Works by Laurie McGinley

tinysaur t-rex

I found a laser cut pattern today on Epilog Laser of a T-Rex. I shrunk it way down to use with 1/32" ply wood and made this dino. I was inspired by these tinysaurs on etsy.com.

snow

snowed over path
Minnesota

last day

sunrise on the last day of vacation in Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico

still

Bolonchoojol cenote, Chunkanan, Yucatan, Mexico

cenote

Bolonchoojol cenote, Chunkanan, Yucatan, Mexico

opening

Chansinic’che cenote, Chunkanan, Yucatan, Mexico

sit

Chansinic’che cenote, Chunkanan, Yucatan, Mexico

depth

Chansinic’che cenote, Chunkanan, Yucatan, Mexico

moss

moss growing on a tree in Chelentún cenote, Chunkanan, Yucatan, Mexico

light

Chansinic’che cenote, Chunkanan, Yucatan, Mexico

blue

Chelentún cenote, Chunkanan, Yucatan, Mexico

spice rack

Our kitchen is very small. Our spice use is very large. We love beautiful organization. Here is the result!

We made the holder from scrap wood and the canisters were scavenged at the Axman, our local reuse store. With a little epoxy, magnets and some labels, voila! Our spice rack was up and on the cheap.

We have metal cabinets so we recessed rare earth magnets in the spice rack and glued them in place. The spice racks go up and come down with a satisfying thwak. The lids are glued into the wood but the jars twist off.

Internet for architects

On Monday I had an opportunity to explain parsed RSS feeds to a group of architecture students. I used this diagram to get my points across.

Blogs make RSS, we can parse RSS to a static web page and Google LOVES uThink blogs.

Plaster cast

I made this tonight for my architecture studio project.

drying rack

Sanguinetti A! found this laundry room drying rack and I made one. Thanks Centsational Girl!

Hot glue tentacles

I made this time lapse photography sequence for studio today.

animated kids

This is what it is like to try to wrangle five kids under five years of age for a photo.

(It may take a little while for the animation to load.)

fork and screw

I made these photos to illustrate a bike repair problem, but I like how they turned out.

video

My final video project

videos

I’ve been posting unedited video footage to a podcast. You can either view it online through the mango player or subscribe to the podcast with iTunes or your favorite podcatcher.

Long bows on the subway

I am not making this up. This was one of the first scenes I saw when I arrived in Tokyo.

I set up a podcast for these videos.

re-conditioning myself

It has been a while since I’ve been a fish out of water, clearly a foreigner in a strange land, someone who cannot possibly blend in. I decided to go with the flow as much as possible this time. I assume it will take a while to re-condition myself here. I need to learn what tastes good, what doesn’t taste so good, how to use the doors, the subway, a map. I’ve had two re-conditioning events so far.

I bought a Pasmo card (an added value card for the subway) and promptly used it wrong. This is what happens when you instert your card into the reader instead of touching it to the top of the reader. Something I observed several locals doing as this nice man retrieved my card from the machine.
When you can’t read any of the words on a food package, just try it. I learned that there is good food at 7 eleven. Some of it better than others. I also learned that aloe yogurt is a little sour for my tastes – especially after just eating an extremely sweet custard.

preparing

I’m preparing to visit Japan for the first time. I’ve wanted to see this country for a long time and I’m excited to go. I’ll post here, as well as at my photography blog. I can hardly wait to see what I will see.

light study

I'm working on a space that is inspired by these photos.

Here is my first sketch model.

animated gif time!

I unknowingly broke the rules when I made this series of photographs of Brian Knep's piece "Healing #1" at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Ooopsie, but they are too cool not to turn into an animated gif. The installation was incredible to interact with.

The Butter Heads

I saw the Butter Heads for the first time yesterday. I had the good fortune to arrive when one of the dairy princesses was having her portrait sculpted in a 90 pound block of butter.

It is time

Dear Internet,

I have had so many good times with you. You’ve filled in my down time, inspired me and provided me with hours and hours of entertainment. It has been a good ride. I’m writing to day to break up with you. I can see how co-dependent we have become and I’m calling it off. I’ll be in the woods for a few weeks so I don’t think about you. If I am tempted to read a blog, stalk someone on Facebook or catch up on Missed Connections on craigslist, I won’t be able to. I know you’ll be fine without me, and I’m so excited to let you go.

Thanks for all the good times,

Laurie

Turismo para escoger

I'd forgotten about a photo shoot I did while working at elsalvador.com until I stumbled across it today on Octo Media.

This is the cover design for a magazine that had an article about tourism in El Salvador.

I just trashed half of my Google Reader feeds

Last month I saw Cullect for the first time and was very impressed. Up until that moment I was convinced that Google Reader was the best way to stay on top of news and trends in my field(s).

Five minutes ago I just deleted half of my Google Reader subscriptions in favor of migrating my reading to Cullect. Why would I do that?

Google Reader is free!

Yes! Google Reader is free. And, as Garrick Van Buren explained to me, it is a reader that is based on the paradigm of reading email. Reading in Google Reader can be stressful and it does not scale very well. The more feeds I found, the faster I found that I read and, consequentially, the less satisfying that reading became.

Cullect can be free, but there are pay scales

And you get what you pay for. Cullect is a new paradigm of reading. It uses your attention patterns to serve you content that is relevant to how you have been reading. That means that if you only have time to read three posts, you can feel confident that reading those three posts will not be a waste of time.

Cullect also lets you have multiple interests. I am interested in many categories of news, blogs and feeds. I can create several reading lists in Cullect so my reading time becomes even more satisfying. Cullect is about quality and diversity of interests.

I'm on the move. I moved my photography interests out of Google Reader today because they are already in my photography reading list on Cullect. I'll be creating a web reading list and perhaps a new architecture reading list.

How can we use Cullect in an academic setting

This is my big question. There is a lot of potential to use curated Cullect reading lists to create pools of resources. More soon...

Cullect, simplify your reading life

A short time ago I saw Garrick Van Buren demonstrate Cullect. We began the conversation by talking about APML, something I've publicly raved about. My understanding was that APML was a way to program your attention data into your feed reader. Then I met Garrick.

Cullect is so smart that it doesn't need APML. Garrick programmed Cullect to understand nine (or was it ten?) gestures that measure your affinity for a particular article. In this way, as I read posts from various blogs, news feeds and searches, Cullect tallies my behavior and begins to understand which articles I will want to see.

I decided to challenge Cullect with what I thought would be a very difficult task: show me photographs I like. I thought this would be hard because photographs don't have text that can be scanned and I generally do not care what a photo blog post says, outside of the actual photograph. Well, I am amazed. I've been working on my Cullect photography reading list for about a week now and Cullect shows me the photographs I like.

Simplify your reading life

I have been using Google Reader for about six months. I like that I can collect over 300 feeds and still get through them but I have developed some awful habits by using Google Reader. I tend to tear through unread posts and only skim headlines for interesting tid bits. Google Reader collects all my unread messages and tells me how much reading I have to do to clean up my inbox for the web. That is stressful! I've marked everything as read several times and I just feel guilty about it.

Cullect, on the other hand, has allowed me to slow down and actually read. I know that the posts will be arranged in order for me based on my past reading habits. So, if I only have time to read three posts, I can be assured that reading the first three posts in my Cullect reading list will be satisfying and relevant to my interests.

Here is a comparison of my photography reading list in Google Reader and my photo reading list in Cullect.

Have many interests

Cullect allows me to have multiple interests while letting them cross over each other. I can set up just one reading list if I am only interested in reading one topic. If I set up a reading list for each theme I am interested in, Cullect will allow me to have recommendations for each category. I can also use the same feed to fuel several reading lists and Cullect keeps my reading habits separate.

Why you should pay for this service

I know, everything on the internet is free and having a dollar sign lurking around just makes me nervous. I stumbled on Cullect in January and immediately closed the window when I saw that it was a paid service. Now that I have had a chance to play with it, I see that Cullect is a service that is worth paying for. It will allow me to collect articles, read them on my own schedule and feel assured that what I am reading is relevant to my interests.

Cullect, go test drive it today.