Back in July, I donated a bowl to shadesong's blogathon effort. She auctioned it on eBay and wrote a story about the bowl in her blogathon effort. Here's the link to the story, and a photo she took of the bowl.

Thanks, shadesong! I really liked this.

http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html

How fascinating ... books are getting digitized one word at a time by Internet users! You've seen those images with distorted text pop up on blogs or websites. You type in the word you see in the image, and then you can leave a comment or send email to someone. If the word is not typed in correctly, then access is not given. The test is done to weed out robot programs that are harvesting email addresses for spammers, or putting unwanted advertising comments in blogs.

This project by Carnegie Mellon is using scanned text from digitization projects in those test images, and the resulting text typed in by human users is fed back to the digitization project until the whole project is completed.

I first read this and couldn't figure out how it worked. Don't you need to know the person typed in the right word before giving them access to leave comments or email? So I read up on the details. They actually have the user type in two words, one word they do know, and one they don't. Access is given on based on the known word, and the translation of the unknown word is noted. They feed the same unknown word to several people. If all of them identify the unknown word with the same word, then the software figures the people got it right and feeds their translation in the digitization project.

Are any of you using reCAPTCHA?

shadesong is auctioning one of my bowls to benefit the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. Here's the link. Please make a bid if you can, or search her other auctions and make a bid. It's a great cause.

Thanks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvo-g_JvURI

I just saw this thanks to beltainelady and I had to save the link. Wow!

I went to resourceress's and sunastria's house last night to learn how to spin paper.

It was a quest that started a few weeks ago. A friend of bayarts asked me if I knew anything about spinning paper to make a paper yarn suitable for knitting. I hadn't heard of this, but I googled up a few examples of paper yarn, so I knew it had to be possible.

resourceress is a fiber spinner, so I asked her about spinning paper. She hadn't heard about it either, so I looked further and found this tutorial online:

http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=1289be4682db2d8450d2a582cdc18e49&topic=203907.0

I showed that to resourceress and she thought it would be easy enough for me to be able to do it myself. She invited me over to give it a try, so I grabbed a newspaper and headed on over.

( Spinning photos back here; includes cute helper )

Thanks, resourceress, for a lovely evening! And thank you, sunastria, for lending me a photo card so that I could take a few photos of our progress.

There's a lawyer in Illinois who is willing to provide legal services (pro bono) to anyone seeking to complete a non-contested second parent adoption in Illinois, in exchange for a $1,000 or larger gift to the Jolene Fund. These range in cost from $2000 to $5000 depending on the complexity of a case so this is a significant savings! (And the donation to the Jolene Fund is 100% tax deductible, so it's even less out of pocket if you itemize your deductions.) Only the lawyer's fees would be pro bono; the family would be responsible for other fees in the case.

Feel free to link in your journal or pass along this info to anyone you know that might need her services, oand send me email if you'd like to make arrangements to take advantage of this offer. dalbino83 at yahoo dot com.

Thanks!

Remember this artwork? I submitted it to a gallery in Salem, and it was on display when the gallery suffered a devastating fire in April.

The gallery has reopened at a temporary location while the original location is being rebuilt. I stopped by this weekend to talk to the owner, and was surprised to discover that this piece survived the fire.

( Survived, but reformed ... click to see )

I've heard of several other pieces that survived in similar shape. I think it would be neat to see an installation of the post-toasted relics.

I received a copy of Deviant Moon Tarot from crustyduck to review for her radio show. It is brand new from US Games Systems, and will be shipping in a few weeks.

( Scan of the deck, and the reading behind the cut )

I hope you found this reading useful; would you please let me know?

I submitted this photo to the person who is gathering donations for a raffle. The raffle will raise money for the art gallery that burned down last month. I think they are only accepting some of the submissions, so I've got my fingers crossed.

I used the shredded packing material that firinel mailed to me last month for this bowl, and then I added pink angel wings and a sparkle finish. I really like how it turned out.

"Toast! A Benefit for The Art Corner" will be held on Saturday, June 28th 7-10pm at the Ward 2 Social Club on 1 East Collins St. in Salem, MA. Tickets will be $10, and will be available after June 1st at the Salem Chamber of Commerce on 265 Essex Street in Salem; contact: Jennifer Bell (salemmainstreets@salem-chamber.org; phone: 978-744-0044).

After my last post, I told fujerica that I made another red bowl the same day. This is the second one. The picture is a little grainy, but it's the same red as the previous bowl.



It fascinates me how this bowl does Escher tricks in perspective. Are we looking into the bowl? Or is this the outside? I can see it flip back and forth!