Tag: Links

Blogs on the move

I’ve been reading a lot of travel blogs, which were pretty interesting over the summer, and then started to taper off as the weather got colder. Suddenly, a lot of these bloggers are doing things again, and it is very worth reading.

721 Sandwiches is about to head down to Key West (for the second time).

freedomvan and A Year in a Car For No Apparent Reason are both in Hawaii (after being on the mainland living in vehicles for a while).

And I AM NOT AFRAID OF WINTER just hitched her way from NC to Portland.

I dunno why I used blog names over real names, but I’m not changing it.
Anyway, keep an eye on those – good reads abound.

Everybody PANIC!

So, I know the other day I bookmarked the smiley face that appeared in the sky on Monday, but it appears there is more to this story. The three were originally in the shape of a happy face, visible to the Eastern Hemisphere (from “Bangkok to Kenya”). Then, as it moved over Europe, it changed into a star and crescent, and finally, a frowny face over the USA.

It’s a shame more people aren’t freaking out about this. Let’s start it.

Update on the $2 per day thing

In class today, one of my professors showed statistics contrasting how households spent money in the early 1900s with how they did in 2000. While that isn’t important, one of the statistics from 2000 got my attention: Food 13.6%.

Assuming that percentage has not changed too much in since 2000 (which may be a big assumption – I’ve emailed the professor asking for a source and if there may be any more current stats), 13.6% of $21,200 (the current U.S. poverty line for a family of 4) is $2,883.2. $2 per person per day for a family of 4 is $2,920, a difference of under $40. In fact, the difference per day is about three cents.

I can’t really draw any conclusions from this until I know the source, but it seems that my findings may not be far off from the government’s.

UPDATE: Got an update from my professor: it is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and he pointed me to more recent reports, one of which actually breaks it down by income. Link to summary, link to full.

Heavy Things

Whoa, I just saw the last posts from this blog in Google Reader, and its getting way too heavy. Let’s lighten things up. Here’s a unicode snowman for you:


Vlogging

Recently I’ve been missing the show more than usual, so I went out looking for a new vlog to latch on to. And I didn’t find any. Most of the things that come up when I’m looking for vlogs are just internet videos. Meaning shows that could be anywhere, but happen to be on the internet. Some examples are Rocketboom, Ask a Ninja, and Robert Krampf’s Experiment of the Week. That doesn’t mean they’re bad, just not what I’m looking for.

So I went to askme, figuring someone had already asked something along those lines, but they hadn’t, so I did. Two responses. I got 80 when I was looking for Boring Books. Does no one watch vlogs anymore, or are there just no vlogs to watch?

It is worth noting that the suggestions that I got were good. ill doctrine is a vlog that seems to be about hiphop, but from what I’ve watched seems to be often about other things. And Brigitte Dale’s vlog is about as close as I think I’ll get to the show.

the show was the first vlog I ever followed, and I loved it. But I remember reading that it would take him hours each day to compose those few minute episodes. I’d imagine that’s why there aren’t more people vlogging. Someday I’ll give vlogging a shot, but that’s a long way from now. I need to have something worth doing first.

The Story of a Lithuanian

This is an excerpt from a first-person account of coming to America around 1900 from a Lithuanian immigrant named ‘Antanas Kaztauskis.’ The full testimony was originally published in 1904 in The Independent magazine.

[After I arrived in the United States, e]verything got quicker – worse and worse – till then at last I was in a boarding house by the stockyards in Chicago with three Lithuanians, who knew my father’s sisters at home.

That first night we sat around in the house and they asked me, “Well, why did you come?” I told them about that first night and what the ugly shoemaker said about “life, liberty and the getting of happiness.” They all leaned back and laughed. “What you need is money,” they said. “It was all right at home. You wanted nothing. You ate your own meat and your own things on the farm. You made your own clothes and had your own leather. The other things you got at the Jew man’s store and paid him with sacks of rye. But here you want a hundred things. Whenever you walk out you see new things you want, and you must have money to buy everything.”

Then one man asked me, “How much have you?” and I told him $30. “You must buy clothes and look rich, even if you are not rich,” he said. “With good clothes you will have friends.”

If you want to read the whole story, it is online here.

Other Trips

I’m not sure why, but this summer I’ve seen more websites pop up about people’s trips. I don’t know if more people are traveling or if more people are blogging, but there are a lot of websites up about people in motion. Some folks are traveling in their cars/vans, living in them as […]

I’m not sure why, but this summer I’ve seen more websites pop up about people’s trips. I don’t know if more people are traveling or if more people are blogging, but there are a lot of websites up about people in motion. Some folks are traveling in their cars/vans, living in them as they go. Some are traveling by bike, or on foot. Then there are the larger scale trips that have a decent sized number of people on them, and have been going for years (BioTour, Big Green Bus, etc).

I’ve added links to many of these sites on our links page, and I suggest you check them out.
They’re pretty interesting, and I’m certain you’ll find at least one that you’ll keep up with.

Maybe more of these blogs are popping up because there is a growing interest in this type of project. I know that nearly everyone I’ve talked to about the Juan Way Tour was immediately interested in the idea, having thought about doing something similar. I wonder what’s causing the interest.

Robert Krampf Rules

Robert Krampf is awesome. I’m certain I’ve had a video or two of his in my linkroll before. He does this Experiment of the Week, where he makes a video of a cool science experiment every week, and posts them online. It seems that it is primarily sent out through a mailing list, but I don’t really care for mailing lists, even if they are for interesting things (why I unsubscribed from B3TA‘s newsletter).

Today I was browsing around Blip.tv, and I noticed he uploads his videos to blip! This is great, because blip automatically generates an RSS, iTunes, and even Miro (Democracy) feed for their shows. So now I can get the Experiment of the Week in Google Reader. I’m very happy, because I love this show. If you liked Bill Nye, you’ll love Robert Krampf. He’s the science teacher you wish you had.

Live Music Archive Gems

There is a reason that the Live Music Archive is in my blogroll: its amazing. It, along with Last.fm, put nearly all the music I could ever want online at no charge.

In case you don’t know, the LMA is a repository for live recording from trade-friendly artists. Basically, folks record and upload shows of bands that are cool with it. Its all legal, and its all good. There are a lot of bands I already knew about on the LMA, but its also a great place to find bands you’ve never heard of. Here are a bunch of both:

Continue reading “Live Music Archive Gems”