Coffee Talk » Life

Stars from Your Street

jayhawkannie — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:12:01 +0000

Although I tend to see myself as a “Google girl” as opposed to Bing, I have to admit that Bing is growing on me a little in certain ways. For example, I like that you can type in any food ingredient(s) and it will bring up recipes for you.

Another feature I learned about on Wednesday is the WorldWide Telescope app in Bing Maps. How do you use it?

Go to Bing.
Click on the link for “Maps.”
Click on the button labeled “Map Apps.”
Then, click on “WorldWide Telescope.”

It allows you to stargaze from any location on the map. In other words, it gives you a view of the sky from where you are. This is great for those of us who are “constellation challenged” (like me)!

The way I really like to play with it is to find a location on the map that has “streetside” viewing. Then click the Map Apps button and click on the WorldWide Telescope app. If you move the little streetside icon up toward the sky, the sky will darken and you will see what constellations are above that location. Unfortunately, not every place on the map has streetside viewing (my street is not currently included), but somewhere close to you may be. If you would like to try an example, type in Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (in Kansas City). It has streetside viewing and allows you to look at the sky above it.

The Nelson by day

Above the Nelson at night

(You can click on the pictures to increase the size.)

Finally, here’s a TED video that shows more of the capabilities of Bing’s map features (including the sky stuff). Give it a try! I think you will be impressed.

“Everyone in the World Has a Story”

jayhawkannie — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:37:26 +0000

I often try to watch the CBS Sunday Morning program at the beginning of each week. There is usually a piece or two of good news, something I definitely appreciate in this current era of a desperate economy (for those of us not on Wall Street), a hard and snowy winter, and a political system that seems too broken to work on any of our problems.

Today, Steve Hartman, of “Assignment America” did a segment on his project “Everyone in the World Has a Story.” I’m usually not home from work to catch the evening news, so I was very glad to see this on the Sunday program. The basic premise is: we are not that different from our neighbors around the globe. This expansion of Hartman’s focus of his American project “Everybody Has a Story” to a global perspective is a very good thing. I see it as a visual version of the line in Maya Angelou’s poem Human Family: We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”

Faces of America

jayhawkannie — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 03:23:52 +0000

Just a quick recommendation to any readers out there… Please check out the PBS series Faces of America hosted by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The current series started last Wednesday and will continue to air on Wednesdays up through March 3rd. The next program is February 17th. If you missed the first episode, you can watch it at the program’s website. It really drives home the point that we all have a history which creates a piece of the story of America.

Perspective(s)

jayhawkannie — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:43:49 +0000

So the soda machine ate my dollar, my boss continued to let two of my slacker colleagues slide, the pilot light on my hot water heater has gone out (translation: cold shower this morning), I’m having to re-figure my budget for one of the programs I direct (less money available than I thought), and the list goes on. It has been a very rough week personally here, but my frustrations with my job and my mother’s situation are really nothing when compared to what I’ve been reading about in Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column recently. I am deeply inspired by this one person’s attempt (Lisa Shannon) to make a difference for her “sisters.” And, after all, aren’t we all sisters and brothers? There’s nothing like a little perspective to make you wake up and be grateful.

You can follow Lisa Shannon on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thousandsisters and at http://twitter.com/LisaJShannon. Learn more about her work by checking out the site Run for Congo Women. She also has a book coming out in April: A Thousand Sisters.

A Different Take on Resolutions

jayhawkannie — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:57:21 +0000

So, it’s a new year. The internet is full of posts about new year’s resolutions. I’ll admit, I’ve looked at some of them & found that they’re full of the same, general advice that you might expect. However, I found a site that offers a different approach from the same old, same old. I’m a fan of Zen Habits, and this new site, 6 Changes, is developed by the same blogger. The premise is to pick six changes you want to make this year, and work on making each of them a positive habit for 2 months (6 x 2 = 12 months). 6 Changes has a lot of good information contained in the site and I recommend it if you want to make some changes. I’m going to follow it and see how I do.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Solo Christmas

jayhawkannie — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:13:29 +0000

KC Plaza-December 2009

Today I learned that my sister and her family will be unable to come to my house for Christmas because of the impending bad weather. Assuming I can travel a bit in that weather, I will go spend some time with my mom at her nursing home on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I’m not sure how I will feel about this very unusual Christmas situation. Although I know how horrible this will sound, I don’t even want to go over to Mom’s. However, I hate for her to be left alone, so I’ll go. It will be very strange for Christmas to occur, but not to “have” it.

A Serendipitous Moment

jayhawkannie — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:18:00 +0000

Sunday afternoon, the end of the Thanksgiving weekend, found me picking up a few things at a local bookstore. I’d tossed a couple of Christmas cards in my bag thinking I’d grab a coffee and write them at the bookstore’s cafe. However, the cafe was packed. So, not ready to go home, I drove through the KU campus and thought I’d write those cards at an overlook point above Potter Lake near the Campanile. I finished my task and was ready to head home as the light was nearly gone when the 5 PM bells rang. Right after that, someone gave a 30 minute concert on the carillon. What an unexpected treat! There were even a few Christmas tunes included. During that time, I decided to walk around a bit and found myself at the perfect place to take this picture.

A Couple of Fun Collage Websites

jayhawkannie — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:19:11 +0000

There’s not much news to tell (at least not much in the way of positive news lately), so I thought I’d mention a couple of neat websites I’ve come across recently. The first one is Wordle. Essentially, it takes a piece of writing and creates an interesting combination of the words. Words used more frequently are supposed to be larger. This image was from this blog’s RSS feed. You can adjust the colors, the fonts, and the design. Recently, our Career Services department used this with students’ resumes to see what key words they were emphasizing. -A neat use, I think.

The other site I found via Lifehacker is Shape Collage. It takes your photos and creates interesting collages into any shape you want. (You can even create your own shapes by using a “draw” function.) The only drawback I see is that it doesn’t allow you to move the pictures around manually. If you want to do that, I think Google’s Picasa is still the way to go. If that’s not a concern for you, the sky is the limit on how you can shape your collages. Here is a link to the video posted on the site which gives you a good overview of its capabilities. And here is a quick one I put together with some recent pictures of my niece. In addition to using this online, you can also download an application to your computer.

Both of the sites are free and very user-friendly. Have fun!

The Berlin Wall-20 years after it fell

jayhawkannie — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:21:05 +0000

While rolling through Twitter feeds over my lunch hour today, I came across a great collection of photos about the Berlin Wall and the 20th anniversary of its falling on November 9th. They are well worth taking the time to look at them. The ones that fade into each other (#s 12-15) with “now and then” views are particularly interesting.

I look at my students today and they have no memory of the Cold War. To them, it is something in the history books or from movies that reference East-West spying and Checkpoint Charlie. However, I remember being their age, in college, when I heard that the Wall was coming down and finding myself mesmerized by the TV footage of something that had been a major piece of my understanding of post-WWII foreign relations. This was a HUGE development and a great boost for world peace.

As we find our country embattled in two wars on this Veterans’ Day, it is good to take a moment to remember that sometimes HOPE does come to fruition. Wouldn’t it be great if 20 years from now all of our current war involvement was just a history book memory for the kids who will be in college then?

Quote of the Moment – November 2009

jayhawkannie — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:09:42 +0000

“If you can’t see God in all,
you can’t see God at all.” –Yogi Bhajan