Take10Now.com just launched. Rory Cohen will be on the TV show The View tomorrow (March 2nd, 2006) with her transgendered son, Tye, of http://asktye.com/

Hope you all check out the sites and check out the show! These are all Crawberts.com productions, and we’re pretty proud of them.

Not a bad article. Requires free registration on the VenturaCountyStar website.

Ventura County Star: Business: Business blogging is blooming

That happened to Leah Peterson of Simi Valley, who posts interviews with other bloggers as a feature on her personal site.

One of the bloggers, who has a lot of traffic on his site, linked to her site and overwhelmed it with more traffic than it could handle. Peterson remedied the situation, but it was a reminder that an interesting post can change blog traffic levels.

Peterson has a background in photography, art and writing. She runs Crawberts.com, a Web development company, with her husband, Joe Crawford.

“Very rarely do I write about anything business-ey on my blog,” she said.

Even so, she said she found before long that her blog was leading to business connections that wouldn’t have formed otherwise.

“We don’t have to advertise as much,” she said. “We don’t have to go out looking for work as much. The word of mouth spreads instantly.”

The blog became a good place to contact people and network.

She recently posted a job ad on her blog looking for programmers — then took the opportunity to talk about those things they were looking for beyond what was mentioned in the ad, such as integrity, a strong work ethic and “know your stuff as well as you say you do.”

Peterson said there is a balance between being honest and creative while still being careful about what she posts. She makes sure to ask clients if they are OK with her mentioning contract work in the blog.

When she goes looking for people, Peterson said, one of the first things she does is look for a blog or personal Web site. She expects that others do the same.

“I think people want to know what the people are really like behind the business,” she said.

Nice work Leah!

Sunday morning Tyler and I, and then Leah, and Tony, were drawn into a discussion of farts, and whether they were the product of Satan, or God. It was a pretty good discussion which turned out to have general agreement that farts are not generally good or evil — they are of us and our bodies, created by God, so they’re neutral.

The question in the world is “How we use that gas?” Are we passing gas to the greater glory of God?

Silly, I know, but it gave us all a chance to talk about the inherent nature of the world, and how we can act in concert with or out of concert with, our Higher Power.

In my experience, discussing farts with teen and tween boys was a valuable “teachable moment” — in part because it was a valuable teachable moment for me.

And I’m not really kidding at all.

The First:
It is… axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
– W. H. Auden

The Second:
Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
– W. H. Auden

Who, Joe? Him.

From Loving Each Day:

Remember that your state of mind, the way you feel about yourself, powerfully contributes or not to your well being depending on whether your attitude is uplifting or not.

Apropos of life:

From Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address:
With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

This geeky page merges two of my interests: religion and comics. There are indeed some Catholics in here:

Religion of Comic Book Characters
This page focuses on fictional comic book characters — mostly from Marvel and DC — who are adherents of real-world (not purely fictional) religions.

We want this page to be as accurate as possible, backed up by objective, published information and not based on conjecture. We do not want this listing to be slanted toward any particular denominational or religious viewpoint. It is intended to accurately report the composition of comic book character religiosity.

In Kelly Abbott’s  article on iMedia Connection: Maven-Mapping for Fun & Profits

Hey, I forgot to mention that last week Crawberts launched a new site for Barkman! — it’s at http://www.workinrhythm.com/ . I think it’s a nice piece of work. And Barky even . Yup, we do that, we install blogs for people.

So back in july I posted Steampunk Anglo Warrior, 1990, and I mentioned V for Vendetta, getting lots of press for being a rabble rousing movie. I was perusing my giant list-o-feeds from the San Diego Bloggers site which pointed me to this post and which in turn pointed me to this Interview with Alan Moore. It’s coming out tomorrow, and Monday is my birthday, so I think my birthday gift to myself is to see it this weekend.

I read this post by James Wolcott last month and it got me thinking the thing would be quiote good. I have high hopes for it.

Randomalia: Beautiful weather today. Boys won their basketball game last night in a very tense match. Tyler was *everywhere* on the court, and Tony was Mr. Rebound. And I was telling Leah and Dev about the USC/Berkeley Basketball Prank. Kind of an icky scenario. Speaking of Dev, I’m a bit worried about Devon, he’s not sleeping, as far as I can tell. Alex may be working with us soon, which will be cool. And Leah has a cold which occasionally produces lots of nasal drips. But dude, she’s so strong, she made great spaghetti last night anyway. And don’t tell the boys, the “meat” in the sauce was actually tofu ground-beef-a-like. Class is good, I have some pictures and a movie to post soon, but not just this second. I’m feeling pretty good. Made some contracts with myself to carry out before Monday. We’ll see how I do. Life is pretty good. Learning lots, paying attention. Avoiding Mr. Capricious, embracing Mr. Plus. And oh, got a haircut last Sunday. Real short. Apparently what I wanted was a #4 on the sides, and a #6 on top. What are these barber numbers? Hirstute argot.

I told you before I was taking a class in 3D graphics and animation. Here’s a render of my most elaborate model to date. I’m proud of it. I learned a great deal on it, trying to get some organic, elegant forms working.

The basis of the model was this:

Each member of the class had a different one to work with. The instructor dug mine.

I also made a very short animation featuring this character and you can download it from here.

Update: or you can view it right here:

Comments and critiques welcome.

Whoa. Today I am 36 years old.

It’s a beautiful day, and everything is new!

“This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it”

Which sounds a little bit like the sentiment here.

I like saying “Onward” — but I think my new thing to say is “Everything is new.”

Or maybe there’s lots of different things to say. Yeah, that sounds right.

Rock on.

Ganzfeld experiment

The ganzfeld (“total field”) experiment uses audio and visual sensory deprivation to test for extra-sensory perception (ESP).

There are claims that this experiment yields results that deviate significantly from randomness, and represent some of the strongest experimental evidence for psi phenomena to date. As with all purported psi phenomena, these claims are highly controversial within science in general and even within parapsychology. The debate is well-documented in parapsychology journals and in articles such as those referred to below.

via voidmstr on web405

There are two whiteboards in my living room.

One is full of notes for a project in development.

It rained like crazy today.

Lots of work being done, and lots of work to do.

Pondering artistic outlets today.

I’m thinking about my dish-doing as an indicator of the lack of resentment and passive-aggression, and I suppose I’m surprised to see how a change in outlook that seems small can have dramatic consequences — in a positive way — in my life.

This weekend Tyler and his buddies worked on a project for school. It was a blast going to Michael’s (local craft store) and watching them pick out styrofoam and fake trees.

It’s been a heckuva day, on a number of levels.

Every day is new, and this one was hard, and busy, and great.

Read my lovely wife Leah on History Day, featuring Tyler and friends, and some generalizations about girls and boys and projects involving glue guns, styrofoam, and posterboard.

Sho’ ’nuff.