Yesterday Google Maps announced a new feature that allows you to add maps to your blog or website just by copying and pasting a snippet of HTML. And once you embed the map, it has all the same functionality of the Google Maps; clickable, draggable, and zoomable.

Go to Google Maps and pull up the map you want to embed. Then click ‘Link to this page’ in the top right-hand corner. Copy the text that you see in the second box. Paste that text into your blog editor or into the HTML of your webpage.The Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge.

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Mix your own relaxing soundtrack using a collection of nature sounds (like bird song, rain, bonfire and more) Link

Drawings of Eli W. Harris.

An 84-year-old Shelton, N.Y., man said he is still driving the first car he ever owned – a 1929 Ford Model A with more than 200,000 miles on it.

Clarence Cleveland Curtiss said he was 15 in 1938 when he bought the car, which sold for $400 when new, from a Derby man for $10. It was during the Depression.

He was out of work, and he was hungry, Curtiss said. “I drove it for a year with no license, and the day I turned 16, I got my license with this car.”

Curtiss said the only change he ever made to the car was installing a Hudson Terraplane engine in 1940. The engine raised his top speed from 55 mph to 80 mph.

Part of the car’s allure is that it has never been restored. There is a hole in one of the floorboards, cotton is coming out of the seats and some of the paint is wearing off. Mr. Curtiss has kits to restore it, but he can’t bring himself to use them. “People just love seeing it the way it is,” he said.

Mr. Curtiss also has a strong emotional attachment to the car. He met his wife, Dorothy, shortly after he bought it, when he was 17 and she was 14; they had been married 56 years when she died in 1998. The initials they carved on the steering wheel as teenagers can still be seen. “She was the first and only girl I ever kissed in the car,” he said. “It’s priceless because of that, as far as I’m concerned.”

The New York Times

Orlando police get missile launcher during gun-shoe exchange

Police were hoping for a good turnout at their “Kicks for Guns” sneaker exchange Friday, but they weren’t expecting to get a surface-to-air missile launcher.

An Ocoee man showed up and exchanged the 4-foot-long launcher for size-3 Reebok sneakers for his daughter.

Taking advantage of the exchange’s no-questions-asked policy, the man was not identified. He told the Orlando Sentinel that he found the weapon in a shed he tore down last week.

“I didn’t know what to do with it, so I brought it here”, he said. I took it to three dumps to try to get rid of it and they told me to get lost.”
More here.

Image Outlining Tutorial

This outlining technique is one that I use in all my watercolors. Some people use it as a sketch technique. This starts out pretty standard. It uses the same technique that everyone else does. I just added a few tweaks to it to get more of what I’m looking for, and I thought I’d share it with you. I first read of this technique at RetouchPRO.com about six years ago I tried it I liked it and I’ve been using it ever since. It’s been going around the Internet a lot lately as a sketch technique, and I thought I’d post my own slant on this old tried-and-true method.

Postcard Collection–a collection of over 6,300 picture postcards of Florida attractions, cities, and people, circa 1900s-1970s

Dinner Key Auditorium in Coconut Grove : Miami, Florida

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