Doodle Pad Archive - April, 2008

Art has a way of sneaking into unlikely places. Via DefenseTech.org, a really interesting read on nuclear missile launch facility blast door art: Blast-Door Art: Cave Paintings of the Nuclear Era

An American Air Force major got a grant from the American Department of Defense to photograph missile bunker art! The article pontificates on reasons and circumstances and throws in some interesting historical tidbits. But the art speaks for itself. Even if you're not interested in the article there's a slide show with 12 more images.

Though many of the images are black humour or jingoistic I find it comforting that the missile crews felt compelled to express themselves rather than conform to an olive drab world.

There were a number of online cartoons I checked out daily in my pre-RSS days. After moving to a RSS reader, they all dropped by the wayside. Hitting individual sites in a browser is just too tedious. Then I found xkcd, mostly because the bloggers I read kept referring to it. They have a RSS feed and I'm a daily reader.

xkcd has a high tech geek factor, so it won't be for everyone. But occasionally, like yesterday and today, there's strips that anyone can appreciate.

Overqualified

Cheap GPS

Just got home, more or less, from the two day Open Web Vancouver 2008 conference. I was an Organizer, and among other things took on organizing the recording of the conference. I have a picture of some of the media we recorded in a Group42 blog post: Pachyderms, PHP and Podcasts

Volunteering usually gets you at least a t-shirt, and sometimes more. No exception here. In fact, although the last thing I need is another plush toy I couldn't resist this fellow, the PHP mascot!

Have you ever bought something for the dream of what you could do with it but never followed through? I'm guilty. I'm thinking specifically of my first video camera and the Firewire non-linear editor card I bought so I could do real video production. I shot some video and took a course but never really went anywhere with it.

Happily my second video camera is getting some real use and I have the photo and video stream to prove it! Tonight's Vancouver League of Drupallers was streamed live thanks to my camera and microphones and Roland's UStream TV prowess. We had some issues with electrical noise but got things worked out. It was a good technology night! Not perfect, but our game is improving.

Or maybe I'm in a good mood because of the Guinness at the Irish Heather afterwards . . .

And if you're interested in a really great presentation on email newsletters, take the time to watch Boxcar Marketing's Monique Trottier give some awesome advice on email newsletters. Skip over the part when I say um way too much. The player is a bit weird, click the spiral button thing () to start.

Monique Trottier on Email Newsletters

Photo by roland