Travel guides devote countless articles to surviving and finding entertainment in foreign countries, but very few guides say anything about entertaining foreign guests, which is a much more complex issue. The problem extends beyond simple scheduling and the solution must also take into account cultural differences that add a subjective slant to the word fun.
It’s difficult to find a positive comment about Netflix’s recent decision to separate its DVD and streaming plans; in fact, the official announcement spawned over ten thousand mostly-negative comments. Most comments were the typical complaints, rantings, and death threats that go hand in hand with with internet commenting, but the shear number was overwhelming. I find myself amidst the crowd that plans to cancel as soon as the price changes take effect, but I don’t harbor the animosity that most so openly display. Continue
Writing for the Web
The Internet offers writers and bloggers access to millions of potential readers, and tools like WordPress are vital in the war of Internet words. Visual editors in blogging software allow for some form of control over visual appearance of the writer’s text, but HTML is required to attain any form of visual uniformity. The most glaring issue with HTML is that writers are not web designers, and while HTML tags are relatively easy to understand, they muddle the flow of text and force the writer to break his or her concentration with awkwardly long and obstructive tags.
The mat was awkward, a bit uneven, and painful to cut. It took about two hours of confusion and haphazard pencil sketching to figure out how to accurately sweep the razor blade across the stock to achieve a straight line, but by the end of it I had two fully cut photo mats and a slight sense of accomplishment. I framed the photos for that week’s assignment and headed off to class. The person sitting next to me asked where I bought the mats, and I told him about my experiment; the mat board was cheaper than the precut mats, and I thought it would be interesting to try and cut my own.
Sometimes we just need an inch. In times of stagnation, or when it seems that there is no path to victory, something as small as an inch reminds us that there is hope.