Niche Award Finalist, PhotoSketch & Elephants

Some time back, I decided to "test" the idea of targeting the wholesale market by applying for the Niche Awards. And then, I promptly forgot about it. (Hey! Don't laugh! I have an aging, fibrofoggy brain, and I'm having a hard enough time remembering to brush my teeth, much less what stuff I've submitted where! Besides, you should be used to this kind of thing from me by now.)

Well, as fate would have it... last night I received an email informing me that I am a finalist in the Polymer Clay category. (Heh -guess what category polymer clay is in... yep, it's in that glorified category called "Other". Pft!)

Well, I'm quite... um... stunned, actually.

Above is the winning Nudibranch BioBangle. This is also one of the bangles in the "Spineless Wonders" exhibit at the University of Southern Maine's Atrium Gallery, in Lewiston, Maine. So, yeah. Wild, huh?

Ok, no more crowing... for now.

From the Cool Digital Tool Files:
I follow the tweets (groan) of a blog called Mashable:The Social Media Guide. A while back "Mashable" featured a new... um... I guess it's a plug-in for PhotoShop. Anyway, it's called PhotoSketch, and as Mashable describes, it 'is an “Internet Image Montage” project from five Chinese Computer Science and Technology students at Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore.'

If I understand it right, you sketch (like above) an object, add names of other elements you want, and the program gives you a list of images that fit your parameters. You choose the images you want, and it... well, I guess... puts it all together. Hard to believe.

My biggest question? Where do all the images come from, and what does this mean for copyrights? Oh, the joys of cutting edge technology! (But don't it sound fun?!)

From the Cool Science Desk:
There's a great piece on "How Elephants Talk To Each Other Through The Ground" at a blog called Phenomenica (a very cool, weird science site worth browsing).

It seems the American Physical Society has found "how elephant vocalizations travel through the ground for great distances, and how other elephants can understand them, just as they understand acoustic sound, which travels through the air."

Sweet, huh? We humans soooo under rate the abilities of other creatures that share this earth with us.