My Word with Douglas E. Welch

Another year and another great holiday light show from Ric Turner. Rock on!

A collection of interesting items I found in my daily reading.

• Cake Balls – October 26, 2010 – I have seen these before. Certainly a different take on “cake” and candy. Sounds like a bit of work, but maybe I can enlist the family for a little help on this project. I tend to avoid cookies that take too much work as I am making so many different cookies for my party and too much “finishing” really slow things down.
• Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies – October 26, 2010
• Top 10: Whiteboards, blackboards, and brainstorming tools – October 25, 2010 – I do miss not having a white board here in the home office. I think maybe the shower board might be the way for me to go. I have several places I could put that and get some creative space.
• Cranberry Turtle Bars – October 25, 2010
• Download & Print Doctor Who Masks – October 25, 2010 – Halloween is just around the corner and you could make a quick costume using these masks from Doctor Who. Some of them look pretty cool!
• (title unknown) – October 25, 2010 – Another review of the Artisinal LA event. First photo shows myself, my son and my friend, Liam, at the start of our day.
• Highlights from Artisanal LA – October 25, 2010 – I went on Saturday with my 12-year-old son and a good friend. We all agreed that it was an excellent event with lots of opportunities to taste and talk with the vendors. I was blown away by how interested everyone was to talk with people and share their take on their products. I would definitely attend again.

  The smallish size of the event was just about perfect. Too often in LA we tend to blow events into huge productions. I find events of this size and scope much more enjoyable. I would much rather see several smaller events than one large one. Heck, as it was, we were stuffed by the end of our 2.5 hours at the show. I don’t think I could have tasted anything else had I stayed the rest of the day. (LAUGH)

• La Tavola della mia Famiglia: Brutti ma Buoni – October 24, 2010 – I am not sure if my wife’s family made these Italian cookies (food and be hyper-regional in Italy and Sicily), but they look like something neat to try for this year’s cookie party. The name means “ugly, but good” and that in itself makes them charming enough to give them a try.
• Fall Cocktails: Spiked Cider – October 22, 2010 – Another Fall/Winter cocktail. Sounds tasty. Cider is always one of my favorite drinks this time of year.
• Ustream Lets Users Set Up Their Own Pay Per View And Ad Free Broadcasting (Alexia Tsotsis/TechCrunch) – October 22, 2010 – Very cool enhancement to uStream’s services. We are all looking for some way to make a few pennies of of the content we create and services like this make it a bit easier.
• pumpkin spice steel cut oatmeal – October 22, 2010 – I am going to try this using my Good Eats overnight Oatmeal recipe that I use each Christmas Eve. This gives us an opportunity to have it more than once a year.
• 8 Great Mind Mapping Tools For Effective Brainstorming – October 21, 2010 – Mindmapping can be a great way to shake lose new ideas and thoughts. I use Freemind myself, but as this post shows there are a host of good mindmapping Programs out there.
• SmartTwitter Posts Your Tweets On Facebook, Minus The Noise – October 20, 2010
• Halloween Cocktail: The Jack-O-Lantern Halloween for Grownups – October 20, 2010
• Boarrd Is a Customizable Information Board for Your Project Team [Start Pages] – October 20, 2010 – I can foresee some big uses for this. Coordinating teams can be hard and having a dashboard can make things a lot simpler.

My fellow New Media Mastermind member, Tracy Pattin, produces this excellent weekly radio show on “Adventurizing your Mid-Life.” Check it out for great ideas and great guests each Wednesday at 1pm Pacific Time. — Douglas

Adventurize Your Midlife with Tracy Pattin and Lisa Greenfield

Date / Time: 10/27/2010 1:00 PM
Category: Self Help
Call-in Number: (347) 838-8845

Co-hosts Tracy Pattin (SizzleintheMiddle.com) and Lisa Greenfield (TruthinHand.com) talk to Author/ Relationship Expert, Barbara Berg this Wednesday, October 27th, 2010 at 1pm.

Of course Tracy and Lisa share insights and adventures from their own lives to inspire YOU to get out there and adventurize!

Upcoming Episodes
11/3/2010 1:00 PM – Adventurize Your Midlife
11/10/2010 1:00 PM – Adventurize Your Midlife
11/17/2010 1:00 PM – Adventurize Your Midlife

They have Author/ Relationship Expert, Barbara Berg this Wednesday, October 26th, 2010 at 1pm.

Listen to the show live or listen to past shows

If you are a mystery fan, a Sherlock Holmes fan, or just a fan of great television, I highly recommend you tune in this Sunday for the first of 3 episodes of Sherlock — a re-invention of Sherlock Holmes in the modern day. This new series is created and written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss of BBC’s Doctor Who.

These 3, 1.5 hour movies absolutely ROCK!

A collection of interesting items I found in my daily reading.

• Artisanal LA: The Best $10 You’ll Ever Spend – October 15, 2010 – Sounds like an interesting weekend and inexpensive as these types of events go. Pershing Square or 7th Street/Metro stations on the read line get you within about a mile of the Cooper Building. Transfer to Bus would probably get you even closer.
• apple and cheddar scones – October 15, 2010 – Yummy scones perfect for the oncoming Fall weather….if it ever arrives here in SoCal.
• Double Pumpkin Kissed Chocolate Chunk Cookies – October 14, 2010 – Pumpkin and chocolate is always a good combo, I think.
• Take Advantage of Presenter View to Create Powerful PowerPoint Slides [Video] – October 13, 2010 – We can all use some hints on how to improve out presentation. I find that I try to use a lot of these hints, but can easily “fall off the wagon” under time pressure.

A short montage of scenes from the Antelope Valley Indian Museum, a California State Park near Palmdale, California.

Antelope Valley Indian Museum – 04, originally uploaded by dewelch.

My friend, Liam (@editorliam) and I spent Saturday wandering around the Antelope Valley including stops at the recently re-opened Antelope Valley Indian Museum, Crystal Airport in Llano to watch the sailplanes and Littlerock Lake and Dam in the Angeles National Forest.

The Indian Museum, a California State Park, is one of the most eclectic and unique museums you will find anywhere in LA County. Originally designed as a home, it is built into the boulders of the surrounding hillside and decorated with the owners extensive collections. It is off the beaten path but well worth a trip.

Click for more pictures from our day.

A collection of interesting items I found in my daily reading.

• The world is full of interesting things – October 12, 2010 – In case you missed any of these cool items as they passed through your feeds, Google collects 100 “interesting things” in one presentation. Certainly worth a few minutes.
• Weekend Blog Showcase – Cheese Crackers – October 10, 2010 – Always looking for savory snacks to balance out all the sweet and these certainly look delicious. I am a big cheese fan, so these should be right up my alley.
• Closed Mondays: The Fort MacArthur Museum – October 9, 2010 – I am a geek in all things, history included, so we have visited Fort MacArthur before, but only briefly, This post gives me a reason to return, I think. Check out history in your area whenever you can
• Facebook’s Blog Import Broken, RSS Graffiti Fixes It – October 7, 2010 – Great information from my fellow Friends in Tech member, Mike McBride. This solves several issues for my many Facebook Fan Pages.
• Peanut Butter Bars – October 7, 2010 – Peanut butter and chocolate is on of my favorite taste combinations, so I will ad this to my list for this year’s Christmas Cookie Party.
• David Tennant – Richard Bacon interview – October 7, 2010 – Long radio interview/discussion with David Tennant of Doctor Who fame.
• Pumpkin Coffee Cake with Brown Butter Glaze – ATTYC – October 6, 2010 – Looks yummy. Maybe for Thanksgiving dessert instead of the typical pumpkin pie — or for Friday breakfast the day after..
• October 18: Jennifer "Jungle Jenny" Michaels will be our guest speaker! – October 6, 2010 – A member of our New Media Mastermind group, Jenny has a lot going on. Make this daytime event at Tuesdays with Transitioners in Northridge for some great info.
• Get Free Wi-Fi at FedEx Office Starting Today [Free Wi-Fi] – October 6, 2010 – After a bit of a stutter, it looks like free wifi is coming back with a vengeance. I don’t often visit FedEx, but it is good to know that it is available if needed.
• How to massively Spread Your Online Influence – October 6, 2010 – Included within are some great ideas — some which I do and others I will start to do.

Canadian Thanksgiving Dinner at friends, originally uploaded by dewelch.

From last night’s Canadian Thanksgiving Dinner at friends