“Today too many blogs are being created, I feel lost in the information and inspiration. There can only be so many different showcases featuring (insert number here) Examples of Brilliant Illustrations. I understand the internet has endless information, and we are just trying to showcase that. I would just like to go to a few destinations to get all the information.”

I’ve had similar views about consolidating information on the Internet.  It definitely would be nice to have one site where you can go to find out everything you ever wanted to know about…zebras, for instance.  I find that there are too many sites that offer the same content.  It’s even more prevalent these days with Twitter.  I can’t tell you the number of links I’ve seen from various design blogs that go to the same article.

But I have realized this consolidation will never happen.  Too many people out there have their own agendas…whether it’s just having an online presence, self-satisfaction, proving themselves in the eyes of their peers, or maybe just making a buck.  Whatever the reason, people are going to post what they want.

I think the author of this article should practice what he preaches.   I’m surprised this article was written by someone that falls into the very category he’s trying to eliminate.  I visited his site only to find a post about the Olympic logos of the past and present…I’ve seen at least five other sites with this same content.  Another post about creating a Bokeh effect…a topic I can read about on numerous sites.

Why not take your own advice, shut down your site and contribute to some of the bigger design blogs you mention?  I would have enjoyed reading why YOU have a design blog when you’re telling everyone else they should shut down and contribute to others.

So in light of my lack of bookreading, I’m listing the books here, crossing each one off as I read it (and updating my profile on LibraryThing.)  I’m sure there are other great books missing from this list, so if you think of any, let me know the title and author and I’ll add it!

Without further ado…the list (in no particular order):

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

And I had my first experience with rock-climbing…well, it wasn’t true rock-climbing, but a Via Ferrata; basically guided climbing where you have a cable to hook on to and hand/foot holds to help you along (in most places).  Torrent Falls is the only place in the U.S. that offers this type of climbing (that I know of).  The heights got to me so I was only able to make it through the level 2 section, but my girlfriend was a trooper and made it through level 4, 150 ft. off the ground!  Level 5 was the toughest, so she did an awesome job.   I’ll be posting pics and video footage of the trip to Flickr soon…stay tuned.

I’m looking forward to heading back there, maybe in the Fall to see the colors change…should be an awesome site from Chimney Top Rock.

While browsing Flickr, I came across some fantastic photos by a photographer in Australia. His name is Kane Gledhill and I think his photos are awesome. Brilliant colors, great composition….just all around fantastic shots!

If you have some time, take a look at his photos or visit his website.

It’s a shame the mall is no longer standing, although I guess it’s been what people call a “dead mall” for some time now.  The mall originally opened in 1962.  The main anchor stores were Crowley’s and Sears, with Mervyn’s and Children’s Palace being added at a later time.

What I didn’t realize was that Children’s Palace closed three years later and was converted to a paintball arena, Crowley’s converted to a Value City in 2000 (which closed in 2008), and Mervyn’s closed in 2006.  So with Sears, Dollar Tree, Jo-Ann Fabrics, and Foot Locker being the only mainstream stores in the mall, I can see how it died off.

It looks like there’s some redevelopment in the future though, as the Livonia City Council is discussing a strip mall called Livonia Marketplace to be erected after the demolition.  Word has it that long-time tenant Jo-Ann Fabrics will close permanently in July 2009.

If anyone is interested, I found some demolition footage of the mall on YouTube here and here.

I was reading an article about a documentary filmmaker (Rob Spence) that is planning on having a video camera concealed inside a prosthetic eye to record people for an upcoming project.  I think that is the coolest idea.  He’ll (hopefully) be able to record the same things he sees with his working eye by using his muscles to move the camera eye around just like with his real eye.   Of course he’ll have to receive permission from the people he films before including them in his film, but it’s still very cool.

The camera is being provided by the Santa Clara, California-based OmniVision Inc, a company that specializes in miniature cameras (cell phones, etc.)  After perusing their website, I found out there’s another person (Tanya Vlach) looking to be the first with a “bionic” eye…before you know it, everyone is going to want one.

Just imagine having a camera eye.  Sort of a reverse on the movie EDtv; instead of having your life filmed, film everyone in your life.

But, I’m sure it would have a downside, especially among people you interact with everyday.  Just like it says in the article, people wouldn’t know if you had the camera on or off.  A lot of people out there are camera-shy and probably wouldn’t like the idea very much.  Maybe if his pupil had a little flashing red light to let people know when he’s recording?

I consider timlawrence.net sort of a personal playground where I get to try out new technologies, methodologies, and any other ologies I can think of… and hopefully learn something along the way.  I’ve never had a blog before, so I’ll definitely be learning the ropes of blogging as I go along.  So far it’s been a breeze.  Thanks Wordpress.

This blog probably won’t be updated daily, but whenever I have something to say, chances are you’ll hear it here first.  For now, jump over to the “Say Hello” section and let me know you stopped by!

And after you say hello, check out some of my Delicious bookmarks posted on the right…most of these probably aren’t very interesting unless you’re a web designer or developer, but as I find new things on the Web, these will change.

Well, I’m on to version 2.0 of my blog. I new layout that definitely adheres more to the Wordpress templates I’ve seen over the past few months. It took a little longer to get this one up and running because of all the template customization I’ve done. I took one of the generic templates that comes with Wordpress and basically changed everything. I hope you like it!.

Stay tuned…