(Amanda: the unaltered originals of those shots, and a couple of others, are here. Apart from cropping and resizing, the only things I did to the smaller versions above was sharpened them slightly and altered the levels a little. If you don't have the requisite software I'll be happy to make whatever alterations you want to the larger versions.)

Our friend Mollie is president of the Ozarks Literacy Council, who just had a large and costly window broken by small and worthless scumbags. The intricate iniquities of insurance companies and landlords have conspired to land the council with the full cost of replacement, which they need to raise by Tuesday so as not to conflict with the annual United Way blackout period (whatever that is -- I have no idea, go ask Brad).

So, if you have five bucks (or five hundred; hey, you don't know for certain Steve Jobs doesn't read this) to spare, please consider helping out a friend of mine and her worthy cause.

Observant readers will have noticed the spousal unit's new project, Portland Public Art, on the blogroll. Portland has a lot of public art, thanks in large part to a (city? state?) law that says 1% of all building budgets must go to support the arts. The spousal unit went mad and decided to catalog it.


The title is a sneaky segue to our latest acquisitions, two miniatures (about 2.5 inches square) by local artist Bernard O Gross, "Three Cedars" and "Red Oak Hillside". These snaps don't really do them justice. (Man, do I feel like an artwanker now.)

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).

The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet -- results and commentary will appear there in the future.

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate -- the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst
(this GUID enables anyone to easily search Google (or Technorati) for all blogs that participate in this experiment). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above). (Update: shorter GUID for narrow column formats: as098398298250swg9e; both will continue to work.)

INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below, please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).

REQUIRED FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

(1) I found this experiment at URL: http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/testing_meme_propagation_in_blogspace_add_your_blog/

(2) I found it via "Newsreader Software" or "Browsing the Web" or "Searching
the Web" or "An E-Mail Message": Newsreader Software

(3) I posted this experiment at URL: http://www.sennoma.net

(4) I posted this on date (day, month, year): 03/08/04

(5) I posted this at time (24 hour time): 23:59:00

(6) My posting location is (city, state, country): Portland, Oregon, USA

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):

(7) My blog is hosted by: uh, my wife set it up for me, I am clueless

(8) My age is: 35

(9) My gender is: male

(10) My occupation is: molecular biologist

(11) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: Bloglines

(12) I use the following software to post to my blog: Movable Type version 2.65

(13) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 29/12/03

(14) My web browser is: Firefox

(15) My operating system is: Mac OS X (at work), Windows XP (at home)