I will be giving out emergency lollipops for being brave
While mainly aimed at medical and pharmacy pros, you too can join the Public Health Reserve Corps! I’m glad the health department is thinking ahead.
I can only hope it's really difficult
So many of the Flickr images tagged with forced perspective are so very unconvincing that it makes me want to make better images. Most common problem: insufficient depth of field, leaving things in unmatched focus. Another dead giveaway: uneven lighting.
I suspect the only cameras I have available have inadequate control over aperture to create convincing illusions.
A nice follow-up for Lammas
The Anticraft has many wiccan and gothic crafts, with a nice sense of humor. The Lughnasadh ’06 issue theme is Danger! and includes a knitted bomb cosy.
Happy Lammas Day!
Hey, it’s Lammas, so celebrate the harvest of grain and bake some bread. Mmmm. Bread.
July Reading
Not much this month, but maybe more will come as the weather cools.
Happy anniversary or something
July seems to be a traditionally busy month for the Collective. It was four years ago this month that we (well, Sarah) started blogging (I know this because the original Smelltone blog is still out there, gathering dust). In November of that same year, we moved the blog to our own site, and there it has remained ever since (not counting a migration from Greymatter to Movable Type and from our "free with ISP" page to a formally hosted one).
Alternative Minimum News
I have sometimes toyed with the idea of a minimalist news site, one that only tells you the news that you really need to know, and only updates you when there is actual new news. But since most people I know are habitual news trawlers, I don’t think it would be for anyone but me, and since I would have to do significant news checking to make the site, it would mean I was reading more news than my minimum daily allowance. Instead of that, here are a few sites that allow you to skip a lot of cruft if you wish to.
Regional Public Information Network
All of the Puget Sound area government organizations that tell you when some urgent event needs your attention, all in one place.
Newseum’s Front Pages
The Newseum collects just the front page from papers arount the world, a quick way to see what the top one or two stories are in any given area, with the nice option of visually averaging out how important a story is globally. Takes some poking around to get the region you want.
Wikipedia Main Page
Wikipedia gives you links to articles related to what’s in the news, an assortment of randomly selected information, today’s holidays and anniversaries and links to a more exhaustive list of same.
The Psycho Ex Game Review
The Psycho Ex Game, Markoe and Prieboy. Yes. Not flawless, but enjoyable. It was impossible for me not to speculate on which stories had been pulled completely from experience, and which had been given writers’ embellishments (or just plain invented). Further fueling that impulse is the fact that Recipe Cards have been posted by (or at least on behalf of) the authors. Also available: the song that started it all. I’ve been a fan of Ms Markoe’s work for more than twenty years, and while I don’t think this is the best book she’s been involved with creating, it does have a unique voyeuristic appeal.
(I’m getting "bandwidth exceeded" errors from the links to the book’s website; I’m hoping they’ll get more bandwidth at the beginning of the month (i.e., tomorrow))
The power of the web, applied to dead birds
Hey! Report that dead bird (in King County, at any rate) to the Public Health Department in a surprisingly detailed form.