January 08, 2010
Top
10 Biggest Food Network Foodgasms Of 2009
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Parisian
murals by Street artist Gorellaume
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Life
in a Yurt, with a NYT article behind the slideshow
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Concrete
mushrooms: A project about the 750,000 bunkers left over from the communist era
of
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The
56 Geeks Project, by Scott Johnson
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Street
installations by Mark Jenkins
January 8, 2010 in Do Something with your Life | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 07, 2009
The View From Your Recession
…At the risk of sounding somewhat obnoxious, I am finding this economic crisis rather soothing.
Back in 1999, I was earning a decent salary (about 60k a year) and had good career prospects at a major daily newspaper. Then, pre-millennial angst crept in: Is this all there is to life? So, I cashed in my savings and dropped out. I moved to Paris, I worked with an art project, I wrote a couple of books, I spent time living in Beijing and on the Greek Islands.
My philosophy was that the one thing a person can’t afford in life is regret and this mantra carried me off on adventures I couldn’t have even imagined back when I was slogging away at the newspaper. The doubts and panic started last year. I am worth nothing: no assets and a bank balance that rises into four digits on only the rarest of occasions. I find myself approaching 40, a less romantic age to live hand-to-mouth. And then my girlfriend became pregnant. All of a sudden, I was sneaking longing glances at those who had stayed in the game and had pensions, homes, and the wherewithal to give their children a decent start in life. I became very very nervous…
A Huge Depository of Unusual Things To Do With Your Life Here
March 7, 2009 in Do Something with your Life | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 28, 2008
Running the extra mile
…The sun was rising behind the hills over Crystal Springs reservoir this morning at 6:20am, but you couldn’t see it yet. There was just enough light to brighten the overcast sky and to make the threaded wisps of mist rising off the slate-dark water stand out clearly. But the day hadn’t properly begun, and all was quiet, unmoving, cool. I looked to my right and thought I saw a hawk soaring low out of the trees, just above head level and about 20 feet off the path. It was brown and black and had barred wings. But as I looked, I realized that it had a blunt, flat face and a downward-curving beak: An owl!
It glided silently on behind me and out of sight.
I’d been running for fifty minutes, and was about five miles away from my house…
Running the extra mile by Dylan F. Tweney
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(Photo above by Thomas Hawk)
A Huge Depository of Unusual Things To Do With Your Life Here
September 28, 2008 in Do Something with your Life | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 11, 2008
I'm so sorry
...When I was growing up, my family had its own way of dealing with disagreements. We stopped speaking. Sometimes the deep freeze lasted a day, sometimes a week. Every once in a while, an offending cousin or aunt was simply erased from the family landscape, airbrushed out of our lives like a deposed member of the Politburo.
I stopped talking to my parents after a series of family difficulties culminating in an angry phone conversation with my mother in 1988. This communication blockade continued to 2000. Other than an annual Christmas card from my parents, which they warmly signed using only their last name, there was no interaction whatever for 12 years.
People like me who were raised in a grudge-holding culture know that the silent treatment is self-perpetuating. The longer you are silent, the longer you will be silent. The further out into the ocean you sail, the harder it is to see the harbor. After a year or two or three, it's not so easy to pick up the phone and just chat.
And then my father sent me a card in which he wrote three very powerful words: "I'm so sorry"...
The Power Of ‘I Am Sorry’ By Janice Wilberg
A Huge Depository of Unusual Things To Do With Your Life Here
September 11, 2008 in Do Something with your Life | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack
June 02, 2008
Life on the beach
Doug Pray's documentary "Surfwise" is the tale of two parents who raised their nine children in a 24-foot camper — an experience their daughter would later describe as "like weird monkeys in a small monkey cage." Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz and his wife, Juliette, both avid surfers and radical thinkers, lived as nomads for decades with their eight sons and one daughter. In that rattletrap camper, they crossed the U.S., eschewing schools and living off the grid. "I just wanted my kids around me, surfing with me, education be damned," says Paskowitz in the film
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June 2, 2008 in Do Something with your Life | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 27, 2008
It's better to do something than to do nothing
…If you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in - that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought...
And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads...
From - A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken, by Clay Shirky
(Graphic above from Fred Jacobs)
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April 27, 2008 in Do Something with your Life | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 30, 2008
Forward Through Backwards Time
The French call it l'esprit d'escalier, "the wit of the staircase," those biting ripostes that are thought of just seconds too late, on the way out of the room-or even, to tell the truth, days later. It's happened to you: you've suddenly thought of just what would put your foe in his or her place, but past the time when the arrow could sting its victim. You've stewed in your own juice ever since, and the chance for singeing repartee is gone forever
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March 30, 2008 in Do Something with your Life | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
March 13, 2008
Hello? Can you hear me?
A special Hearing Test from Norway. (Takes about 3 minutes to complete)
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February 09, 2008
How to Be Happy
Buster Butterfield McLeod's performing all the components of Facial Action Coding System dissected by Paul Ekman
Joshua Loves Melissa - That is all
Handstanding at important landscape sites in Europe is Nathan Hemming
An image of Steve Jobs made out of icons (by Charis Tsevis)
Inside the prize-filled trophy home of a seemingly obsessive-compulsive contest enterer
Let Me Save You $40: Here’s How to Be Happy
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February 9, 2008 in Do Something with your Life | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 03, 2008
World's Highest Bungee Jump
Don’t look down! Macau Tower is 764 Ft. Up, and as such the world’s highest commercial bungee jump
The private island is more than just a status symbol for the Richard Bransons and Larry Pages of the world, it is the ultimate retreat from the stresses and demands of today’s 9-5 rat race. Surprisingly, owning your own tropical island paradise isn’t reserved for dot com moguls and skinny heiresses– prices start in the low six figures. From there, the sky (and the ocean) is the limit. Start saving now, Cravers– and continue reading below on how you can Buy Your Own Private Island
Take a sledgehammer and wrap an old sweater around it. This is your “shovelglove”. Every week day morning, set a timer for 14 minutes. Use the shovelglove to perform shoveling, butter churning, and wood chopping motions until the timer goes off. Stop. Rest on weekends and holidays
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January 3, 2008 in Do Something with your Life | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
December 09, 2007
Marry me
"What if I could get Neil Gaiman, our most fave author and fantasy writer, to help propose to my girlfriend?" A sweet tale of how Jason got Neil Gaiman to stage the proposal. (From Gravity Lens)
Tom Baxter's Better
My Origami Learning Curve. Also, Bourgoin's Arabic Tessellations, 1879. (Found on Eric Gjerde’s flickr stream)
What will you do for a million dollars?
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December 9, 2007 in Do Something with your Life | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 04, 2007
A project for the blind
The Braille Graffiti Project
I will knot is a site about knots: how to tie them, how to appreciate their beauty. Even the seriously knot-challenged among us can learn to tie many useful and popular knots by following along with the short, step-by-step instructional video clips on this site
The Mp3 Experiment Four was “Improv Everywhere” biggest mission to date. 826 people downloaded the same mp3, pressed play at the same time, and had a blast together on Lower Manhattan’s beautiful waterfront
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October 4, 2007 in Do Something with your Life | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 05, 2007
Observations on my 63rd birthday (Not mine)
It's my 63rd birthday and I don't feel a day over 59. These birthdays come and go, but I've reached the point in life where I've learned that each day is as precious as the next.
But still, birthdays make me reflective. I thought I'd share some of the thoughts that have come to me as this particular birthday approaches
Also: “You know you're old when you spell words correctly and use full sentences in text messages”. Guy Kawasaki’s list of You know you’re old when…
21 Critical Life Lessons You Didn’t Learn in School
When Not to Hyphenate Your Name
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September 5, 2007 in Do Something with your Life | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 08, 2007
Cracking a Coconut
Into the Wild, a new movie by Sean Penn
The Secret of Cracking a Coconut
The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun. (From Life Hack)
How to tick people off. No 4. If you have a glass eye, tap on it occasionally with your pen while talking to others.
If you're going to get a Barcode tattoo, at least do it right. Pat Fish offers this advice: The single most important consideration with a barcode tattoo is scale. There is a blur factor in all tattoos, and thin areas of skin between black carbon pigment lines will inevitably be blurred by the natural skin-cell division causing ink particle movement. The best thing you can be telling people is to have their artist do a bead line of white ink between every black line, and continue to do that on a regular basis every few years so that the white pigment "holds the place open" and prevents the black ink from moving
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August 8, 2007 in Do Something with your Life | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 28, 2007
Priceless
Vasectomy: $400. Speechless look on her face: priceless
The many Woodworking projects and other from Matthias Wandel
Every week, I do a mood board that depicts stuff that I'm doing, things on my mind, music I'm listening to, books I'm reading, movies I'm seeing, etc.
Swim At Your Own Risk, or: where not to spend your summer vacation
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May 28, 2007 in Do Something with your Life | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack