Strangest Sentence I Ever Typed

"I was going to put the dogs in the mac."

Current Favorite Song: Beep Beep

I can't tell you how embarrassing it is to write the above subject title.

A) Beep Beep sounds like a children's song
B) It's only available for sale in the UK (sob), so...
C) I can only hear it by watching this television commercial.

My only advice: ignore the commercial and just listen. Then pray that Simone White releases her album here in the U.S. So I can stop crying.

Jaw-Droppingly Awesome

How absolutely amazing are these books created by Brian Dettmer:

from Haydee Rovirosa Gallery

from Aron Packer Gallery

Another blogger Centripetal Motion has collected much of Brian's work.

Few more goodies

As a friend recently pointed out, this has really just become a product pick blog - and largely focused on etsy at that. Just as well - i can't afford to have more expensive taste than etsy.

Here are a few more yummys:

from smeenakanit:
from katinkapinka:
from Another Shade of Gray:

Tee Hee - Jewelry

I'm so excited about a number of jewelry pieces I just found today. These from Christinebijoux on etsy:


And these from Hummingbird13 on etsy:

OK, love these fans

Through some blog hopping today (can you tell I didn't have much to do at work), I came across these amazing ceiling fans on G Squared Art:

wish I had a little girl

Ok, i don't really mean what I say in the title, but some of these things are SO cute. But I'm a bit old and my boyfriend a bit too (ahem) manly, to defend hanging such sweet things in our apt. But don't you just love A Life With Flowers?

Wedding Band - No, not for me!

Wouldn't this make the most romantic wedding ring set? He takes one half, she takes the other. I'll ruin this by pointing out that most men & women don't have the same finger size, but whatever. Intriguing idea nonetheless:
Ring design is from Moha.

Sob - I'm out of control

With all my shopping recently (um... bought another print this morning), I've been actually feeling like I'm ready to stop. And then I found these.


I've been looking for a new ring for about a month now and I finally found what I like. Only dilemma now is which one to get (only 1 is an option... I think). I'm taking votes now...

Lively Artwork

I just love this stuff from Elesavet (not buying any I swear):

Tee Hee ... Gift for Me!

.... so there was a slight lull after last week's binge, but now I'm back off the wagon! You'll be excited to know that I've added another lovely purchase to my recent celebration of the beautiful things that surround us. This intriguing bracelet from etsy:

And a quick update: I received the canape plates from Tracy Porter and LOVE them. They are the perfect size to be held in one hand and they're great vivid colors. So excited to use them when guests are over.

Dammit - shopaholism continues

Few other sites to tempt you all too:

Cups nuzzling teapot

Graphic duvet covers

Sigh!

I Heart Home Decor

So I'm smack in the middle of one of my worst shopping phases ever. It started yesterday and I have seriously eyed more than $500 worth of whimsical decorating merchandise that I don't have room for. (I almost wrote "that I don't need" but that would be a lie. Of COURSE I need a 6-stem flower holder and a set of five-pronged forks.)

So, to try to sate my shopping urges, I've decided to record here all the items that are so sorely tempting me. With any luck, I'll be able to nip this swiftly in the bud. But if this keeps blooming, that 6-stem flower hold will sure come in handy. ; )

6-stem flower holder

5-prong fork + spoon
update: I just realized these are servers. That makes so much more sense. The 5 prongs were a tad scary.

Red tree landscape — this one I actually purchased (see post below)

Tracy Porter canape plates (oops! bought these too)
Leaf olive oil dish
The color deepens as you add more olive oil plus doubles as a ring dish!

Teacup Girl

Anything by Belle & Boo
And finally Little Hedgehog Goes Fishing

Moody Trees

I just LOVE moody and contemplative artwork. On top of that, I love trees in artwork - so predictable! Here's the perfect synthesis of both, which I just bought from Etsy from the artist Galeriedeilluminata.

Anyone remember the children's book that was kinda like this, with an above- and below-ground scene with all these crazy-fun things happening in both?

OMG I'm in love...

World's Thinnest Notebook

How to Find the Best Music

So I've got an embarrassing confession: I was a patron of Lite Music for years. I told friends that my parents made me listen to it instead of the Eagle 106, the Philadelphia rock station. But actually I loved Star 104.5, and would swoon to all its schlocky songs.

When I think back on that time, I am filled with shame. How, oh how, could I ever fall for Boyz II Men or Lionel Richie or Eric Clapton the way I did? Now I listen to the radio and wonder how it is that people can listen to songs that ALL SOUND ALIKE! We haven't heard a new hook on FM for years!

I can claim this kind of snobbery because I find new hooks all the time, and I do it through a few select blogs (whose taste I like) and through a great tool called Page Playlist that I use with the web browser Firefox.

I have to give credit to Blurbomat for explaining how Page Playlist works. Thanks to him, I discovered an entire world of music without having to wait for Songbird to load (if you're feeling adventurous, it's a fun program to explore, though).

Now I can go to my favorite music blogs and Page Playlist aggregates all the MP3s on the page into a little player in the upper left-hand corner. I double click, I play, I listen, I enjoy! My music taste has gone from blah to bangin' in just weeks. You too can enjoy this musical makeover! If you don't already have music blogs you like, try some of these favs of mine:

• fluxblog - mixed taste with 80s vibe
  
• 3hive - tags let you easily find the genres you enjoy
  
• getecho - generally mellow and European
  

There are fresh sounds out there! Now you have no excuse for the stuff you listen to.

Eye-Eye Matey!

I just have to direct your eyes to a wonderful photoblog called ENFOCAR that a coworker of mine just launched. He has a wonderful eye for creating tension in a photo. My favorite pic is A Billboard With Eyes.

The Brain Butler

I really enjoy wine, partially thanks to a man I dated a few years back. He was quite passionate about the topic, avidly reading Wine Spectator, and he could spend 45 minutes picking out a wine for dinner that night. Other than the painfully long waits in the wine store, this was perfect for me. I benefited from his superior taste and knowledge without having to spend a second learning anything.

But riding his intellectual coattails didn't work over the long term. We broke up and I was left with, well, a bratty tongue that wanted all the best wines still and a dull brain that hadn't manage to learn much more than which names meant red and which white.

I don't think my plight is rare either. I once read an article proposing that couples often store information in each other's heads. One person is good at finances. The other makes exceptional pasta primavera. Voila! A symbiotic partnership is born.

But I've started to notice that this is seeping beyond the confines of a serious relationship. It's showing up among friends and, more surprising, co-workers with similar jobs. At my workplace, a design agency, people within one capability are micro-specializing. We each have reputations for being interested in different aspects of our job. This means each of us are keepers of different bundles of knowledge.

I, for instance, enjoy being a first adopter of newer technologies that are in the early stages of user-friendliness (i.e. I don't have to do any of my own coding or head to Radio Shack for a new cord, but few other people have heard of the software/site/product yet). So co-workers send me links to things they don't have time to explore but think I might like. When I have time, I wander to the sites and try something new.

Whether this trend is new or not, I couldn't pretend to say. But I would propose that based on how much information there is in the world, it's bound to increase. As information overwhelms, we start piecing together support systems to comb through it. Those support systems include bloggers whom we've come to trust the taste of despite having never met, ex-boyfriends who hold all the knowledge we need about wine, and co-workers who research things and then report back any exciting new technologies / trends / content.

My favorite word for this is bit literacy, coined, I believe, by Mark Hurst, who is particularly concerned that we all have ever-improving experiences with technology despite the potential to be overwhelmed by its content.

Perhaps we can consciously acknowledge the need to rely on others for those bits. Call them brain butlers — friends, co-workers or bloggers who are willing to research topics we have no time for and parse it down to the information we need to know. Kinda makes you want to choose your friends (and your place of employment) a little more wisely.

Find the Perfect Gift for You

Use the Imagini Gift Finder to uncover the perfect gift for you or others (sold in the UK). Besides the regional limitation there is one other downside: the process takes longer than expected with 15 steps. But naval gazing never gets old. ; )

The results are quite fun and — I thought — rather accurate.

House Envy

A co-worker of mine just closed on a new home in Jersey. I SO want it. I want to hold it and cuddle it and make it mine and 'I wanna pet the rabbits, George'! Too obscure?

Bottom line: I don't have enough space in my little NY apartment to buy all the neat, cute things I find all over the web. Now you all can join me in my pain. The Hygge site is only available to customers in the UK.

But feel free to browse anyway.

Their Fairytale inspired giclee print and cut maple coasters will make you realize just how tough my life must be the rest of the time when I see lovely things and can't even dream about surrounding myself with them.

UPDATE: Dammit. Turns out they ship anywhere. Now I'm alone again. So alone.

Women Rule! Yes!

Women — the smart, well-balanced, successful kind — rule for two reasons today:

• Contrary to myths, they have better marriages and better sex
• They now get paid the same as men when they win Wimbledon

Um... uh... maybe... uh... can you decide?

What kind of problem solver are you? Take this one-page test (requires you to create a login) to find out. I was quadrant 2!

Fake iPhone Story

I love stories about idiocy. That's why I still pay passing attention to politics, but I digress. Here's a great iPhone story where the local news didn't ... quite ... get it right.

I Heart Social Experiments

Why do social experiments make me laugh so hard? Like Candid Camera, where you watch people think they've entered the twilight zone. Or the guy who stuck bubble stickers on posters around NYC and then returned to see who wrote messages in them.

The Voyer Box is the newest discovery to make me smile. Watch the startled looks as people get their picture taken while they walk by. I thought at first the machine cat-called pedestrians, but this is slightly kinder... maybe.

Of course, intrusive technology is BAD BAD BAD, as anyone concerned about ubiquitous computing will tell you. But SO funny.

Dream a Little Dream

Dreams: I wanna be an astronaut. I wanna sing in a rock band. I wanna ... um, write dirty romance novels. Sometimes they actually come true. You land on the moon, you open for Jewel, you ... um, write a dirty romance novel.

Well, today a little dream of mine came true. This is one of those dreams that you almost forget you have, like not having singleton socks in the laundry or rediscovering some forgotten perfect outfit. And then it happens one day — the dream comes true — and, partially because you've forgotten to yearn for it, you're insanely excited.

That's me right now. Insanely exited. Over something really small, but something I've quietly wanted since I was planning out my dream mansion in fifth grade. Today I discovered... [building suspense] ... a speaker system that can play the Same Song Throughout Your Home. Now I can walk from room to room and never lose the melody. Woohoo! But get this: It can also play a Different Song in Each Room in the House. Woohoo again!

The main reason I'm excited is that it was gushingly reviewed on this blog I read that endorses clever technical products. And although the system costs more than $1000, I'm excited for another reason: I don't need it yet. I barely have three rooms to my name — no house. By the time I need it, I expect the technology will be smaller, cheaper and more accessible.

Today's accomplishments? One lifelong dream fulfilled. Whew! I'm exhausted.

find a photo with geography

Using location tags found on Flickr images, Yahoo! has created a map that shows you pictures connected with the locations where they were taken. There are still several rough spots since it's dependent on accurate tagging and the areas of the country presented on the map seem to be pre-selected.

I've heard rumors of a GPS-based camera that can map your own pictures to an interface like this one. You'll never forget again exactly where you took something. Now that is cool, especially as you could compare someone else's picture taken in the exact same spot. Oooh!

Changing the way we look at history

Technophiles and history buffs alike will appreciate this one: a tag cloud showing the words most commonly used in presidential state of the union addresses since John Adams. The bigger the word, the more times it was repeated.

Can you forgive someone 7 times 7?

I'm going to try (emphasis on try) to renew my blogging efforts, insofar as I'll post interesting websites I've come across. More to come!