Zentangle® - October 2015

The Zentangle habit is one that I even take on vacation! There is always enough room for tiles, a pen, a pencil, and tortillion!

Toward the beginning of the month I started experimenting with the patterns on soft drink bottles. My rationale was that making patterns on a curved surface rather than a flat tile would take some practice and I was considering making spherical Christmas ornaments for our tree this year; in the meantime, the decorated bottles could hold water for when I was hiking. I bought an ultra-fine point Sharpie. The ink did indeed stick to the plastic although I discovered that any residual oils (like from fingerprints) caused it to wear off. I also discovered that it pooled a bit if I didn’t pick up the pen fast enough so continuous line patterns were preferable. I am not back to tiles…and thinking of ornaments made out of paper coaster material – hanging diagonally ….I’ll have so of my early test tiles later in this post.

I am enjoying the colored pencils even though the patterns are made with the Micron pen.

I find myself using more open patterns so that I have spaces to add color. The group below includes a test of the Sharpie on a strip of plastic…before I used it on the soft drink bottles.

I like the flower fillers!

The group of tiles without color below is from when I was traveling. For some reason – I reverted to more traditional tiles while ‘on the road.’

Sometimes I use only one color…and in areas that I would have done shading.

Sometimes I think – after the fact – of themes for tiles…like the sea (upper left) or jewels and scarves (upper middle). I decided to start naming the tiles.

The names for this batch (starting at the upper left and moving to the right…then lower left and right): Opera house, Space I, D flower, Deed pods, Tri-red, D flower 2, 2015. The last one was an experiment on the coaster material to hang on the tree.

Below are three more with potential to hang on the tree. I started using a red Sharpie. I like the color but the lines are very fat! The lower right is a Zentangle with my name in hieroglyphs (one of the activities in the Coursera course on Ancient Egypt)…and I did auras around it to make a cartouche.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 28, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

A Visual Guide to Chemistry Glassware - A vocabulary lesson in glassware!  Probably everyone knows the difference between a test tube and a beaker…but what about a conical flask and volumetric flask?

From soda bans to bike lanes: Which 'natural experiments' really reduce obesity? - Which changes have made an impact? Studies that included longer follow-up periods after a change showed stronger results. Two examples of changes with strong impact were trans-fat bans and active transportation infrastructure improvement.

50% Driving Ban for Paris Due To Air Pollution - Weather conditions in Paris cause spikes in air pollution this time of year. We normally thin of the larger cities in India and China having the worst air pollution problems. The World Health Organization estimated that air pollution contributed to the deaths of 7 million people in 2012…so it is not an insignificant issue for the world.

Science Photographer Reveals Beauty of the Microscopic World - Manipulation of light through the microscope: transmission, differential interference contrast, optical staining, or dark field contrast.

Adapting to climate change will bring new environmental problems - Can we adapt in a sustainable way…or will our adaptation be short-sighted - and bad for the planet in the long term?

Archaeologists discover Maya 'melting pot' - Evidently mobile groups of hunter gatherers came together with settled groups for construction projects and public ceremonies --- they interacted much more than previous thought. They eventually became more uniformly sedentary.

Genome Study Predicts DNA of the Whole of Iceland - The DeCode project has collected enough full DNA sequences from Icelanders to extrapolate to the whole population (because the people are related). From this analysis, they know that 2,000 people in Iceland have the BRCA2 gene….but cannot tell them. The ethics associated with new technology is complex. In this particular case there is a “right ‘not to know’ of genetic hazards.” With more and more genome data being collected - other nations will soon have the same issue Iceland is facing now.

The Last 200 Years Of U.S. Immigration In One Chart - Click in the upper left corner to enlarge the plot. The overall trend is as interesting as where people came from. World War II had quite an impact while World War I did not.

SolarCity to build its own power grids - The market for solar technology seems to be developing very quickly. There are so many more options now than there were 5 years ago. When will the tipping point come…when more people will have solar - or some form of renewable energy where they live and work.

Compulsive Behavior Sells - Habit-forming technology….a little scary. How quickly will people train themselves to realize that it is happening?