Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Catching up here with Web 2.0 Games! Weird, I can't even pronounce the name of my new band, Nii Welbeck. Sounds more like a highschool student I once knew, Nicoline Shipticki.

With a Ghanaian band name I'm forced to use Google to find some dictionary site with pronunciation capabilities, like Merriam-Webster. Again, a learning experience using sound.

Well at least my first album, thanks to Eleanor Roosevelt, went gold, Do the thing you think you cannot do.

Crap, the image I wanted for my cover was protected so I couldn't use it. This one will do, borrowing from one of my new Flickr friends -- who found me the day after I loaded my first Cornwall, Ontario postcard scans. Only problem is that the image didn't get inserted at the bottom of this post.


You what? I have to admit I have used YouTube before -- and almost died laughing. One of my favourites is Bush Blair Endless Love. Where do people find the time to synch faces to lyrics? I don't know, there seems to be lots of weird eye movements going on in another spoof on the formerly leaders.

Monday, March 30, 2009

This just in: Academic Blog Portal is well worth checking out.


I found the listing of blog sites under the History tab to be very valuable. There will be some of those blogs that I will start to follow:

http://wiki.henryfarrell.net/wiki/index.php/History

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Quite a few months ago I created a Facebook account -- and then my family found me. Drat! I thought that I was safe.

So today I took another leap and created a Twitter account. I have little intention of telling my few followers how I feel. Someone recently used Grumpy as a good word to describe me.

Is this how to find me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/a7miller?

Will adding rula20 allow others to find this blog?

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Okay, the petting zoo was fun -- and I found a Christmas present idea for the man who has everything, that would be my dad.

So this week I'm getting back to those Google applications I've dealt with from time to time. I love the idea about Google Docs and will play around with loading a piece and see if the team leader can find it. So often the screens have all those gadgets and I so easily miss the right one -- like the Share tab. Why, tell me why, does Google not like a7miller@ryerson.ca?

Google Maps has been very helpful for ages. I love grabbing the map and moving it around, just like adults do with paper maps. And is up always North?

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Well, this should be fun, this Library Thing.

Here are a few starting titles and I'll have to add tags later:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/a7miller

Friday, February 13, 2009

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Things are moving along a fair clip and now we're onto Flickr. This will take a bit more work than expected but something I wanted to investigate years ago. A few photos have been loaded already and some need to be rescanned. Yes, rescanned since they are from the old days, i.e., pre-digital camera years.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/a7miller/

Tuesday, January 27, 2009


New Mexico boasts two early art communities centred around Santa Fe and Taos. It's hard to say which members are more interesting, but since I have a background in biology/ecology, I'd have to admit to finding landscapes more to my liking.


One can find lots of names to delve into at this wikipedia page:



Three favourites are W. Herbert Dunton, Oscar E. Berninghaus and Ernest L. Blumenschein. A new biography of Blumenschein was just published which includes some of my favourite paintings. See this Denver Art Museum page for more information on the biography.


Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Monday, January 19, 2009

Chaco Canyon

Chaco Canyon, one wonders why settle here? Perhaps before 1250 the area was greener, the rain fall more plentiful, but not seemingly in this century. As one walks around the canyon and stops at Pueblo Bonito, you can't imagine how a large population could support itself here. How do you feed hundreds of people?

See: A Brief History of Chaco Culture National Historical Park

Trade routes must have fanned out with Mexico not too far south; okay the 2000 miles to Chichén Itzá in Yucatan, now that's far! But the distance didn't stop some trade in turquoise from the Cerrillos mines between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. And all this trade took place before the horse was introduced to North America.

When the horse came to play a prominent role in trade there were routes to the east and west, like the Old Spanish Trail leading to Los Angeles.

See: The Old Spanish Trail via NPS

Thursday, January 15, 2009

In August 2008 I was planning on linking up with a vertebrate paleontologist friend in New Mexico. But while doing some sit ups in Denver I pulled something in my lower back and that ended a great trip.

Weird coincidence: in the middle of Nowhere, Missouri, at a gas pump, I recognized someone.

"Hell, I know that back," I said to myself and just waited.

Yup, when the guy came back it was my paleo friend Bob Sullivan.

Our paths didn't cross in Santa Fe, but they did near Rolla, Missouri. I think we spent way too much laughing about what our aging bodies had done to us over the last two decades. In 1990 Bob and I spent time collecting vertebrate fossils in the badlands of New Mexico, close to Farmington.

Where did the years go?