Michelangelo Up Close

The Vatican has posted a high-resolution, interactive, virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel.  Navigating the massive, movable image is a bit tricky.  You use your mouse or touchpad and the controls in the bottom left corner of the chapel. (I found the arrow keys also worked.) Make sure to let the tour fully load before sailing off into Michelangelo's world!

Here's the link.

Shout Me Out Already

Deek's Profile Pic

My thanks to Deek at the typecasting blog TypeClack who asked his readers "Why Do You Write?"  He'll be posting responses as he receives them.  He graciously posted mine yesterday.  Thanks, Deek!

p.s.  The new and old technology he refers to is my using the Visual Typewriter software to create my typecast.  We have guests this weekend and I've stashed my typewriters in my workroom closet.  The dead giveaway is that there are no typos! (that wri  te thingy near the end was the software not me!!)

VIDEO: Gotta Get Me Some Happy Feet!

Here is one happy-making video!  I was especially pleased to see it included clips from Strictly Ballroom and the forever-favorite, Singing in the Rain.

Sept 24th [comma] 2010

As a once and future English teacher, I could not let this day pass without noting it's significance.  Today, 24 Sept 2010, is NATIONAL PUNCTUATION DAY!!  So break out your pencils, pens, typewriters, and keyboards, folks.  It's time to punctuate!

For more ways to celebrate this grammatically awesome day, go to the website for National Punctuation Day.

This message brought to you on behalf of sentences and paragraphs everywhere.

Playing with the Sky

*hb19 (R.I.P.), a creative photographer, did a whole set of "sky play" images.  The set is here on his/her Flickr account.  Click on the Slideshow version for the best effect.  The other images on his/her main Flickr account are pretty fun as well. 

Me Arty!!

Earlier this year I commented on the "Next Blog" feature of Blogger, noting that it seemed to take me to blogs the Blogger search algorithm deemed similar to mine.  But jumping from blog to blog to blog made things weirder and weirder.  This morning I tried jumping again, and it would seem I have become an Art Blogger. 

Cool! Here's where I went this time.*

A photographer's blog: Jest 18:17. 

Text from the site: " "To keep things going for a long time, you just have to carry on taking photographs. By taking photographs you make discoveries about yourself and come to realize various things. If you're constantly reminded of things, this gives you the impulse to carry on. You learn things through taking photographs; photography is your teacher. The main thing is to keep on taking photographs for ever and ever."  -- Nobuyoshi Araki"

 

 

A European traveller/photographer's site: Diário de Lisboa

 
 
 

 

The site of a sketcher who posts his/her drawings regularly: El Mar de Eco.

 

 

 

A site containing self-portrait after self portrait: Querámoslo o no,

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* After a few runs, though, the same circle of blogs kept popping up.  Guess the Interwebz sees me as only a wee bit arty! ;-)

VIDEO: Horse Play

Image source

Pure silliness; pure fun.

Worlds on Walls

I grew up with a lot of "makers" (long before the Maker Movement even thought of exisiting!).  A few excellent memories come immediately to mind: one brother sewed himself a camping tent because at that time there were none made for tall people; another brother made a robot costume for himself made of boxes covered with tin foil that had embedded working lights; a sister fashioned a 'dancing trail' of painted footprints (music played and one had to match one's dancing to the patterns of the feet markings).

One of my favorite memories is of the dragon mural brother Architect painted on a brick wall of the garage-cum-playroom.  It has long since been painted over and the playroom re-reconverted to a car garage, but the idea of spontaneously-painted murals continues to entertain.

Australian Murals

These two images are from the very amusing site of Australian Alan Wadell.*

The Murals of Philadelphia

[from the Time website: "A public art project which encourages local artists to create works utilizing the city's architecture has beautified the City of Brotherly Love and created an enduring cultural legacy."]  See here for more.

3D Murals

See more here.

Loyalist Murals in Belfast, Ireland.

See more here.

There are scads of images of murals out there.  To find them, search Google Images using the word murals.

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* Images by Wadell of Australian letterboxes were noted on this blog here and here.

Fun and Glory and History

Although I grew up in a creative household, one that assumed "making stuff" was not only normal but expected, I still get jazzed when I do some makies that have an historic element to them.  In this instance, the history involved canning tomatoes using jars that my mother used when we were kids and her mother used on The Farm.  I'm guessing some of the jars in my stash go back 80+ years.  Add to that the canning kettle that I found at Goodwill (for a mere $6.99!).  It was dinged in places and a tad rusty - clearly it had been used for some years.

The tomatoes came from a pick-your-own farm near north of here that's provided acres of well-grown vegetables for a couple of decades now.  Since The Farm has long since been sold, goodbye to the massive vegetable and fruit garden my grandparents kept each year; and since the grape vines that grew in our backyard when I was a kid met their maker over 40 years ago. . . this vendor farm is near and dear to my culinary heart.

So that was my day today: washing, coring, blanching, peeling, 'jarring', and hot-water-processing 18 quarts of tomatoes.  Is it the best thing I ever did?  Not really.  Does the world stop to notice?  No way, and why would it?  But do I feel like I stepped into History with my makings?  Oh yeah, a very big yeah!  Some personal fun and glory is what went down today. 

  

hey! it's been a lovely day! everything is going my way

i had so much fun today and i'm on fire

god it's been a lovely day everything's been going my way

ever since you went away hey i'm on fire.....

i'm on fire...

i'm on fire...

so you don't want to hear about my good day?

~~ from the song "Good Day" by Amanda Palmer

Letterbox Sighting: More Oz-i-ness

This and dozens of other Australian letterboxes were 'discovered' by Alan Waddell.

[from Wadell's website: "Alan Waddell was encouraged by his doctor to take up walking. After a while, repeating the same route every day became boring. So Alan Waddell decided to walk every street in his own suburb. In December 2002, this idea of walking every street was expanded to include neighbouring suburbs and so his odyssey began."]

Letterbox Sighting: Awesomeness from Oz!

Came across this wonderfully fun page of Australian letterbox pics.