You will buy me these.

I think I may have just died and gone to heaven.

(P.S. Just kidding. Not about wanting them… but about the whole “buy these for me!” thing. Just so you know.)

… but when over 173,000 people (which, I might mention, is more people than actually live in Eugene, OR) have seen you dressed up like Princess Leia, you can’t help but act a little bit like a star:

Sorry for the lack of updates on the “Send Teal (a.k.a. Princess Leia) to Cambridge fund” and other exciting tidbits, like the fact that our humble photo has traveled to the four corners of this world wide web-o-sphere, but life and schoolwork have to take first priority, even for two newly-minted internet celebrities.

Of course… who are we kidding? Our limelight has passed. The collective interweb has already moved on to watching more YouTube videos and laughing at more LOL Cats. But for our fifteen seconds of fame, it was kind of fun (and scary) to imagine hundreds of people crawling all over my website at the same time.

In any case, the whole thing has been a fun adventure. And hey—y’all are a generous bunch! All together, so far, you have given Teal almost $450! This is, admittedly, not going to cover her tuition any time soon, but it is still remarkable—we really owe you.

This will probably be my last post on this topic for a while, unless something else exciting and unexpected happens. Teal is exploring her educational options for the fall; I’ll post an update sometime in the coming months about her decision. In the meantime, thank you again for looking at our photo. I’m so glad you all like it.

And now *sigh * back to our regularly scheduled programming.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, a girl and her friend made a picture. Then that girl innocently posted that picture on flickr, just like she does with all her other pictures…

… and two days later, it exploded.

Last night before I went to bed, I was pretty excited because my photo of Teal in her Princess Leia costume had about 300 views on Flickr. This morning, as I stumbled out the door to walk to classes, I met Teal, who was on her way back. “Erin!” she cheered, “It’s at 1500 views!”

Wow, I thought, Flickr’s “Explore” system must have really caught hold of that photo.

An hour later, after my first class, it was up to 2500. Now some of my classmates were starting to notice.

Throughout the day, as I revisited my Flickr page between classes and appointments, my jaw dropped lower and lower. I discovered that my photo had been picked up first by Reddit and then by Digg, two sites that together command most of the internet’s attention. By dinner time, almost the entire school was wanting to know “How many now, Erin??”

It is now 11:30, and my photo of “Princess Leia” and the R2-D2 mailbox has been viewed over 65,000 times. 65,000, folks. That’s 10,000 more than our local football stadium holds. Holy. Cow.

Needless to say, it’s been a fun day for Teal and I. So, what is the purpose of this post? Well, here’s the thing about Teal. She is really super smart… an MIT graduate and one of the finest nerds I have ever met. She has also, as it happens, just gotten a step closer to her dream of attending the University of Cambridge in England in the fall.

Here’s the catch. Although she just found out that Cambridge accepted her, they will not be providing her with any scholarship money—bringing her expenses for her first year to a whopping $41,000.

One of our friends joked, when he was visiting this evening, that if we had a dollar for every person who viewed our Star Wars picture, Teal’s expenses would be more than paid for.

And that idea sounded almost crazy enough to work.

Now, just so you know, I really really hate people asking for money—probably more than I should. But when the entire internet is crawling all over my blog and many thousands of dollars are standing between my friend and her dream… well, you can’t blame me for seeing if a few of you might have a spare dollar or two lying around. So I am providing a link on the sidebar over there —> which will allow you to donate to Teal’s “Send Princess Leia to Cambridge” fund.

… OR you can ignore this, totally guilt free!

Either way, even if she doesn’t make a penny, Teal and I are pretty stoked at the success of our little geektastic adventure—we really never imagined.

UPDATE: Aaaaand the numbers keep climbing. You really have no idea how excited Teal and I are that even one of you decided to donate… let alone enough of you to bring her total to almost $60.00 so far. You should see our house… there’s a giant chalkboard in the middle of the living room, and on it we have a running tally of both her Cambridge fund and the view count on Flickr… and it’s getting updated pretty often.

Some completely valid questions have come up in the comments, which I showed to Teal, and here are her answers:

What will Teal be studying at Cambridge? Short answer: Math ed. Long answer: International perspectives in math education. Why? Because Teal has tutored countless kids and adults whose enjoyment of math have been ruined by bad teachers, scary educational experiences, or bad textbooks, and she wants to help reform math education in the U.S.

What about taxes? We haven’t looked into this, honestly. Teal is planning to report this income and pay any necessary taxes on it, but we’re both wondering: are there other factors we need to take into consideration?

“I’ll give you $50 if you promise to wear that costume once a week while you’re at Cambridge and post a picture of it to Flickr” Hahaha. We got a kick out of that one. This was probably a joke, but Teal did say that if 200 people pledged her $50.00 to do this, she would.

What if Teal doesn’t get enough money? I do not think that either of us are expecting this “Send Princess Leia to Cambridge” campaign to cover all of Teal’s expenses (although that would be awesome), but if she does not manage to put together enough money on top of her earnings here to go to Cambridge, she will donate what you have given her to World Vision International.

I will update this post throughout the day as I can… thank you again to each and every one of you who has donated! We owe you.

One year ago today, I wrote a little post called “Welcome to Lylium.org.”

Happy birthday, Lylium. It’s been quite a year.

… That is the sound that disturbed the slumber of many a Gutenberg student (and no doubt a few people in the southern hemisphere) last night when I, at approximately 10:30 pm, discovered that my blog was a finalist for Best Teen Weblog in the 2007 Bloggies.

A. FINALIST. FOR. BEST. TEEN. WEBLOG.

To the people who nominated Lylium.org, and the people who have already emailed me to let me know that they decided to vote for it: Thank you, friends. You have no idea how much joy it brings me to know that enough people have enjoyed this blog to get it nominated in the Bloggies. I appreciate your support more than you know.

To every single person who is reading this post: GO VOTE. And I don’t necessarily mean you have to vote for ME… I highly encourage you to check out all the other finalists, as there is apparently some serious teen talent on the net. But at the very least, vote for SOMEONE!

Good luck everyone… and thank you again for the honour.

Let me tell you a little story.

Approximately twelve months ago, I was surfing the internet and discovered a little thing called the Bloggies—awards for noteworthy achievements in blogging over the past year. I also happened to notice that they had just introduced a brand new category for their blog awards: “Best Teen Weblog.” I read those words and a little voice inside of me said “You want to win that.”

And, so help me, I did want to.

At the time, I was already blogging, but only on a lonely little blogspot blog that almost nobody knew about. I decided it was time to get serious.

I registered my domain name. I installed Wordpress. I designed my blog’s template. This was going to be my ticket to success. I would win Best Teen Weblog next year at the Bloggies!

Of course, over the year, my blog became much more to me than an attempt at a Bloggie award. In fact, it was not long after I began writing that I forgot about that goal entirely.

Until now.

You see, it’s that time of year again. And now, right now, right this very minute, and every minute until 7pm (Pacific) Wednesday, January 10 (which is probably today by the time most of you are reading this), the Bloggies are accepting nominations.

And so, while I do not want to manipulate you or force you to do anything, if you have enjoyed reading this blog and feel it is worthy, I would heartily appreciate your nomination.

These are the categories for which Lylium.org is eligible (although certainly not necessarily worthy ):

• Best American Weblog
• Best Photography of a Weblog
• Best Teen Weblog
• Most Humorous Weblog
• Best Writing of a Weblog
• Best-designed Weblog
• Best New Weblog
• Weblog of the Year (hahahaha)

Don’t feel like you have to nominate Lylium.org for anything if you do not want to. But if you do have the urge to put in your nominations for the Bloggies, you can do that here.

Oh, and… in spite of my little “story,” I hope it is clear that neither is this blog solely an attempt to win awards, nor will I be crushed if it does not win any. And, although it would be fun to be nominated for best teen weblog, I am not silly enough to assume that mine is the best on the web. This site is a great place to start if you are looking for some other serious teen bloggers.

/Plea.

By now, most of you have figured out why, for the last month, I broke my usual blogging pattern and posted EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. But in case you haven’t heard, I will explain.

In the month of November, I participated in NaBloPoMo, or “National Blog Posting Month.”

I know this may have seemed like a poor choice, considering how swamped I was feeling by schoolwork, but as November approached I decided to join for a number of reasons. One, I just really wanted to blog more. I felt like a lot of things were happening that I never recorded anywhere, and that I would eventually forget about entirely. Two, I really wanted to prove to myself that I could actually do something… that I could make a commitment like that to myself and actually stick it out.

I also decided, as I was beginning this challenge, that I wouldn’t tell y’all about it—at least not right away. I have a bad habit of announcing things that I’m going to do and then not doing them. So, here I am, not telling you that I’m going to do NaBloPoMo, but that I did it. Ever so much more satisfying.

So, I did it, but was it a success? I’m not exactly sure. This challenge surprised me in a lot of ways. I think the easiest way to debrief will be a simple list of Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• I wrote every day. I really did have to exercise the discipline that I talked about above.
• Readers had fresh content every single day.
• I recorded a lot of little moments that I would have forgotten about otherwise.
• I gained new readers. I’ve noticed several new faces around, probably people who found me through the NaBloPoMo Randomizer. I hope you stick around, folks!

Cons:

• I wrote every day. It was not very many days into November before blogging started to feel like a real chore.
• Readers had fresh content every single day. Honestly, I think this was probably a little overwhelming. Because I have so little time to read blogs, I usually prefer when they update every couple of days. But maybe that’s just me.
• My posts dropped in quality. Often I had to write my posts in the ten minutes before I went to bed, and usually I was grasping at straws to find topics. All of this made me feel like I was giving you scribbles instead of finished paintings.
• Readers (understandably) left fewer comments because there was less time to digest each individual post.
• The posts in turn seemed to lose a little bit of their unique identity, becoming instead “part of NaBloPoMo.”

Oh, I forgot one big “Pro”: I captured one month of my first quarter at College in a time capsule. I can only imagine what it will be like to look at this two, three, twenty years down the road. All in all, I think it was a good experience.

But I’m sure as heck not doing it in December.

In fact, starting tonight, I am taking a week-long hiatus from the internet. Finals are next week, and in order to help me concentrate, I will not be checking my bloglines feeds, checking MySpace or Facebook, surfing the web, or getting on at all except to check my email. I’m already starting to feel a little bit twitchy from withdrawal, but I think it will be good for me.

See you next week.

… Not really. But I did order a Macbook Pro!

After months of wondering and hinting, I finally bit the bullet.

But now I need your help. Yes, you—all you staunch Mac users out there, even if you have never commented on this site before or have just stumbled on it by accident. You see, this is my very first Mac of my own. And while, on the one hand, I am ridiculously excited about it, on the other hand there is a small part of me that is beginning to have a panic attack because this is where the rubber meets the road.

I’ve been trying to convince myself and my parents and my friends for ages that I want a Mac, that I need a Mac, that I cannot possibly be happy and fulfilled in my computing life without a Mac! So naturally, now that I’ve hit that “Place Order” button and watched all of my money fly out the window, I’m apprehensive; my worst fear is that it will arrive and it will be gorgeous and I will open it up and turn it on and it will be SO PRETTY and then I will go… “Now what?”

So this is where you come in. The Macbook Pro is scheduled to arrive around September 12th, which is, coincidentally, my birthday. Before then, I need to harness your collective Mac wisdom. I need to know what to do and setup and download to feel at home in my new computer. I want to know it inside and out. What are the apps or widgets that you can’t live without? What are some of the most fun and useful features built into OS X that I may not know about? How do you even use OS X, anyway?

I am not a novice computer user, by any means. I am not even completely clueless about Macs, as I have been reading The Unofficial Apple Weblog and other Mac-related blogs for quite some time. But I would really love some tips and instructions to make my transition from Windows to Mac as smooth as possible. Thank you in advance!

P.S. Because we qualify for the educational discount from Apple, I was also able to get a free 2 GB iPod Nano with my laptop! That is pretty exciting too, as I have never owned an iPod.

P.P.S. That Macbook Pro graphic up there is Apple’s, not mine. It belongs to Apple. Apple has the rights to it. Therefore Apple would be within its rights to come hunt me down and shoot me for using its graphic on my website. Don’t do it, Apple, it’s free advertising!

So, when I said in my last post (on Thursday) that I would be posting more details about the conference that night, what I really meant is that I would be posting more details in three or four days when my brain finally finished decompressing.

Seriously, though, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get this post (and my pictures!) up. Yesterday Mom said to me, “Erin, you better post something on your blog soon! People are going to think you died or something.” If even Mom is worried about my readers, you know it’s serious.

The trip to Portland and the Webvisions conference were both great fun. We did end up driving my beloved car up to P-town, although Philip drove it both ways and within Portland we mostly used the MAX (more on that later) for transportation, so I never actually did any big-city driving. Oh well. I’m sure I will someday. (Also: I don’t know if they will ever read this, but I just want to give a big “THANKS!” to Laura and her grandparents for providing us with a place to stay. Your generosity was greatly appreciated.)

Rather than trying to spew every detail of the experience, which would be boring to write and to read, I have grouped the anecdotes and tidbits that I am especially anxious to share with you into a few sensible categories. Also, check out my Flickr set of photos from the trip.

Things in general of note:

• Riding the MAX light-rail train. Excepting Disneyland rides, before Thursday I had never been on any sort of train or subway or metro of any stripe. So I was very excited when Philip and I left my car at the Park and Ride station Thursday morning and descended into the subterranean (but open-air) loading area for the MAX. Very few other people there seemed to share my excitement—while I stood there clutching my camera case and brimming with anticipation, with “I can’t believe I’m waiting for a train!” written all over my face, everyone else’s faces seemed to be saying things more like, “I can’t believe that instead of sleeping I am waiting for the train.” Their loss. (And the train ride did not disappoint—it was quite fun to stand there hanging on to the bright yellow bars and watch Portland fly by the window.)
• Photography opportunities. Although initially I thought this would be a great opportunity to get photos of various Webstars during their talks, I quickly became disenchanted with that idea—not only because the lighting in those rooms SUCKED for pictures, but also because I felt self conscious and annoying every time the “Ker-chink!” of my shutter would interrupt the relative stillness of the room. Don’t get me wrong, I love my dSLR, but its noisy shutter does not allow it to be quite as unobtrusive as my parents’ Powershot. Nevertheless, I got several good photos of speakers—but mostly I ended up taking pictures of the convention center itself. In particular, there was a beautiful shaft of sunlight from the glass ceiling spilling over the walls of the circular lobby where we met. And after every session, this light would be casting different, awesome-looking shadows on the wall. So during each break I would scurry out to the lobby, pull out my camera, and… take pictures of the wall.
• Walking around Portland/Dinner at the Macaroni Grill. Thursday night Laura, the girl we were staying with, and Hannah, another friend of Philip and Laura’s, met Philip and I at the convention center. As the four of us walked/rode the MAX to dinner, I had the opportunity for some quick street photography… which was fun. We ate at the Macaroni Grill, which had really good food and was also where I did two of the dorkiest things I have ever done in my entire life. Dorky thing number one: I ducked into the restroom when we got there so I could wash my hands before we ate, and I happened to notice that not only was the bathroom GORGEOUS, but it had a GORGEOUS full length wood-framed mirror. And then, of course, it occurred to me that I wanted a picture of my outfit that day, so… I did what any sensible person would do. I walked back out into the restaurant, retrieved my camera from our table, walked BACK through the restaurant, and BACK into the bathroom, where I proceeded to take a picture. Of myself. In the gorgeous wood-framed full-length mirror. And there were even poor, unsuspecting people still washing their hands at the sink, probably wondering what kind of narcissisistic freak show they were watching. Nothing to see here, people, move along! It’s not a narcissist, it’s just a blogger. Dorky thing number two: One fun feature of the Macaroni Grill was the paper covering they spread over the table—a ready canvas for the crayons they gave us. So I drew what I always draw when I am randomly presented with a writing implement and paper: an eye. And then a face. And them some hair, until the floating female head that graces so many of my school notes and sketchbook pages sat there on the table. But I couldn’t leave it at that… so, just before we left, I added a speech bubble above her head with the words “LYLIUM.ORG ROCKS!” boldly written within. And you know what’s even dorkier than the fact that I did that in the first place? The fact that I truly hope someone came here because of that.

Favorite Talks:

There were a lot of great speakers at this event, so keep in mind that this list is not by any means comprehensive. These are just the talks that I personally found particularly interesting/informative/entertaining. It’s probably no mistake that they all featured the two people I was most looking forward to seeing.

• Practical Business Blogging Panel: DL Byron, Matt Haughey, Andy Baio, and Derek Powazek talked about the ins and outs of blogging, both personal and professional, and all four of them had interesting and informative things to say about the pros and cons of business blogs and the ways to make all kinds of blogs more effective. One solid piece of advice that I came away with: To have a successful blog, even if you are a business, you can’t fake your content. Blogging for blogging’s sake won’t get you anywhere if you aren’t genuine in the ideas and stories you put forth.
• The New Community: How Decentralized Conversation Empowers Individuals while Creating Community: Derek Powazek was not kidding when he said his talk on Thursday night had the longest title of any talk at the conference. Even with all those words, however, I went into this talk not exactly sure what it was all about or whether I would be all that interested it. Turns out, not only is Derek a great photographer and writer, but he’s a great speaker, too. His enthusiasm for his subject and clear articulation of his ideas really made this an interesting session. I thought his analogy of sites like Flickr being “company towns” was particularly apt.
• Bulletproof Web Design: Dan Cederholm is not only one of my favorite web designers, but his book, Bulletproof Web Design, was very helpful to me. I really feel like it gave me a coherent picture of the issues involved in creating solid, accessible, degradable web design that I did not have before. And while his presentation contained only a small slice of the useful information found in his book, he was a good speaker and had obviously put a lot of work into making his presentation informative and entertaining. It did not seem like the book and the presentation were just copies of each other—each one had something useful to add to the other.
• Design Panel: Dan Cederholm, Keith Robinson, Mike Davidson, and Bryan Veloso led probably my favorite session of the whole conference. Not only did they all have great stuff to say about web design today (the good, the bad, and the ugly), but the four of them had a great rapport and were genuinely funny at times. I really enjoyed their panel and feel like I learned a lot from it, too.

Also, I met these people:

• As I mentioned before, Derek Powazek was one of the people I was most looking forward to seeing at Webvisions. (Also, just for the record, I am never going to try to pronounce his last name out loud again. When he announced his name at the conference, it was so different from the way I had pictured pronouncing it that I had to do a double take to realize what he even said.) After seeing him talk at the Practical Business Blogging Panel, as Philip and I were about to leave the room, I decided that I could not pass up the opportunity to be able to say that I met Derek Powazek. So I walked up and introduced myself, and I’m very glad that I did! I only talked to him for a moment but he was very nice and personable, and seemed to genuinely appreciate my compliments on his photoblog. Not only that, but he asked where my website was, so I gave him a business card! He gave me one of his (very nicely designed) business cards and a JPG Magazine sticker. Nice to meet you, Derek.
• Dan Cederholm was the other person I was really looking forward to seeing. Philip and I talked to Dan for few minutes while I got my copy of Bulletproof Web Design signed; he was very nice, and seemed like a very down-to-earth guy. He said it still felt strange to him that he was signing books. I didn’t try to give Dan a business card, though… I wasn’t sure that I wanted the bulletproof guru looking at my website, lol. But he may be here anyway, since I am linking to him. I guess that’s okay, as long as he doesn’t look too hard into the cobbled-together corners! It was nice to meet you, Dan. Thanks again for your great book.
• The way I met Dan Rubin was kind of a funny coincidence—I actually did not even know who he was before this conference. During one of the sessions after the Design Panel on Friday I was checking my email on Philip’s laptop. I got a notification from Flickr that someone named Dan Rubin had just added me as a contact—and, sure enough when I visited flickr I saw that he had left this comment on the photo of my business card mentioning that he had seen me at the Design Panel. I thought that was kind of odd, but after looking at his photostream to see what he looked like, I went searching for him at the next break. I did find him, and we exchanged business cards (his was way cooler than mine ) and chatted about the merits of homeschooling. It turns out that he found my flickr photostream through a comment I left on one of Dan Cederholm’s photos, and realized that he had seen me earlier! I guess you’re bound to have things like that happen when you put that many people using the internet into that small of a space. Anyway, it was a pleasure to meet you, Dan!
• In case you don’t remember, Nick Finck, one of the directors of Webvisions, left a comment on my original post about coming to the conference. I actually saw him in almost every session, although I didn’t realize it till later, because he came sneaking in to take photos of all the speakers. I remember noticing him because I was jealous that he could get away with taking photos better than I could. I didn’t realize till almost the end of the second day that he was the person who had commented on my blog—and I didn’t get a chance to talk to him until the very end of the conference! But I finally did catch him, and I’m glad, because he was very nice. We talked about blogging and Technorati and swapped business cards as well; he had a nice Blue Flavor one. It was great to meet you, Nick! Thanks again for the comment.
• I also got to meet Elliot Swan, a fellow teenage blogger and web designer whose website I discovered a few months ago. I think I may have frightened him off, however, because after I enthusiastically recognized and greeted him on the first day, it seemed a little bit like he was avoiding me the rest of the time. Perhaps I am just imagining that though… lol. Anyhow, it was fun meeting you, Elliot! I hope we see each other again sometime.
• And then I met Kyle. This is actually one of my favorite “met someone” stories in this list, because of how random and unexpected it was. As Philip, Laura, Hannah and I were riding the MAX home Thursday night, I pulled out my camera to grab a few pictures of the train interior and the scenery going by. But right as I started taking pictures, I noticed a teenage-looking boy move a little bit closer to me, staring at my camera. “Hmmmm,” I thought, “That’s kind of strange…” but before I could even finish thinking that thought, this boy had already explained, “Sorry! I just really like cameras.” I could not argue with the sincerity of that statement. Also, he had a cool T-shirt on… it had a string of code on it that I did not recognize but which Philip did, making it clear that Kyle, like us, was a computer person. So we got to talking with him about the conference we were in town for, and eventually he said, “So, I have to ask: do you have a website?” … and the clouds parted and a light shown down from heaven as I smiled and pulled a golden ticket from my camera bag. Well, maybe not… but I did feel HIGHLY justified as I forked over one of my new business cards, since that is EXACTLY the kind of occasion for which I had them printed. I’m glad we ran into you, Kyle! I hope you stick around to read more.

*PHEW! * If anyone actually read all the way through all of that, I am now officially in love with you. Not really, but I do realize that this has been an excruciatingly long post, and I appreciate anyone who stuck with me through the whole thing. (I appreciate you if you didn’t, too. )

So, that’s all for Webvisions. It was great fun. I don’t know if I will go next year or not, but that is a bridge to cross when I come to it.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite photos from the trip; this is a look up at the giant pendulum swinging in the lobby of the convention center:

Phase two of my brilliant plan to take over the world via the triple threat of web design, photography, and blogging: a brand new face for Lylium.org!

So, here it is. Lylium.org has been redesigned, or realigned, or whatever you want to call it. I actually think of it as “finishing” the site more than anything else. You may have thought Lylium.org was a finished product (besides the previously-missing content pages, of course), but the truth is I threw the original design together in a couple of days on a whim. I feel like the site has been wearing borrowed skin from the day it opened (which was almost six months ago!).

I have had this “finished” design more or less in mind from the beginning. But, like most projects I take on, I recquired a little extra motivation to actually get in and DO it. That motivation came, as you know, in the form of Webvisions, the web conference I am attending this week in Portland. Somehow, the thought of sending any web professionals I meet to the Kubrick-mashup that was my previous design turned my stomach. Because I knew I could do SO. MUCH. BETTER.

Be sure to check out the About page, the Photography page, and the Web Design page, because they all actually have content. Ironically, I ran out of time once again to incorporate the portfolio of my websites into the web design page, but at least it explains what I do now.

Keep in mind as you peruse the site that I finished the coding of this design in a daze of last-minute rushing, so if you find any bugs crawling around in the corners, please let me know.

So I hope you like the new look and feel. I have to go finish running around like a chicken with its head cut off now. Philip and I are driving up to Portland tonight, and I feel like there are still so many details to take care of! But anyhow. Welcome to Lylium.org… again.