Kimler Adventure Pages (http://randsco.com)

2010 is officially "The Year of the House", as Scott refocuses on things closer to home. One of the first projects of the year was to revamp their front planter, building a trellis and creating a visual divide for an outdoor "room". See what he's been up to.

A Long 2010 To-do List

Before: The front planter in 2006, shortly after we moved in. The Hydrangea was too big for the space. Trimming it made it look spindly and it never did recover from Scott's initial 'hack job'. (Scott can't kill plants, so he moved it to our 'wild English' garden area, along with a Forsythia bush from a nearby flower bed).

We've been living on our 5-acre Yellow Point wooded lot for over three years now. Each year it seems we have a laundry list of things to do, but the summer season always rushes by and the list just gets longer. It looks like 2010 might be "The Year of the Home", as Scott has been making more of a commitment to the property and less to his computer (as you can tell by the dirth of recent posts here).

One of the projects he's tackled recently, has been revamping the front planter box. This involved removing an overgrown Hydrangea, pervasive St. John's Wort, building a five-foot-tall lattice fence, amending the soil and planting some new (deer-resistant) flowering and climbing plants.

Follow along as Scott and Rachel plan their new garden and see the results of all of Scott's labor. (We'll update with another photo at the end of the growing season and continue with updates, to see if our "future planning" actually comes to fruition).

Can You Dig It?

A slide show of Alex's 2009. Over 100 photos presented in an "ArtiZine" format (unique design and layout, driven by the article content). Not your normal blog post. Come check out the design and Alex's year.

Slide Show: 100+ Pics of "the Oop!"

School Picture: Alex is appropriately wearing a "XXI Olympic Winter Games" shirt, the day school pictures were taken. Our "big" (little) first grader! She's so social & loves school.

Christ­mas came upon us very fast this year. Be­cause both sets of Alex's grand­par­ents own a di­git­al photo frame, we gave them each a 2GB SD card, con­tain­ing over 300 fam­ily pho­tos (mostly of their grand­daugh­ter). One month later, I've up­loaded some of the best shots to Rand­sco, to share with every­one else!

Alex is a very out­go­ing and en­ga­ging girl of six, though in most of these pho­tos, she's five. Al­ex­an­dra is her full name, but we just call her "Alex" or "the Oop" (a nick­name that she's had for a while and one that stuck). She had a very busy year at kinder­garten, vis­it­ing grand­par­ents, ex­plor­ing, mak­ing friends and just be­ing a kid. We in­vite you to share her year in pic­tures.

We hope you en­joy the show, which is presen­ted in an Ar­tiZ­ine What the Heck is an Ar­tiZ­ine? An ar­tiz­ine is a blog art­icle that has a com­pletely unique design & page lay­out, driv­en by the con­tents of the art­icle. It is re­min­is­cent of print magazine art­icles, where each art­icle has a some­what dif­fer­ent design, ty­po­graphy and/or art­work. In fact, the word "artizine" is a com­bin­a­tion of the word "article" and "magazine". An ar­tiz­ine is dif­fer­ent from a blogazine. In a blogazine, every art­icle con­tains magazine-like styl­ing. Be­cause such styl­ing takes work, blogazines are in­fre­quently up­dated and re­quire the blog au­thor(s) to main­tain a sep­ar­ate site for their "nor­mal" mus­ings. In con­trast, an ar­tiz­ine is simply a spe­cial, magazine-like art­icle, con­tained with­in a reg­u­lar blog. format and it's the second such art­icle we've pub­lished. As such, it may be a bit dis­or­i­ent­ing to some folks. Just wait for the page to load and then hover over the mov­ing theater screen stat­ic. Click to start the slide show. Then click the thumb­nail im­ages to move for­ward, or back­ward, through the slide show! (Simple really)

Now, let's get on to Alex's spe­cially de­signed slide show!

 

Show me the Show!

This article was a long time in coming. Over 25 years, to be exact. However, it contains much more than observations on why software fails the users for which it's supposed to be designed. It also demonstrates a method of designing blog posts. Is it "just another post" or a "completely new website"? You decide.

The Nose Knows: Software makers often fail to satisfy their users. We explore why this happens.

Programmers Cut Off Their Noses

Are users ever truly satisfied with the software they use? The answer is typically "no". We need the software. We use the software. But we often don't like it. Among the reasons: it's buggy, hard to figure out, doesn't do what we want, is overly complex, the navigation sucks, it's got a steep learning curve or it's poorly documented. Take your pick. Why does software fail the very users for whom it's supposed to be designed?

Why Software Fails

Why Software Fails

A classic Norman Rockwell moment, as Alex takes her ceramic piggy bank down to our local credit union "Island Savings" and opens her very first bank account. At age six, our girl is learning how to save her money! She deposited $54.40 in coins.

Alex's Opens Her First Bank Account - Chooses Island Savings Credit Union

Here Piggy Piggy: Alex proudly holds her hand-made ceramic piggy bank, before dumping the contents and depositing them (most of them) into her very first bank account. (One coin was a token, another an English Pence ... the American coins went in at par).

It was classic Norman Rockwell. A six-year-old girl holding a ceramic piggy bank, sitting in the lobby of a bank, waiting to open her very first bank account. The girl was none other than our Alex and the bank was the small branch of a local credit union.

Earlier that morning, Alex asked, "Can I get a bank account?" (Since Dad is keen on personal finance - having retired at age 39 and opened his first business when he was 12 - his ears perked up).

Several questions later, it became clear to him that Alex understood the concept of banks (even though she couldn't name all the denominations of coins in her piggy bank).

Alex has a very special piggy bank, one given to her by her God-mother - a beautifully decorated and glazed ceramic pig, complete with Alex's tiny hand-print on it (Alex was two-years-old at the time "Wilber" was made).

That afternoon, Dad drove his 6-year-old daughter to the credit union in Cedar. It was a long visit. She signed multiple forms and it took time to count out her "life-savings".

It was a very big day for Alex and a proud one for her Dad (who was busy taking pictures of the event). The visit brought smiles to the banking staff, whe were very patient with Alex and treated her like a 'big girl' customer. Not every new account holder meets one of the Credit Union Board of Directors, but Alex did! She also learned the difference between tokens, coins and foreign money (as she had a few Pence and U.S. coins).

To learn more about Alex's first account, read on ...

Alex Breaks the Pig

On October 26, 2009, Yahoo pulled the plug on millions of websites hosted on GeoCities web servers. It marks the end of an early Internet Era and one that affects no less than five of our early adventure journals. Restoration efforts are taking place. Learn more (including why the Internet is a house of cards)

26-Oct Yahoo-GeoCities Shut Down
Randsco Adventures Rescued from Ashes

GeoCities Closes: In a cost-savings move, Yahoo shut-down the GeoCities free online hosting servers on 26-Oct-2009. The move marks the end of an early Internet Era, where millions of users created personal websites (web1.0 animated GIF-land).

On October 26, 2009, Yahoo-GeoCities shut-down their servers and immediately obliterated 15 years-worth of personal websites, made by millions of people across the world.

We rescued our early adventure journals off of GeoCities, reposting them on the Randsco domain, including: Scott's Big Ride, Rachel's 1999 Big Ride, our Oregon Cycle Tour and Wonderland Trail backpacking trip.

Begun in 1994, GeoCities spawned "neighborhoods" and by 1997, there were over a million "homesteaders" that had created personal websites. In 1999, Yahoo! bought GeoCities for $2.87 billion dollars.

GeoCities floundered under Yahoo's leadership. Terms of service changes, monthly data transfer limits, eliminating FTP access and changing advertising strategies drove users away. (We moved our home page off of GeoCities in 2003, because advertising changes interfered with visitor experience - and shared server costs were becoming affordable).

To learn more about the GeoCities shut-down, what's being done to preserve this bit of Internet history and the pitfalls of 3rd-party servers ... carry on.

GeoCities Restoration?