Every now and then, I come across a resource site that makes me go click, click, click, click…this post is about one of them.

I found it through deviantART originally. I was looking for a railing for a build in Second Life. I ended up building the railing, but then decided to do everything differently and didn’t use it. But it was too late, because there were so many more brushes and patterns. This is what I ended up doing:

That’s the clock tower that tops my shop in SL.

So, go look at this site. It’s got a truckload of stuff. The brushes are awesome, I can’t wait to play with them more.

I’ve got this friend, see, and he has this thing where he posts neat pictures.

And today, the picture inspired me. I’ve done something similar before, where I decided to build a clock my grandmother gave me in Second Life:

(please take note of the rubberband tied onto one of the spikes, the wood had cracked and I was waiting for the glue to dry)

I started it at about 11:30pm, now it’s 2am (and about 2 hours later than I’d intended to be up) but I really, really wanted to finish this. And this is it:

Maybe I’ve found my calling…recreating ugly-ass wall ornaments from the 50′s. Or maybe I’ll look at it tomorrow, awake and alert, and decide that I’m not allowed to look at my friends lovely pictures anymore.

(this is a cross-post from The Secret Chicken)
I hate wasting things. Unfortunately, it means that sometimes, but trying not to waste, I end up wasting even more. Don’t throw that away, it might be useful someday! And of course it never is, and what is more wasteful than having a possibly useful item sitting in a box in the garage? Yeah.

We all have neat things, things we see value in, but which have no real value in our lives. And we ask ourselves, “Why am I keeping this? It’s useless to me! But it’s so neat, and it still has uses…”, so we keep it. In a closet, in a box in the garage, hell, in extreme cases we keep them in storage units because it’s just too hard to get rid of it.

This is where donating comes in. It’s a way of letting these ever-so-useful items become useful again – to someone else.

A lot of us shop at thrift stores, but we don’t consider that we could donate just as easily. We see things that we need, things we didn’t know we needed until we saw them…so why can’t we do that for someone else? Give them a chance to see our neat things, and let them see how much they need neat things.

Last week, I had a few things I wanted to donate. Not much, but a few things. Some clothes my daughter let me pry from her hands, mostly. I put them in a box in the living room, and told my roommate it was there, if he wanted to add to it. And miracle of miracles, he did! He added a jacket he’d had since the 80’s. Some shirts he’d had almost as long, things he’s had in his closet because they were too nice to throw away, but didn’t fit him anymore. They did have some sentimental value, they were from peak of his youth and all that. It was hard. But knowing that someone else can use them, that made it possible. It made it a good thing, not an angst-driven purging.

And what that means, is that somewhere out there…there is a person who will find that jacket. That jacket that looks like it was made from the upholstery of my grandmother’s couch…and think it’s neat.

And that is why we donate.

That’s what the kool kids call St. Vincent dePaul. I went by there today, and got some fantastic treasures.

First, I got a couple shiny new tea cup/saucer sets. I’ve got a nice little collection going. Nothing fancy, maybe 20 sets. I just collect single cups with saucers, and don’t often see ones these days that suit my liking. These two were nice, and I got them for half-price. Nice.

I also got something else. I mean, really something else.

Some background here first.

I like frogs, frog things. Not all frog things though. People think sometimes that when you collect something, that you collect everything related to it. That’s not true – not even remotely. But I get cartoony frogs, beaded frogs, ceramic frogs, resin frogs, you name it. But I can’t even tell you what it is that makes some of the frogs likable and some of them not. No idea. But I think that if I were to show everyone this frog piece, it might make them think twice about picking out another plastic frog with a funny hat.

What you see there are taxidermied frogs, playing pool.

I thought it was just some weird one-off, but it turns out that they are a whole thing. There are two of the on ebay (here and here), with instruments.

Seems that it’s some kind of tradition. I’m still looking it up, I need to know more about this. It’s just really, really odd. But I like it.

Wow, I really like this style of gallery. I’m seriously considering replacing my coppermine gallery right now, which I don’t do lightly – I’ve used it since the dawn of dawn. This is just that friggin cool.

What you see below took me about 90 seconds to set up, using a Facebook album as a source. You can use a ton of other sources, and publish it to a ton of places. Including WordPress. I used my login info for this blog, and the following showed up (as code) in my post list. It shows as “scheduled”, which I didn’t even know you could do.

In any case, pretty impressive. I like. Looks like I can fiddle with the size too…let me do that now…ok, now it fits the page better. It looks really incredible with more pictures, as you can see here (where I originally found the Cooliris style).

There are lots of options, color and all that. And if you know a bit of code, you can play with it yourself, for options not on their list. This could really be fun.