at my blog.

Came across this:

Knit-o-meter.

I've added a new gadget to the sidebar of my blog. It's called the Knitmeter and it keeps track of how many metres of wool I've knit this year. Um, so far, I've knit myself almost all the way to Jones Baseline. I'm on my way to Rockwood. I think I'm going to try to get home to Warsaw by the end of the year!

Happy Earth Day!

In Canada, April 22 is Earth Day. On this day, we take some time to reflect on how we, as individuals and as an entire nation, celebrate environmental awareness and reduce our negative impacts on the ecosystem. Andrew said he would sleep in, not turn on any light, and not do any work so as to reduce his energy consumption for the day. That didn't work out because his parents came to visit and go out to lunch. This, however, is a perfect example of why it is important to incorporate environmental awareness into all of the activities of our daily lives and avoid making lofty promises to the earth one day a year. Not that I think Earth Day is about one day, I just like to think of it as the day to celebrate all of our hard work every day of the year.

One of my favourite parts of Earth Day is when TV shows do special clips about environmentally conscious people. I suppose I should turn the TV off and save power, but it would just get turned back on and the one-day impact is what we're trying to get away from here. My favourite clip this year was on MTV. Nicole interviewed a hockey player from the Boston Bruins. His name is Andrew Ference and he's a good Canadian boy. He started his career with the Calgary Flames and one day he was asked, "if you could go to dinner with any celebrity who would you pick?" Andrew replied, "David Suzuki." Of course, this got picked up by the Canadian media and David Suzuki's people called Ference's people and set up a breakfast meeting for the two Canadian celebrities. Or something like that....I said I saw it on MTV. Andrew said he ended up having the breakfast with David and they collaborated to start a program to green-up the NHL. This is a pretty big deal because the NHL is mainly about over-the-top use of resources. Players may fly to three different cities a week. Giant ice sheets don't actually exist naturally in southern Florida, or even Toronto in June. Not that this really matters to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Andrew started with the Flames and had all of the players buy carbon credits to offset their travel for the season. This initiative has spread across the league and now 500 players have signed on to purchase credits. More can be read about this project here.

Of course, all of this got be thinking about daily actions I take to minimize my negative environmental impact. Andrew and I don't buy many disposable items. I think I've had the same roll of parchment paper since we moved in together. We use cloth in the kitchen and for all of our cleaning. I try to eat a mainly vegetarian diet and buy local food. I don't have a car, we walk, bike, and use public transportation. I try not to accept plastic bags and I rarely use disposable containers. I'm moving out of my house at the end of August to visit Australia. So, I really need to cut down on my belongings and most importantly not accumulate any more. I'm thinking I want to make a somewhat of a pledge to use NO plastic bags or disposable food containers for the entire year. I am also wanting to make a pledge to NOT purchase any clothing or accessories that are not made in my country of residence. I think I can take this on for a year. Lots of other people are doin' it. Also, I have this great collection of food containers and craft supplies, so I can take or make my own.



The reason I want to make this pledge is that I am completely aware of my impacts when purchasing food and clothing, but I still make the wrong choice once in awhile. I feel like I need to figure out why I make these choices when I do. So, I'm going to use this blog to comment when I feel like slipping up.

There's definitely more to come on this one, but I need to work on my thesis now.

Cass

Springtime Craft Roadtrip.

Yesterday Nat and I went on a very fun roadtrip. Well, actually the day started off with Louise's first trip to the Guelph Farmer's Market and a visit with Emily at Capistrano. Then we went on a roadtrip. So, it was actually a roadtrip that was part of a very fun day.

The first stop on the roadtrip was The Ford Plant in Brantford. The Ford Plant is a music venue in one of the abandoned corner shops in the decrepit ghosttown that is downtown Brantford. This was very sad to see, actually, as the city seems to be a very beautiful town with the river running through and all the old limestone buildings and southern Ontario architecture (I love stone buildings of any sort). Anyway, I had heard about an Art and Craft Sale that was being held by the Telephone City Crafters. And we managed to find the Ford Plant and all of the crafty wares it contained. I was very impressed by the selection of artists that were at the show and their prices. I ended up purchasing a few things.



First, was an incredible pink coral ring made out of polymer clay by Sarah from Beat Black. I was completely in awe of the way this person makes cool things with polymer clay. We seem to have very similar tastes as well. I noticed she has a cool little crafty blog called In Shadows and I've already found two clips there that I absolutely love.

I'm going to have to do an entire post on videos from PES (the Western Spaghetti clip) because my mouth just drops open every time I see something new. O, and I also picked up a tiny coffee bean stitch marker from Beat Black as well.

Next, I purchased a small pyramid shaped pouch from a textile artists named Anna Zygowski. All of her work was absolutely beautiful, as is her website. I didn't notice any of the tops she has on her website at the sale, but they certainly are gorgeous. Really, even her business card is absolutely beautiful.



I also talked to Jen from Urban Fusions for awhile. I bought two hairpins from her and they are so lovely. My hair is very slippery though, and I lost one while we were playing in the park with Nat's kite this afternoon. I feel sort of sad about this and might have to order a new one from her shop. Looking through, many of her items caught my eye.



The last item I purchased was from Erica (nothing's up in her shop as of yet). She was one of the few locals at the sale. She knits and makes all sorts of things and does some bookbinding. I found a very cool little hand-bound journal for Jayme's upcoming birthday. The inside is lined with vintage Bettie Boop Goes on Vacation material and Jay loves that stuff.



After the craft sale we took Erica's advice to travel over to Paris, Ontario and take a look in all the little shops there. It was really nice to see a happening downtown. I found some neat items for one of my colourswap partners on Rav. We had lunch at a small cafe that had a back balconey over the Grand River. It needed a good spring cleaning, but it was fine. Then we took a drive out to Mary Maxim. I've only ever known Mary Maxim as a catalogue order craft business, but found out yesterday that it's headquarters are out in the middle of nowhere in a small business park near Paris. Interesting place. Huge store. Tons of crafts. Lots of wool.

I'll be back tomorrow with pictures from all of these adventures, Cass

Bateman.

Doug was speaking with Robert Bateman over the past weekend. He has connections with the Guelph Guitar, though I can't remember the exact story this late on Friday night. Robert Bateman's paintings give me chills. Even the most simple image, barns I've probably driven by several times throughout my life, winter scenes that are so common to rural Canada, they just hit me somewhere hard and send a shiver up my spine.









Information about one of Robert's current projects can be found here. His foundation is working to build the Robert Bateman Art and Environmental Education Centre. This will be located at Hatley Park National Historic Site. This park is located on the southern point of Vancouver Island where an actual castle was built by the governor in 1908. The centre will enable many people to learn about the art, culture, and ecology of the local area.

More Please.

I was thinking, after this morning, about items or activities that would make interesting stop motion videos. I thought it would be really neat to look up some plant growing themed clips. Here are some of the best ones I found tonight.

I wish I had set up a camera in the greenhouse over the last few years. It would have been so cool to be able to watch my years of work produce alvar plants for restoration in 1 minute flat.

Part of my attraction to these little videos are the soundtracks. I really appreciate it when people pick beautiful music to go along with their creation.

This next series is quite cool. Celery: The Movie is my least favourite.

Stop Motion Craft.

I spent some time today watching stop animation on YouTube. I like the crafty ones the best. Here are a couple of the best examples I found today. The first one is how to make a felt bunny. At the end, a bunch of different bunnies are shown. I really like how the creator makes the embroidery letters.

This second animation is quite clever. The mole is made from fabric and thread. I really like making little creatures like this one to have around the house. There's a neat science-y twist at the end of this one.

And, a morbid tale of a giant button attacking a town of mini buttons. You'll just have to watch this one. It's a bit sad, actually. Great character development though.

Finally, a clip I've been meaning to bring here for awhile. Actually, this brings me to an entire story I've been meaning to tell here. This is an interpretation of one of my favourite Edward Gorey tales from childhood. Last summer Bronwen and I went to see a special exhibit at the Toronto Public Library. I came across this book and I had forgotten all about it (where did it go?). Somehow, I managed to forget about it again until recently when I joined an Edward Gorey swap on Ravelry and was thinking about some of his work. This time, though, I couldn't remember the name of the book so I couldn't find it anywhere. I e-mailed the librarians at the Osbourne Children's Collection at the TPL and they got back to me the next day with the title. Since then I've been checking out all sorts of media inspired by Edward Gorey's work. This is my favourite creation of "An Inanimate Tragedy".

Yeah.

Yesterday was not a shining day of wonderfulness-to-remember in thesisland. I feel more pulled together today and I really have to knock out some discussion. I think that counts as Make Things. And I feel a bit better about Get Excited too. Also, it reminded me of this and I love this:

Yep, that's it.

Emily just sent me this as part of a message and it made my day, if not my week:

Also, I was just doing some reading, and came across this passage in the book I am reading, "The Origin of Species", by Nino Ricci. It made me think of you.

"The real breakthrough, though, had come when he had finally braved an excursion into the natural sciences and stumbled upon the sociobiologists: here was a whole netherworld of unabashed trend-buckers, people who put the words 'science' and 'art' in the same sentence without fearing they would rend the very fabric of the cosmos. It was all total anathema to the literary purists, insofar as they even deigned to notice anything so reactionary - it was just biological determinism writ large, they said, the worst sort of regression, a heartbeat away from social Darwinism and eugenics - but that didn't mean it wasn't true."

Umami.

I have so many things that I need to mention here right now that I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. I feel like it's been ages since I posted last. It's fairly obvious that I need to keep on top of this interspace and visit often in order to manage the things in life that are making me feel a little stressed out.

So, on six seemingly unrelated notes (not really though, it's always so much more complicated than that...just remembered a 7th item to mention), allow me to dazzle you with the going-ons in my life.

1. I try really hard to eat like a vegetarian. I'm by no means perfect and I definitely do through some meat-eating phases. These usually coincide with special occaisions when large family meals are traditionally served. Summer BBQ time is also tough. The thing is, I really an a bit of a foodie and I truly miss the flavours that get left out when I don't eat certain food groups. A long time ago Em and I came across the term umami in biology class. Umami is a Japanese word that means something along the lines of meaty or savoury. It is the fifth taste to go along with sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. So, I'm hunting for some good ways to eat more veggie umami tasting foods. As I type, there is a large crock pot of chili bubbling away in the kitchen. It's full of cremimi and other little mushrooms that I can't remember the name of right now. I also added a whole bunch of vegetable protein because I need more of that in my life too.

2. Awhile ago I had personal information cards (I'm not exactly part of a business) printed by a really cool company from the UK called Moo.com. I uploaded images from my work and travels last summer then designed the info part including a picture of myself. I used 23 different background pictures for 60 cards and I could have used 60 different ones if I so desired. Moo.com is a really cool website and a great company to work with. I would highly recommend them for any of your printing needs. You can also make personalized postcards and stickers at the site and I will definitely be partaking in the future. Last time I attended a conference I ended up ripping about 6 pages out of my notebook to scribble down my contact information. I hope I'll get to hand out a whole lot of these this summer instead.



3. Today I received a phonecall from the mother of one of the students I tutor. Apparently he achieved a Gold Medal at the science fair I judged last week! There were just so many displays at the fair that I didn't come across him at all. He didn't see me either, and only knew I was there when he noticed my name as one of the judges in the handout from the award ceremony. Awards were handed out at 8:30 pm and I was only at the fair during the morning. I'm disappointed that I missed him, but I'm very proud of his work.



4. Last week, my good friend Bronwen, from Ottawa, sent me a package in a colourswap. This was a little mail exchange I organized with a few of my crafty friends. Everyone had a secret person to send a package to full of knit, found, made, or thrifted items in the recipient's favourite colours. One of my favourites is blue and she sent me a lot of really neat treats along with a handmade, bound notebook. Bronwen is a great bookbinder and I love receiving notebooks from her. This one is called good notes. I'm going to write in all sorts of little quotes and poems I come across that inspire me. The first one is a favourite of mine by e.e. cummings. He was on my mind from two posts ago.



5. Before and after this post I've been working on a new crochet project. I rarely crochet, it jsut isn't my thing, but I will always love the mindlessness that is the creation of a granny square. The most traditional pattern in all of crochet has to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing patterns in Canadian history. Image a cottage without a granny square afghan? Last weekend, I was home and Belva gave me a giant bag of cast-away wool. Even though I'm trying to pare down my belongings, I will gladly accept any offering of wool. In the bag there were 11 balls of Shetland Chunky Tweed in horrible, coordinating colours. So, now I am making a giant granny square tweed blanket and taking into consideration everything I know about colour theory to make this mix into an appealing blend of warmth and coziness.



6. Yesterday and today I received e-mails from the ESA conference in Albequerque, New Mexico and Perth, Australia, saying that my abstracts for oral presentations were accepted. I'm very excited to travel a bit, but I really need to get my thesis finished. Today I caught a little snag in the results section and it definitely brought me down. I was feeling pretty rough and had to leave work and get some fresh air. Tomorrow will be a new day though and I'm going to forge ahead with the discussion.

7. Last, but definitely not least, this morning Doug was talking about the Guelph Guitar and mentioned that Robert Bateman had offered him a piece of Tom Thomson's coffin for the guitar or case. The thought of this is sort of overwhelming and the entire web of stories about art, science, history, life, people, culture, everything inbetween that I can't even think of right now just blows my mind. I'm so glad Doug is putting this all together and I've had the chance to see behind the scenes. I'm a huge fan of early 19th century Canadian landscape art, the work of the Group of Seven and everyone associated with them. I could go on and on about this part of the story, but my fingers are getting tired. I don't know if Doug will take this piece for his work because how will he ever sum up the circumstances that led to this offer in one chapter of his book?



That felt really good. Getting all of this out of my brain allows me to realize that there are many more important things to consider in the world besides my protein intake levels. Got to stay humble,
Cass

Statistics are good.

I found the coolest thing on Ravelry today. Google has a trends lab search engine that allows you to figure out how many times people search for certain words. You can type in more than one word and the comparative statistics will be calculated for you almost instantly! One creative Raveler demonstrated by searching for knitting and poison.

This is what resulted:



The y-axis is number of times the word was used for a search.
The red line is poison.
The blue line is knitting.
The letters indicate important events that may have caused the spikes in the graph.

A. Poison Ricin Found in Sen. Frist's Office Albany Democrat Herald - Feb 3 2004
B. Dioxin expert says poison causes widespread damage KVOA.com - Dec 11 2004
C. Yushchenko's poison level extreme NorthJersey.com - Dec 16 2004
D. Photos show 'poison' toll on ex-spy in Huddersfield.co.uk - Nov 20 2006
E. MOSCOW Two American women are hospitalized in serious condition in Russia after ingesting the deadly poison thallium. WBAY - Mar 7 2007
F. Testing reveals melamine in recalled pet food, but not rat poison: FDA CJOB - Mar 30 2007

So, basically, when we're thinking about knitting we really don't have time to think about poisoning anyone. I suppose you could also swing this to say that knitting maintains civility and prevents us all from killing the people we know.

Also, these are the regions where the most knitting hits came from:

Regions
1. New Zealand
2. United States (note the US was the only region that had more poison hits than knitting)
3. Australia
4. Canada
5. United Kingdom
6. Ireland
7. India
8. Germany

Yay! New Zealand is in the lead, and even Australia is ahead of Canada. New Zealand has a much smaller population than Canada and Australia is most likely similar. I'm so glad to see where they turned up on the list because I plan on doing a whole lot of knitting in those countries later this year.

Today.

Blog needed some organization today. The list of blogs I follow keeps growing and growing. I decided to add categories to make things easier to keep track of. I think I like the new set-up.

I'm really glad I started writing here. Whenever I need a break from anything I can come here and feel completely refreshed. Writing out all of these things that usually swirl around in my head makes me feel much more focused and pulled-together. Also, I've found endless sources of inspiration in the blogging world and it's really nice to know that they are all in order here. Every time I open up this page I find something new and exciting.



Now that I've become more comfortable with html editing I know how to make the changes I want to make before I tell other people about this place. Today I figured out how to make a little icon for my blog tab. This why my personal style will show up on the tab as well and readers will be able to collect it for their bookmarks. The one I added today is not simplified enough to show up on such a small scale. I just clipped one of my favourite images from the title bar and used converted it to an icon file with this free converter: converticon.com. It's cute and worked well ad has a little Mac interface design. Then I uploaded it to this spot to make a direct link to the image: Image Boo Hosting. So, I'll work on the header and the icon over the next little while, but things are starting to come together!

O, and I almost forgot to mention, check out this collision of art and science:


Fluid Sculpture from Charlie Bucket on Vimeo.

Cass

Chaos.

In my head and in my mind and all around me today. Apparently, we're in the mood to move books around and get rid of stuff from the lab for the big move-out that's looming at the end of August. Today is also the day I plan to finish the results section of my thesis. This has proved difficult for two reasons. First, the crashing people all around me and secondly, the fact that along the way some of my data managed to mix itself up. There was an inconsistent dip in evenness amongst my seed plots and I'd been meaning to investigate the reason for this for months. Finally I got around to it today and realized that I had cut and pasted the first five columns of data in survey 3 incorrectly. Thus the dip and an entire day spent rearranging graphs. This has created the chaos in my mind. The chaos in my head has to do with the weather and the unbelievable amount of static electricity my hair is capable of holding onto. It's driving me nuts, to say the least.

I've decided to come here to escape from all of this hectic energy and create a post about why I admire e.e. cummings so much. I mentioned him in the previous post about poetry and was thinking about my appreciation for his work last night before I fell asleep. In my Grade 12 English class we had to make a presentation about all different aspects of a poem we had selected to study. (Strange how you can remember some projects and things so vividly). I picked a favourite of mine: anyone lived in a pretty how town, by e.e. cummings, of course. I knew that I enjoyed reading his poetry because of the images it conveyed, but I had put little thought into the meanings and symbolism of his work, or the impact his life had on the things he wrote.



I put a lot of effort into that project. I can remember sitting in my seat in the middle of the bus, scrunched up with my knees pushed into the back of the seat ahead of me, reading everything I could find in the library about e.e. cummings and his work. I managed to deconstruct his poem, probably deliver one of the better talks of my highschool career, and come out the other side wanting to know more. Usually, this was not the case for me and as soon as I finished a project I attempted to delete the unnecessary information from my brain. The difference this time was just that he defied every rule he came across, grammar and punctuation, the English language. The characters in his poems were outcasts but they did whatever they wanted to do. His style was dark, but pretty at the same time.

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

Poetry.

I've always been interested in the work of certain poets. Two favourite I always read are Margaret Atwood and e.e. cummings. I have a few other collections of poetry, but I've never really been completely sucked in. Today though, I found this fragment of prose and it struck a chord with me:

FIGS ALMONDS DATES

We have in our cross-hairs
your

figs, almonds, dates, your pome-
paradise, your orchard

--"A duet with Rav Zalman who used to sing," Margaret Aho

I went on a bit of an internet search to try to find more. I couldn't find this particular poem at all, so I might head to the library in the next few days. I have a hard time letting this sort of thing go. I still need to write about the mystery book I mentioned a few days ago.

While I was looking for that particular poem I came across some more of Margaret Aho's work at the Beloit Poetry Journal. This journal is an incredible collection of interesting poetry. It appears to be free to access the entire site by anyone. From the website's History Page:

"The BPJ has remained remarkably consistent in its independent and eclectic editorial policy, its high standards, its international scope, its selection process, and its format. It has never missed an issue."

I'll definitely have to heck this out a little further. In my searches I also came across this little inter-gem: The Poet Name Generator. It never ceases to amaze me what people will do with their free time. From my html coding today I know that developing this sort of site is no easy task. It takes at least a good portion of a university-level course to come up with this sort of thing. So, yeah, approximately 14 solid years of education.

Cheers,
Lady Evelyn Picklesouse

Science Fair 09.

Today I volunteered to judge 36th annual Waterloo Wellington Regional Science Fair. The Fair is a day long event. All of the projects have won the science fairs at their respective schools and have moved on to present at this regional fair. The students range in grade from 8 to 12. There are several divisions which are divided based on age and field of study. I judged 7 displays from the Life Science and Biotechnology categories in both the junior and senior divisions. I was impressed by the level of effort and dedication the students put into their projects. One of the students decided to test the effect of energy drinks on his hockey performance. He was in grade 8 and had a rink in his backyard. He shook my hand and offered me a seat while he talked about the skills he tested after him and his dad drank Red Bull, Full Throttle, and some other highly caffeinated, sugar water drink. He had to have special permission to incorporate these drink products into his study because they aren't permitted in his elementary school (good thing, in my opinion). His observations about the way the drink altered his performance were things like 'made me fidgety'. I was impressed by his cleverness and his determination to study the contraband beverage. I tried to ask several questions, but unfortunately he was never quite able to explain what some of the negative aspects of consuming these drinks were. He also had a hard time explaining why the information he gained was useful and beneficial to the general public. I think this is where most the projects began to breakdown. And I do suppose that this sort of cognitive synthesis is going beyond the level of most grade 8 students as well.

Overall I had a really fun time. It seemed like the students were having a great time too. I think this sort of an atmosphere is great for teaching the importance of displaying your work well and sharing the information you gather.

I actually went to the Science Fair with one of my friends from down the hall in Integrative Biology. She is heading into her 7th semester and mentioned the fact that she is finishing up the last edits of her thesis. When she handed her first draft in it was only 20 pages long! I'm way past that point now, so I think I'm going to hammer out the ending and focus on submitting it asap. Even if the discussion isn't quite up to par this will get my committee talking about it and I could use some suggestions. I need to stop feeling stuck, put the ideas down on paper, and work on things from there. Moving to the next point is the goal at the moment and that requires letting all of my readers see a fair copy and sign my request for evaluation form.

Just now I also made a change to my blogger template. I managed to figure out how to edit the html and add a label cloud! I've been wanting to make that change for awhile, but I was intimidated by all of the lines of code. Blogger doesn't seem to have a gadget for just adding-on a cloud. So I went to this friendly site: phydeaux3 and figured out to add their code into mine. I also found this really cool 216 Web Safe Color Chart in order to change the colours of all of the features on my blog. I'm sure this will come in very handy in the future now that I know how to use it. I ended up making my cloud range from light pink to burgundy.

And in other exciting news, as I was browsing through the recent updates of blogs I keep tabs on, I found that the muffin bunnies were featured on IndieFixx along with a cool tutorial for these sweet little cherry blossoms.



At another of my favourite blogs, I found a tutorial for making tulle blossoms was posted yesterday. These flower crafts are so fresh and spring-timey to me. I wish there wasn't a blizzard outside. I think I'm going to have to incorporate some of these ideas into my secret swap package that's heading to South Africa this week.

Childhood books and authors.

One of the things we talk about a lot around here is how the conventional educational system attempts to squish the creativity out of everyone who enters it. Now, I'm all for public schools. I went through the public school system in Ontario during the Mike Harris years and we saw drastic changes in quality. I also managed to make my way though and turn out to be a genuinely creative person. I spend all of my spare time making things, I have a well-developed imagination, I appreciate the creative efforts of the people around me, and I work to surround myself with beautiful things (thanks Em). However, I was a bit of an outcast in my earlier school days. I hated it then, but I thank the gods everyday now that I did. Somehow I made my way through a situation that I perceived to be difficult and unnecessary at the time and turned it into a character building experience. That being said, it is fairly obvious that many of the students I work with did not manage to succeed as I did; highschool has numbed their brains and sucked out much of their creativity.



In his retirement, Doug is planning on tackling this lack of creativity through the Guelph Guitar project. He aims to engage all of the people of Guelph in stories about the science and history in this city. I think this is a cool idea.

I'm dealing with this issue in my own way, as well. I think that remembering our favourite childhood stories, authors, and illustrators is a great way to get our creativity flowing. This is why I like to post about my favourites here. I'm creating a little collection of stories that had an impact on me in my formative years and gaining inspiration from them for my current work. Some day I'll even tell more people about this blog and they can take a look at them too. When we grow up we operate based on logic and learned reason (hopefully). But when we were young we operated on imagination and our perception of the unbelievably large world around us. There weren't any rules governing physics or the universe that we knew of, so the stories we admired could take us anywhere we wanted to go where we could do anything we wanted to do. I suppose some clever adults slipped in a meaningful lesson or two along the way, but really we were free to take them however we wanted to.

One of my favourite childhood places was Where the Wild Things Are. Maurice Sendak created this story in 1963. Reading that article, I just realized that the book contains only 10 sentences. The way I remember things, this story holds much more important information than my adult brain considers 10 sentences to contain.

Next October 2009, wherever you are, I'd recommend taking this in. It's amazing what creative people can do with 10 sentences and a lot of cash.

I won an award.

So many things to update on. I've been meaning to post this all weekend, but every time I come here I end up thinking of other posts I want to make and just adding draft posts to my list. Anyway, now that I'm actually here at school, working on my writing, I need something to do whenever I get stuck. I started out today by making one the corrections that Uta had suggested. I need to good short descriptive titles for my treatments and use them throughout the entire thesis. I started doing that, and then got stuck in the wording of my hypotheses. At least I made it through the introduction.

Back on topic, what I've been trying to say, is that last Friday I won an award. The award consisted of a little bit of money and a good am out of honour. I presented some of my research at the Latornell Research Forum and my talk was judged to be the best. This Forum is one of the programs the Latornell Endowment Fund runs annually through the U of G. It was a small gathering of grad students, undergrads, faculty, and people from the conservation sector in Ontario. Arthur Latornell was very interested in supporting the development of young people in conservation careers and he gave his entire estate to the University to set up these programs. I have a really neat little biography about him that I have been intending to read for the past while. Once the April showers (and snowstorms) have passed maybe I'll get to spend some time outback working my way through the dangerous stack of books on my bedside table.



Doug just called me away from my computer to show me this:



Yes, this is a sun visor made out of the skin of Cane Toad which is a highly invasive species in Australia. Doug has been obsessed with Cane Toads for much much longer than I have know him. Every course he teaches includes a class on invasive species biology where he shows a film made in the early 1980's about the movement of Cane Toads across Australia. He even has a preserved Cane Toad sitting on the hearth of his fireplace at home. Somehow, he found this and deems it to be the ideal gift for a invasion biologist. I said he could give, "a toadally serious lecture wearing that disgusting thing". At least then everyone would know he really is crazy.

I have many other items to cover today, but I feel the need to return to my thesis for a bit. I might be back later. Knitting Group is almost over for the summer semester, so I won't be going there tonight. We're having a special session on Thursday this week. I am planning on knitting at home tonight, of course. These little guys will be on the agenda:



More muffin buns! These will be Easter treats for the little puppies that live at my parent's house. They love knitting and they will love throwing these around, for sure. The ears will probably be ripped off the first night. I also need to finish off another accessory for the spring challenge. Luckily my mitred square bag is flying off the needles.

Tomorrow I'm judging the regional highschool science fair, so I'm sure I'll be back with some observations on scientific communication,
Cass

Happy 1 April.

I have no tricks for fools today. Over at Rav however, Casey, the programmer dude, is having a heyday. I looked at one of my friend's projects and a little bug was crawling around the screen. Also my avatar is wearing a petite top hat.



Also, I was thrilled today to see that one of my favourite blogs had mentioned a giveaway that included a free embroidery pattern for a muffin bunny! This is the second day in a row that tiny muffin baby bunnies have been in my life. I hope I get to see another one tomorrow.



I think that's all for now. Just wanted to get a roll on the April blog posts. I have an exciting story about a mystery I solved today, but I'm going to save it to post in the next little while. I still have some important information to collect.

Stay tuned, Cass