And what’s next?

Have you ever had someone explain something to you — and you’re grasping it… and then they keep babbling on and on and you lose that little thread of understanding and just end up confused?

Well, I have. Years of it, in fact. It was called “high school.”

I was reminded of that era by part of an email I just got from Kodak:

When will I get my order?
Your order is scheduled to arrive 3-10 business days after you receive this email. 3-10 business days delivery orders experience a range of delivery times. Most orders are delivered very quickly (within two to five business days), but 3-10 business days delivery time depends on distance and internal 3-10 business days delivery factors, and therefore cannot be guaranteed. US West Coast deliveries often arrive the next business day and many US East Coast orders arrive in as few as three business days. However, 3-10 business days delivery can take as long as 14 business days, regardless of destination. If your order has not arrived 14 business days after receiving your shipping confirmation email, please contact us at…

Found a cool new website that takes your photos, apply effects, and inserts them into various scenes. Fun stuff - in fact, the site’s name is PhotoFunia.

Check out a few of my favorite photographic creations - starting with an old shot of me and my big sister that looks like it’s in an antique book, and including putting one of my boys on a Harry Potter-esque WANTED poster and my daughter on a sign outside a (Russian) store. Go make your own at PhotoFunia!

BTW, I have no affiliation with this site at all - just thought it was interesting and amusing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just posted over on SheKnows.com about Trent Reznor’s new video interview that went live today. This is exactly the sort of video I’d love love love to make! (With Trent, definitely — but with any/all of my interviews, really.)

And on that topic, I included a little message for the man at the end of the piece, ’cause I know he’s such an avid SheKnows reader. Really, though, I have this whole concept/rationale in mind, and got exactly nowhere with it so far. But I’m just not going to push it if Mr NIN and his peeps aren’t interested — it’s not like I don’t have more than enough to keep me busy.

Over the past few years, I’ve been trying to scan in as many old family photos as possible — “old” meaning simply those before my own personal digital camera era.

I knew I had some photos dating back to the 20s, but was surprised to find a few even older… from the mid- to late-19th century!

Here’s one I found — and I love everything about it, from the woman on the left with her wasp-waisted corset to the hat on the lawn in the foreground on the right. (You need to see it full-size to really appreciate the nuances of it — click on the pic for a larger version.)

Sadly, I don’t know where this was taken, or who the people are.

Someone was kind enough to have sent me a really interesting and kind of amazing theory on this photo of my son Quinn - a pic that showed early on how his mind worked a little differently (eventually diagnosed as autism):

Here’s part of her note (actually sent to me as a comment on this site):

My primary research interest is autism and so I had of course seen the pictures you uploaded of Quinn onto the Wikipedia article on autism. I had first seen the “ducks in a row” picture a while ago and felt that there was something interesting going on with the spacing of the ducks in that line of toys. When I drew the pattern out, assigning shapes to the types of toys he had, it blew me away when I realized that Quinn, at two years old, had created a Fibonacci sequence with the ducks (I first learned of this sequence in my senior year of high school). A Fibonacci sequence is 0 1 1 2 3 5 8…continuing infinitely. It’s the pattern that’s found all over nature, in sunflower heads, pinecones, nautilus shells, etc. Furthermore, Quinn lined the toys up in a way that the “non-duck spacers” represent the previous number of ducks multiplied by themselves. So in order: 1 duck (x1) = 2 spacers (clock and teletubby), 1 duck (x1) = 2 spacers (2 shoes), 2 ducks (x2) = 4 spacers (frog, pig, cow, cow). Finally, if he has two of kind for the spacers, he puts them together. Although I have read of talents with prime numbers in autism, I have never come across anything with the Fibonacci sequence. I’m at the beginning of my studies, so I don’t have any concrete recommendations, but a fellow researcher I study with thought this was remarkable as well.

This is something I had never noticed before, but it wouldn’t be impossible to believe. (I will need to look over some of his other sets of lined-up toys and his artwork.)

What do you think?

I just found another photo of Quinn doing pretty much the same thing with the ducks on a different day (but around the same age).

I wish I could find the original of this so I could see the ducks a little more closely! The 4 ducks should be 5, but maybe (lacking another yellow quacker) he put the green thing as a duck? I certainly don’t know all the ways his lovely mind works, but there’s definitely a pattern here…

I’ve published something new — and not on my own site! It is an article written for entrepreneurs, called Snap Out of That Self-Help Stupor and Get to Work, and was posted this morning on BusinessWeek.com.

Here’s a little screenshot, which you can click to see the whole piece:

The article was linked from the site’s main page, and the even editor gave me a little intro, explaining what Twitter had to do with the whole deal. Check out how BusinessWeek Editor-in-Chief John A Byrne explained my guest columnist status here.

Thanks to both John Byrne and Shirley Brady for this opp!

I finally finished my Amanda Tapping interview and posted it on SheKnows!

Check it out: Amanda Tapping: From Stargate to Sanctuary

This is actually just part 1 of the interview, which needed to go live pronto because the season finale airs tonight. There’s still Stargate to talk about, as well as some daily/family life stuff.

The point of the interview was to discuss her new show, Sanctuary, which airs on the Sci-Fi network. Sanctuary has both a cool premise and unique execution, and Ms Tapping does far more than just act on the series: she co-founded the production company with two friends, and works on many different angles of the business, including several not-so-fun parts.

Chatting with Amanda was fantastic - she’s very easygoing, and actually knew who I was and had been on SheKnows.com! Very trippy to hear her talking about me, especially since I have heard that same voice coming out of my TV or computer screen for 200-plus episodes of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis.

Trippy, but very cool.

I have given money to several charities over the years, but one of my favorite non-profits actually doesn’t require donations — but you are still able to help those in need.

If you haven’t heard of Kiva, it’s an awesome concept: making small loans to teeny businesses in very underprivileged parts of the world.

I’m such a fan, I wrote a sort of Kiva primer for SheKnows:

Make a difference right from home
I have helped buy cows in Azerbaijan, food in the Dominican Republic, clothing in Kenya and fund construction in Mexico. But I’m not an aid worker or missionary, and I haven’t been to a single one of these countries. How, then? Well, I’m a sort of modern-day armchair lender: a web-based microlender.

Read the whole article here — and here is a really sweet review on the piece. <blush>

Finally published the first article based on the interviews I did a couple weeks back! This piece is really just about the various reactions to the show being cancelled. (I know… a day late and a buck short. It’s taken a long time to get all the chats transcribed — nearly three hours of audio — and they’re still not all done, actually.)

Atlantis goes into stasis

Stargate Atlantis ends its series run: Cast and crew react to the news

When word broke at the end of August that Stargate Atlantis, one of the shining stars in the Sci-Fi Network galaxy, was being cancelled with its 100th episode, ardent fans weren’t the only ones who were stunned. After all, the show was only in its fifth season, and was more successful than ever. So what’s the story? SheKnows visited the Stargate set in Vancouver, and talked to three of the series regulars as well as the show’s executive producer to find out.

Read the whole article here at SheKnows.com

Stargate Atlantis article #1 on SheKnows.com

I managed to get the chance to journey up to Vancouver a couple weeks ago to visit the set of Stargate Atlantis. I was there to interview the cast and crew for a series of articles to run on SheKnows.com… but I was really there ’cause SGA is one of my favorite shows. Rather than letting a writer set up some phoners with the troupe, I decided that (a) I could do a better job since I know the series very well, and (b) I really wanted to do this. (I mean, if you are into a sci-fi show… who wouldn’t?!)

I got what seemed like a VIP tour: met most of the stars of the show, the exec producer and several other cool behind-the-scenes peeps.

What also rocked is that I also had the chance to play on the sets! I got a picture with the Atlantis base Stargate, at one of the desks in the control room, sat in the chair at Stargate Command from which incoming wormholes are announced, and even got to sit in the captain’s chair on the bridge of the Daedalus! (That set also served as the Apollo and the Prometheus ships.)

Hey — no apologies for geeking out over this.

I can’t publish most of the photos I took on SheKnows, as there are various legal/union/other issues apparently with such publication — but I’d think it would be cool to post some teeny thumbnails here on my own personal site. Yeah?

My fab Stargate tour

Row 1: With Rachel Luttrell (who plays Teyla) on the Stargate Atlantis set / In the control room
Row 2: At the SGC  / On the bridge of the spaceship

More about the experience will be revealed as I publish the articles over the next couple of weeks.