A&C art supplies

dropped into this place this afternoon. It’s huge, well-stocked, and the folks who work there seem to know their stuff. No longer will I need to travel very far for any kind of supplies but the most esoteric. I needed stuff they don’t carry but they knew where I could find it: that’s worth paying for, so I picked up some stuff to amuse the younger artists around here.

Locations all over the place.

this might be useful

After four hours at a swim meet when I had to get up every few minutes to see what events are coming up (a. you can’t hear the megaphone in a cavernous public swimming hall and b. events sometimes get condensed if there aren’t enough swimmers (what I call a SuperHeat)), it occurred to me that a POV display, like this one, might be useful. I wonder how hard it would be to make a simple input interface where you can key in event numbers and heats.

quote of the day

Harry:

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s a fine thing that a noticeable
proportion of the whole world is going to stop what they’re doing this weekend and read a book instead.

The younger readers have been limited on these, with one on each birthday, starting at age 8. This means the Ten Year Old has read the first three, the Eight Year Old just the first. Well, with the buzz around this The Final Installment, we gave in to the badgering and let them carry on with the rest of the series with the proviso that they must stop when they get scared and no waking us up with gibbering about Dementors. So while we older readers scheme and plot to get our hands on the new one first (ha, I’ll just read it once she’s abed and snoring), they’re catching up.

Happy Potter Day to you.

links for 2007-07-21

50 years

a former colleague who moved into an old neighborhood of mine just let me know my old house[*] has been torn down for what I suspect is a better use of that lot but could be an ostentatious folly.

This is a description of what’s going in there: it will certainly alter the character of that street.

Still, it pains me a bit to think of that house going away after 50 years. It was a good little house (emphasis on little) at just under 1000 square feet. Hmm, I need to think about this and perhaps even grieve a little. I have seen other houses leveled and don’t find it pleasant: first time it’s happened to one I lived in.

* The map Google provides is wrong here: the point they provide is several houses away. The house directly to the right of the green pushpin is the one.

anyone else seeing chain letters in their mail?

It’s been ages since I have gotten one, it seems, but I’ve gotten two this week. The first I just pitched but the one I just got is going to the local postmaster. There’s a whole bunch of jailhouse-lawyerly prose about how it’s all legit which immediately makes me think it isn’t.

Anyone else seeing these? Why doesn’t someone make these fun and send a joke to five people and ask them to send one of their own to the five people on the enclosed list? Entertaining and legal, I expect.