me: there is a recipe in here from my grandmother’s archnemesis. you know how church ladies have nemeses.
joshua: I can imagine.
me: the best part? my grandmother’s archnemesis’s name. Dottie Bone.
joshua: Holy crap.
me: Dottie Bone’s pineapple cake.
joshua: Do you think it was obtained through skullduggery?
me: no. I bet Dottie gave it to her. I mean, they had to be nice to each other. they were CHURCH LADIES.
joshua: Do you suspect this recipe then? This could be a sabotaged recipe. There’s no suspicious salt or baking soda or soap or anything?
me: this is the recipe in its entirety.
me: Pineapple Cake
1 – D. Hine yellow cake mix
Add 4 eggs – 3/4 oil – 1/4 water – 1 box instant pudding mix
Place on crushed pineapple – brown sugar – butter
—Bone
joshua: You can almost hear the “You won this round” contempt.
Yesterday I attended the summer iteration of Shadow Art Fair at Corner Brewery in Ypsi, and it was just as awesome as the last time.
This time, I splurged a bit and got a necklace (by Wei’s Open Secret) and a photo print (by Ann Arbor’s own Peter Baker) for myself, as well as a birthday gift for my mom.
I also traded some postcards and stickers, and ran into some other Ann Arborites happy to escape the art fairs in town this past week.
Some of my favorite artists there this time:
Peter Baker: hand-printed film photographs of locations all over the United States. Find him at peterbaker.com (photography), elevatedworks.com (design and development), or ptrbkr.com (blog).
Sara J. Bradstreet/Broad Street: antique and vintage remixed jewelry. Find her at broadsinthestreets.com (portfolio) and broadstreet.etsy.com (store).
Lori Brown/MorninGlori: softies and sculptures of charming creatures. Find her at themorninglorivine.typepad.com (blog), morninglori.etsy.com (store), or myspace.com/peculiarflower (myspace).
Amanda Marie Edmonds/amepix: buttons, magnets, stickers, and accessories with a garden and localvore theme. Find her at amepix.etsy.com (store) and amepix.net (photo gallery).
Elevated Press: letterpressed cards and stationary. Find them at elevatedpress.com (coming soon) and elevatedpress.etsy.com (st0re).
Cre Fuller/Tin Angry Men: found-object (mostly coffee percolators!) robot sculptures and lamps. Sadly no website, but here are some photos.
The Proper Peach: felt and flannel toys and accessories. Find them at theproperpeach.etsy.com (store).
Meredith Reeds/Rug Wear: handwoven and fiber art accessories. Find her at handwoven.etsy.com (shop)
Brian Walline/Route 17: postcards, posters, and stickers with an Ypsi-Arbor flavor. Find him at brianwalline.com (portfolio).
Last weekend I went back to Pennsylvania to see my family. While there, I swung by Knoebels to see my old stomping grounds and see what’s changed over the years since I visited last.
View the full set of photos and videos from Knoebels.
While I was home I also stumbled across my grandmother’s recipe box. It is full of mid-20th century delight, including both her original recipes and those collected from friends and periodicals. Some highlights include a recipe for smoking 100 lbs. of pork, jello salads clipped from magazines, and 11 ways to make pickles. Also: white wash.
I’m currently planning to scan or photograph the cards, as well as to enter the contents into a database or XML file.
Daniel MacArthur of the Genetic Future blog at scienceblogs has broached the topic of using realtime online technologies (liveblogging, twitter, flickr, etc.) at science conference in a few posts, and updates with some information about a peer creating a set of slides and icons to indicate how information contained in a presentation can be disseminated:
A while back I pondered the possibility of creating icons for conference presenters to add to their first slide to alert bloggers/tweeters in the audience about whether the presented data was “blog-safe”. This was provoked by a recent episode illustrating general confusion among bloggers (in this case, me) and scientists about the use of social media at conferences.
Fellow Australian-turned-UK-resident-scientist Cameron Neylon has now put together a handy set of slides for presenters to label both “blog-safe” and “no-blogging” presentations. The slides have a ccZero license and so are freely available for download and modification; the original icons can be found on Cameron’s Flickr account and Christopher Ross’ website.
Coming from information science, my default assumption at conferences or talks is that presenters want their information disseminated as far as possible, and services like twitter and the practice of liveblogging seem the obvious way to go for real time info, provided quotes and data are accurately attributed at the time of publication. I’ve twittered about the last two professional conferences I’ve attended, and subsequently provided my notes on those conferences as publicly available Google Docs (see my BookCamp Toronto 2009 and Internet Librarian 2009 notes).
But I understand some disciplines, particularly biomedical sciences, depend on keeping their data and findings within a limited sphere of people and publications. For example, this winter I attended a talk presented as part of the Health Informatics Grand Rounds series, which is sponsored by a variety of health science departments and institutions at the University of Michigan. The talk was done by John Wilbanks, Creative Commons VP and Science Commons ED, and was about mechanisms for sharing and storing data sets online, and how such mechanisms would affect how researchers think about what information belongs to them, how they collaborate with colleagues, etc. Sharing research data is a no-brainer for me, but I’m also not trying to beat my competitors to the cure for cancer, or secure research funding for the special thing that only my lab (at least I think it’s only my lab) does.
Developing a set of symbols, or a written statement, that tells viewers what can and can’t be discussed outside the original presentation forum is, I think, a step in the right direction, and will get people talking about the issue. But, for better or worse, I think we’re moving closer and closer toward a world where people assume that information they see and that they find important can and should be further disseminated.
What do you think?
