Vicarious Thoughts

Been feeling low today and not much has helped – killing an evening playing Lord of the Rings online helped me forget for a while but having quit for the night (see me practising moderation! :) I’m back to feeling low.
So I’m taking a night off from blogging whilst still trying to achieve my goal of blogging everyday this week.

I’ve randomly chosen (or rather picked the first link that jumped out) a site from my rss feeds.

Paper Toys is a website with free downloads that you can print and assemble for free. There’s a nice range of items including famous buildings like, the Empire State Building, Sydney Opera House, Taj Mahal, and the Eiffel Tower. They also have various modes of transport (cars, buses, trains, aircraft), christmas themed items, and crowns (and a tiara). All in all, quite a cool site. (via Freely Educate)

I was going through my RSS feed tonight looking for inspiration for a post and I realised there were a lot of small tips I’d tagged to read up on. A lot are from Lifehacker which is a brilliant site (and which I’ve probably gushed about before)

This first idea is to use 3 ring binders and Zip sealable binder pockets (via Lifehacker) to store small items (in this case; capacitors, resistors and other electronic components) – something so simple and yet I’d never considered using anything but paper and clearfile pockets in a binder! This reminds me that fishing stores (and places that sell knock-off fishing supplies) sell wallets (often with custom space binder rings) with sealable pockets for storing tackle in – so if you’re not interested in making your own binder, or can’t find zip sealable binder pockets (or if they’re horrendously expensive) maybe this is another option to explore.

And finally, here is a cheaper alternative to the Jiffy Peat Pellets I’ve mentioned in an earlier post – the Toilet Roll Seed Starter! (via Parent Hacks)

New Zealand Forest & Bird launched their annual Bird of the Year competition during the recent 2010 Conservation Week.

The Forest & Bird blog has been publishing messages from each competing bird’s campaign manager and there are some interesting tidbits of information like; did you know the Grey Warbler is the weight of two 20c coins or that to be classified as a Native bird you need to have flown to New Zealand under your own steam and to have set up a family here, like our newest Natives, the Barn Owls in Northland, have recently accomplished.

This is a great opportunity to have a bit of fun and can easily be expanded into a classroom or homeschool exercise on campaigning for your own candidate for Bird of the Year! Nothing like a bit of healthy competition to get the research muscles moving and then a bit of creative writing to persuade your audience that your choice is the Bird of the Year!

Voting closes on 13th October at 5pm. So don’t miss out!

Oh, and my pick for this year? The Morepork, or Ruru, for it’s stealthy flight, sharp hearing, and excellent night vision.

Image borrowed from The Nobles in New Zealand blog.

Craft

I know I could manage this kind of craft project easily and I know my girly-girl would love the results from this
Scrunch Fabric Flower Pom Pom Headband Tutorial. So, I grabbed some supplies for this project and a few others this past weekend and now, all I need to do is track down (and probably clean) my husband’s glue gun :)
This Skirt with Built-in Shorts (via Craftzine) looks like the perfect summer clothing idea for my daughter. The fabric used looks kinda familiar to some fabric we almost bought from Spotlight the other day (though it was in more gaudy colours).

Kitchen Stuff

Five Minutes a Day for Fresh-Baked Bread gives you instructions on a way to make a week’s worth of no-knead bread dough that keeps in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. Sounds interesting and the photo looks Mmmm … Yummy!

These Thick Chewy Homemade Granola Bars (via ParentHack) remind me so much of the homemade muesli bars (as we call them in my neck of the woods) my mum used to make when I was a kid so what can I do but try to make them. The instructions, explanations, and photos are super great to boot! :)

Well the week was pretty up and down and we ended up being out and about for the majority of 4 days out of the week. On top of that, 2 of the days we were home were pretty hard going.
As a result, I’m not unhappy with my progress for the week. So here are the final graphs:

So the downside with using ProgressFly for this purpose is that either I lose the stats each week and reuse the progress meters, or I could create new meters each week (often for repeating goals) which seems a bit wasteful (to me anyhow). I also am a bit uncomfortable with the fact the meters show the same amounts on each blogpost. However, what I could do is update the posts and make them static amounts.
The alternative I can see is a different wordpress plugin called Tally Graph which I’ll trial this week (eventually I’ll settle into a routine I’m comfortable with). This uses custom fields to record data and then generate graphs. The upside is that updating can be done via a blogpost, and the downside is the updating has to be done via a blogpost. :D By that I mean tracking daily progress and starting and ending points would be straightforward, but that this relies on me posting updates daily. I’m also interested (seeing as I haven’t used custom fields in quite a long time) in seeing how the custom fields appear on each blogpost and so I have had a play on this post.

Finally, the public goals for this week are (and will seem familiar):

So there we go – a day late, a dollar short but finally written! :)

Edit 2011-03-22: Moved onto a different progress bar plugin called ProgPress which is more static and so, overcomes the problems/concerns I had above.

Without further ado (considering this is already 5 days late :P) I present my third and final attempt at …

101 in 1001

The Mission:
Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).
Started: 16 Sep 2010
Finish: 13 Jun 2013
Days Left:
Completed: 0/101

1. attend a lecture or seminar
2. be confident doing medium difficulty digital image manipulation
3. be confident using my digital slr
4. be confident using our telescopes
5. be familiar with the location of the countries of the world
6. become fluent in a new programming language
7. buy a bike
8. buy a longterm item of furniture
9. buy/create and maintain a bonsai
10. create a painting and hang it up
11. create a recipe binder and/or book
12. decorate a cake that I can be proud of
13. enjoy a sunrise
14. enter a photography contest
15. entice birds to our garden
16. expand my recipe repertoire
17. fill a journal
18. fill a sketchbook
19. finish cross-stitch and frame it
20. fly a kite
21. gather together a complete emergency kit
22. get a stable vegetable garden going
23. get cpr certificate
24. get to grips with my family history
25. get first aid certificate
26. give geocaching a go
27. give meditation a proper chance
28. go antiquing (I know! I’m sounding old!!)
29. go camping
30. go hiking
31. go horse riding
32. go indoor rock climbing
33. go kayaking
34. go on a bike ride
35. go on holiday somewhere i’ve never been before
36. go on the train
37. go to a driving range
38. go to a play
39. go to an anzac dawn service
40. go to an art gallery
41. go to an orchestra concert
42. go to something on opening or release day
43. go to the beach and build a sandcastle
44. go to a quiz night
45. grow some mushrooms
46. have a traditional picnic under a tree
47. identify a bad habit and work to eliminate it
48. join a new face-to-face social group
49. knit something
50. learn how to draw
51. learn needlepoint
52. learn to bake specialty breads from scratch
53. learn to identify native trees and plants
54. learn to crochet
55. learn to play chess
56. learn to recognise the southern constellations
57. learn to sightread music
58. learn to weave flax
59. make a bag
60. make a habit of getting a haircut
61. make a scrapbook
62. make a snowman
63. make clothes for myself
64. make clothes for my daughter
65. make greeting cards
66. make regular exercise a habit
67. memorise a poem
68. memorise origami designs
69. participate in a book club
70. participate in a crafting challenge
71. participate in a mailed swap
72. participate in nablopomo
73. participate in postcrossing
74. participate in a sh1ft project
75. participate in the 365 project
76. purchase some art work
77. read non-fiction books
78. record daily gratitudes
79. relearn calligraphy
80. research and grow a herb
81. send handwritten letters to people
82. solve the rubic’s cube
83. sort my photos into albums
84. spend a day at a botanic gardens
85. spend a day going to garage sales
86. take a walk in the rain
87. take up an additional charitable work
88. take up archery
89. try out podcasting
90. try out vblogging
91. visit an observatory
92. visit the wellington zoo
93. watch movies from list
94. work up to blogging regularly
95. replace this with a task at day 101 (26/12/2010)
96. replace this with a task at day 101 (26/12/2010)
97. replace this with a task at day 334 (16/08/2011)
98. replace this with a task at day 334 (16/08/2011)
99. replace this with a task at day 500 (29/01/2012)
100. replace this with a task at day 668 (15/07/2012)
101. replace this with a task at day 668 (15/07/2012)

Each week I will do an update and expand on one task at a time so that each task becomes achievable through a measurable goal. This has not been done in advance due to some of the tasks having a reasonable amount of complexity. Other peoples lists I have observed often have a higher proportion of items which are to have a reasonable amount of money spent to achieve them and I have tried to minimise this without compromising the idea behind the list – hence the greater complexity of some of the tasks.
I guess that makes this task a bonus task :)

Okay the plan is to restart the 101 in 1001 list on Thursday, so I’ve been working on a revamp of the list. Sadly, this has ended up in more items being removed than added – it would be nice to have an abundance of tasks to pick and choose from.

So here is the list so far (not word perfect):

1. be confident doing medium difficulty digital image manipulation
2. be confident using my digital slr
3. be confident using our telescopes
4. be familiar with the location of the countries of the world
5. buy a bike
6. buy/create and maintain a bonsai
7. create a painting and hang it up
8. decorate a cake that I can be proud of
9. enjoy a sunrise
10. enter a photography contest
11. expand my recipe repertoire
12. fill a journal
13. fill a sketchbook
14. finish cross-stitch and frame it
15. fly a kite
16. gather together a complete emergency kit
17. get a stable vegetable garden going
18. get cpr certificate
19. get to grips with my family history
20. get first aid certificate
21. give geocaching a go
22. give meditation a proper chance
23. go antiquing (I know! I’m sounding old!!)
24. go camping
25. go hiking
26. go horse riding
27. go indoor rock climbing
28. go kayaking
29. go on a bike ride
30. go on holiday somewhere i’ve never been before
31. go on the train
32. go to a driving range
33. go to a lecture or seminar
34. go to a play
35. go to an anzac dawn service
36. go to an art gallery
37. go to an orchestra concert
38. go to something on opening or release day
39. go to the beach and build a sandcastle
40. go to a trivia quiz night
41. grow some mushrooms
42. have a traditional picnic under a tree
43. identify a bad habit and work to eliminate it
44. knit something
45. learn needlepoint
46. learn to identify native trees and plants
47. learn to crochet
48. learn to play chess
49. learn to recognise the southern constellations
50. learn to sightread music
51. learn to weave flax
52. make a bag
53. make a habit of getting a haircut
54. make a scrapbook
55. make a snowman
56. make clothes for myself
57. make clothes for my daughter
58. make greeting cards
59. make regular exercise a habit
60. memorise a poem
61. memorise origami designs
62. participate in a book club
63. participate in a crafting challenge
64. participate in a mailed swap
65. participate in nablopomo
66. participate in postcrossing
67. participate in a sh1ft project
68. participate in the 365 project
69. purchase some art work
70. read non-fiction books
71. relearn calligraphy
72. research and grow a herb
73. send handwritten letters to people
74. solve the rubic’s cube
75. sort my photos into albums
76. spend a day at a botanic gardens
77. spend a day going to garage sales
78. take a walk in the rain
79. take up archery
80. try out podcasting
81. try out vblogging
82. visit an observatory
83. visit the wellington zoo
84. work up to blogging regularly
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97. replace this with a task at day 101
98. replace this with a task at day 334
99. replace this with a task at day 334
100. replace this with a task at day 668
101. replace this with a task at day 668

12 more to go :)

The original name for this post was Weekly Summary & Progress. Right now I’m not sure how comfortable I feel about sharing anything that’s happened over the past week but we’ll see for the future. To be honest, I’m not really sure how this post is going to pan out long term so bear with me please. :)
The hope is that by making some of my goals from my Weekly Review public each week I may actually accomplish them! Gotta love procrastination *sigh*.

So these are my public goals for this week:

I thought I’d try out a wordpress plugin called ProgressFly to track the progress and hopefully by the end of the week I will have 8 filled progress bars. Not exactly sure how I’ll update them, freeze them in place at the end of the week, reuse some of them, or even how to report back on them next Sunday but I’ll cross those bridges as I come to them.

Here’s to a good week! :)

Edit 2011-03-22: Moved onto a different progress bar plugin called ProgPress which is more static and so, overcomes the problems/concerns I had above.

Not exactly sure how to explain the idea behind this post. I thought I’d publish a post monthly where I can blog about the small stuff that happens in my life and that is amusing. Some of this stuff is likely to have been posted on Facebook and/or Twitter.

Late one night my daughter comes running out to me … ‎”Mummy, I think there’s a monster in my room.” “Hmm, can’t be. We sprayed anti-monster spray in there remember?” “Oh. Perhaps it’s a ghost then …. Do you think Tigger (our cat) would scare it away?”

Our daughter calls headphones “Ear Mops” which always puts a smile on my face “Daddy, do you have Ear Mops on?”

One evening I suggested we needed a dog to clean up a frozen pea spillage in the kitchen (in the hope the person responsible would clean it up) – turns out our cat likes them defrosted – so I guess problem solved! :D

These aren’t great photos – taken mainly so husband can see what it’s like.