We visited a Japanese grocery store recently, and my daughter loved the maneki neko figurines and posters. She does an excellent imitation of the famous Japanese lucky cat, and I just had to share. We wish everyone a lucky and prosperous 2009!
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Happy New Year, everybody! I’m still digging through boxes. Has anyone seen the one labeled “lamp shades?”
In other news, here’s a link I found a while back (October, 2008), but never got around to sharing. It’s a Dream Captcha, by Jeffrey Augustine Songco, and I think it’s brilliant!
Not only does it look awesome, but the artist put some real thought into the design and materials he used. For example, if you look closely, you’ll see the feathery dangles are made from web-ish grid-like tulle. Web, Internet, get it? The artist explains the meaning of the Dream Captcha like this:
The original idea of a dreamcatcher is an object to protect sleeping children from nightmares. And you can argue that one use of Captcha is to protect a website’s identity. Therefore, a main expression of the work is obviously protection.
Jeff did make a limited run of 23 Dream Captcha pieces, but I’ll bet they were all purchased pretty quickly. [Edited a couple hours later: I just got an e-mail from Jeff and he still has some Captchas left for $100 each! Yaay!] If you’re interested in his work, check out his portfolio. Cheers!
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Well, I’m here! I’m still alive, and we’ve moved from Indiana to Colorado. I’m buried in boxes and work, but we did manage to put up our Christmas tree last night. My 9 year old offered to add some of his own, handmade ornaments. See if you can figure out which ones he added. Click the photo for a larger view. Cheers! 
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Yesterday I noticed my Google search came up with these little arrows and Xs next to the results. Clicking the up arrow is a vote to “Promote” the search result, and clicking the “X” is a vote to “Remove” it.
I’m not sure how I feel about this social option being added to my old, familiar Google search. Somehow, I’ve become comfortable with the ever-changing, mysterious, mighty mathematical algorithm. I like to think that it produces pretty fair results, although there are certainly plenty of people with gripes over Google’s ranking system.
I hope this Promote/Remove system doesn’t turn Google search into something like Digg or StumbleUpon. I’m not an expert on these systems, but I think they can be a bit cliquish, or even fraudulent at times, with voting exchanges and paid Diggs/Stumbles. I still enjoy stumbling, but I wouldn’t depend on it for my search results. Sometimes I want people’s opinions, and sometimes I want a robot’s unemotional, calculated result.
I guess it’s too early to tell what effect this new SearchWiki will have on the Google gamers. We’ll have to wait and see. What do you think? Is this a good thing?
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WELCOME! I can't teach you how to monetize your blog, but I can offer you some mostly intelligent conversation, moderately geeky tech talk, very funny mom stories, with the occasional rant thrown in for sanity. I'm so glad you're here!
