penn

Lulu

Lulu, best as I can figure, appears to be a sort of self-publishing place. You format and upload a book, and they will print it for you when ordered. It seems really nifty. They also do calendars, so I'm considering sifting thru my Europe photos to see if I can put together a year's worth of stuff. I would love to experimentally put out a calendar and see how it does.

Also, lots of people seem to put their books up for sale on Lulu instead of going the standard publishing route. I've already got three I want, and this is just from the travel section:

We Told You So about backpacking in Europe

Fuel: memoirs of a crisis about the petrol crisis in England in 2000

Buying a Farm in Spain

I'm sure the quality is highly variable, since this isn't a bonified full-deal publishing house. However, it also seems like an excellent idea for producing one's own works. It's something I'm seriously considering, unless someone else out there knows a better way to begin to market my photos.

Pride and Prejudice

the quick review:

It was an excellent film, and it was much funnier than I remember other films being. I haven't read the book in eight years, so I have little recall from that.

Kira Knightly was a cutie. The guy who played Darcy was not half bad either (and by that I mean that he was wonderfully handsome and austere, but not a hunk. This is a good thing. He was wonderful for an Austen film).

Total chick flick. There were only three guys in the theater, and I was with one of them. He said it was fine for him to be there because he's British :-)

In summary, it was a great movie. I'm quite glad I went to see it. If any of my readers are contemplating seeing it, I'd urge you to go.

Learning a new language?

Here's a great method I read about on JMPP:

Take a regular 8 1/2 x 11 piece of blank paper and hold it horizontally. Fold it in half so that you now have an 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 surface. Then fold it again (same direction) so that it is in quarters, then again so that it is in eights, and then unfold it. You will have a piece of paper with 8 narrow columns. Across the top of the first column write "English," across the top of the second write "Spanish," then "English" atop the third, and so on.

Take about 25 vocab words (depending on how big you write) that you want to learn, and write them down the side of the first column in English. Then write their Spanish translations alongside them in the second column.

Now fold the 1st column (English) underneath the rest of the page so you can't see it. You will be left with a column of 25 Spanish words and a blank column in which you are to write their corresponding English translations (you'll also have five other blank columns). When done, check your work and make corrections as needed. Then fold the two left-hand columns (already written in) underneath the paper so that you have an English list for which you need to write the Spanish translations. Repeat this until you get to the last column and I'll bet you have all 25 memorized.

Heck, it may even work for memorizing vocab from chem, bio, etc. Seriously good idea. I'll have to try this sometime.

Coming up for Air

and I've got a long todo list.

My test is done. That's all we'll say about it. I won't have the results for quite awhile.

I've got a long list of chores.

I keep thinking of cool posts to write, but I don't have either the energy or the motivation.

Mostly, just wanted to post to say I'm still alive, and I've been enjoying other peoples' blogs.

I like Jimmy's retort to Pat Robertson regarding the Dover School District. I think Easy Green has some great ideas about simple things one can do to be conscious of the choices we're making and the environmental impact of those choices.

I'm so jealous of April's journey, and I wish I had the time to go visit Audrey (and Michel too, while I'm wishing to go abroad).

I'm living vicariously through Ant and his NaNoWriMo blogging.

I also had the privilege of attending the baptism (and more) of a beautiful Byzantine baby, and I took tons of photographs. I'll have to see if the parents will let me post one or two, because the service was quite lovely.

PS at the time of publishing, I had 666 posts. Just thought I'd share that funny number :-)

You Can't Change the World

you can only yell at one idiot at a time.

-- courtesy of my big brother (the original Penn). we don't always agree, but we do have a common disdain for willful idiotry. Oh, and happy Veteran's Day to him.

Lots of Books

I currently have 18 books checked out from the library plus one on hold. I can't begin to explain how excited and happy that makes me. I can't wait until my test is done on Saturday so I can get down to skimming thru several of these books and figuring out which ones to read.

For the record, they're mostly non-fiction books. A few are biology career books (I could probably return those now, I think). I've got several "green living" books (composting, green house design, etc). I've got a few camping books, and I've got two books about bicycling.

Okay, so they're all non-fiction. Someday, I will pick up a novel again. I read a lot of novels this summer, so I feel like I'm balancing out now.

More Flickr Photos

I've finally posted a slew of new pics at my flickr site.

One of the best:

Lo-fi Acoustic Happiness

Anyone want to go see Scott Andrew with me?

He sounds cool, and I like the one mp3 I downloaded. I found him via 43 folders and a post on Productivity for the Practicing Musician.

I Voted

even though I wasn't particularly rabid about any of the issues. In general, my votes expressed the general will of the public. I did break with my traditional voting by not voting for the green party candidate for King County Executive, but the Green Party guy wasn't really putting forth an environmental platform. He was really concerned with voting issues. I figured that I didn't want the Republican to win, since I didn't like his platform, so I went with Ron Sims.

Someday, I'm hoping that voting for the green party will actually make a difference. I was pleased to see that Green Party guy did get something like 5% of the vote. Not a huge contender . . . yet.

Long ago, I learned that the best thing to do on an initiative is vote "no" if you don't really understand it. A "no" vote (at least in WA) means that nothing will change.

I did vote no on the weird initiative to repeal the gas tax (so I voted yes for the gas tax, I guess, in a roundabout way).

I was sad to see that it looks like the Seattle monorail is dying. However, I am confident that light rail will take up where the monorail has failed. I'm hoping the car tab tax for the monorail can be rolled into the light rail to support mass transit. Right now, they're building light rail from the airport to downtown, and they're trying to finance a line from downtown to the University District. Now, if they can just link West Seattle to both downtown and the airport, we'll have the start of a truly killer light rail system.

I am ever hopeful.

So, a thought

I wish I could rig up my treadmill so my dog could walk too. Then, when it's rainy and icky outside, the dog could still get her exercise without me getting gross.

Does it say something about the unnatural nature of treadmills that non-human animals can't properly understand them?