See my test form here.

I am slightly agog at this functionality, having spent 2-3 hours setting up a similar form at www.altarserverappreciation.org that just records info in a database.  Took about 15 minutes to set up a test on Google Forms.

This is a good night to play around with technology - seeing what’s out there on the web.  I am constantly amazed at the amount of free, reliable tools out there waiting to be used.

I’ve wandered into an alternative universe, and I’m trying to decide if I want to stay. The setting is the lovely, old-fashioned library of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, in midtown Manhattan. The event is a gathering called “SPLAT! A Graphic Novel Symposium.” I’m here because the organizers have promised to lay out, in the course of a single day, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Graphic Novels.”

What I want to know is: How did this formerly ghettoized medium became one of the rare publishing categories that’s actually expanding these days?

More at: Drawing Power

Found at: Metafilter.

Hopefully I’ll be able to upgrade the back end today, and work on the design later.

El Jardin de la Nina Maria and Serra Boston are due for upgrades too.

Upgrades upgrades everywhere…

UPDATE 8/23: Upgraded the blog; thanks again to Bluehost the upgrade went smoothly and is now running on SimpleScripts.

Schmap is an online travel guide, and they apparently use Flickr photos tagged with Creative Commons rights to create photo galleries.

See the St. Louis Schmap here.

It’s a pretty ingenious way to grab photos off the web for free.  I feel like a published photographer.

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI visited The University of Notre Dame Australia’s Sydney Campus on Friday 18th July.

The Holy Father had requested to meet with local young people at risk of alcohol and substance abuse, victims of homelessness and other forms of disadvantage. The University was privileged to host this occasion and a number of young guests within its precincts at Sacred Heart Church, Darlinghurst.

More at: Pope Benedict XVI visits Sydney Campus

Taken from the side of the Charles river on July 4.

Toys that we play with when we’re children can affect our future career path, “in the same way that language is supposed to affect thought.” I’ve recently had similar thoughts - the work I do with content inventories and information design seems to follow the same basic thought pattern as assembling a gray, Mark I Iron Man out of Legos without reading any instructions.

Full talk below - beware that only about 1/30 of the talk has anything to do with the ideas above.

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Bonus link to this awesome video of the secret Lego Vault with every Lego set ever made, which shows several sets I remember as a kid.

The male rejection of adulthood is now the dominant attitude in Hollywood comedy, even (or perhaps especially) in movies whose sexual frankness makes them officially unsuitable for children. Occasionally you will see a functioning if beleaguered dad, usually a widower, like Steve Carell’s character in “Dan in Real Life.” And sometimes, as in “Little Miss Sunshine,” a coeducational, multigenerational ensemble will carry the therapeutic and satirical burdens of the genre.

But far more often the center of attention will be a guy, his buddies and his toys. He will, most of the time, be nudged toward responsibility, forgiven for his quirks and nurtured in his needs and neuroses by a woman who represents an ideal amalgam of supermodel and mom.

Full article here.

The last paragraph could be a blow-by-blow description of “Knocked Up,” which I recently caught on cable.

Love this Pixar commercial for the characters in Wall-E.