T N.

John Elder Robison is the older brother of author Augusten Burroughs. Having been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome (under the umbrella of autism) at the age of 39, Robison wrote a memoir about his life entitled Look Me In The Eye a few years back and is on the way to publishing another. I'll admit that I have a fondness for Robison because he has given time to an organization with which I'm affiliated. Robison has made great efforts to correspond and talk with students at The Monarch School in Houston, Texas in order to share more with them about his experiences with Asperger Syndrome. Any person willing to do that is pretty special. Robison's website provides great resources and information for parents and educators. He even teamed up with Monarch School faculty and students to develop a teaching guide for Look Me In The Eye.

The Huffington Post frequently (at least once a week) has articles written by 'experts' or parents of children with neurobehavioral disabilities, especially autism. It takes less than a couple minutes to read an article and digest it, making it easy and absolutely necessary for me to do so. Of particular interest to me are the posts written by parents, as they give me various perspectives of the family process.

I heard about this on NPR and love the idea of it. It's a free network of websites to seek and post employment ads based on your area or city. Basically you can type in SanFrancisco.jobs (or whatever city you're in) or education.jobs (or whatever field you're in) or SanFranciscoeducation.jobs (city and field) to find work that might be relevant to your field, location or both! Brilllliant.

Here's the link to the NPR story: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/08/*******/New-Network-Of-Websites-May-Help-Job-Seekers?ft=1&f=100

My friend Juice asked me to look into this website for her. She remarked that it could be "interesting, but scary". After checking it out, I figured out why. I also figured out why, being married, she could not check it out herself first.

The premise is interesting - video chat with random people around the world (the whole thing is supposed to be randomized). If you see someone you don't like, click NEXT. If you see something you like, stick around and chat it up. The reason I say "something" is because you don't always see people, but rather parts of people or couples in uncompromising positions, and that can be unsettling and vile after a while. According to MyAnh, who reviewed Chatroulette earlier today, the site seems to have cleaned itself up, but when I tried it a few months ago, that wasn't the case. When I explored it, it was a mature site, not to be visited by children, yet there were children on it, and I felt the sudden need to protect them.

I don't think the site is necessarily bad, but it can be disillusioning to see how uninhibited and lonely some people seem to be. And even when someone appears to be a respectable person to get to know, he may reveal his real motives with time, so take heed and be careful there. I'm also not a fan of NEXTing someone, in the spirit of MTV; I can't imagine how hard it must be for some folks to be nexted over and over again.

In short, while the idea is promising - to connect people from around the world, I feel like this is more of a social experiment that could potentially be damaging, if not better thought out.

Here's a useful place to look for clean, crisp stock image photos. The website also suggests similar photos and allows you to choose the size of the images as well as parts of the image (so useful).

Starfall is a wonderful free resource for pre-reading and basic reading skills. It has a kind of Sesame Street, commercially feel but it actually is fairly well-developed and easy to access.

Your friends live far away, as in another continent. You want to do a little happy dance for them, or a sad dance, or a robot dance, depending on your mood and their desires. You don't want to get on to skype because you really don't want to TALK to each other, you just want to show your friend the dance. nimbb.com solves your problem. Make your robot dance using your webcam, press record, check it, save it and send your friend the link. So easy. Thanks, nimbb, for helping me maintain my friendships cross-continent.

I couldn't bring myself to trust or buy from another online therapy store. The Therapy Shoppe came recommended to me by a friend/colleague. The materials are as affordable as you can find them anywhere else, online or in store. (And if you find them anywhere else for cheaper, chances are they won't last you for very long). The 10 things I purchased were shipped within 2 days of my purchase, and they arrived on time and as promised.

4AD is a British independent record label that represents bands like blonde redhead, beirut, camera obscura, mountain goats, m. Ward, etc. (some only in europe). The website has some great songs to download usually, especially because the label represents some stellar bands. For news and updates, though, I'd use Pitchfork. 4AD's blog/journal at journal.4ad.com features some mouth-watering acoustic performances, interviews and band updates.

I've bought a lot of items from Knock Knock in the past. This place is full of novelty items that are fun and completely useless, such as pre-printed post-it notes that start with "Just Thought You Should Know: (checkboxes for something smells, this sucks, check your teeth, you're too loud, everybody knows, you rock) and a space to elaborate". There are other things like large checklists for beer rating, paper voodoo pads, labeled file folders (to check off whether it is something to be done "in the near future, when I feel like it, against my will, by somebody else or never"), slang flashcards, etc. Completely useless but a lot of fun to have around in case the occasion arises that you might need to give your boyfriend a "things you must do to make me happy" checklist. The website gives free shipping on orders over $50 and is completely reliable.

I'm pretty sure this is NOT the official Bella Terra Make-up website. The official one would be http://www.bellaterracosmetics.com/

I looked at this website as a way to get ideas for an apartment that's less than 300 square feet. Unfortunately it doesn't help so much with that - rather it's about making over apartments - turning nice ones into NoICE ones (not sure how to spell that the way I'm saying it). Still pretty addicting and small ideas can be taken from it here and there...

I'm not a Christian Louboutin kind of girl but I thought I'd write this review to let it be known that, according to the Louboutin people, this is the only authorized site that can sell Christian Louboutin shoes at outlet prices. In taking a look at the site (and it has other designers also), I was pleasantly surprised by the prices - though still out of my league, they weren't too far off from the prices of Chinese replica sites that will scam the crap out of you. However, the thing is that it is indeed an outlet center, meaning that you might not find items in your size, but if you check often enough, I'm sure you could find some pretty good deals.

As I prepare for my second stint as a doctoral student in the Fall, I realize that life is now easier for students with sites like EasyBib. According to my friend Judy, who told me about this, EasyBib compiles your bibliographies and citations for you. Having spent now too many years in school, I cannot tell you the number of hours I've spent formatting for APA and compiling my bibliographies - particularly when I've got several dozen up to a hundred or so sources. Not to mention how many times I've nearly gone crazy. I'm a fan of paying for convenience - and if I can relieve the stress of the bibliography, I might just employ these guys soon.

I have had relatively few problems with my AT&T service, despite all the negative things I've heard about it. I have, however, had issues with the AT&T website, which seems to be a bit moody in wanting to accept my password sometimes and other times not.

I go through phases in which I try to immerse myself in whatever theme, food or activity is of interest. I once ate sushi everyday for a summer. I watched as many heist flicks as I could in one week. During one phase I was into geography - my boyfriend at the time and I were obsessed with the Odyssey globe game and with this game - Geosense. A simple game with a web 2.0 feel to it, Geosense tests your knowledge of where cities around the world are generally located. The game gives you a location and you click on where you think it approximately might be (within 10 seconds). Then it tells you how far from the target you ended up being. You can play solo or with a stranger. Everything about this game is easy... except for the game itself sometimes - especially when you're given a city in Russia (that isn't Moscow or St. Petersburg) because there's a lot of surface area to choose from...

I wrote a review for this and then accidentally deleted it. Here's the shorter version:

This is the third of a trio of food blogs I use to refer to for my Asian cooking needs. This particular one I came across when searching for a good spare rib soup (http://norecipes.com/blog/2010/10/28/bak-kut-teh-recipe-sparerib-soup/). No Recipes, a blog maintained by Marc Matsumoto is a tidy little food blog covering foods from around the world. The title No Recipes is less about irony (as the site is dedicated to recipes and ingredients) and more about encouraging experimentation, which is what I appreciate most about Matsumoto's blogging style / recipes. I don't feel like I need to follow the recipes to a tee (though I almost never do, unless it's baking). Unlike Wandering Chopsticks, No Recipes feels cleaner and simpler; the author certainly seems to be humbler and more accessible. Be fair warned that he does go for some of the more upscale stuff, but I skip over that stuff. I'm not making my own pate.

People who haven't been to Houston or who don't know much about it would assume that we don't have great art. But we do! We really do! The Menil Collection is one of my favorite places to go to when I come home to Houston. In a beautiful building designed by Renzo Piano and situated in the middle of a quiet little Houston neighborhood, the Menil Collection is a haven for art lovers in Houston. It includes some incredible pieces of Byzantine, African and modern / contemporary art. I've visited the Menil over a dozen times and can't seem to tire from the pieces by Warhol, Picasso, Basquiat, Yves Klein, Barnett Newman, Rauschenberg, Matisse, Pollock, Koonig, Jasper Johns - the list goes on and on. While it's not a huge collection, the way the museum is curated in a building that uses natural lighting in the most divine way really maximizes the value of each piece.

The Menil website is ehh, so-so, could be better, but just for the Collection itself, I have to give it the most love I can.

As a note: Within blocks of the Menil are the Rothko Chapel, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel and the Cy Twombly building (but the Twombly is a whole other story that I'll write another day).

I have this thing about proving people wrong (though I don't have a problem being wrong). So this morning after my friend and I argued about the correct pronunciation for the mysterious Middle Eastern mixture of meats shawerma / shawarma, naturally I googled "shawerma pronunciation". According to my friend, it was "shwarma", but I thought "shuh-where-muh". Forvo.com to the rescue. The sound feature helps me prove easily that my way is clearly more accurate (not totally accurate but MORE accurate) since my friend can't read phonetic spelling very well either.

I don't have a Macbook or Ipad, but I do purchase things through the Apple store (apps, music). For such a great company, I sure do wish their buttons didn't feel so heavy and using iTunes didn't feel so clunky. Not sure how to describe it, just that it's unpleasant. As well, for such a user-friendly business, I'd say their website could do much in the area of improving navigation and usability.