where in the USA? more hints

So not a single person has guessed the location of previously posted photos/game. Which got me thinking: maybe I made it too hard. Here are a few more pictures from the same location that might help get your guesses coming...



so this definitely narrows down the selection of U.S. cities

too much information?

I feel like I'm giving it away now for sure.

...that's assuming that people are actually reading this. Am I the only one having fun with this game?

where in the USA?

Let's play a game.

I apologize for those of you who hate games but to be honest, I just want to get a little dialogue going and to get a feel for my audience (or if no one at all is reading). So here's how to play: I'll show you some photos and you guess where in the USA the photos were taken by leaving a comment below. Then check back next week for results.

Guess the city, give your feedback on the photos, let me know if the photos make it too easy or too hard, tell me what you want to see from this blog.

I look forward to hearing from you. Someone, please.

honey

I've been on hiatus but I'm back now.

Thanks for checking in.

new colors!

Pantone has added 336 brand new colours to its Pantone Plus series, giving designers more choice and flexibility when it comes to creative work

The 336 new colours - which range from pale pastels to intense deep tones - bring the total number of hue variations in the Pantone Plus series to 1,677 in both coated and uncoated formats. Pantone Plus is the relatively new name for the 50-year-old Pantone Matching System, which, was extensively revamped in March 2010.

Pantone says the new colours were inspired by the Pantone Goe System, which brings new ink combinations and depth to its colour library. “The Goe System represents important technical improvements in the area of ink film consistency and coatability and these benefits have migrated to the 336 New Colours,” Pantone said in a press statement. “Formulated for consistent ink-film thickness, the 336 New Colours can be easily reproduced by printers worldwide.”

Pantone guide updates

To help designers and other creative pros discover and use the new colours, Pantone is updated its range of colour guides, both as standalone volumes and as supplements to existing guides. It’s also rolling out updated versions of its Pantone Colour Manager Software (May 4th) and myPantone iPhone and Android apps (early June). The company’s Capsure system will be updated with the new colours by the end of May.

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source: Robert Mead-Green  |  As Computer Arts' deputy editor, Robert writes, commissions and edits a whole bunch of content for the magazine, ranging from cover features and studio profiles to tutorials and our 16-page Manual section. He's also a frequent contributor to the Computer Arts blog. When he's not doing his day job he also writes for several other Future Publishing titles including MacFormat and Tap. In the little spare time Rob has left he tries sleeping, toying with his Mac and iPhone or playing Harry Potter and the Peppa Pig Pirates of the Star Wars Caribbean with his kids.

do you follow?

This is a book review of sorts. The book:

344 Questions: The Creative Person’s Do-It-Yourself Guide

to Insight, Survival, and Artistic Fulfillment.

[It] was the most popular book amongst Brain Pickings readers this year — a delightful pocket-sized compendium of flowcharts and lists to help you figure out life’s big answers by ever-inventive designer Stefan G. Bucher, he of You Deserve a Medal and Daily Monster fame.

Besides Bucher’s own questions, the tiny but potent handbook features contributions from 36 beloved creators across various disciplines, including Brain Pickings favorites Christoph Niemann, Stefan Sagmeister, Marian Bantjes, Doyald Young, and Jakob Trollbäck.

Check out what lies within.

Let’s be clear: I want this book to be useful to you. There are many great how-to books and biographies out there, and even more gorgeous collections of current and classic work to awe and inspire. But looking at catalogs of artistic success won’t make you a better artist any more than looking at photos of healthy people will cure your cold. You’ve got to take action!”

—Stefan G. Bucher

“If you keep this book in mint condition, I’ve failed,” says Bucher.

We are all different people, but we face a lot of the same questions. The point of this book is to give you lots of questions you can use to look at your life — in a new way, with a different perspective, or maybe just in more detail than you have before — so you can find out how you work, what you want to do, and how you can get it done in a way that works for you. Specifically.”

—Stefan G. Bucher

[source: Maria Popova]

Page images copyright © 2012. Pearson Education, Inc. and New Riders
Note: you can click on the images for a larger view.

photography

Photography is a true passion of mine. That said, hours spent devouring an issue of National Geographic is never time 'lost.' The National Geographic photo contest is upon us...the deadline for entries for this year's is November 30.

Photographers of all skill levels (last year more than 16,000 images submitted by photographers from 130 countries) enter photographs in three categories: Nature, People and Places. The photographs are judged on creativity and photographic quality by a panel of experts. There is one first place winner in each category and a grand prize winner as well. Follow this link to see 54 amazing moments as selected from each of the 3 categories. Here are a few of my favorites..




LONE TREE YELLOWSTONE: A solitary tree surviving another harsh winter in Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.
(Photo and caption by Anita Erdmann/Nature/National Geographic Photo Contest)




IS HE STILL THERE?!: One morning while on the Big Island of Hawaii, i exploring my surroundings to see if i could find something to photograph. I almost went back inside when something on this huge palm tree leaf caught my eye. I stayed around and it was this little gecko, startled by my presence he was hidden between the ridges of the leaf. He would pop his head up periodically to check his surroundings, as soon as he saw i was still there he would hide again. We played this game for a while until i got the shot. Holualoa big Island, Hawaii.
(Photo and caption by Lorenzo Menendez/Nature/National Geographic Photo Contest)





FLESH AND BONES: In a world where no one understands the importance of nature, all that is left of our nature is just these flesh & bones. Toronto, Canada.
(Photo and caption by Amirhassan Farokhpour/Nature/National Geographic Photo Contest)

 


LOVE OF PARENTS: The emperor penguins fight for survival and to protect their only baby in the frozen Antarctic ice desert. Antarctica: Atka Bay, Weddell Sea.
(Photo and caption by Claus Possberg/National Geographic Photo Contest)




MY OWN LIGHT: Pinki Kundu, a 13 yrs old girl is suffering from a chronic disease & is being treated in Mother Teresa TB Hospital in Kolkata.She is under CAT 1 drug therapy & is doing well.The day I photographed her she was very hopeful mood that she would be returning back to her parent soon. Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
(Photo and caption by Saibal Gupta/People/National Geographic Photo Contest)



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Photo 47 never did load on my computer...did you see it?

Which photo(s) was your favorite?

professor refuses to teach if students don't bring snacks

USA Today featured this story in their education section today as provided by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed. Check it out:

Students in George Parrott's psychology courses have an unusual requirement: they must bring homemade snacks each week to the laboratory section, and they need to work out a schedule such that groups of students make sure each session is covered, and that snacks aren't repeated from week to week. If there are no snacks, Parrott walks out of his class at California State University at Sacramento, and the students lose that week's instruction.

 

Parrott has been teaching at the university since 1969. He says he started this requirement a few years after he arrived — and that most students have appreciated the ideas behind the rule (which he says are more educational than culinary). But on Thursday, when students in the morning section of Foundations of Behavioral Research didn't bring muffins (or anything), he enforced his rule. He left class and took his teaching assistant to breakfast. One of the other sections missed its snack obligation one day last month, and he left that class, too. Ever since, the snack schedule has been followed by the students in that class.

This is Parrott's last semester before retirement, but his teaching technique — in use for more than 30 years — is now being subjected to scrutiny. Some of the students in the section he didn't teach on Thursday complained, and the university is now investigating.

Joseph Sheley, the provost at Sacramento State, said via e-mail that the university wants to be sure of the facts, and plans an inquiry this week. But he also said that he would "ask the psychology department to review whether or not the practice is appropriate within the department's curricular and learning outcome goals."

In an interview with Inside Higher Ed, Parrott defended his teaching methods. He said he could understand why some students would be frustrated about the missed class time, but that people should view his requirement as a valid pedagogical choice.

A graduate of Cal State's Chico campus, Parrott said that when he was an undergraduate, courses had 12 to 20 students, and those in a class formed close ties among themselves and with the professor. "Those days are long gone," Parrott said. The course in question is supposed to have a maximum of 42 students, although this year he has 52 in the section that skipped snack last week. That makes it hard for students to connect. So does the nature of Sacramento State's student body. "It's a commuter rat race. Students drive in and go home and never connect with their fellow students," he said.

Enter the snack requirement: Parrott said that he's teaching students to work together to set a schedule, to work in teams to get something done, and to check up on one another, since everyone depends on whoever has the duty of bringing snacks on a given week. Typically, no individual should be involved in preparing the snack more than twice a semester, he said.

Parrott said that considerable research shows that students learn more if they develop the skills to work in teams, to assume responsibility for projects, and get to know their fellow students. Team members need to count on one another, he said, and his students learned Thursday that if someone fails at a task for the team, there are consequences. "They need to learn to check on one another and clearly they didn't get that done," he said. "This was an important lesson."

There are some practical considerations for the requirement as well. Lab sessions run three hours, so some people get hungry. And the snacks, he said, make the classes slightly less formal and thus promote closer ties between instructor and students. As for the requirement that the snacks be homemade, he said that he wants the snacks to be healthy. "I'd like stuff without the total chemical treatment" that is found in packaged snacks, he said. He added that he rarely eats the snacks, but wants them there for everyone else.

People typically bring muffins, cookies or coffee cake to morning sessions, Parrott said. One of his afternoon sections recently featured pizza.

Alexander C. McCormick is director of the National Survey of Student Engagement, which has found positive impacts on students from working together, and working on projects outside of class. He said he would be hesitant to say too much without knowing all the details of the discussion at Sacramento State. But he said that the snack requirement may help to "build connections and community among students — especially challenging when most students are commuters." Further, he said that such a requirement "can also help reinforce skills like collaboration, organization, planning, etc."

McCormick said that "it's good to help students recognize they share responsibility for a successful class, though I think this is both more clear and more powerful when connected to the subject matter." For instance, he said, students might gain more by preparing or maintaining lab equipment or by discussing projects and writing them up together than by preparing a snack.

And McCormick also mentioned concerns about the sanction of the professor leaving class. "When the professor doesn't teach because someone didn't bring a snack, who gets blamed and what are the consequences for connections among students?," he asked. "Is it right to deprive all students of the class when one or a group fail to or are unable to prepare and bring a snack? That's certainly arguable. It also seems to empower one student who may not care much about the class."

Although Parrott said he is convinced that his students gain from his technique — even when he walks away from class — he said he couldn't think of another faculty member who shares his approach. He plans to stick to his rule for his last semester. Given that he is on track to retire, he said that if told to stop enforcing the rule, "I'd probably ignore it."

So what do you think? Is Parrott out of line? Do you think his teaching method is a good one? Why or why not?