The Book & Stumbleupon.com

Recently, I've had the privilege of achieving enlightenment through an amazing online tool called Stumbleupon.com. It's a neat search engine that produces random websites that might interest you. With a click of a button (literally, the button says "stumble") you discover things you've would never expect. It's a 100% free adventure. Everything is random and unexpected. Call it the embodiment of spontaneity :) How stumble works is that when you sign up for sutmbleupon, you check off what topics you're interested in such as: photography, art, drawing, books, cooking, news etc. When you access your stumble account, click on your stumble button and stumbleupon will display page after page of interesting and unique websites that one may never have come across solely due to that fact of an unawareness to it's existence - it's kinda like shaking an Eight-ball and seeing what comes up next, minus the whole future prediction part. While exploring and stumbling, Stumbleupon allows you to catalogue and keep track of sites you liked and organizes them in categories so you can refer back to them later. Personally, I selected a lot of photography and art related interest categories and the types of websites that I've stumbled upon have been phenomenal. Many of them are personal websites of artists displaying their work. Others are blogs or other official websites that are related. There's some really amazing stuff you can find.

Today, I Stumbled across this really interesting site. It's called "Book". This excerpt is straight from the web page. I couldn't figure out a better way to describe it as the original text so here it is:

For 36 weeks, a sketch book was sent in random order between 4 artists: 2 in Brooklyn and 2 in Belfast. Every Wednesday one participant would receive book and the following Monday it was sent out, giving each artist 5 days to complete a spread in response to the one that proceeded it. A small portion of each entry extends on to the following page. Beyond this, there was no communication between the artists concerning the content of book during it's making. Book's first trip across the Atlantic was on 2 June 2003. It's final trip was on 2 February 2004. By the time it was completed, book had travelled over 60,000 miles.

On the web page you can see some of the images inside the book. Checkout http://www.lookatbook.com/

It's really cool.

Another cool idea for a web service is Book Mooch. It's a book listing network where you can post up books you want to give away and in return you can get books that other people are giving away as well. The only catch is the for every 2 books to take, you must put up 1. There is no cost to use the site. Your only responsibility is postage to the recipient. You can search for books by title, genre or country. It's a neat idea and perhaps you can create a mini book club through it. It's an idea :) Check out http://bookmooch.com/

Other photos and thoughts to brighten the day:

It's a pirate cat!!!! ARRRRRR!!!

Kanye has gained control of Google search...

Even Darth Vador can be eco-conscious and environmentally sustainable. If it wasn't space, I'm sure he'd ride a bike.


It really is funnier...I mean more fun.

JAY-Z!!!!!!

Try it! I highly recommend it. Although, with a word of caution - it's highly distracting. Once you start stumbling, it's hard to stop.

xxxxxxx

Retrospect

It's interesting. This time away from home I'm more frequently reminiscing about home, friends family...old friends, newer friends...the people who I consider to be my truest friends. I'm not sure what it is but all I can do is be grateful. Homesickness sucks, but I feel perhaps I miss home because this time around I left "home" as a place I finally moulded to be my own. The friends I've made over the last year have been the most incredible people whom I've come to love and really care about. And especially recently, I've had the chance to catch up with 3 of my best friends who I hadn't seen for over 2 years. It taught me, that no matter time or distance real friendships last forever. And the really beautiful thing about it all is that perhaps it's the one thing in life that is the most real and tangible thing. We don't ask or choose our best friends or family. We meet random people in life and through the randomness we find the most valuable treasures and relationships which will be the most honest in nature, most real and most fulfilling things in life.

I got a feelin'...ooh oooh....

For all those who've continued to read this post without being pissed that I've now got the Black Eyed Peas song stuck in your head - I thank you :)


It's Wednesday, December 2nd. And it's cold outside. It's 23 days away from Christmas and I've been officially away from home for 1 month and 1 day. Happy anniversay to me. And I have the urge to write.


I'm excited. Christmas is coming up. Though I won't be home for the holidays with the fam-jam I'm looking forward to another new Christmas experience - one with the Mackay family in Edinburgh. Apparently in Edinburgh Christmas and New Years (also known as Hogmanay in Scotland) the celebrations are huge!!! It's a massive 4-day celebration and everyone hits the streets for music shows, dances, food and fireworks (http://www.edinburghshogmanay.com/) I'm a little torn because the Gordon-Smith family has invited Louis and I for Christmas and New Years at the chalupa. I'd love to go for at least New Years, but we'll figure it out soon enough. Also, I'm excited to do my Christmas shopping. I love making/buying gifts for people. It's the best to see your gift made someone happy or excited. But in the more immediate future, I'm the MOST excited to see Gintare Stankevicuite - one of my bestest friends in the whole world (literally)

She's my beautiful best friend from Lithuania who I met my first year of Uni. We had loads of class together the first semester but the class we really got talking in was our English Composition course. There I also met the rest of my "family" - Tony Jakubse and Danny Lostak. Later Sandra Issa would be added onto our atomic family.

A couple of weeks ago, on our road trip to the UK we also got to catch up with Laura. It was amazing and I can't imagine what it's going to be like to catch up with Ginte after 2 years!

Another exciting event is the return of Sister Angela Backeberg from her mission in Halifax on Dec. 5!!!!! I cannot wait. Unfortunately, since I won't be in Vancouver when she arrives, I can only do the next best thing and skype date her! It's been 1.5 years already and I miss her. Her sister Jenny became one of my best friends and amazing support to me in my life and I am so grateful for the months we lived together. Now to catch up with Ange. It'll be amazing.

Anyways. What I've learned. Your true friends will be your friend no matter time or distance. Some friends are forever. And whoever said diamonds are a girl's best-friend obviously had no best-friends.