My Word with Douglas E. Welch » dewelch

What I’m Reading…Accidental Creative

dewelch — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:33:01 +0000

I have listened to Todd Henry’s podcast, The Accidental Creative, for years, so it only made sense to pick up his book from the library.

From Amazon.com…

Have better ideas, faster, without the stress and burnout.

It isn’t enough to just do your job anymore. In order to thrive in today’s marketplace, all of us, regardless of our role, have to be ready to generate brilliant ideas on demand.

Business creativity expert Todd Henry explains how to establish effective practices that unleash your creative potential. Born out of his consultancy and his popular podcast, Henry has created a practical method for discovering your personal creative rhythm. He focuses on five key elements:

* Focus: Begin with your end goal in mind. * Relationships: Build stimulating relationships and ideas will follow. * Energy: Manage it as your most valuable resource. * Stimuli: Structure the right “inputs” to maximize creative output. * Hours: Focus on effectiveness, not efficiency. This is a guide for staying inspired and experiencing greater creative productivity than you ever imagined possible.

Link: The Accidental Creative: How to be brilliant at a moment’s notice by Todd Henry

What I’m Reading…Accidental Creative is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Event: Reaching Across the Distance – Love Letters for Valentine’s Day 2012 – Sun, Feb 12

dewelch — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:24:46 +0000

Announcing – a new Eclipse-1.com radio show:

- Listen to :

Reaching Across the Distance –

Love Letters for Valentine’s Day 2012

Sunday, February 12, 2012

3:00 pm Pacific – 6:00pm Eastern

A Live look at Love Letters and Poems Through History

- Reaching Across the Distance-

Join us in an Interactive exploration of the heart.

Listen LIVE on talkshoe.com

hosted by Michael Lawshe and Keri Dearborn of

http://eclipse-1.com

Love letters can reveal the true personality

of the individual that puts pen to paper.

Love letters can bridge time and place.

And they come in many different forms.

Sometimes a love letter offers the love of a friend

and reaches across desolation

to bring the recipient back to the world of the hopeful.

Sometimes the loss a letter conveys is unexpected.

A few words can bring the reality of home

across an ocean

to a distant battlefield.

The love can be written between the lines.

Some love letters are the trumpets that herald

the return of their author.

These letters leap across time and miles

to escort in the future.

Do something different this Valentine’s Day,

reach across the distance

with a love letter written in your hand,

speaking your words.

Event: Reaching Across the Distance – Love Letters for Valentine’s Day 2012 – Sun, Feb 12 is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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New Booklet: Career Compass: Finding Your Career North

dewelch — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:23:00 +0000

I have just released a new booklet in Amazon Kindle format and I wanted you to be one of the first to know.

This ebook can be read on almost any device including Mac, Windows, iPhone/iPod/iPad and Android device — and, of course, the Kindle Readers.

NOW AVAILABLE AT:

Career Compass: Finding Your Career North

by Douglas E. Welch

	This career booklet (5100 words) can help you to find the true direction of your career and guide you on that journey. Topics: How do you discover which job and career is right for you? How do your desires point you in the right direction? How to discover and stop your from moving “Due South” — exactly the wrong direction in your career? How can you use the Career Compass to evaluate new opportunities? From the introduction… “Imagine if when you were born you were given a magical compass to lead you through your life. It would always show you the way. It would show you the right answers on tests, lead you to the right college and to the right course of study at that college. It would lead to your first job, your first (and maybe last) love and always show the path ahead. This isn’t some idle fantasy. We each have a compass to show us the way, if only we would take it out of our pocket and use it. This compass, of course, is our desire. Instead of a needle, it is a feeling, a pull, a tension — in some cases, an overwhelming flood of feeling that says “Yes, this is the way — this is the one — this is where you need to go!”
	Douglas E. Welch

New Booklet: Career Compass: Finding Your Career North is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Food: Buttermilk Cornmeal Waffles

dewelch — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 20:58:26 +0000

One of my favorite waffle recipes. I made these for breakfast this morning

These Cornmeal Buttermilk Waffles puff up nicely and have a great crispy crunch.

Buttermilk Cornmeal Waffles
Adapted slightly from Gourmet

Yield: About 16 waffles

1 cup sifted all-purpose flour (sift before measuring)
1 cup yellow cornmeal, preferably stoneground
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
2 cups well-shaken buttermilk
6 tablespoons vegetable oil plus additional oil for brushing waffle iron

Accompaniment: pure maple syrup

Into a large bowl sift together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Repeat sifting 2 more times.

In another large bowl whisk together eggs, buttermilk, and oil. Add flour mixture all at once and whisk just until combined.

Preheat a waffle iron and preheat oven to 200 °F.

Brush waffle iron lightly with additional oil. Spoon batter into waffle iron, using 1/4 cup batter for each 4-inch-square standard waffle and spreading batter evenly, and cook according to manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer waffle to a baking sheet and keep warm, uncovered, in middle of oven. Make more waffles with remaining batter in same manner, brushing waffle iron with mire oil before adding each batch.

Serve waffles with syrup.

Food: Buttermilk Cornmeal Waffles is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Information: Listen to Van Nuys Airport Tower Communications

dewelch — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:43:21 +0000

Like the LAPD scanner link I posted week or so ago, this link to LiveATC.com lets you listen in to that is happening at Van Nuys airport as aircraft arrive and depart. Van Nuys is the business general aviation airport in the US, so there is always a lot going on. You can also listen in on what other aircraft, like LAPD, are doing near the airport, as they need to stay in contact whenever working in the Van Nuys airspace. Van Nuys is also the base for LA County Fire Helicopters.

This feed could also be useful if you happen to visit the Van Nuys Airport Observation area off of Woodley Avenue. Using your iPhone or other mobile device, you could listen in on traffic as you watched the planes arrive and depart. When my son was younger, we used to visit here so he could watch the airplanes up close.

Link: Van Nuys Ground and Tower – KVNY radio feed via LiveATC.com

Information: Listen to Van Nuys Airport Tower Communications is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Food: Garden flower cookie cutters

dewelch — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:47:01 +0000

I came across these in the Baking Bites blog, which I read via RSS. This posts crosses a couple of my interests. They are cookie cutters, so this post is about food, but they are flower-shaped and other garden shaped cookie cutters, so this crosses in the gardening topic. Oh what to do? Where do I post this? Everywhere, I guess. (SMILE)

These cookie cutters have deep indentations so that they shape the cookie as well as cut it out. You can highlight the design with icing, but I usually just like the plain cookies. The article has some good advice on the best cookie dough to use. You want something that doesn’t spread very much when baked, so that the detail remains in the final product.

Link: Even more cookie cutters from Amazon.com

Garden Cookie Cutters

It may not be time for spring as far as the flowers in your garden are concerned (even during a mild winter), but with this set of Garden Cookie Cutters you can get spring started in the comfort of your kitchen. These cookie cutters are some of the cutest cutters I’ve seen in a long time because the plastic is shaped just like the finished cookies. The cutters punch out very detailed cookies not just the outlines of cookies – in eight different designs, including a rose, daisy, tulip, dahlia, ladybug, butterfly, bumble bee and dragonfly. They’re easy to grip and kids will have just as much fun with them as adults, especially since the plastic handles are more kid-friendly than you’ll find on some cookie cutters.

[…]

Read the entire article on Garden Cookie Cutters from BakingBites.com

Food: Garden flower cookie cutters is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Product: Lego-themed Moleskine Journals

dewelch — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:08:58 +0000

Lego-themed Moleskine Journals at Amazon.com.

I came across these new journals from Moleskine via Boing Boing the other day and quickly added them to my Birthday Wish List (Feb 14).

I love Moleskine journals themselves and adding a neat crossover by theming them in Lego makes them a fun addition to the journals I already carry everywhere. they come with a lego on the front cover you can build on as well as stickers to customize it as you wish.

My son is a Lego fanatic and I am sure he would go crazy over these, too.

Product: Lego-themed Moleskine Journals is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Food: Sally Lunn’s Buns (and bread), Bath, UK

dewelch — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 03:40:12 +0000

I noticed this recipe for Sally Lunn Bread from favfamilyrecipes.com pass through my Google+ stream today. It quickly reminded me of our trip to the UK back in 2010. We spent 2 days in Bath and had lunch at Sally Lunn’s. The food was very good, especially the buns. I can’t wait to try this one out here at home.

Here is a photo of my wife, Rosanne, outside the Sally Lunn shop, just before we headed in for lunch.

Click for a larger image

We really loved Bath and want to return there as soon as we can, hopefully with more time to explore more of the city and area. We took a 1/2 day out of town to visit Stonehenge and didn’t really have as much time as we wanted to explore. At least the fairly long drive to Stonehenge gave us a chance to see the surrounding countryside.

You can see all our pictures from Bath and Stonehenge in these two Flickr picture sets.

Click to see Bath Day 1 slideshow on Flickr

Click to see Bath Day 2 slideshow on Flickr

Food: Sally Lunn’s Buns (and bread), Bath, UK is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Food: Soda Pop Ice Cream

dewelch — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:46:11 +0000

I have been on an ice cream kick lately. Although this would have a lot of sugar in it, it might be worth trying once. Basically you combine any soda with sweetened condensed milk and then freeze as you would any ice cream. Simple.

I like the idea of the Orange Crush Ice Cream and maybe a root beer one, too. You wouldn’t want to have it everyday, but it could be a beat Summer treat every once and a while. I wonder if you could make it with diet soda to cut some of the calories?

Soda Pop Ice Cream (original Source)
Recipe is far down page. Search for Ice Cream to jump to it

Discovered on Pinterest.com

Source: familyoffarmers.blogspot.com via Douglas on Pinterest

Food: Soda Pop Ice Cream is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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Information: Listen to LAPD Radio Scanner via the web

dewelch — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:25:00 +0000

Living in a big city like Los Angeles, you can see and hear a lot. In such a large city, helicopter activity is nearly constant. Nearly every day I hear an LAPD helicopter orbiting overhead covering some police activity.

In the past I have often found myself wondering what was happening. Recently, though, I stepped up my search for access to radio scanner audio via the web. I had been to RadioReference.com before, but hadn’t located a scanner feed that delivered the best information. On this visit, though, I found the scanner feed labelled, “LAPD – Code 3/Hot Shots, Air/K9 and Van Nuys/Valley Traffic“. (Click to Listen)

In the last few days, this audio has proven very useful in discovering where a police incident was happening and also learning a bit about what was happening. Whenever I heard the chopper overhead, I would tune in listen for a few minutes. The quick mention of an address what usually all I needed to understand how the incident might impact me and in nearly every case, move on with my day. One of the biggest reasons for wanting to know the location of an incident is simply to avoid the location so as not to get involved in the incident itself, but more importantly for Los Angeles, not get involved in any traffic jam that might be caused.

RadioReference.com has scanner links for many metropolitan areas, so even if you don’t live in Los Angeles, you might find something useful there.

Information: Listen to LAPD Radio Scanner via the web is a post from My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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