russian nesting bags

Posted on January 28, 2007 by Marie Kennedy

it seems that there are two ways to store your plastic grocery bags: all jammed inside a bin or the russian nesting bag way (one bag inside another, inside another, ad infinitum). i prefer the every-bag-for-itself way because when i reach inside our storage bin i am certain to pull out just one bag. by storing them the russian-nesting-doll way it is likely that instead of pulling out just one bag i’ll actually get one bag filled with many other bags, which can be frustrating when i’m in a hurry.

does anyone have a really good way to store plastic grocery bags?

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retaining your rights to self archive, made easy

Posted on January 25, 2007 by Marie Kennedy

do you know how wickedly easy it is to retain your rights as an author, in order to self archive articles you have submitted for publication? i set special time aside today in order to buckle down and figure it out, only to discover that all i have to do is submit an addendum with my copyright agreement to the publisher. mit has made one for me, so all i have to do is download the PDF or Word file, fill it out and negotiate from there. here’s a link to the mit site: http://libraries.mit.edu/about/scholarly/copyright-form.html.

thanks for pointing me to the mit link, Open Access News!

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this is how i get into trouble

Posted on January 21, 2007 by Marie Kennedy

i was surfing around on the ‘net and came across a website on how to make an “amazing circle” with an image in photoshop. so, of course, i had to stop my surfing and make one. and then i had to sign up for a flickr account in order to upload it, to be part of the “amazing circle” pool. bing, bam, boom, there go two hours of my saturday morning.

make your own “amazing circle.”

see other “amazing circles.”

mushroom ring

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use, utilize

Posted on January 17, 2007 by Marie Kennedy

here’s how i like to think about the words “use” and “utilize.” may this be helpful to you if you’re having a difficult time in choosing which to write or say.

use means that an item is employed for the purpose it was created (e.g., i’m going to use this toothbrush to clean my teeth)

utilize means that an item is employed not for the purpose it was created (e.g., i’m going to utilize this toothbrush to remove the fuzz from my hairdryer vent)

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he who parks too close

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Marie Kennedy

badparker it took the parking lot attendants about 20 minutes of jiggling the steering wheel back and forth to inch my red car away from the gold car enough so that i could drive home from campus. we’re not sure how the gold car actually parked less than 2 inches from my car without scratching it (possibilites discussed: dropped from above with a crane, david copperfield made it appear, driver had been on call the last 24 hours and didn’t notice my car was there, etc.). we’re also wondering if he got out of his car through the trunk, since he couldn’t open his driver’s side door. it’s the first week of classes here and people are unusually desperate to find parking, but i never thought i’d see something like this.

Posted in titter | 2 Comments

Monterey Aquarium video

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Marie Kennedy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvgcC-FJ62Y

just opened an account at youtube. totally free, totally easy. when you upload a video you’re required to add metadata tags so it gets filed with similar videos (i heart social tagging!). i added the tags “jellyfish” and “aquarium” since the video i uploaded was of jellies from the monterey aquarium. once you add the tags it displays how many similar videos are already on youtube. it found 6475 related videos. that’s 6475 videos of jellyfish!

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