Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

Desks, desktops and pretty flowers
I briefly succeeded in finding space on my desk for my hypothetical new scanner. Since then my pile of magazines has encroached upon the space - easy to clear again at least. Someday I’ll have a neat and uncluttered desk. Really! I think I need to break down and get a file cabinet, honestly, but I don’t want one. They’re a pain to move (either within the house or to a new house) and just make me feel old. But… yeah, I need one. Maybe a dainty one. Maybe I’ll paint it or cover it with stickers. My next goal on my desk is to condense 2 cubbies of clutter into one. Babysteps, right?

Speaking of desktops, this columbine photo is currently my desktop picture. (If you want a copy, click here for the gargantuan version.) I am indeed a sucker for flowers.

Easy Fountain Pen Adventures
My eternal obsession with pens has been quite fruitful of late. I made a small order (really, it was small! 2 pens!) from Colorado Pen Direct and got a free purple Pilot Varisity fountain pen. They’re offered individually, in boxes of 12 and in a rainbow pack of 5. If you have been looking for an inexpensive way to play with a fountain pen,
$4.25 will get you an individual Pilot Varisity and $18 will get you a set of 5 in fun colors. The pen has a Medium nib and writes fairly smoothly. It feels like a ‘normal’ pen in your hand though it’s a little fatter than a typical ballpoint it seems to be a little smaller than a Sharpie. It’s also a very light pen which is nice. It’s a disposable pen so the ink is completely contained in the barrel - no refill options but also a limited risk for mess. In short, there’s not really much intimidating about this fountain pen if you’ve never used one before and want to try one out with very little commitment.

Work Saunters On
Work is going well. My boss is on vacation next week and somehow I’m point person for a couple of things while she’s gone. I’m not worried, per se, but I am hoping nothing goes wrong. It’s easier that way. My perpetually stalled project is still stalled but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. If it’s not a light, it’s a train and I’m going to pretend it’s the end of the tunnel anyway so I can die with optimisim in my heart.

tags: , columbine, disposable pens, fountain pens, pens, pilot varsity, work

Sunday’s walk involved taking lots of photos. The sun decided he would play hide-and-seek with me most of the walk so I found myself standing and over-composing shots while I waited for a cloud to pass. This is different than over-composting shots, but often the result can be the same. And it meant my walk was probably not as exercise-rich as it could have been, but I got some lovely photos.

This shot is not one of the over-composed ones. I like how the exposure worked with the overly bright pink against the dark center of the tulip and dark background. Also if you look at the larger version (aka the full-sized original file which is 3.5MB), you can see the textures of the petals. I now have this set to be my desktop pattern. Feel free to use it too if you want - just open this link and right-click to save it or set it as your desktop image.

In playing with this I discovered a nifty thing about Firefox too. When I click on full-sized image link, Firefox cleverly resizes the image to fit in the window and scales it appropriately as I resize the viewing window. When I mouse-over the image, my cursor turns into a magnifier so that I can zoom into the full sized image just by clicking. When I click again, the image is resized to fit the window again. Fun stuff. Of course, I’m probably the last person to realize this… but I don’t view big images in Firefox very often. ;) Zoom in to the center of the flower - it’s so cool!

Do you actually see your desktop image? With all the windows and applications I usually have open, I don’t see much of mine. Right now I see the lower right corner of the image - a blurry green leave and a sharply focused edge of a pink petal. Of course, I am particularly bad about open windows in Firefox (thank the gods for tabbed windows!). But still, it seems like I only ever see my desktop image when I reboot (which is rare on my personal computers) or when I hide all my applications to find something I saved to the desktop.

tags: desktop images, firefox,, flowers, macro, photography, pink, technology, tulips