Avataring Sites

I needed to make some quick avatars for a presentation: a mom, dad, son and daughter.

A quick google gave me 12 Sites To Create Cartoon Characters of Yourself which was pretty useful, since it not only listed a dozen resources but gave me a quick idea of what each produced. I tried two:

Joystiq Mii

First I tried Joystiq Mii characters and in a short time made Wii-style avatars. I couldn't figure out how to save them but no worries: Windows 7's "Snipping" tool worked just fine. The results were quick and fun; not terribly detailed but o.k. if you want cartoony. I did run into a problem with gender and age differentiation; since there was only one body type I needed to use facial features. Putting eyelashes and long hair on the females, and a mustache on the daddy was an adequate tho not satisfying solution. In retrospect I might've used different lip styles too, since cartooning usually gives females fuller lips.

For age differentiation I tinkered with giving the children bigger eyes and smaller noses. Because you can move the features, growing or shrinking them, you can have a very large number of faces. I tried to give each child at least one feature directly from either parent. I would've liked more features, e.g. ears, body types, but for a quick cartoony avatar, I was happy.

http://www.joystiq.com/media/2006/10/mii.swf

Yahoo Avatars

I wanted a more realistics, "sexier" look, so next I when to

Yahoo Avatars. This definitely gave a more realistic (although still cartooned) look. One nice feature is that it saved your 10 favorite avatars; I still used the snip to save the avatar to my harddrive but it looked like I could keep up to 10 works-in-progress for tinkering. But a complication arose when I started playing with gender.

Gender differentiation was straightforward: you pick your gender and it gives you a female body type, and face/hair/clothing/accessory choices. However, switching gender was a problem: when you changed gender you lost all your favorites. It appears that yahoo's avatars are intended to be used for your login and not for other purposes. You might consider having a separate login for each gender (...or hey Yahoo! think about gender switching sometime!)

Age differentiation was also an issue. Yahoo avatars had a lot fewer face choices, since you can't move the features around as with the Wii above. To differentiate the dad from the son, I gave the former the face with a five-o-clock shadow, but I couldn't find something similar for facially differentiating mom and daughter. Instead, I had to do that with choice of costume, giving mom some definitely hotter outfits and the daughter garb that deemphasized body shape.

It would have been nice to be able to play with body proportions, for example giving the children relatively larger heads, as a way of suggesting age.

Others

Since I'd met my goal, I stopped checking out avatar-building sites (but I'd like to get back to Simpsonize Me!, South Park Studio, and the interesting-looking Meez). None of these utilities are perfect, but for the price, what-the-heck!

How To Compile Your List of How To's!

You probably have many postings of useful hints right on your blog. Think about it; after a couple of years of blogging, if you have written only one how-to a month, haven't you accumulated a lot of useful stuff? But it can be even more useful if you compile them into an easily accessible "How-To" list. 

Fortunately, this is easy to do: simply tag each post you want to put on your list with the tag "how to", and then post a link to your how-to list!

Here's mine: http://rewinn.blogspot.com/search/label/how%20to

If you're not sure how to generate the query, look at the bottom of one of your blog posts that you've put a tag on. When you click on the tag, you get a page of all your posts with that tag (... maybe multiple pages, but that doesn't matter.) Now go get the URL from the top of your browser, then copy and paste. You're done!

Different sites may call tags by different things; for example, in blogspot, they call tags "labels". It doesn't matter; the technique is the same whatever there terminology: you add a little metadata to the relevant posts, then link to a query for that metadata. Does that make more sense ;-)

I was inspired to post this by Inspiration Alley's invitation to a "Learn Your Lesson" Blog Party:

" You are invited to a blog party with a difference. Why yes, of course there will be tea and cake (what's a party without either of those after all?). There may even be lashings of ginger beer and perhaps something with a touch of sparkle too... Who knows what the party will bring?

One thing we do know however is that you'll be taking away quite a goodie bag. Yes my little chickadees every visitor, every player and every participant will be given some wonderful gifts - for this is a special sharing party. No posh frocks required, for you will be getting most messy, seriously sticky and terribly tangled. Just bring yourself and your gift... your lesson.... your tip.... your tutorial.....

We thought it would be terribly good fun to roll our sleeves up and learn something new. We'd love you all to share a lesson with us - perhaps you might have a photoshop trick you can explain? Maybe you know how to transfer images successfully? How do you glue paper without leaving bubbles? Do you have a receipe that no longer needs to remain a secret? Can you tell us how to make clay beads without cracks? To bleach a photograph or make something furry and felty? You may even just like to list your favourite tutorial sites. Anything goes, just bring your special gift to the party by way of a link to your own blog post and take away a goodie bag of lessons to try out for yourself.

All you need to do is pop along to our party room here at the Avenue on the weekend of May 1st & 2nd. Leave a comment with a link to your post and visit all our other party guests...."

OK, you gotta love their attitude, don't ya?

And thanks to my bloggy friend Reduce Footprints for telling me about this - she's hosting the party too!

Growing a Compost Pile

I wanted a composting system without spending any money. I'd heard of sod houses, so the thought arose: why not use sod to build the walls of a compost heap?

My neighbor had recently cut back the turf that, over the years, had encroached on the public sidewalk. It lay on the parking strip for a couple of weeks drying out but not decomposing, and slowly killing the grass under it. No-one objected, so I decided to do something with it.

Several wheelbarrow loads later, we have a U-shaped structure of sod walls:


Notice the cinder blocks between the east wall and the wooden fence. My mother-in-law suggested, wisely, that we wanted to protect our fence and I had a few blocks lying around.

I started the heap with a layer of needles raked from our yard, added a little yard waste. As the heap grows, I suppose I may need to reinforce the sides with more sod, but I like the idea of having living walls!

This is an experiment. I can't think of why it would not work, and it is certainly economical. The worst outcomes would be that the compost would convert to dirt slowly, or that the entire thing might collapse, but neither outcome is especially bad, since we can always spend money and buy lumber to build a more formal heap.

Meanwhile, I'm growing a compost heap!
I don't know how well this will work.

How To Get Free Legal Help

My bloggy friend Joanna Plichta Boisen just posted "How To Get Free Legal Help

"At some point in your life, you will be faced with a legal issue. But even if you are lucky enough to avoid it, it is almost inevitable that someone you know, whether a family member or friend, will need legal assistance so learning about pro bono options can be valuable.

The trouble with the word "justice" is that it's not free. In fact, the costs associated with hiring a lawyer, paying for litigation, and filing necessary motions in court can add up quickly, and in an economy where the unemployment rate is around 9.4%, many people will end up navigating the legal system pro se. Thankfully, Washington has a very strong network of nonprofit organizations, online resources, and social service agencies for the public to access. So, where do you begin?..."

I would suggest beginning by reading the rest of How To Get Free Legal Help

Cabbage Leaves Replace Aluminum Foil in Cooking Salmon

Trying to minimize the aluminum foil we use in cooking, my lovely wife tried Savoy Cabbage leaves for covering a 3-pound salmon baked in a pyrex dish, with a few chopped veggies.

It worked! It worked great! The salmon was tender, tasty and perfect.

In the photo, the leaves may be a funny shade of brown but remember, we weren't planning to eat them (we don't eat the foil after all). I'll probably toss them in the crock pot anyway.

This is only a minor savings, but every little bit helps. We can grow cabbage a lot easier than we can mine and refine aluminum!

---

Previously, we cut out using aluminum to edge piecrusts by getting a pie ring: Pie for the Apple of Your Eye

Best No-cook Meal: Fresh Mozzarella and Tomatoes

The key ingrediant to this quick, no-cook meal is a loaf of fresh Mozzarella cheeze. This is NOT the same as the stuff you might get in a block or shredded in a bag to put on pizza; it's softer, looking perhaps like pure white bread dough. I'll admit, when I first heard of this stuff, I was sceptical but one taste turned me around.

I get loaves of this at Costco, because their quality is fine and the price unbeatable, but a lot of stores carry it now. Last year, the Cheese Festival at Pike Place Market feature a guy making it from scratch and, reportedly, 5-minute-old fresh Mozzarella is an entire quantum level jump into transcendant realms of tastiness!

But for us mere mortals: cut up the cheese into one- or two-bite sizes. Cut some tomatoes to about the same size; use tomatoes that emphasize flavor rather than shippability for this (it's only half-a-pound of them, so splurge on a nice heirloom tomatoe if you can!) Sprinkle a little green herbs on top, preferably whatever you have fresh from the garden or, in the winter, your windowsill: chives, cilantro, whatever.

This is key: arrange nicely on a dish! It costs nothng and adds so much to the fun.

You're done!

Some people like to sprink a little sea salt or kosher salt on top. This definitely makes the taste more intense, at the cost of higher sodium. Check your body's needs and proceed accordingly.

Your wife will be pleased and happy that you've made her a quick dinner that didn't heat up the kitchen. For extra credit, add a side of sliced hard boiled eggs (you always keep a half-dozen boiled eggs in the fridge, right? right!) and some artichoke hearts (from that handy large Costco jar.) You are well on your way to cooking studery, with a minimum of effort!

Today's report was inspired by this week's Change the World Wednesday challenge:

"This week, plan an oven- and stove-free day, and no cheating and going out to eat! Have sandwiches, cut up fruit, veggies with dip, leftovers from a previous dinner .... Plan ahead and make a pasta salad you can eat cold for a few days. Have hummus, feta cheese, and spinach on a pita or wrap. There are tons of healthy, delicious meals you can have without having to turn on the stove! As an added plus, many of the meals are quick and easy to prepare!"

Due to the "leftovers" option, this was not a terribly difficult challenge as written; we typically cook a large meal on Sunday and then enjoy leftovers for a couple of days before freeing the rest (our freezer has three kinds of soups from as many weeks. If there's every a power outage, we'll we eating a lot of soup!)  However the challenge did help me realize that some of our favorite meals involve no cooking, or more precisely, no more cooking than went into preparing the goods before we got it. (I must ponder the energy impact of enjoying fresh tomatoes in the winter; they had to be shipped from somewhere other than my garden but somehow canned tomatoes would just not be the same!)

Anyway, even without the energy savings aspect of no-cook cuisine, this fresh mozzarella-and-tomato combination is so darn tasty that I really wanted to share it. Enjoy!

Coffee Cup Love!

Back when I was just another cubicle drone, I guzzled so many cups of coffee, latte, mochas, and even carmel machiattos with little thought for tomorrow. The money I poured into them and the paper cups they were poured into are gone.

If you spend part of your life making money, and then waste that money, are you not making a little suicide?  Br-r-r-r-r-r!

Years ago, I was ejected from the world of wage-slavery (much against my will!) which compelled me to re-think everything. I found that I could make a decent coffee/latte/mocha, and at a greatly reduced price. I didn't need a throwaway cup either. Every thriftstore has a shelf of them for fifty cents or a dollar or possibly, for a very fancy one, $1.50. Why am I paying twice for a paper cup (once to acquire the cup, once indirectly from the environmental costs of disposiing of it?) when I can have a much better cup at a lesser cost, so long as I re-use it?

I was reminded of this recently by my bloggy friend Reduce Footprints' most recent Change the World Wednesday challenge:

"This week only use reusable mugs/glasses. Yep ... for seven whole days, refuse anything that isn't reusable. Bring your own mug to your favorite coffee shop ... haul your own glass to the soda dispenser at the corner convenience store ... carry your own mug/glass to fast-food restaurants. If a drink comes in something that will be tossed out ... either don't buy it or use your own vessel." 

This is something I've been doing for quite a while, so let me offer a few things I've discovered along the way.

• Splurge on several stainless steel cups! Live Large! Get 2 or even 3 thrift-store travel mugs, so that you are never without one handy. They're cheap, and your thrift store purchases go to a charity you'd want to support anyway. (My favorite is the Mercer Island Thrift Shop ) While buying them new would only encourage the production of useless cr@p (imported in an orgy of local job destruction), this consideration does not apply to 2nd-hand items; in essence, we're mining an existing pile o'cr@p to extra usable materials, creating local jobs in the thrift store's intake area. I avoid the plastic and aluminum cups; while some people say they are safe, I can taste the difference, which suggests to me there is something there I don't want in my body.
• Reuse anything washable. We have a special box for party supplies, such as a stack of plastic cups, forks and spoons. I suppose you're supposed to use them once and then throw them away, but I've discovered that plastic actually washes pretty easy, and can be reused quite a lot.
• Compost paper cups. If you end up with a paper cup anyway (...it happens...) give it a 2nd life. Here in Seattle, they can be put in the compost bin (a separate container from ordinary recyclables) but now that we have a yard, I prefer to tear them up and compost them myself (every yard needs a little compost pile, out of the way, in the back; not only does it reduce your waste stream, it generates usable soil with which to refresh your yard!)

I do love my coffee! and I love being in a committed relationship with real, not paper, coffee cups.

Growing Mr. Scrubby

Kitchen Scrubbies are useful but they wear out. Plastic mesh bags are annoying because they're too small to reuse as a shopping bag, and they're probably non-biodegradable, but they are common packaging for some food items, such as elephant garlic and apples from our favorite farmer's market. What do these items have in common?

This week's Change The World Wednesday challenge is

"...collect your garbage rather than toss it out. Continue to compost and recycle, but rather than take your bag of "real" garbage to the dumpster or put it out for collection ... keep it. At the end of the week, take a look at how much you've collected and consider ways to reduce it...."

This is a really good idea, but I needed to adapt it to our little apartment. In the spirit of "consider[ing] ways to reduce" my garbage, I analyzed each item we trashed. The very first thing I saw was a mesh bag that seemed obviously useful for something, but what?  It wasn't bulkly enough to be a scrubby, so (thinking of the world's largest rubber-band ball)
I tried accumulating these mesh bags around a scrubby. Maybe I'll grow the World's Largest Scrubby!

As you can see, Mr. Scrubby (to be formal) is coming along nicely. Doesn't he look natty with the kitchen sink plug topper? All he needs is spats and a stickpin!

Savings Analysis: Growing Mr. Scrubby is not going to make you rich (...unless you really do grow The World's Largest Scrubby, but remember: There Can Be Only One!) but it is a small improvement in garbage output and a tiny savings of money, in exchange for almost no labor at all.

Besides, it's good cheap fun ... and good clean fun!

Dusting Lightbulbs for Fun and Profit

In response to this week's Change the World Wednesday Challenge:

"In most homes there are multiple light bulbs used to light a single area. For example, bathrooms usually have a row of vanity lights ... ceiling fans often have three or more light bulbs ... and kitchens typically have quite a few lights (over the sink, over the table, over the center of the room, etc.). So, this week, twist off all but one bulb in each area and see if it works for you. If one bulb isn't enough light, twist on a second ... or a third. The idea, here, is to experiment a little, use only the amount of light that is truly necessary, and save a lot. So, twist them off!

So I took a look at our bathroom lighting.
Six bulbs, one that burned out a while back; since we never bothered replacing, clearly we didn't need it.

I unscrewed the one of those left (!Basta! that's HOT!) and the result seemed o.k. We'll try it for a week and, if there's a problem, screw it back in again. Experimentation is fun!

I noticed the top of the bulb was dusty. That dust is dysfunctional from a lighting standpoint; it coverts light to heat, not only absorbing maybe 5-10% of the light but also heating up the bulb, shortening its life. So by dusting the tops of the 4 bulbs left on, I increased their output, getting FOR FREE the equivalent of another half-a-lightbulb. It's not massive wealth but hey, let's take what we can get!

If we owned this place, I would install a inexpensive mirror strip behind and above the bulbs, to cut the light wastened in bouncing off the wall and ceiling. For that matter, by the time we can afford a home of our own, lightemitting strips will be cheap enough for home use.

But for now: dust those light bulbs to save money AND our planet!

Holy Day of Carpooling!

Every week in these United State, tens of millions drive to church, synagogue, temple, mosque or other house of worship. What if they carpooled?

• Some polls say 40% of Americans go to church at least weekly; others people dispute these numbers, so let's say 20% do, or around 60 million (out of 300 million). How many cars is that driving to church, and how many miles each way?
• It's hard to tell, but let's do some rough figures. Some attendees are driving alone; some are packing their SUV with 10 kids. Let's assume the average car going to church four people in it. That gives us roughly 15 million trips to church per week (excluding those who go more than once).
• Now, can't a lot of these carpool? Our estimate includes SUVs with five empty seats and Cooper Minis, and a huge range in between. If one-half the families carpooled with someone whose door they basically passed on the way to church, that would eliminate 25% of the trips, or roughly 3.75 million trips a week, or 195 MILLION trips a year.
• How much gas this saves is complicated; it depends on the average trip to church, is a little thrown in for the added weight of the extra people in each vehicle and a little for whatever overhead there may be in picking up carpoolers. But if the average trip burns half a gallon of gas (not unlikely at 23 MPG (the average for passenger cars in 2006, the last year available), then we're talking the savings of over 95 million gallons a year. 
• Saving 95 million gallons a year is not going to make America energy independent, but it's a big step in the right direction. It's also helpful in cutting the harm to the planet over which we have been given stewardship. If it saves a little money as well, there's no harm in that!
• If you live within a couple miles of your church, try walking. If it takes you an hour, so what? It's a day of rest, not of work; the walk will do you good both physically and spiritually. And when you get to the pews, they will feel a lot softer.
• A side-benefit of carpooling, or walking together, is more time building community with fellow parishioners. Who knows, you make discover you have something in common!

Let religious leaders of all faiths urge members of the congregations to carpool; let congregations take the lead themselves. After all, not one Founder of any major Faith ever drove a car!

Social Media in One Hour

Our goal is to set up a use social media environment in one hour.

• Pick a brand name. This is some text to appear on all your communications so that they may be aggregated. For example: rewinn, 4freeCLE. Be sure that this does not occur elsewhere on the net; if your initials are USA, IBM or SNAFU, you'd best try something else. I picked "prototypebar"
• Set up a blog with your brand name, e.g. http://4freecle.blogspot.com/ . I set up http://prototypebar.blogspot.com/
• Set up a twitter with your brand name, http://twitter.com/4freeCLE ( http://twitter.com/aacf ) ( I set up prototypebar)
• Link the blog to the twitter using twitterlink. (This took me half an hour because I can never remember my twitterfeed fu. I had to read the help page ... again!)

Now, once a day, post a press release to your blog.

• Monday: We start the week with 132 open files. We need 4 attorneys to help out. To volunteer, contact xxxx@brandname.org
• Tuesday: NEEDED: Emergency need for a family law attorney in Skamania County. Please call 425-999-9999 if you can help.
• Wednesday: Training next month for volunteer attorneys. 1 CLE approved. To register, see link.
• Thursday: FILLED: emergency need for family law attorney in Skamania County. Thank you! STILL NEEDED: creditor/debtor attorney Chelan/Douglas County - could be done by fax & telephone. Please call 425-999-9999
• Friday: This week we closed 12 client files successfully. We opened 14. To volunteer, contact xxxxx@brandname.org

NOTES:

• Monday & Friday are "canned remarks", needing changes only to the numbers.
• Wednesday is a repeating message; just change the date when your training date changes.
• Only Tuesday/Thursday require original work and they're very brief statements of your urgent needs.
• Twitterfeed will forward your press release to your twitter
• For business purposes, short is better.
• Now when you recruit, you have an online, easily seen, datestamped record of accomplishment to include with all your recruiting materials.

2nd Level - Manage Via Email

Advanced Course:

• Set up an email box with your brand name in the major mail services: gmail, yahoo, hotmail ... and of course, your own domain.
• In your leisure time, you can route email from those mailboxes to your preferred mail delivery system.
• Set up a listserve with your brand name, e.g. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/4freeCLE/ When you send out a press release, send it to the listserve. Some people just prefer lists, that's all there is to it.
• 
  

Next

• Record your next volunteer training.
• Post it on YouTube (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOAfqGMtslo&feature=PlayList&p=736CC688A9E6567A&index=0&playnext=1 )
• Upload the audio as a PodCast. See how great this looks: http://entertainmentlawupdate.com/
• 
  

Link to it periodically on your blog etc.

Carbon Neutral Book Shipping

Selling used books is a form of recycling that saves a lot of resources; books that would otherwise be wasted get a second use with minimal processing. This effect is massively intensified by internet bookstores; volumes for which there is a small local demand can now efficiently be sold to people who want them almost anywhere on the planet.

My favorite actual sale was a battered Amharic/English dictionary that I got cheap, real cheap; there just aren't that many people in the Seattle area who speak the native language of Etheipia. I sold it to a guy in Norway, who explained that Norway has a project in Ethiopia something like our American Peace Corps; there may be no Norweigian/Amharic dictionaries but most Nordics have enough English that this dictionary would help the project move forward ... and this book got a new use!

However, nothing is free. Books must be shipped; I cannot grossly cut the carbon cost of physically moving the volume, although this is grossly outweighed by the energy saved in not pulping the copy I have and re-printing a copy at the seller's location. However, I can replace the carbon-intensive/non-recyclable shipping materials, such as plastic or mylar padded mailers, with something that is almost completely recyclable once it is done being used. Best of all, this practice reduces the material that has to go into recylcing bins in the first place!

Set-Up

• Get a Chopper (see picture). If your volume is low, you can do this with sissors or shears, but it is much more work. Choppers pay for themselves quickly, especially if you get one at a thrift store, as I did.
• Get some clean cardboard. You can pay to get it new, or you can double the recycling benefit by re-using boxes used by your friends and neighbors (it saves a lot of money too!) Use only clean cardboard, blank on at least one side; cardboard is common enough that you needn't use marginal stuff.
• Pre-cut some cardboard blanks: rectangular strips that will wrap around books. I keep in stock blanks 7" wide for massmarket paperbacks, and 10.5" wide for most other books. They can be almost any convenient length since you'll trim them to fit individual books. The important thing is to have the cardboard ribbing at right angles to the width, so you can easily bend the cardboard along the ribbing.

For Each Book

• Before you ship a book, check it for quality. This shouldn't take long, but you don't want to ship something that the receiver won't want. Every now and then, a book is damaged in storage or ... and this is annoying ... a publisher re-uses an ISBN so the book the buyer buys is not the one you catalog.
• Wrap the book in cling-wrap. This is plastic and not reusable; however, it keeps the book protected from water (...sometimes books delivered to doorsteps get rained on...) and holds the book together tightly, so the pages don't flap open in transit.
• Now set the book on a blank, wrap the cardboard around it and note where you'll want to cut it with the chopper. Don't be skimpy with the cardboard; it's cheap and light and you want plenty of protection!
• I usually slide the book off the cardboard before I chop it; maybe I'm paranoid but I like to keep the chop simple. That gadget really will take off the end of a finger so safety first!
• Now put the book and any stuffers (e.g. packing slip) on the cardboard, wrap the cardboard around everything and secure with tape. I use strong clear plastic packing tape; it doesn't recycle well but I haven't found a good paper substitute. Do not use duct tape, as it comes off. Scotch tape is not strong enough to be reliable. Strapping tape (the kind with filiment in it) is way overkill!
• Add address label and postage and you're done!

If my packages are going to sit around any length of time, I try to pack them flat so the weight of the books contribute to keeping everything neat and tidy. This may be a small point but it costs nothing, so why not?

I ship 10-20 books a day. That's something like 5000 a year, and I have never gotten a complaint over this kind of packaging. I hope that I have not only put to immediate use something like 5000 pieces of cardboard, but also saved 5000 or more mailers from going into the trash (...and saved myself the cost of 5000 plastic padded mailers. Ka-ching!)