Day 74: Beware the Ides of March!

March is the best month. It's in like a lion (an awesome animal), and out like a lamb (not such an exciting animal, but weather-wise it's cool). It has Pi Day and the Ides of March and St. Patrick's Day and the beginning of Spring and my birthday and my Spring Break and its signature color is green, the best color in the world. And this year it has my new apartment. So much goodness crammed into 31 little days.

Anyway, here's what I made for today.

And here's the whole passage this quote is from, in case you're not a nerd who has it memorized:

(The setting is Caesar's funeral, after the betrayal and stabbing and unkindest cut of all, and Marc Antony is speaking.)

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. (Act III, Scene ii, Lines 74-77)

And here's one last little tidbit to share with you on this beautiful Ides of March:

(Source: http://www.someecards.com/2011/03/09/historys-most-pivotal-auto-correct-fails-someecards)

Day 73: Happy Pi Day, Nerds

Today is the nerdiest holiday in the history of nerdy holidays, so I naturally have to celebrate. Here's what I made in honor of Pi Day.

It could be significantly more visually appealing and chock full of nerdity if I had my laptop with Photoshop. Also, if I had my laptop, I could have printed it out and done something interesting with it. But alas, Laptop is still in the hospital and Printer doesn't like to play with Loaner Laptop, so I had to make do.

So to compensate, here's a little bonus nugget I found on the Internets:

Day 63: Dewey Decimal Area Codes

So we all know I'm a nerd. I'm comfortable with that. I'm fascinated by both classification systems and symbolism, so sometimes my brain makes strange leaps, like this one. I've looked up the Dewey Decimal System equivalents for various area codes throughout the country. I got the idea when I first discovered that my area code, 425, leads to English grammar, and I thought that was appropriate. And since today is National Grammar Day, I'll proudly share this bit of nerdity with you all.

First of all, a quick primer in Dewey. It's divided into 10 basic sections under these broad headings:

000s - Generalities
100s - Philosophy & Psychology
200s - Religion
300s - Social Sciences
400s - Language
500s - Natural Sciences & Math
600s - Technology (Applied Sciences)
700s - The Arts
800s - Literature & Rhetoric
900s - Geography & History

If you want to know more than this, check out the Wikipedia entry.

Away we go...

First, the area codes closest to home:

Seattle - 206 - Organizations of Christianity
Donut around Seattle (Bellevue/Lynnwood/Renton) - 425 - English grammar (yay!)
Donut around the aforementioned donut - 360 - Social services
The rest of Western Washington - 253 - Pastoral theology
Eastern Washington - 509 - Historical, areas, persons treatment in Natural Sciences & Math (whatever that means)

For the rest, I'm only listing ones that I think are somewhat interesting (I won't bother explaining the odd ways my brain works sometimes). Keep in mind that most major cities have more than one area code, and I may not list all of them when I mention a city.

Los Angeles - 323 - Civil & political rights
Los Angeles - 310 - General statistics
Los Angeles - 213 - Creation
San Diego - 619 - Experimental medicine
San Francisco - 415 - Structural systems (grammar)
Denver - 720 - Architecture
Miami - 786 - Keyboard & other instruments
Miami - 305 - Social groups
Atlanta - 678 - Elastomers & elastomer products
Hawaii - 808 - Rhetoric & collections of literature
Chicago - 708 - Galleries, museums, private collections
New Orleans - 504 - number not assigned or no longer used
Portland OR - 503 - Dictionaries & encyclopedias in Natural Sciences & Math
Boston - 617 - Surgery & related medical specialties
Las Vegas - 702 - Miscellany in the Arts
Manhattan - 917 - North America
Manhattan - 646 - Sewing, clothing, personal living
Manhattan - 212 - Existence, attributes of God
Cleveland - 216 - Good & evil
Dallas - 469 - Portuguese
Dallas - 214 - Theodicy
Houston - 713 - Landscape architecture of traffic ways (ha!)
Houston - 281 - Early church & Eastern churches
Idaho - 208 - Kinds of persons in Christianity
West Virginia - 304 - Factors affecting social behavior
Wyoming - 307 - Communities

I'm sure there are some awesome ones out there waiting to be found. Or maybe there aren't. Anyway, the awesomest one is my own area code, followed closely by Cleveland.

If I didn't list your area code, go to a library website and see what kind of stuff is under that call number, or find the subject heading on this list.

Now I want to do this for phone number prefixes...

Day 6: Magnetic Bookmarks

Magnetic bookmarks are kinder to books than dog-earing pages, and they won't fall out like scraps of paper or an expired driver's license. And they're cute.



These are designed in Photoshop, printed on card-stock, folded, and given little strips of flexible magnet on the insides.



I made three of these little guys, trying out different shapes and techniques.



Next time, I'd like to laminate them and use more powerful magnet strips.

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