A very happy Sunday to you and yours. First up in this week’s issue: A worthy entry into the world of restaurants, smart phones, GPS and social media. Next up, get access to all your music on all your devices. Then, which “room of change” do you find yourself in? Roy Peter Clark seduces us with the glories and wonders of grammar. This week’s referral: Blackbird Wine Shop. Check out the new “word of the week” feature in the right column. Forty years ago James Dickey opened Deliverance with this: “It unrolled slowly, forced to show its colors, curling and snapping back whenever one of us turned loose.”
Eats, Shoots, Shares | Foodspotting
This is no time to be a Luddite, friends. Too many groovy gizmos and apps out there. Foodspotting is part of the new wave of GPS based applications that uses your location to help you share and find people, places, a margherita pizza or a chourico and chips sandwich. You first allow Foodspotting to determine where you are, then click on find to get a list of nearby eateries, with photos of drinks and food, or spot to shoot and add a photo to the Foodspotting universe. Very nice!
Life Without Cables | Libox
Automatically sync your entire media library across all your devices? Without cables? For free? What is this world coming to? Here is the simple explanation. Libox turns your computer into a server. Once you download Libox to all your devices – iPhone, Droid, iPad, laptop, desktop, etc., every device has access to your music, video or photo library. One caveat: your computer (your server) must be on for this to work. So if you’re trying to share this campy Windmills of Your Mind by Dusty Springfield, at a dinner party, leave your computer on before you leave the house. Visit Libox.
Sun Lounge or Pit of Paralysis? | The Four-Roomed Apartment of Change
Oh, how I love this. Developed by Swedish psychologist, Claes F. Janssen, The Four Rooms of Change is a psychological theory. “In all change,” writes Janssesn, “we move from a Contentment, which is lost, via a period in Denial, which is a defense of the old, through Confusion, which ends when we give up whatever it is of the old that had to be given up. The giving up is the turning point, making us open to the possibilities, the new, whereby we move on to Renewal.” The graphic you see above is a tarted up version of the Jannsen original which you can see here. I URGE you to take a look. Wicked good!
Angle Face | Roy Peter Clark: The Glamour of Grammar
Will someone please designate Roy Peter Clark a National Treasure? A senior scholar at the Poynter Institute for journalism, Mr. Clark authors the most beautiful books on writing. The Glamour of Grammar is his latest, and I’m hooked. In a delightful passage on the word spell, he weaves a little spell from his boyhood. “I felt the first tremors of manhood most powerfully in the presence of a local teenage girl nicknamed Angel Face. She even had Angel Face stitched across the back of her leather jacket.” But whoops! Roy Clark’s mother burst his bubble: “Take another look buster. Her jacket says, ANGLE FACE.” For young Roy, it was the day that love died. Do you all spot the adverb? (Apologies to RPC for paraphrasing the quote.)
Moore Music & Wine Please | A Night to Remember at the Blackbird Wine Shop
It happened one week ago tonight. I was transported straight into the heart of Glen Moore’s world and what an evocative and ephemeral world it was. All thanks to some terrific advance work by my good friend EM. Mercy me, this music was so, so gorgeous. Just downright sick. It happened because of BlackBird, my local wine shop. BlackBird has opted to support the arts and they do it in style. They brought in the Glen Moore Trio. Moore is the bassist for the legendary jazz ensemble Oregon. Mr. Moore led his trio, Dan Gaynor on piano and Gary Hobbs on drums, through two killer sets. Glen Moore was charming and brilliant, the folks at Blackbird were great hosts. Kudos to you, BlackBird and thanks a million to EM! I’ll be back.
