Here’s a chicken sketch I did yesterday, when I was supposed to be doing other things. I’ve had chickens on the brain lately.
I went to a Prairie du Sac Village Board Code Committee meeting a few weeks ago. The committee addressed the request to allow chickens in the village.
Some members of the committee seemed dead set against allowing people to own chickens in the village, even though they did not seem to have read any of the material sent to them by urban chicken supporters. They seemed to think people might want to have small farming operations on their back patios, with roosters and all, rather than the three or four hens people actually support.
But some members were open to the idea, and had heard of the whole urban chicken movement, so that was hopeful.
Also, a half-dozen or so urban chicken supporters were at the meeting to show solidarity and numbers. And they had clearly done a lot of homework on other Wisconsin municipalities that allow chickens and those communities’ ordinances. I was pretty impressed at how professional it seemed.
So now its a process of waiting as the notion of urban chickens works its way through the slow-turning wheels of the village board.
Meanwhile, here’s what my mushrooms are doing.
I bought a DIY mushroom kit at the supermarket the other day. I’m completely a sucker for odd DIY projects. Over the years, I have made my own sourdough starter and sourdough bread, kimchee, sauerkraut, pasta, clothes and more. Some of these projects have gone better than others (you’ll never see me wearing homemade clothes).
I have high hopes for my mushrooms, though! They’re from Back to the Roots. Pretty soon, if I diligently mist my mushroom kit, there’ll be oyster mushrooms sprouting from the middle of the plastic area. Cool.
I’ll keep you all posted about the progress of my fungus.
For your artistic enjoyment: yesterday’s date, beautifully illuminated, with eyes on stalks.
This is my version of spring fever.
Also, ask me about my mushrooms.
Here is some free design advice – when you have very long to-do list:
- don’t doodle
- don’t try to sync your ipod and find that all your music is missing and have to figure all that out.
My music somehow ended up inside some different folder and was lost to iTunes. The music became found again when I juggled things around a bit. So yay.
In other news, did you just notice something about this site? You’re thinking “Did it change its hair a little bit/lose weight/get new pants?”
Sort of! The site got a little spruce-up, the web page equivalent of one of the above.
I changed the text color slightly to a very dark gray. I’m planning to work on usability a little bit with my students tomorrow so I decided to read up on it.
One of the things experts mention to increase the usability of your site is to increase text contrast. Check out Contrast Rebellion, a site which explains it well.
Got up at 4:30! Drove Dave to the airport! Actually, Dave drove us to the airport and I drove home. He doesn’t like the way I drive; he says my driving makes him carsick.
I didn’t design anything today, but I though about it. Mostly these days I think about usability and communication and responsiveness.
