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Interesting thing happened today, Google opened its gadgets for placement on any web page (it used to only work on their own properties). Why is this interesting? Because most of Google is open via their API.

As part of the wiki/blog at ThinkNOLA, this opens up a possibility for something that has generated a little discussion in the past, that of a community calendar. Now, with open gadgets and the Google API, ThinkNOLA could create and maintain a public Google calendar of events and publish the mini calendar on the site. Updates to the calendar automatically go on the mini-calendar, which could be placed anywhere. Thoughts?

Google Press release
Main Google Gadget page

I never watched Bob Ross, mostly because I never considered myself artistic as a kid. 

So, watching this fascinating clip of Bob Ross that someone posted to YouTube made me feel like I was watching clips from someone else’s childhood. I was vaguely aware of Bob Ross and slightly more aware of this painting thing, but I never actually sat and watched this show.

Now, I sort of regret that. For all it’s kitsch, there are so many redeeming qualities to Ross’ work: it was approachable, it was simple, and it was completely for the audience. Ross never tried to make what he was doing anything more than it was. Even in this short clip, you can sense the pride in his voice as he teaches.

Compare this clip with any show on HGTV or your favorite DIY show. You don’t find the simple pride in something done well there, all you get is “see how simple it is” as they hide the complex issues behind jump cuts.

Huh, I think I was just pining.

(Sorry for not posting the video directly; WordPress doesn’t do embed)

YouTube: Bob Ross painting a mountain on fake wood

I only ask because it might be important to know in the future. Seems that some paleontologists (that would be smart people who play in the dirt) found a friggen huge Tyrannosaurus rex thigh bone in Montana a couple months ago. Unfortunately, when they tried to stuff the bone in their chopper, it wouldn’t fit. So, after spending what was likely weeks dusting off this bone to preserve it, they very scientifically broke it in two.

Luckily, this paid off as they found soft tissue in the middle of this bone. What kind?

This tissue, including blood vessels, bone cells, and perhaps even blood cells, was so well preserved that it was still stretchy and flexible.

If someone teaches Wayne Knight to use bash, we’re in big trouble.

Link [via Digg]

Hmm.. looks like Bloglines. Congrats, Google. You finally made the reader we were all using already.

Google updates Reader

Buwhahahahaha!

In a dramatic development that has come as a surprise to pundits and the public alike, a youthful technician with Diebold, Inc. has emerged as the unlikely winner of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. The president-elect, 19 year old Billy Pustule of Green, Ohio, reached via SMS at the garage apartment by his mother’s house in which he currently resides, said he was “real psyched about being the president” and “had big plans for the inauguration party”.

Link

You write articles discussing the hand-edness of video game characters.

You create distrubing art of video game characters.

You have a category for gaming on your.. web… sitecrap.

And another interesting race became a moot point. It’s too bad because DeVos had everything going for him: he wasn’t Jenny, he was a DeVos, and he wasn’t Jenny. But then he had to go and do something stupid like this.

“Lots of intelligent people can disagree about the origins of life. In the end, I believe in our system of local control,” he said in a news release Wednesday afternoon. “Local school boards should have the opportunity to offer evolution and intelligent design in their curriculums.”

Sigh. Sorry Dick, not even Lee Iacocca can pull you out of this stupid, stupid maneuver. You just lost my vote.
Let’s say this one more time: Intelligent Design is religion. As someone from the unbelievably religious West side of this state (which is the only reason DeVos made this statement, sucking up to the old, Dutch protestants), I know religion’s effects on a young mind. Note to all you old (and not so old) Dutch protestants: not everyone believes what you believe and you have zero right to force them to hear your cosmological views, especially in a science class.

You can read all the ass-kissing at the Freep; hat tip to Stupid Evil Bastard for the link.

Congrats to Karen, Bart, Michael, Alan, and Maitri for the write-up in the San Antonio Express-News. A nice summary of some of the activities going on in New Orleans.

Kudos to Sarah Lewis, Operations Director for ThinkNOLA, and Valdis Krebs from Network Weaving for their continued work on making sense of all the New Orleans groups involved in the recovery. Valdis has posted the first network map of the more than 1,000 groups, people and orginizations that Sarah catalogued. You can see the map on Valdis’ blog.

I. Effing. Hate. those insipid managerial motivational posters. The Demotivational posters [purchase] jumped the shark a long time ago, too. But, you have to have something in your mental back pocket to jump start yourself (as my last post illustrates). Mine is from Hugh MacLeod at gapidvoid.com and came from the Hughtrain, his response to the Clue Train Manifesto. It’s simple, true, and hits a certain spot for me.

Merit can be bought. Passion can’t. The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does.

I see this over and over in people like NOLA bloggers, national figures (both Left and Right), and even in my team. I can buy my way into a meritocracy; I can’t make someone passionate. And only the passionate see those fundamental things that really and truly matter.

I will work to be one of the passionate.