Scribbles and Photos

Gingko (Central Park) This week, I've been happily pinning to my 2012 Olympics Moments , a Board I created over on   Pinterest .  Since I last blogged about Pinterest, my enthusiasm has waxed and waned. There are things I like: It's easier than clipping things out of magazines/newspapers and filing them away. There are a lot of people out there collecting really cool things and organizing them using Pinterest. It's a perfect way to keep track of something like the Olympics. And things that I don't like: Pins that lead nowhere (you know, a photo of a really cool place with no comment as to where it is and if you click on the pin, you just get a bigger version of the picture);  Pins that lead nowh...... oh, I said that already.  Sorry. The copyright policy (it got better but it's not great). The sometimes insane focus of the social media world on Pinterest as a tool for building your brand. Pins that lead... A Rose is a Rose Nowhere. Ye...

I can still remember my father filming us kids with an 8 millimeter camera and my older brother still has his old video camera (big, clunky, requires a bag).  This video, on the other hand, was shot by my iPhone camera -- standing on the window ledge during yesterday's thunderstorm.  Amazing how far we've come in my short lifetime.  Add some sound effects, edit out the LONG minutes where there is no lightning i had a video in fairly short order. Of course there are a lot of videos featuring lightning over Manhattan so I'm not expecting this to go viral -- but it was fun making it.    Happy viewing! And no post would be complete without a picture from the archives.  This one from a trip to Botswana in 2007.   Zebras Looking

Lily Interiors I was an early aficionado of Trading Spaces   – and its British counterpart, Changing Rooms .  Like most British imports, the original was better (and less time-consuming) than its American counterpart (and for the record, I loved Lawrence).  One thing I hated about the shows was that design often trumped function.  People would ooh and ah over a room even if the TV had been located behind the couch (yes, that did happen).  I always admired the home owners that were willing to take the risk of ending up with an awful living space – particularly given that the overall budgets for each room were not all that ample.  I wonder how those rooms – slapped together in a 48-hour period – have held up over the years? Another place where form often trumps function is the magazine business.  Now that I have an iPad (and its precursor, a Kindle), I usually only pick up a magazine or two at the airport to get me through take off and landing....