I don’t know about you, but for me, being a Girl Scout and later a Girl Scout Leader made a lot of difference in my life. The organization and the purpose are what you make it, be that good or bad, just like anywhere else, but the opportunities to learn and be a part of your local community are what it’s all about. Girl Scouts help others, and is an organization that is world wide through WAGS. Girl Scouts is all about volunteers. Leaders are not paid, they are parents of daughters in the troop. My Mom was a leader, and when my girls needed a leader for their troop, I reluctantly stepped forward. I have been the troop cookie manager, and have helped our service units in many ways over the years (including writing online sales and organization systems for two service units). I truly hope that if you have girls, you at least give them a year to experience what Girl Scouting is…
Girl Scout Birthday, March 12, commemorates the day in 1912 when Juliette Gordon Low officially registered the organization’s first 18 girl members in Savannah, Georgia.
It all started with a phone call on March 12, 1912. . .”I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all America, and all the world. . .” Juliette was off and going with the first Girl Scout troop.
Birthday Week begins Sunday March 7, 2010 and ends Saturday March 13.
G is for the Gracious way we all proclaim our birth
I points up the Ideas shared and those we’d like unearthed
R is for Respect we have for every race and creed
L is for our Loyalty to promises we heed
S is for Sincerity of deed and word and mind
C is for the Countless ways in which these are combined
O is Obligation that we owe to fellow man
U means that it’s You who must be first to lend a hand
T is for the Teamwork which has evidenced our growth
I is for Integrity which backs the Girl Scout oath
N is for the Noble way we remember days of old
G is for the Grateful thanks for efforts toward our goal
It all began with a spark of light,
And Juliette led the way.
Today her ideas are glowing bright,
It’s Girl Scouts 98th Birthday!
Girl Scout leaders still have enough time to create a special troop meeting for Girl Scout Week, which honors Juliette Gordon Low’s founding of Girl Scouts on March 12, 1912. The meeting can be both educational and fun. All girls love a good birthday party, so the troop meeting, successfully tested with 12 second grade Brownies, is themed “Happy Birthday to Girl Scouting.”
Act Out the Story of Juliette Low
It’s important for Brownies to know the story of Juliette Gordon Low, the free-spirited, almost deaf woman who founded Girl Scouts in the United States. But troop meetings usually occur after school, a time when Brownies are tired of sitting in the classroom all day.
The key: Bring the story of Low to life by preparing an interactive reading of the “Juliette Low Album,” which is found on pages 8-11 of the Brownie Girl Scout Handbook, a leader’s staple.
Before the meeting, the leader rereads the story, and gathers items that represent parts of the story. For instance:
a United States map (Low was born in Savannah, Georgia)
a paintbrush (to illustrate that Low loved the arts)
pieces of taffy to hand out (Low famously got taffy stuck in her hair)
a Brownie who is the second oldest child in her family (like Low)
a small plastic bag filled with rice (an accident with rice caused part of Low’s deafness)
a first aid kit (Low’s first U.S. troop learned first aid)
basketball (her first troop also played basketball)
a book and a pencil (to demonstrate when Low wrote the Girl Scout handbook)
any other items that the leader feels appropriate, to match the number of Brownies present
Before reading the story, the leader passes out at least one item to each Brownie. The leader then animatedly starts to read the story. She pauses at the point where an item is represented, and asks the Brownie who is holding the item to display it to the group (the Brownie who represents the second oldest child stands up.) This helps the girls listen carefully to the reading. It’s great fun!
Make Girl Scout Themed Mug
Brownies love crafts! The following project, which takes about 20 minutes, ties into the birthday theme, is educational, relatively mess free and requires little to no adult help.
clear plastic mugs with plastic insert (readily available at “big box” craft stores in children’s section) These cost about $1 each
markers, pencils, crayons
glue sticks
scissors
Girl Scout graphics (free, from the national Girl Scout website) downloaded and printed in color
Girl Scout Promise printed out in color (several more copies than girls, to allow for mistakes)
Girls remove the mug insert and paper, then decorate the paper. They should make sure to paste (or write) the Girl Scout Promise and their troop number on the paper. They also can add the dates “1912-2009″ to help link history to present. Afterward, they simply wrap the paper around the insert, and put it back in the mug. The mug is not fragile, but care should be taken when washing so as not to get the paper insert wet.
For snack: a birthday cake made from a mix, served on birthday plates. Before eating, the girls can sing “Happy Birthday to Girl Scouts.”
By using a “Happy Birthday, Girl Scouts” theme, Brownie Girl Scout leaders can quickly design a troop meeting that celebrates Girl Scout Week with a story, craft and snack.
This year for the Atlantic Ocean has not been quiet, unless you base your opinion on storms striking land in the continental US. As always, the Caribbean Islands have had a fair share of storms, but not as many as previous years. The oddities have been Hurricane Bill and Tropical Storm Grace both making their way to the UK. While the storm tracks did not follow them through to the coast, the extratropical storm remnants did make it, causing torrential rains and minimal damage to land.
In the Eastern Pacific, off of the West Coast of the US and Mexico, we have had a large number of storms. Right now, we are following Category 4 Hurricane Rick. Hurricane Rick is heading to the Baja Mexico peninsula, which has already seen the remnants of Tropical Storm Andres, Hurricane Jimena, Tropical Depression Olaf, and a quickly dissipating Tropical Storm Patricia.
The Central Pacific is an open area that you would think would not matter much, unless you are in shipping. While that could be partially true, residents and visitors to Hawaii would most certainly disagree with you. Storms like Hurricane Felicia, Hurricane Guillermo and Tropical Storm Hilda form in the eastern Pacific ocean, and travel a long way to become a threat to the Hawaiian islands.
While Hurricane does not presently track Typhoons in the Western Pacific, we have found another oddity of the season. The west coast is feeling the remnants of Typhoon Melor. How often does that happen? About as often as Hurricane remnants hit the UK!
Prior to creating our iPhone App Hurricane, I like most people in the US paid little attention to the tropical systems outside of the Atlantic Ocean. Growing up in South Florida made it necessary to watch those storms because we were directly affected. Last year, Hurricane Norbert opened my eyes to the simple fact that hurricanes do affect the west coast of North America. This year, thanks to Hurricane, I have kept better track of the affects of hurricanes on areas outside of my little sphere. As an application developer, my hope is that Hurricane can help travelers and residents stay better informed about storms that affect you.
Even as this year’s storm season seems to have come to an early close for most on the US eastern seaboard, we will continue to keep watch on the tropics around the world.
If you track hurricanes, and want to see a little of what Hurricane can do for you, I often post screen shots directly from Hurricane on twitter @weatherangel. Feel free to take a look and see what you have been missing! Keep in mind that my screen shots are not automated, I post them as time allows or I see fit.
Over the last week I have watched Hurricane go from number 5 to number 3 in the US iTunes Store, a place Hurricane has not seen since last year, before the release of The Weather Channel and Weather Bug paid apps. Hurricane has remained in the top 5 in Jamaica, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, and has remained in the top 10 in El Salvador and Canada. Hurricane has also been in the top 100 over all apps in El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica during July and August.
We love our customers! Kitty Code has received so much great feedback, both through the App Store and through email, which has shown how great we are doing with the app. Things are running smoothly with the data feed, and while we do babysit the data, just to be sure, it’s nice knowing we don’t really have to – and the system just handles it all.
Haven’t checked out Hurricane yet? If you live in an area prone to hurricanes, you should definitely take a look. You will not be disappointed.
Previously I wrote about where to find cool scripts to handle getting the App Store Rank for each country. Back in April, Apple added a few more countries to the app store, did you know? The script attached below needs to be credited to the original author: Erica Sadun. The version I use is based off of Ben’s script with my own modifications to it to handle multiple id’s a little cleaner, and really, just a tad of code clean up that made me feel better
The script itself is attached as a zip file here: AppStoreRank.zip. This version is still written in Perl, but it is extremely easy to add a new app to the script. At the top, just modify the following section:
appName is just for display purposes
appID is your application ID from the iTunes store.
categoryName should match a category in the list below (this will pull the right category number).
As you can see in my list, the order of the parameters does not matter.
Added the following store codes to my script:
# stores added April 1, 2009
143508 => “Dominican Republic”,
143509 => ‘Ecuador’,
143516 => ‘Egypt’,
143518 => ‘Estonia’,
143510 => ‘Honduras’,
143511 => ‘Jamaica’,
143517 => ‘Kazakhstan’,
143519 => ‘Latvia’,
143520 => ‘Lithuania’,
143515 => ‘Macau’,
143521 => ‘Malta’,
143523 => ‘Moldova’,
143512 => ‘Nicaragua’,
143513 => ‘Paraguay’,
143514 => ‘Uruguay’
I am a little more retentive than most, and wanted my rankings to be listed in alphabetic order, so my version of the script does this automatically.
Also the way the script is written, it can be used as a stand alone script, or as part of a package.
If you have updated the script to add a check for Ratings, I would be very interested in seeing your changes!
A few days ago, Mashable posted an article stating that IE6 must die. The Twitter community agreed, and took it one step more and created a cause on Twibbon to spread the word!
Support IE6 Must Die and add an overlay to your avatar! Twibbon.com is the easiest way to promote awareness of your cause on twitter. Start something today !
With all of the push behind killing off Internet Explorer 6, one must really understand that it is a business decision. As web designers and developers, it is our job to express the sound judgement of what the majority of our users want to see. The unfortunate thing about this movement is that there are a lot of people in business who are stuck on IE6, because their IT departments do not see the value in updating their computers. I would think for security reasons alone the browser should be updated to at least IE7 if not IE8. Each company and business must decide their own fate.
With all of that being said, the users of our web applications should not be held back by the 15% still using IE6 in my opinion. There are SO many cool things that we can do with the new technologies, and based on the sales of next generation devices like the iPhone, people clearly want the new cool things. The answer maybe as simple as letting the user know they need to update their 8 year old browser. With services like YouTube and Facebook dropping support for IE6, where a vast majority of non-tech savvy users play on the web, the social media websites will be the biggest help in pushing users of older browsers forward. Like the upgrade from HTML 3 to HTML 4, maybe the upgrade from HTML 4 to HTML 5 will be the thing that pushes developers to drop support for the older browsers, and therefore push people who are behind to the newer browsers.
We can all hope for the best, but ultimately the people who are still using the older browsers, and the IT departments which have not rolled out the latest need to decide that now is the time. The question becomes, how do we as a development community convince those who are left behind to catch up?
Refreshable Braille and the Web came up as a search result when I was looking for CSS language accessors and IE. While it’s not what I was looking for, I took a few moments and watched the video. I know there are screen readers out there, as well as language translators and more, but this was very compelling to me. I did not know that there was a braille reader which is essentially either a keyboard or an attachment to a keyboard which allows the reader to read just as if they were reading a book. Instead of reading lines of braille, there is a single line at a a time which is available.
Articles like these remind me of why great HTML markup is SO VERY important to accessability, and forward thinking. One of the points which is made is that the HTML outline is used by the screen readers to not only describe where the reader is, but also describes the importance of that information which is being read. Ironically, I do not believe I have ever worked for a company which specifically targeted their audience which may require the accessability standards which are now in place. Just like you and me, people who need the accessability standards work, shop and play online. It is important to make sure that we test not only for the vast majority of our users, but we also test for those who may need that extra little push of our time at the end of the day.
I hope that you find the video as compelling as I did.
This is actually a great presentation on post click marketing and landing page myths. It contains information that I was learning when I was working with paths for a really great company a few years ago, and rings very true to what we found out. It is an overview, but also goes into depth as well. Just one more thing that I need to understand fully…
Google asks people in Times Square “What is a browser?”… Considering I started using a “browser” back in 1995, I was in a good deal of shock that most people had no idea what a browser was. No wonder so many people still use Internet Explorer after all these years!
At this point, if you have watched the video already and are still looking for the answer. It is simple.
Simply put, a web browser is the thing you use to visit websites. The most common web browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera. There are MANY more not mentioned here.
A SEARCH ENGINE – Google, Yahoo, Bing (it’s new), and Web Crawler (do you remember that one?) …
What causes the confusion?
There are a lot of factors, but having the Search Engine plugins which automatically search when you get your website URL wrong is probably a good indicator of why there is confusion. If you don’t understand how it works already (and most people don’t want to understand) then you will think that all of the rolled up technologies are a single technology instead of seeing the small moving parts.
Something that I have been detesting is how my sites have been looking in Firefox under Windows. I know, I know, you deal with these things for security, etc. But I looked at Safari, and the fonts were always clean and crisp… So what gives?
I found an article relating to @font-face css rules, read it in Firefox 3, and then decided to look at the same page in my VM instance of Firefox 3.5. The difference was staggering, and yet very slight. Firefox 3 looks very grainy and even pixelated where Firefox 3.5 looks crisp, like an Arial font should look. I start looking at the author’s CSS (yes, I’m a nosey person) and realize that they’re not actually using @font-face styles on their page! So I looked around the web a little more, comparing the pages side by side just to find that wow, the experience may not bring me headaches any longer!
For me, this one little thing is a huge win. I look at Firefox every day during my development cycle and to be able to see the fonts just as I would in any other application is frankly awesome. This is something that I expect, and it was a disappointment before. I am very glad to see that Safari has taken up the challenge of being innovative and improving the user experience on the web. Other browsers like Firefox are now catching up, and for those of us who develop applications for the web, and those that use our applications, this is nothing but WIN!
Thank you Mozilla – for something so simply pretty. Thank you WebKit for making the challenge happen.
