5 for Friday

On this 5 for Friday, we have a variety of course from which you can pick and choose.

1 - Mr Brilliant (37Days readers will recognize this one) has his own blog now. He just celebrated his birthday. That didn't stop him from posting on his birthday:

An early study of attention and perception (or “How Many Items Can it Embrace at Once?”) popped out at me while muscling my way through another year of Nature magazine for 1871. The article was by W. Stanley Jevons ("The Power of Numerical Discrimination," 1871) who contributes an interesting and very early experimental bit on the success of the brain to correctly formulate an accurate memory when in a flash shown a number of items. (That is to say, when shown a certain group of X-number of items instantaneously and then removed, how often will the mind be able to remember the correct number upon recall--and without committing them to memory per se or counting them?) In this fascinating study Jevons records not only right/wrong answers but how "close" the remembered fit is to the original number, and in effect is a pioneering scientific effort towards understanding our abilities and limits in information processing.

Read the remainder of this posting here, or go to the top of his page and start with whatever you find.

2 - Weekend Entrepreneur

Melanie Benson-Strick is our weekend entrepreneur poster child for this week, and we congratulate her for not only making the escape from cubicle nation, but for persisting until she got it right, and then creating a template and system for other motivated would-be entrepreneurs to follow her footsteps…

Click through to read the full interview with Melanie

3 - And from Noel Kingsley we find out about the Alexander Technique

My 'work' with the Alexander Technique is about helping people improve their health and well being and be more successful. They learn to free themselves of unwanted postural habits to improve their balance and co-ordination. By making appropriate choices for themselves they rediscover the natural poise they enjoyed as young children. In principle it's a simple and practical technique that can bring profound benefits including enhancing abilities and performance in sport, business or the arts as well as reducing stress and building self-confidence. And it's usually great fun.

It's wonderful having so many different and interesting clients to see every day. But although they are all very different, the one thing that they have in common is the wish to help themselves. The Alexander Technique gives them a basis to do just that. I've been using the Alexander Technique for over thirty-three years and I can honestly say it's helped me make the most of myself in so many different ways and it underpins my view on life in general.

4 - And from Cellobella in Perth, Australia we find out about the Pillow Wall

A number of people I know are pregnant at the moment and they’ve reached that happy stage of the third trimester where everything is oh so slightly uncomfortable, including sleep.

Slowly over the months they have been collecting pillows one by one. Arranging one behind their back, one between their thighs, one under the belly - now full and heavy - until it takes at least ten minutes to settle in the right spot - cocooned on what was once Passion Central and is now divided by… The Pillow Wall.

Click through to observe the set up (yes, it is safe)

5 - And finally we hear from McBilly:

Hi, my name is McBilly Wilford Sy. Yes. McBilly is my real name. Weird? Theres a story behind it.

You see, the word Mc actually means son of and Billy is another word for William. So now you know my dad’s name. Cool isn’t it?!

I’m 18 years old and currently a working student taking up Bachelor of Science in Information Technology. What can I say, I just love the internet and I want to make a difference.

Other than being a student, I’m a freelance web designer, flash artist and internet entrepreneur. I’m not an expert, but I’ve earned enough from the web that I can honestly say that there is money in the internet.

Have fun cruising amongst these sites. One or more of these you just might find you need to add to your RSS Reader of choice.

5 for Friday

5 for Friday along the trail for passion.

1 - Let's start with a video clip:



From The Wardman Wire

2 - And what twist and turn in the trail brought me to Dangerously Irrelevant, I am not sure. But I have the feeling that I have been here before. I recognize the name Scott McLeod.

3 - And from the Agile Chronicles we read:

I've got a question for you... Do the same rules for leading volunteers apply when leading employees?

We pay people to come to work but can we buy their enthusiasm and creativity? What about their passion and excitement? Maybe we need to consider applying the same or similar leadership principles in our businesses that we've discussed for our volunteer organizations? Do we need to modify our list for business and employees? Let me know your thoughts and what's working for you.

4 - And we find Alun writing at Archaeoastronomy

I am currently a PhD student in the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at Leicester University. My work seems to concentrate on the cross-over between science and humanities, in particular with work on Archaeoastronomy.

My current PhD in soundbite form is seeing whether there is an astronomical fingerprint for Greek settlement in the western Mediterranean which can help show the difference between Hellenised and non-Hellenised sites. It works from two perspectives. One is the Ancient Historical problem of whether or not the natives of Sicily and Italy did become Hellenised and how did it happen? The archaeoastronomical side is testing the assumption that cultures do exhibit shared orientations for superstructure or infrastructure.

5 - And we find Christine writing at chicken scratch.ca

Christine Stefanitsis, a founding member of little chick press, is a writer with poetry and fiction published in CV2, Fireweed and Emerge. Editing and publishing a Canadian literary magazine for women has been a life-long dream. Through her writing blog, chicken-scratch.ca, Christine anticipates coaxing her novel back to life.

Quite the variety today. I hope you will enjoy one or more of these and find time to enter them into your RSS Reader of choice.

5 for Friday

Today, 5 for Friday is really covered with one site, one email that you can subscribe to and receive daily. Each day this week, my email subscription has brought a gem of a find to me.

Visit the Very Short List

Today I heard about a new film made in Iceland whose trailer is intriguing with beautiful photography.

Thursday it was about Val Newton, the producer behind the low budget horror films at RKO in the 1940's.

Wednesday it was a video using stop motion

Tuesday it was folk singer Basia Bulat

and Monday the week began with love stories

click through to their home page and subscribe so you can begin next week with the Very Short List

5 for Friday

On the Billy Collins trail today we find:

1 -

Like Donnell Alexander says, "It's about completing the task of living with enough spontaneity to splurge some of it on bystanders, to share with others working through their own travails a little of your bonus life."

But, it's mostly the kind of place that folks looking for "girls and cars" stumble across by accident.

Visit Tiny Cat Pants for more of this...

2 -

Regardless of their current eternal standing, people who leave shopping carts haphazardly in parking lots may end up going to hell. I know there’s no direct reference to intentionally orphaned buggies in scripture, but I think it may be implied.

read more of Michael Snyder, the author of My Name is Russell Fink, here

3 -

My new chapbook is out! Another Circle of Delight has hit the stands (well, okay this blog and my website). I did a preview reading in Crockett at Valona Cafe a couple months ago. Publisher David Alpaugh (Small Poetry Press) found the cover art, which thrilled me. Click on the cover art to see a bigger version. The title and cover art refer to the keynote poem (is that an actual term?), "A Walk After Reading Dante's Paradiso."

Find out more about the chapbook and author Rachel Dacus here.

4 -

An American woman, newly embarking on the second half of her century here on earth, reflects on Life in General, and her own in particular

Read more on Becca's Byline here.

5 -

"What it all comes to is a confused and incoherent mixture of stories which are as old as the hills but are still unfinished" Ward Six is a daily digest of book reviews, literary analysis, personal observations, anecdotes, and opinions.

visit Ward 6 here

5 for Friday

This is a special bunch, not just any old 5 for Friday, but 5 for Friday times 20!

If you are into user experience this is the listing for you to explore. Some of these sites have already been "hiked" here but so many more have not. Rather than wait for the hikers to make their way, let's just share them all at once and let you go do the exploring.

Pick one to start with and have fun!

5 for Friday - PodCamp Boston 2

on the 5 for Friday PodCamp Boston 2 trail, with more folks to review before coming to meet and greet at PodCamp!


Daniel Steinberg, Producer Dim Sum Thinking http://dimsumthinking.com

Daphne Gould, Artist Daphne’s Designs http://www.daphnesdesigns.com

Dave Kawalec http://www.daveandmattshow.com

Dave Lamorte http://www.teachingforthefuture.com

David Cutler http://www.eatmedia.com


Visit their site.
See what and how they do what they do.
Prepare to meet them somewhere at PodCamp Boston

5 for Friday - PodCamp Boston 2

on the 5 for Friday PodCamp Boston 2 trail, with more folks to review before coming to meet and greet at PodCamp!

• Connie Crosby Blogger & Librarian http://conniecrosby.blogspot.com
• Craig Murphy CEO thebestkidsbooksite.com http://www.thebestkidsbooksite.com
• Dan Gorgone Co-host/Producer Baby Time Podcast http://www.babytimeshow.com
• Dan Harper http://www.danielharper.org/blog
• Dan On Tap Host Life On Tap http://www.lifeontap.net

Visit their site.
See what and how they do what they do.
Prepare to meet them somewhere at PodCamp Boston

5 for Friday - PodCamp Boston 2 Participants

As we approach PodCamp Boston 2, our 5 for Friday will pick out a few of the folks who have registered.

Visit their site.
See what and how they do what they do.
Prepare to meet them somewhere at PodCamp Boston,

Adam Farrah a business and technical writer

Adam Quirk, Producer of Wreck & Salvage

Alyssa Boehm, Producer of The Big Red Podcast

Amy Carpenter, "super fine artist", Welcome to Amyville

Andrea Lovett, storyteller

Enjoy!


PS - if you are impatient, you can head to the listing of registrants and cruise the listing ahead of my 5 for Friday spotlights. With over 700 already registered, I won't be able to cover them all anyway!

5 for Friday

A name, like money, doesn't exist in the same way my hands and mouth do, but to treat names as simple identifiers instead of the textual embodiment of a whole person would put every human relationship I enjoy in peril.

From Paul Ford writing at the Ftrain. Read the whole post here.

People at the top of every profession share one quality — they get things done. This ability supercedes intelligence, talent, and connections in determining the size of your salary and the speed of your advancement.

Despite the simplicity of this concept there is a perpetual shortage of people who excel at getting results. The action habit — the habit of putting ideas into action now — is essential to getting things done.

From John Wesley at PickTheBrain. Read the full post here.

Company that I work in does some fantastic practices. I’ll give you one example.

We are publishing house, and our final clients are readers. Where do readers get our books? Of course in the book-stores! So every month we go to the book store (the biggest one in Moscow) and work there for 2-3 hours as a book consultants. We talk to customers, recommend them books. But understand me correctly - of course we recommend our books a bit more (because we are sure of their quality), but also we recommend ALL good business books even if they are published by our competitors.

This process involves all the people from the company, even our directors take part in it.

From Dimitri Linkov writing at Dimitri Linkov.

I’ve created a WordPress plugin which creates an iCal feed from your blog posts. It creates a calendar which can be added to pretty much any popular website (such as Google Calendar) or application (such as Microsoft Outlook).

I built this because I wanted to see when I made my WordPress posts, in a more graphical interface. I already used Google Calendar, so I would have loved to see my posts right in my calendar.

You can do that with my plugin - no configuration necessary! Just download it from me, upload it to your server, and then activate it in your WordPress plugins page.

From Gary King writing at King Gary. Read the remainder of this post here.

More than a year ago, I made a list of what I considered the 6 essential elements of a website widget in these web 2.0 days. It’s a simple list, but nonetheless I’ve used it multiple times when developing widgets, and it has in most cases helped to increase gains from pushing a widget. I then wanted to write about these 6 elements, but as with many of my other posts, I’m slow at finishing it.

From Stefan Juhl writing at Stefan Juhl. Read the full posting here.

Enjoy!

5 for Friday

Friday and time for five in honor of the 5th day of the week.

1 - We'll send you to visit with a new contributor to the Joyful Jubilant Learning blog, April Groves. April is a realtor, mother of four down in Georgia, and writer of two blogs: Making Life Work for You and My Beautiful Chaos.

2 - On the Billy Collins trail, we find Amy King currently teaching and writing in NY. Her blog can be found here. A link to four of her published poems can be found here.

3 - Also on the Billy Collins trail, we find Grub Street's Penny Dreadful blog:

grub street is a non-profit writing center dedicated to nurturing writers and connecting readers with the wealth of writing talent in the Boston area. We have two vital roles. We support writers at every stage of their development by offering writing classes, fellowships, employment, and networking opportunities, and by promoting the work of local authors. Equally important, we enrich the lives of Boston-area residents by introducing them to a community of fellow readers and writers through author-hosted book clubs, informal discussions, movie screenings and more. grub street builds on Boston's proud literary tradition by making the city more welcoming for writers, and more inspiring and culturally alive for all of us.

4 - Continuing the Billy Collins trail, we end up traveling from East coast to West coast to find C Dale Young in San Francisco writing at Avoiding the Muse:

I currently practice medicine full-time, serve as poetry editor of the New England Review, and teach in the Warren Wilson MFA Program . My books of poetry are The Day Underneath the Day (Northwestern 2001) and The Second Person (Four Way Books, Spring 2007).

5 - Finally, going to the southern coast we find Katie Kidder writing at The Poet's Lounge in New Orleans.

A venue for poetry, literature, and all things of entertainment and interest.

Katie wrote a poem about her muse:

Oh, it's so bad
to get stuck with a muse you don't want.
Why couldn't I have been assigned Bobby Frost's muse,
or someone with something like grace?


Mine belches and scratches her ass in the hall.
She has the sickly sweet smell of children
and stale Nilla Wafers, as though she was sprung
from the foam of the sofa.


She grabs at my smokes during the two-point conversion,
and she swims in my wine like a gnat.
I trip over her, by the bed, reading Plath on the floor
at six in the morning when I get up for tea.


My muse is nothing like me.
She waxes perverse in the thighs of thin blondes
when we've a perfectly good blonde at home.
And that bitch burns my old lovers' letters
and makes up her face with the ashes.


Kissing my muse, I imagine,
is like swallowing a mouthful of honey and rust,
and twisting your legs in her legs in the cold comfort of dark
is like spooning, in the sea, on the rag, with a shark.


My muse works with the mercy of bullets, falling.



Enjoy!