Advent Wreaths

You'd be surprised at how difficult it is to find tasteful advent wreaths. Your best bet is probably ordering a fresh wreath, but if you want something you can use year after year, these were the best that I could find (and really, I'm not that thrilled about any of these).

advent wreaths

Another reason everyone should be told they can do math

New research, not on whether women are inherently better or worse at math than men are, but rather on whether they believe those differences are due to genetic or social causes.

I would buy if you believe you can't change your abilities, you wouldn't bother trying, but this actually implies that if you are told (or presented with information that tells you) that you are genetically worse at math, you actually score worse on a math test administered shortly afterwards. (In other words, this was independent of lifelong habits, beliefs, or training.) (hat tip to Ben)

On a related topic, a friend once mentioned some studies that showed spatial thinking abilities to be related to how much you are thrown in the air as a kid. I would love to find that study, if anyone knows of it. Parenthacks had something similar a while back, about spinning infants around to improve their cognitive abilities.

Corners of My Home

rincon
Originally uploaded by niñagato.

I love reading decorating magazines. Sure, I read them for ideas, or for keeping up with decorating trends, but mostly I read them for the "pretty pictures." They are a treat for my eyes, in ways that going to museums or shopping is. I don't need to acquire, I just like to look.

One of my newest ways to entertain my eyes is the Flickr pool Corners of My Home. The content is even better than a fashion magazine -- these are "real" homes, decorated by "real" people, not decorators.

The only downside is that it is all online -- I like looking at things on paper. Business idea for someone -- publish amateur homes photography into a magazine, use a business model like Taste of Home (subscriber content, no ads) or an ad revenue based model to make money and pay your contributors a bit.

This weekend: Stitch Austin

Austin's Indy Crafters are throwing Stitch Austin this Saturday evening. Check it out.

adventures in food: fatback

So we recently returned from a trip to rural Virginia (visiting with relatives, working on the farm). At a country buffet dinner one night, I was surprised by something I couldn't quite recognize. Asking my mother-in-law, she said "It's fatback."

I had heard the term before, but wasn't very clear on what it was -- some sort of pork product. Picture bacon. Now take away the meat. And make it a foot long. That's right, fatback is a 12x2 curled up, crispy friend piece of fat. And it's good.

I'll try to get a picture next time.

Extreme Programming, Brumfield-style.

Married pair programming. In a car. Oh yeah.

(With some war driving thrown in when you need to figure out the exact syntax of a Ruby call...)

RIP Budget Living and my other favorite magazines

I don't know what it is about my taste -- I would think I am "normal" enough to have taste similar to other people -- but time after time my favorite magazines have been cancelled on me. Victoria. Mode. Inspired House. Most recently, Budget Living. Budget Living was a high-lo lifestyle magazine with a definitely retro twist. I loved their fashion (lots of Stop Staring dresses), parties (a wedding reception in a school cafeteria), and decoration (I remember one very gothy house with a painted shadow of a raven on a stand). To add insult to injury, the publisher decided to replace my subscription with Rebook, of all things. Yuck. I have never once bought Redbook, and I definitely won't now that I've had a chance to browse it.

I have this business fantasy of buying up all of my favorite dead magazines and revitalizing them...