One Year

Watch one year in 40 seconds. Eirik Solheim has others on his website. View another two-minute version in HD.

Seeing Is Believing

Image from Flowing Data: Watching the Growth of Walmart by Nathan
Can't get enough of visualized data like Wordle and decision trees? Watch The Growth of Walmart or study the Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis. Flowing Data has chosen the Five Best Visualization Projects of 2008.

Good Reads of Late Fall 2008

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir by Elizabeth McCracken

My review

Elizabeth McCracken is one of my favorite authors (Awake and Giant's House) and this non-fiction account of losing her stillborn child and surviving is heartwrenching and poignant.  NPR reviews it here.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

My review

Brief, classical character study of a sterile and innocuous age ... kept me riveted even though the tragedy of the ending is predictable.

A Walk Through Mathematics

Everyone should watch this video online. Nine chapters and three dimensions through complex numbers and geometry.

Origami!

Thanks to Gerry for this timely link:

From WikiHow

comes instructions on making an origami reindeer.

Helping Hands

Perhaps you know a family that is suffering because one its members has just been diagnosed with an illness. Sign up for the organizational help using the Lotsa Helping Hands website. Family and friends can sign up to help cook, manage childcare, shop or simply sit. From the website:

In literally minutes, a Coordinator can create, free-of-charge, a private and secure Lotsa Helping Hands web community, define volunteer activities using the supplied templates, and begin inviting members to the community. Through an intuitive interface that requires no training, volunteers can then easily view and sign up for any number of available tasks, review their current commitments, and be confident they won’t forget any assignments as the system automatically sends out email reminders of upcoming obligations.

Community members also have access to the community’s private message boards, photo galleries, resource sections for sharing relevant web links and documents, and even a Well Wishes wall. Any number of custom community sections can be created by the Coordinators to enrich the flow and sharing of information within the community, keeping all members, near and far ‘in the loop’.

Coordinators can also easily create new custom sections within the community to address the specific needs and make-up of the community, including journals and blogs, photo albums, message boards, recipe sections, and listings of members’ skills. The community-building capabilities are only limited by the imagination.
te community in which you know a member, get in touch with that person and ask them to send you a ‘tell-a-friend’ link which will allow you to request membership into the community. For privacy and security reasons, there's currently no way to volunteer at a web site in which you don't know anyone.

Once the community web site is set up, the Lotsa Helping Hands system quickly and easily guides Coordinators through the creation of new activities using on-screen pre-defined template forms. For example, the request to receive weekday dinners would specify the desired days and times, dietary restrictions, and delivery instructions. Or if a family requires transportation, they can easily specify pick-up and drop-off times, locations with direct links to Google Maps for directions, and appointment durations.

Lotsa Helping Hands relieves the awkwardness of personally asking for help in each instance of need. And once a member signs up for a task, the community web site shows that task as assigned, thereby avoiding overlap of efforts, wasted meals, and confusion.

Why Search?

Rob sent me this great site today and it's certainly worth a look! AllMyFaves also has a blog and I've added it to my Google Reader feed.

It's For The Birds

For the birder in your life, the new Cornell Ornithology Labs Birdscapes: A Pop-Up Celebration of Bird Songs in Stereo Sound  by Miyoka Chu is a wonderful idea. You can even get a sneak peak at the pop-up pages and listen to the birdsongs in the wild on Amazon.com. It's a bit pricey but I imagine the sales do promote the Ornithology Lab which does amazing work. 

Bronner's Christmas Wonderland has a multitude of bird ornaments.

The World Wildlife Fund has a special Adopt a Penguin program through their gift center.  

For a younger birder on your list there is The Young Birder's Guide to Birds of Northeastern America. Listen to the podcast by Bill Thompson, father of Phoebe Thompson, his daughter and co-author. Another choice is the Young Naturalist's Guide to Songbirds by Jonathan Latimer.

What We Already Knew

Watch this NBC Nightly News Report with Brian Williams.  Libraries are needed more than ever in these tough times.  Libraries own more books than ever before and circulation is up.

Read this interesting article by JOANNE KAUFMAN on book group trouble, Fought Over Any Good Books Lately? in the New York Times, December 5. Graphic from the New York Times by Gary Hovland

Organize Thyself

Mashable has a great list of 100 Web organizational tools.




DoitDoitDone has online lists to be shared with family and friends and Shoeboxed will organize your receipts. Anything free and easy at this time of year should be a help to everyone!

Lighting Up Your Holiday

This is one of the best 2007 holiday lighting displays set to music. The 34th Street Overture is the music or watch this next one set to Music Box Dancer.  Both are by the Holdman Family of Utah who designed over five lighting displays last year. They were voted down by neighbors in their gated community and they've moved the display this year to Lindon, Utah. Check out their display this year as it goes online. Better yet, donate to the MakeAWish cause. 

Find more on YouTube by searching for holiday light displays.