Sudoku Sends the Wrong Message to Children

Sudoku, a Japanese numerical puzzle
teaches something downright harmful:
if you find the pattern you will win the game.

This is why I ultimately prefer backgammon:
It is more similar to life.
Based on chance,
you do what you can with what you are given
and you are helped along with a little bit of luck and skill.

I have been playing Sudoku a lot lately,
I find comfort in the patterns
and enjoy my increasing familiarity with numbers
but but but
simultaeneously, I have noticed
that I am displeased more frequently:
Why doesn't a+b=c!
You mean there are VARIABLES?

notes on a first draft

On July 26th I had the pleasure of writing "the end." Life is a miracle! I sat with the gratifying feeling and savoured it. I did not share it with anyone, because that would only dilute this passion that I wanted to last forever. And now its time to read all 67 pages of this bad girl, without too much judgement, since it is still a child! She doesnt know any better then to be overly dramatic or inconsistent. Of course, she cannot be born and be expected to take care of herself! So with compassion, I read the first draft.

this blog

dear friends of night and day sweatshops

something exciting has happened. I have a website now.

Its the kind of fancy website that I can update like a blog. a blogsite? It's got videos on there and other goodies too.

so what i am trying to say is that I wont be using this blog anymore. All news and exciting things will be posted to www.ndsweatshops.com.

which is RSS readable, by the way!

on the "contact" page of the site there is a mailing list form. Please sign up! that way I can tell you about things! When you fill out the form, you will get an e-mail. You can to click on a link in that e-mail in order to confirm that you've signed up for the list. So dont forget to check your junk mail if you dont see it!

xo
L

April 20th - save the date

Apple - Trailers - Vacancy

One day I get e-mail from Lynn Sable who works in sound in LA, and she tells me she is working on a film directed by an old high school friend of mine.

Then she tells me that he told her all about one night where we picked up an old lady who was standing out in the rain at 4am and took her home.

So I called Nimrod Antal today, and he told me that the movie opens April 20th. I just watched the trailer and it freaked my shit.

Next Time

Next time someone asks me if I am on tv, or tells me that i look familiar, i will say, yes, I am on tv. As inspired by Marc Horowitz.
If you have a suggestion as to which show i would be on, please let me know!

its so nice to be home

What a great birthday present
to feel like I have a home.
After three months
I took a deep sigh of relief when I stepped out of the cab.
The driver laughed.
Thank you Brooklyn
Thank you fresh cool winter night air.

The journey continues.

oh, blogger

why must you erase my links when i change templates? oh dear blogger, who has the time to redo such things? -lrp

A New Word for the English Language

We were discussing the good feeling of accomplishment one gets from being able to close a tab in one's web browser. The word Big Cookie came up with was "tabtastic." Any other suggestions?

WILD HORSE SOCIETY

A Very Special Video Collaboration

The Wild Horse Society is video collaboration made up of two lady horses, Lila Yomtoob and Nathalie Roland.

Yomtoob lives in New York and made a feature film, High Life. She partakes in a lot of other activities, and likes bunnies and surf movies.

Roland is a printmaker and dj who lives in San Francisco and never made a video until she joined Wild Horse Society. She likes cookies.

Back in the day, as young horses, Roland and Yomtoob would spend many hours at Kinko’s making art out of photocopies. They have remained friends ever since, and cherish this opportunity to collaborate once again.

Wild Horse Society will run through mid March 2007 and is sponsored in part by The San Mateo Ecovillage Videoblogger in Residence Program, dedicated to social change.

You can view our videos at:
Wildhorsesociety.blogspot.com

We are keeping another blog, that is of our creative process. So if you are interested to see the inner workings of wild horses, look at:

wildhorseprocess.blogspot.com

We hope that you stay tuned to the Wild Horse Society. The easiest way to keep track of us, is to add our blog(s) to your RSS Reader.

If you would like to set up an RSS reader, we wrote a simple tutorial. You will find it on this blog.

If you like what you see, we encourage you to pass the videos around to friends, repost them, and write us little notes in the comments area of the b-l-o-g.

Thanks For Reading,
Wild Horse Society

eco deck

eco deck
Originally uploaded by low rent princess.

some ecovillage photos for you

i live on the right, on the top

i live on the right, on the top
Originally uploaded by low rent princess.

some ecovillage photos for you

garden pretty green

garden
Originally uploaded by low rent princess.

some ecovillage photos for you

hairy flowers

hairy flowers
Originally uploaded by low rent princess.

some ecovillage photos for you

oh so peaceful aint it?

oh so peaceful aint it?
Originally uploaded by low rent princess.

some ecovillage photos for you

more of the view

more of the view
Originally uploaded by low rent princess.

some ecovillage photos for you

there are many birds here

there are many birds here
Originally uploaded by low rent princess.

some ecovillage photos for you

chickens

including chickens
Originally uploaded by low rent princess.

some ecovillage photos for you

decomposing leaf found while gardening

decomposing leaf found while gardening
Originally uploaded by low rent princess.

some ecovillage photos for you

RSS Readers - tutorial for technophobes

Ok.

In Northern California the tech influence is all over the place.

So I learned about RSS Readers.

And I wrote a little tutorial, so you too can use it. I'm not super hyper into it yet, but its cool.

RSS Readers For The Technophobe:

If you are like me, and developing technology makes you run screaming, have no fear. The RSS reader is here. (I know, it rhymes).

An “RSS Reader” is a special page ( a “reader”) that lets you know when your favorite websites have been updated. That way you don’t have to spend time surfing around.

“RSS” is the technology that lets the information get to you. It is also known as “a feed” or and “rss feed.” RSS stands for “really simple syndication” or something like that.

Google makes it nice and easy.

You will need a google account to use this free service.

They have a simple tour of a reader that they make, and after you take the tour, they will walk you through the steps to make it happen.

Here is the link:
http://www.google.com/help/reader/tour.html

Google will give you the option to subscribe to their bundles. You need not do that. All you have to do is enter the urls to your favorite blogs and sites by clicking “add subscription” and typing your favorite urls.

You can “subscribe” to blogs, newspapers, and a lot of websites. Go to your favorite place and if it says anywhere on the homepage anything about RSS, you are in business (I think).

Try it out by entering wildhorsesociety.blogspot.com.
See what happens?

Wild Horse Society is added to your list of subscriptions on the left there, and next to the name is a number. That number indicates how many updates there are for you to look at.

You get the text and imagery from all the posts that you haven’t read, and if you want to watch a video, you click on the link.

When you add a new subscription, it might tell you that you have a lot of unread stuff. This freaked me out. If you don’t want to look at it, you can double click on the subscription and click “mark all as read.”

The other cool features of the Google RSS Reader are:

“Home” – is like a table of contents of the items you haven’t looked at.

“All items” – click on this and the on the upper left click on “show only new” then this page becomes a compilation of the new posts you haven’t read. Its like having your own newspaper, every day! On the internet!

At the bottom of each post there are a few icons. For the layperson, the most exciting are:

“Email:” you can email the stuff you get excited about to someone else who might get equally excited.

“star:” keep track of your favorite stuff.. if you add a star, the post will be filed into your “starred items” folder.

If you want to unsubscribe to a site:

Go to settings
If you don’t see a list of your subscriptions, click “subscriptions”
Click of the thing you want to get rid of
And click unsubscribe.

You can do all kinds of neat stuff if you dig a little deeper. You can set the thing up to read on your “mobile device” or set it up to easily repost something to your blog (if you blog that is).

That’s about all for the basics. Thanks to Ashley and Ethan and Nathalie and Damon for explaning RSS to me, and for showing me Newsfire (another reader) and Google. May the force be with you.

San Mateo Ecovillage Video Blogger in Residence

You got it. I am on the west coast until Mid March, making short videos and posting them on a blog.

I am working on these videos with Nathalie Roland. Nathalie is an outstanding visual artist, a dj, and a great friend of many years. The videos are centered around positive social change.

San Mateo is 20 miles from San Francisco, on "the peninsula" aka "silicon valley" ( i think).

I am living on an ecovillage (photos to come). An ecovillage is an "intentional community" where there is a conscious effort to be as green and sustainable as possible. We share a meal a week together, work in the garden and do property maintenance together, and help eachother out when we can.

Needless to say this is very different then my life in nyc. It is a huge shift when you take into consideration that I am living - on an ecovillage - in the suburbs - with no car.

Thankfully I have a bike.

Our vlog (thats short for videoblog) is called Wild Horse Society. More on that in a few days..