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A.A. Milne is reputed to have said "One of the advantages of being disorganised is that one is always having surprising discoveries."

I am a disorganised person who through sheer bloodymindedness has organised my life, but aside from that I am one of the most dismal failures at math, numbers in general really, that you will ever meet. It doesn't matter why; the point is I regularly do stuff like miscalculate the amount that my final paycheck will be.

I thought I was getting about half what I usually get for my final check, because I wasn't calculating things right, but as it turns out I got full pay and a little extra because my union dues weren't due.

(Never having to pay my feckless, corrupt, useless union again: Priceless!*)

Rejoice with me, my children: all the bills shall be paid on time this month, and there shall be groceries. Yea, and maybe a pizza. It'll still be tight, but I can buy shampoo, which is a blessed relief.

* Don't mistake me: I am 100% pro-union. I understand the history of labour disputes in this country and I know what the unions have done for the workers in the past, which has provided me with a forty-hour work-week, paid vacation, and benefits.

It's just my current union, whose entire leadership resigned over an embezzling scandal about eighteen months ago, has done nothing but screw me since the day I joined.

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And now a proper good morning to everyone, because it's time for the Friday Photo Post!

I have made some icons! They are free for use and free to be altered as your hearts desire. Teasers:


( More under the cut! )

HELLO PHOTOS!

So I was in Texas last week, where due to the drought they've turned off all public fountains. This one I think looks almost better with no water.

We were in the area of Whole Foods and West Elm when we went Cow Hunting, and it's a rich hunting ground. There are cows with gold udders, Cows apparently celebrating Dia de los Muertos, discows, and the infamous grinning Stupid Tourist Cow.

There's also this cow, which I couldn't get a close-up of though that hardly matters. It's just such a typically Austin photograph: a Starbucks, an art cow, an electric car, and two people in sandals.

This is my El Stop, and my sky.

I don't know what the deal is with this polar bear made from plastic soda bottle caps, but a quick peek around seems to indicate it's some kind of vague, formless Coke ad.

En route to the Art Institute yesterday, I looked up above the storefront of a bank I've passed probably thousands of times, and noticed there was the ghost of a sign etched into it -- you can see it at the top of the photo. I guess there was once a suit and shirt maker at the location...

I did not take a picture of the Spider Web Silk Textile, because it's on loan so it's not allowed, but I did take a picture of this awesome African headdress and that fantastic Incan beaker.

One of the apps I downloaded for my new phone was "Retro Camera", a free app that basically pre-filters your photos so that they look like they were taken on pinhole or polaroid or other older-model cameras. It's pretty neat -- I took a photo of my mug at work and really like how it came out.

I've fallen down a bit on origami this week, though I don't really think you can blame me. Still, I did do one other fold, a heart-with-birds that I'd link you to except I got it out of a pdf ebook. I used this special "indigo" origami paper, which is gorgeous but doesn't hold a crease very well -- it'll be excellent for more sculptural folding.

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It's always casual Friday in ( A Cheaper World. )

Now with a guest limerick!

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This is the longest Friday ever. Holy god.

Also, I discovered today that there are companies out there which make whiteboards framed in mahogany. This seems to be...somewhat unnecessary to me. Whiteboards are inherently untidy-looking things, and no amount of mahogany can hide that.

I've also started writing a Brand New Big Book. The Big Book for my old job is fine and good, but the new job has many new skills to learn and document. Part of me is very excited to be learning all these new things and organising them in a digital file. Another part of me wants to weep at the idea of starting from scratch. Nil desperandum, though; putting it all in a book is better than continually losing it all, anyway.

twirlynoodle reminded me just now that today is Ada Lovelace Day, which is a day dedicated especially to celebrating and promoting women in science and technology (not that we should not do that every day!). And, if you're a fan of the webcomic Lovelace & Babbage, they have in honour of the day released an iPad app for the comic which also contains linked annotations and primary documents.

I solemnly swear I read up on these websites this time. :)

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Let's talk about something other than my day job!

Today, in my spare time, I fixed the last few flaws I picked out of the proof copy of Trace, so the final hardcopy has been put to bed. (Details of release pending; "Early November" for now.) I also converted that file into a small, cheap Digest version -- that won't be released publicly, it's for my use to send reader copies to review sites.

And I used Lulu.com's new ePub converter wizard to make an ePub version. It works surprisingly well, at least on books with very simple formatting; there are a couple of quirks, and I may have to reformat trace from indent paragraphs to block paragraphs for the ePub, but I'm thoroughly pleased that Lulu is now offering this service and it appears to be relatively easy to use.

As ever, when Trace does go to press, the PDF will be free; I'm going to start the ePub at three bucks and we'll see how that works. It's a whole new world out there.

I decided I was going to do something immature and gratifying tonight, so I'm curled up on the sofa watching a whole bunch of old classic Disney cartoons I downloaded. "How To Play Baseball" and "Modern Inventions" have lost absolutely nothing with time.

YOUR HAT, SIR.