Getting tired of winter? Then haul out some Spring!

Rake in those seed catalogues. Start your Spring cleaning. Get into craftiness. Find new unique ways to reduce, reuse and recycle and be generally thrifty.

Many companies will send you free seed catalogues. You can look for your favourite flowers, herbs, vegetables online and find someone shipping seeds. You may have to pay for a catalogue but most of the time that's just a way to coax customers to order. If you make an order you get your catalogue money back. Just imagine, you could have sunflowers in your mailbox!

But, why be satisfied with pictures? Here and likely wherever you are, there are tulips, daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths, miniature roses, cyclamens and so on available in a grocery store near you. I've already bought one white cyclamen and 2 pale roses. One is cream coloured and the other blushing pink. Very pretty sitting all together on the kitchen table. Usually I would have bought a hyacinth, but the last few years those just seem to look sadder and sadder. The blooms are so low on the stem they hardly have room to bloom at all. So, I've gone to roses instead. They can also be planted outside in the Spring. I have a few from last year. I'm eager to see how they will do in their first Spring as an outdoor plant.

Spring cleaning. Not my favourite thing. But, it does make you feel better to get rid of the clutter. It's so easy to build up piles of stuff over Winter. But, don't sit back and settle with stuff around all around you, packed in every available space and under that table you hardly ever use. Instead, pack it all into boxes, recycle the papers, ship off whatever is usable to GoodWill and toss the rest. Think how much better you will feel to have all that clutter out of your life. I'm not saying it's easy, I'm a huge clutter bug myself. But, I know how much lighter I feel when I do manage to get rid of some excess stuff.

It's a good rule of thumb to look at how often you have used something in the past month. Don't think "I might need that someday..." That's just a way of hanging on to everything. Have you really used it? If not, why give it space? If it's not paying rent, just collecting dust, toss it.

Do you feel Springy already? Well, get working on it! Personally, I feel warmer already. Of course, it could be that the heater is finally kicking in.

Happy Groundhog Day!

People who think they know how to fix something should make sure they have the experience to understand how it worked before they judge it. I was annoyed to read a post about how to fix the problems with dmoz, The Open Directory Project on DirPopulus today. Here is what I wrote:

I read your Problems & Solutions. Some of what you have written about dmoz is incorrect and based on the viewpoint of someone who did not see how the directory worked in reality. Although I understand your biased point of view, it is annoying to read someone making incorrect assumptions and judging the directory I spent over ten years working on.

Looks like you are using the dmoz software, or something based on it. So, that won’t help me really. I don’t want to deal with that. We had volunteer editors trying to fix that, not staff. AOL decided to dump dmoz because no one there was interested in supporting it. For the last few years dmoz was run entirely by volunteers while the AOL staff forgot the directory existed. In the end they did not find any value in keeping it on their servers but they did feel the domain and the dmoz/ Open Directory name were worth holding onto.

The main directory, with some active editors, is being set up on Curlie. Other projects were started and discussed but that is the one which has the best chance of becoming active again. Most of the volunteers who worked on the old dmoz software went to Curlie and have been working on the updating the software.

As volunteers we did not send out notifications every time we reviewed, edited, or added a site to the directory. We were already running with few active editors so trying to send out notices for every submission would have meant the end of getting any reviews done. Waiting for three editors to approve (while good in some ways) would also mean submitted sites would take ages to be listed.

We did have bots checking links and moving them into unreviewed for volunteers to check the links. Some bots were able to check for things like the new http:// versus https:// so an editor just needed to verify the change and re-list the site. We also had bots which checked for general link rot and expired domains. These doubled the amount of links to be reviewed leaving editors which huge amounts of links waiting for attention. Also, dmoz had a feature giving people a chance to leave a note about their link, letting us know if a correction was needed. This was a very seldom used feature and yet the first thing I would check when I began reviewing links in a category. Often this was abused and suggested changes were about spam, deleting another site’s listing, or some other junk.

Also, we were able to check links with the Wayback Machine and Google’s archived version of the domain/ link. This was a good help in tracking down an old submission/ broken link. I often found broken links, one way or another. It was one of my favourite things to do.

Reviewing submitted links took hours, especially in categories involving businesses and, of those, anything involving marketing became so flooded with junk submissions it was too much for a volunteer editor to want to deal with. When I tried to work on these categories my computer slowed down to a crawl just trying to load the page with all the sites to be reviewed. It was aggravating to work there when most of the submissions were junk – the link was already listed and descriptions were full of keywords, CAPITAL LETTERS and so on. Of course, these are the very people who complained about dmoz and dmoz editors the most. They did not understand we were running as a directory for the public to search, not for businesses to be listed. The priority was not listing every business or service but to have resources for people searching for a business, service or information (with the Regional listings to help people find local resources).

There are duplicate listings for some sites because they fit into more than one place. Also, sites could be double listed in Regional and the topic or business. Once you get into organizing and deciding where sites (you call them resources) should go you will see it is a much more complicated project than it seems from the outside looking in. We had a forum just for ontology issues. Due to many opinions from active and inactive volunteers, making category changes was time consuming and tended to get lost along the way.

I wish you best of luck with your directory. But, you have a lot of years to go before you should judge how another directory was run.

After being inspired by photos taken of little dolls in peril or just trying to cope in the big world, I have found my own little people to experiment with. I’ve seen people use Barbie dolls, some kind of revenge against the media thing I think. I know an artist who uses tiny figurines which are sold to be set up in model train villages.

I have been using two Bratz dolls which I bought at a GoodWill store. I like their sort of bitchy expression and the fact that they aren't blonde princess types. These Bratz dolls have a range for true torment, real peril and facing it all with an annoyed look.

So far the hardest part is getting the photograph in good focus. Even when I’m sure I’ve got several good photos, I end up deleting all but one or two cause they are blurry looking. I’m going to see what tricks and ideas I can find from other sites and people who are taking close up photos of little things. It's almost macro photography, but not quite that close up and focused on one small thing.

My best tips for anyone giving this a try:

• Clear out anything you don't want in the photo's background. Get clutter out of the way. Look through your camera before you start and see what you still need to move out of your way.
• Get in close to your dolls/ toys. In the photo you should clearly see their faces and details of hands and other small items you pose with them.
• Tidy up her hair. The Bratz dolls hair becomes a mess pretty easily.
• Practice different angels: overhead, to the left, to the right, from below, over her shoulder, etc.
• Practice focusing on something in the background and have your foreground be a little blurry, not in direct focus.
• If you are indoors, bring a light you can move around. Don't let it cause glare but experiment with moving it around for different effects, like shadows.
• I bought a tripod to help me get a better photo, without blurring due to any least movement of my hand. This should help me get better, clearly focused photos. Also, it's nice cause it keeps my camera in the exact same spot if I want to try playing with the light.
• Use the macro button/ feature on your camera. This means you have to move the camera really close but it does give you better luck catching the details.

Orchid Dolls - Ten Tips For Doll Photography

• Align the eyes, forward, upward or sideways: spend the time you need for that.
• Focus the eyes. Make the doll look directly at your lens, or at some distant point from the camera.
• Another important thing are the eyebrows: even if the wig has a fringe, I always try to show the eyebrows because this is what enhances the expression in the doll’s look.
• I don’t use high angles with my dolls, because it makes them look like simple dolls. To make them look alive, I put myself to their eye level or even, sometimes, below it.
• Try to avoid elements out of our doll’s scale in our framing, such as benches, litter bins, people walking… unless, of course, your intention is to show just that.

A Source of Inspiration

• Little People by Slinkachu - A tiny street art project.

This is a real personal ad from Edmonton, Alberta.

You are a busy woman with a great life. You miss a man in your life, but don’t miss the ego they usually come with. This great looking physically fit man is looking for you. You make the rules and rule the nest. He willingly follows. Your dinner is ready after a long day, your bath is ready - you will be towelled off and then your lotion applied. The shopping is done and the house is clean. Your man cleans up real well and is an excellent outing sidekick. You walk hand in hand, always knowing who really wears the pants. All of your other ‘needs’ are met on cue. I am physically fit and active and you should be the same. Interested?

How could a woman not be interested in that? It’s like having your own butler, manservant or going back to the early days in a relationship where the man goes out of his way to be pleasing - courtship. Why do men stop courting and romancing their women? Do they forget? Do they get too busy? Do they lose interest?

Whatever the reason, I think women need to take back some of the power they give out in a relationship. Stop being the one trying to make things work and be the one who must be pleased instead. If he wants something from you let him deserve it rather than just expect it. Don’t let yourself be taken for granted when there are other options. Options which you can enjoy.

I think this is why women should try to have female led relationships (as they seem to be called these days rather than FemDom and sub or Domme and slave/ slut).

Sex is part of it. But not where it begins or ends. It should begin with what she wants. What she really wants, not what he wants from her. That is a very fine point which gets lost frequently. If the woman can stay focused on keeping the relationship about what she wants and not let his wants sneak in, things can stay on track. Yes, he can get what he wants too. It is not all one way, there can be a balance. But, all too often his needs and wants are put first. She becomes secondary and then the courtship is over. Again.

Keep the courtship alive. Men, let your women lead, stop telling her what you want. Instead find out what she wants. Do you really know or have you just been telling her what she should want?

One of my favourite Christmas things is the tree, all lit up and decorated. The ornaments are a blend of special treasures I bought over the years, vintage ornaments passed down in my family for a generation or three and the real prizes are those ornaments we made ourselves, mostly from some felt, lace and embroidery thread. When it’s in prime Christmas mode the tree is glorious.

That’s why seeing a Christmas tree discarded somewhere, left to become a weathered mess, is so sad. How could some poor tree be plucked from it’s roots, given a grand celebration and then thrown out – treated with less care than the wrapping paper which was once under it.

Why do people do this to the trees? In these days of living green and caring for the planet, when we recycle and reuse and refurbish… why toss out a whole tree this way?

You can see of abandoned trees in Flickr groups. Maybe between now and the end of the year you will see an abandoned Christmas tree yourself. If you can drag it somewhere it has a chance to be recycled, I hope you will.