Nina Lewis

Archive for October, 2008

My children heckle me for my inability to figure out how the VCR remote works . (I can work the one for the DVD player.) “And you call yourself technologically savvy?” they say with tones of derision.

Then, one of them gave my husband a mother-of-all-remote-controls. It’s HUGE. It has more buttons than the control center for NASA in Houston. (’Houston, we have a problem’ could be my daily slogan when working with a remote. . .)

However, my wonderful student employees helped me to realize something. VCRs and DVDs and remote controls are electronics NOT technology. My soul feels so much better realizing this!

We (my student employees and I) came to that conclusion after watching this video clip which I think is rather funny.

I feel passionate about what happens in the classrooms of today. In many of them (especially at the university level), the environment is still in the 19th century: the professor lectures, student crams for the final, student forgets within a month everything from the class.

I recently saw this little video. It’s rather powerful. It was created by Michael Wesch and 200 of his students at Kansas State University. I wonder how many university professors have seen it . . . I wonder if they changed anything they did because they watched it . . . Probably not . . .

A Vision of Students of Today by Michael Wesch at Kansas State University

Feel free to post comments and share your feelings about this clip.

So in my previous post, I had fun with the site Spell with Flickr. I used it to spell out my name with photos from Flickr. When I made the post, everything was A-Okay. Just moments ago, when I checked my site, there aren’t any pictures spelling out my name. Just funny boxes with text in them.

Now, I’m a Mac computer user. I’m a Firefox browser user. Put those two together and sometimes websites don’t display so well.

Knowing that, I quickly opened up Safari. The pictures worked in Safari.

I hate it when websites aren’t displayed properly in Firefox on a Mac. Especially when it’s my own personal site!!! Sigh . . .

On a lighter note, I just feel compelled to tell you about a handy dandy, nifty little tool that I was given recently by my daughter for my birthday. It removes calloused skin from your heels.  I recommend that you zip down to a beauty supply store and get you one.  It’s the best thing ever!

I gave myself a pedicure — soaking my feet in lavender scented water, using a foot scrub soap, cutting off the rough skin with that nifty tool, smoothing on a nice moisturizer, and painting my toes. Now I have nice soft heels and pretty toenails.

Nice. No more runs in my nylons . . . hopefully.

My daughter said that she has never seen my toenails painted. I used to paint them. Twenty-five years ago. . . When I finished with my pedicure, I took a picture of my toes and sent it to her. I said that I wanted to post it here on my blog.  My husband didn’t think it would be a good idea. I don’t understand why not. Isn’t just EVERYBODY anxious to see a picture of my feet???

Guess I’ll spare you . . .

Have you ever found a site on the Internet that brings glee to your lil’ ol’ technological heart? I have. And I just came across a fun one. It is Spell with flickr.

Just type in a word (or name or phrase — whatever) and click Spell. It will go through photos on flickr and bring back the appropriate letters. If you don’t particularly like one of the pictures, click on it and it will change to a different picture.

If you are really geeky, you can then copy the code and paste it into your blog (like I did here).

(Dang! I hate it when my name is so long that it won’t fit on the webpage . . .!)

Even if you don’t use the code on your blog or webpage, it’s still fun to see the pictures that come back.

Take a moment to play with it. Spell with flickr. I think you’ll have fun!

In the 1990s, I fell in love with fonts. I downloaded countless free ones. A plethora of them.

For Christmas one year, our oldest son gave me a CD with 1,000 fonts. After loading them on my computer, it crashed. The system couldn’t start up with that many installed.

My love for fonts is almost being taken over by my love of themes for Wordpress. Some nights, I spend hours browsing, downloading, and checking out themes. Since I transferred to a new hosting service, I now have an arsenal of new themes!

So, hang on to your hats — we may be in for a wild ride as I try out them all out!