Category: Pass the Olives: A personal blog
Pass the Olives includes memoirish entries and a few other things. If you don’t like olives, you probably won’t want to read these.
These are more personal, biographical entries with a few other things mixed in. Posts I felt like writing and had no place else to put. I’m in the process of moving these to Pass the Olives.
The best music video ever made: Viewing Grand Rapids
Roger Ebert ranked this of “Views of Grand Rapids” the best music video ever made. After Newsweek pronounced the city one of the top ten dying the cities in the nation, residents sang and danced back. This world-record setting 9+ …
The best music video ever made: Viewing Grand Rapids Read more »
Pattern in Islamic Art
Pattern in Islamic Art is an online archive of over 5,000 beautiful Islamic patterns. Images sortable by museum, monument, region, town, materials used (ceramic tiles, plasterwork, wood, etc.), or by architectural feature (decorative panel, doors & doorways, lattice-work, etc.) Excellent …
Piping Frosting Lace and Other Patterns
Piping frosting in lace patterns is one of the ways to create an elegant cake. It also takes much more practice than cutting out fondant flowers. From and Craftsy: Everything You Need to Know About Piping Techniques Since piping is most …
Learn WordPress
Learning WordPress has just become easier. WordPress has launched a new site, Learn WordPress, directed at WordPress.com users, those whose site is hosted by WordPress. WordPress.com sites are free and have limited but often adequate features. You then pay WordPress people to fix …
Tagged with: Wordpress
Perfect Profile Pictures
Not Just for Dating Anymore With the growth of social media for networking, the profile picture has become a major decision for anyone who participates. Which picture will people click on in LInkedIn? Who will follow me in Twitter? Am …
Majestic: Analyzing Links
Majestic describes themselves as “The planet’s largest Link Index database.” What they know is a lot more than I know, for sure. What they can tell you for only one of their services is how many links there are to …
Search Engine Optimization, SEO Tools
What is SEO, Search Engine Optimization? “Search engine optimization” is a fancy way to describe methods that help search engines find your site. This site, SharonVillines.com, is the place where I put things I don’t want to forget—and probably will …
Perfect Popcorn
For too long had I been popping the perfect popcorn in a hot air popper. Fluffy clouds. No fat! No cholesterol! No taste. Until I re-discovered the real stuff. After years and years of this, a friend brought real popcorn …
Brand Colors
A lovely online source of brand colors complete with color numbers—no guessing. Includes colors from Adobe, Airbnb, Amazon, AOL, Basecamp, Behance, Better Business Bureau (they have colors?), Bing, bitly, Boeing, Digg, Dribbble, Drupal, Ebay, Firefox (a big palette), Freshbooks (very …
Tagged with: Colors
New York Times Chronicle
Counting Names and Phrases in the Times The New York Times Chronicle is a new resource for “visualizing language usage in New York Times news coverage throughout its history,” which began in 1851. Enter a word or phrase and it will appear as a …
Comics
ComicBook+ is an archive of public domain Golden and Silver Age Comics — books and newspapers. 24,184 books as of today. Categorized by type and date. It also has a forum for comics lovers and collectors. All can be downloaded without cost …
Free Icons
A collection of free icons created by “Aegean K” from SketchActive. 360 outline and 360 matching solid vector and bitmap formats. Transparent individual files in 60px & 120px for Coding. JPG files for overview and detail revealing. Sketch files for Editing, fully scalable and …
The Art of Hand Lettering
The Art of Hand Lettering is a fabulous archive of hand lettering for logos, signs, murals, stationery, etc. A new site so the examples are only from 2013-2014. A wide range of styles in black and white and full color, all …
Best Demographic Data
Amazing data well-presented: City Data
Tagged with: Demographics
Internet Service in Cohousing
A major conundrum for cohousing and one that warrants a chapter in the next book on building a cohousing community is internet service. To provide it collectively or each to their own? If collectively how to charge, or whether to …
Converted Bus: A Home for $9,000 in 15 Weeks
Wonderful idea for converting old buses into a tiny house. My son used to watch out the window on regular trips down the Thruway in New York State to see a large parking lot for school buses, some in service …
Tagged with: Living
Making Public Transportation Better
I used to commute four hours a day round trip, from New Paltz, NY to Manhattan. My community was the commuters who boarded the same bus every morning at 6:50 and again at 5:50, or sometimes 4:50. When I gave …
Public Domain Books
Not exactly a website resource but public domain books are something to consider if your site has anything to do with literature or book selling, or you just like to read: Public Domain Books—25 sources. An amazing array of sites described …
Favorite WordPress Plugins
If you have favorite WordPress plugins, the ones you use on all your sites, download them to your computer, put them all in zip archive. Then you can upload them and have them all ready to use.
Why a Newsletter Blog?
Newsletters on your website are a better choice than printed or even emailed newsletters. The “issues” or entries stay posted on your website easily accessible for as long as you like. A newsletter on a website can be indexed by …
Pixels, Ems, and Rems
Website design measurements are not inches or even centimeters. They are pixels, ems, and rems. Rems are new. When I opened the Twenty-Twelve CSS (styling) sheet, I was thrown by the new rem measurement. The first thing I did was delete …
WordCount
About http://number27.org/wordcount Was not working April 24 2020 Another fabulous gem from the UK. WordCount is a ranking of the 86,800 most used words in the English language by frequency of use. Presented in the same format as a timeline—a …
Death Over Dinner
Death Over Dinner is another let’s have dinner and talk about death movement like the Death Cafe. The introduction by the founder, Michael Hebb, begins: On a beautiful June morning in 2012 I boarded a train traveling from Portland to Seattle, …
Image Size for Websites
When designing a website, I look again at the latest recommendations for image size for websites, at the best pixels per inch (PPI). This article from PhotoshopEssentials.com (dated only 2013) says, “there’s simply no such thing as a standard web …
Typography: Modular Scale
Modular Scale sponsored by Typecast is a handy tool for converting type sizes from pixels to ems and beyond. Enter the size of your text in pixels and translate it using one of almost a dozen perfect ratios and the …
Snazzy Maps
Snazzy Maps is a collection of links to, you guessed it, Snazzy Maps. When a Google Map isn’t enough look a these: Pale Dawn, Midnight Commander, Avocado World, Neon World, and more. A map to match every color scheme. …
Tagged with: Maps
Stet: A Writer’s Journal
Stet’s full title is Stet: A Writer’s Journal on Culture and Technology. Many wonderful articles on how writing on for the web. It is published by Editorially: The Best Writing is Rewriting, a collaborative writing forum. STET’s goal is to demystify …
Tagged with: STET
Infographics from Visual.ly
The graphic design company Visual.ly specializes in “visual content,” information conveyed using a combination of images and language—infographics, videos, interactives, presentations. They pull together storytellers, number crunchers, designers, and animators. Their Infographics start at $999 and are worth every penny. …
Simple Design, Short Names, No Ads
Triple Threat Websites are simple, and becoming simpler. It takes time to learn to leave out what people don’t really need to know, but we’re getting there. Simplifying the Internet Today’s examples of simple are from a post by John Herrman on the …
The Perfect Website
Addressing the key elements of the perfect website as simply as possible is the basis for designing an affordable, effective, and fast website. The Key Elements Design: Testing on multiple browser capabilities, and screen sizes and resolutions. Valid HTML and …
Tagged with: Visual.ly