while cruising bloglines this morning, i came across nettie's post about the knitting olympics. yes! i want to participate in the knitting olympics! so i went ahead and joined the ravelry group and gave some good thought to what i would make. what better way to get ideas than to look in my queue and my friends' activity, right? so i noticed that in the friends area now you can filter by activity and then subscribe to the RSS feed of friends' activity based on your filter. perfect. i subscribe and am shuttled back to bloglines.

now i've been sidelined to bloglines again so i give a look at my current stories and see a story on wired about teams of people that are going around beijing and fixing bad english. funny story all about fixing the rampant beijing chinglish. i see a link to the wikipedia entry on chinglish and click through. you really must see this. it's hilarious!

but what's even better? the final photo on the wikipedia page.

please steek gently

a warning to all knitters apparently.

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so, lovely annie nominated me as a rockin' girl blogger and i'm happy to pass on the torch to other women that i think are particularly rockin'. you see, annie and i have little girls, a cashew and a peanut, who are just about the same age. regretfully, we have never met in person but i'm sure we can rectify that once we emerge from the sleep-deprived haze we live in. she's my go-to gal whenever the peanut has done something particularly perplexing and i'm wondering if the cashew has done the same. and yes, it IS nice to know that there's someone else up and feeding the kid at 3AM (last night, 3:30AM!)

in no particular order, i nominate:

kaitlyn - i would have given up on many motherly things and taken the easy way out if it weren't for her giving me all the support i needed. thanks!

aimee - another mommy blog friend. i love hearing about max.. and she's doing it all in two languages!

sarah - a new mom. she's hanging in there!

kat - a soon-to-be mom. her bump is looking particularly cute these days.

claire - you don't have to be a mom to make my list! claire and her husband, jess, are rockin' japan. it's always fun to see what she'll post next!

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colorwork (fair isle and even intarsia) is the knitblog world's 2006 official obsession. i expect it to go well into 2007 as well.

what fair isle work have i done this year? well, not one thing. why am i always the last person on the bandwagon? i doubt it's because i'm too cool for school.

check out these fabulous examples!

• Is There a 12 Step Program?
• Rock On
• Eunny, I love you
• Playing Favorites
• Ravens
• Squirrel and Oak Mittens
• Icelandic Yoke Pullover
• Holiday Mania

... and that's JUST a sampling! i think that i've missed out on something.

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for those knitters out there that love addi turbos but have always wanted a sharper point on them for projects like lace knitting (especially in sock!! at least for me..), please see this entry on grumperina's blog about writing to karin skacel and requesting a new line of addis with pointier tips. i sent off my email yesterday, based on the one that grumperina sent, and received a nice reply from karin this morning indicating that they will look into producing a new kind of needle! i figure, though, that the more people that write to her about this, the better chance we will all have of getting those sharp points.

so if you have the time and feel the same way, please drop her an email. all the information is over at grumperina's site.

have a great weekend!

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if you aren't a cute subscriber, you should be.. at least to get such lighthearted moments as an alpaca, dog, and boy playing football. it made my day.

http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2006/06/ll_the_cool_kid.html

i guess alpaca do other things than just give their wool for lovely knitted items.

and...

another story about a fleecy animal not behaving like a fleecy animal.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/5048644.stm

oh, the picture of the sheep watching tv is cuter than cute.

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be still my beating heart... i'm actually posting to this blog two days in a row! but it's a quickie.

here's the slinky garter stitch wrap!

at sundown

draped

yarn: blue heron yarns, rayon/metallic, 550yds, color: hibiscus
needles: size US19 needles
pattern: none, just garter stitch

i loved working on this! the wrap, if you can't guess, is over 6ft long and i could have made it longer but stopped because it just seemed like the right length. this was so simple but produced such dramatic results. a lot of that has to do with the yarn though. i got really lucky! i actually used a gift certificate that colleen gave me months ago for helping her out with her website redesign so i owe a little to her on this as well! thanks colleen!

because i couldn't go to maryland with all you fabulous knitters, i decided to treat myself to a little yarn. i WAS on a yarn diet (diets are meant to be broken, right?) and now i'm back on it again after this purchase. i was lucky (again) to happen upon sweetgeorgia's yarn shop right after her DNS updated after switching to a new server so i bought myself a little..

superwash sock yarn in angel

and a little...

candy floss in lavendar

check out this closeup.. so pretty! i'm going to do some toe-up socks with the sock yarn and a birch with the candy floss... but i really have to concentrate on my summer knits first!

anyway, here are a few things came across my notice this week.

• veronica mars was renewed by CW! huzzah! another year of logan. mmmmm...
• ABC changed its tactics with lost, thank god. they will run it straight (in two chunks) without repeats. i'm glad they listened to me. at least someone does!
• i can't tell you how much i identify with this posting on subtraction. thanks khoi for saying it straight. i hate IE yet coding for it consumes at least 40% of every project i work on.

###

this is really exciting! i never thought that when we started the spiders our "notoriety" would make it past our little circle in blogland but several of us were interviewed for a daily news article this week. without further ado...

http://www.nydailynews.com/city_life/tech/story/384869p-326491c.html

thanks goes out to dawn, the author, who was exceedingly kind and widdled down our three page answers into small coherent quotes.

real update to come later when i'm less tired... and have had some coffee.... and time to get images off of my camera.

OH AND... i came across this article from the knitting news blog this morning and it's too funny not to pass on:

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1685466.html

Female kidney turns lumberjack on to housework

"A Croatia lumberjack claims he started 'enjoying housework and knitting' after he was given a female kidney.."

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You are The Point!
http://www.thepointnyc.com
You want it all. You might have a hankering for the most luxurious handpainted silk yarn. Or maybe a couple of skein of Kureyon. Don't worry, you can sit down, have a latte and absorb it all...

What NYC yarn store are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

this seems about right given that i spend so much time and money there. though i thought i would be school products because i love that place so darn much. who knew? thanks veronique!

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i just realized that all of the relative URLs that i've been using on gleek.net have not been working in the XML/RSS feeds. i always put links on my entries using the absolute path, which is from / meaning the top of my domain. i was not using fully-qualified links from http://www.gleek.net/. sorry about this! i like using absolute links so i found a nifty MT plugin called MTResolveURLs that i just installed and programmed into the RSS feeds. now, the linking will be correct for you to click-through to my site.

my apologies. all is now well with the world.

###

i was going to answer the knitting meme that i was tagged for but then ran across this article on CNN about a utah judge being kicked off the bench for having three wives.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/11/02/polygamous.judge.ap/index.html

yes, i agree that if you are going to enforce the law then you cannot break the law and i wasn't at all surprised by a mormon having three wives...

... that is until i hit the third to last paragraph of the article that states that the three wives are all biological SISTERS! dude! what is wrong with this picture?! aren't there enough men to go around in the mormon faith? can't they spread out a bit? just a bit?

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i've been doing a lot of research for work on RSS feeds and aggragators as we're finally getting around to putting feeds on our corporate website (where it's desperately been needed for some time.) luckily, i'm the one that came up with the idea (hoorah!) which means that i can spend some of my "spare" time here reading blogs.. as it's for research, eh-hem. at work, i'm primarily on my windows machine (win2k, blech) and my OSX machine just sits idly by waiting for use, poor thing. this means that i really had to do some looking around for the perfect RSS aggragator for windows.

on OSX, i love newsfire because i'm a firefox user (that and it's got this really cute flaming logo and who doesn't love flaming logos? hhmmm, i sound like a bad web client from the early nineties. "can you make my logo spin and have flames shooting out of it?") the two work seamlessly together. for windows, the task of finding an RSS reader that works with firefox is.. well, let's just say that at least half the hair on my head is left.

i spent most of the day yesterday trying to figure out why feedreader would only let me browse to sites off the feeds with IE. really, all you people still using IE should be ashamed of yourself! don't you know that you're opening yourself up to a million security problems using that damn thing? i only use it when i'm forced to and that's only when i have to interface with my company's content management system, teamsite. after finding out that feedreader would only let me use IE, i continued my search with little luck. all these desktop aggragators have built in browsers which isn't what i'm looking for. i want firefox integration! i want alerts upon feed updates! i want it all! is that too much to ask?

apparantly it is for desktop applications but not for web-based ones. i came across two new-to-me RSS applications and i want to tell you about them if you don't already know. then i'm also going to lecture you about your RSS feeds on your sites.. here goes.

google rss reader. you probably haven't heard of it as it's still in beta but i don't expect it to stay that way for long. it's extremely bare-bones so it doesn't have any helpful features as of yet. it won't allow you to mark all your feeds as read and it also doesn't support alerts yet. but, it does offer OPML (an XML file list of all your feeds that can be exported and/or imported from all major utilities) support, some integration with gmail, and a very cool interface. i see a lot of potential here if they can get a few of the bugs worked out. it'll be one to watch.

bloglines. i've heard about bloglines a million times from my fellow knit bloggers. you've no doubt seen the "subscribe with bloglines" button or link on bloggers' sites and wondered what it is. unfortunately, the name "bloglines" is a bit constricting because it's not just for blogs. it's a full-powered, web-based RSS aggragator and it has everything that i was looking for: OPML support; view all the RSS feeds within firefox and continue to browse to sites off the feeds with firefox; alerts, desktop AND browser-based; integration with many different blog utilities including a handy utility where you can put in the main URL of someone's blog (this really only works with blogger and few other blog hosts) and it finds the RSS feed for you. i think that i'm in love.

after finding bloglines and importing in my OPML bookmarks from feedreader (which i gladly closed and told never to open again) i proceeded to all of my favorite blogs via my old-fashioned bookmarks to find their feeds and add them to my bloglines list. some blogs already had the "subscribe with bloglines" link/button and that made it very easy. a few others had links to their RSS feeds and many had nothing. this especially applies to several of my knit blogger friends who use typepad or blogger. believe it or not girlfriends, typepad and blogger create RSS feeds for you! all you have to do is put the link in your sidebar. don't know what that link is? you can find it by viewing the source on your website.

look for this:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom" href="http://yourblogname.typepad.com/yourblogname/atom.xml" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 1.0" href="http://yourblogname.typepad.com/yourblogname/index.rdf" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="http://yourblogname.typepad.com/yourblogname/rss.xml" />

these tags tell the browser that you have alternate feeds of your website available. in this example, there are three feeds available:

an atom feed -
http://yourblogname.typepad.com/yourblogname/atom.xml
an RSS1.0 feed (generally an excerpt feed) -
http://yourblogname.typepad.com/yourblogname/index.rdf
an RSS2.0 feed (generally a full text feed) -
http://yourblogname.typepad.com/yourblogname/rss.xml

choose one or choose them all! put the links in your sidebar so that people can subscribe to you! if i put you in my bloglines, it alerts me that you have new posts and then i hasten over to your site to see what new and wonderful things you have to offer. this is what's known as RSS-enhanced click-through rates. it drives traffic to your site and it makes people happy. capiche?

ok, i've lectured you and i must now heed my own words of advice. i've gone and made it easy for everyone to get their gleekiness in a timely fashion. you'll see that my sidebar now contains a "subscribe with bloglines" link right under the other RSS feeds. now, shoo! and go do it to your site, too.

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aaaaaaaarrrr, me maties! not only is it me anniversary, it's also talk like a pirate day!! how convenient!

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my thoughts and hopes for swift help are with you. to all my readers, please consider making a donation to help those in need.

http://www.networkforgood.org/

there will be no commentary on this blog about the horrors and tragedies in new orleans and other southern states effected by katrina. there's a time and place for everything. now, what everyone needs, is a moment of peace and silence.

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i popped on over to lisa's blog this morning and found that her week sounded a lot like mine.

i DEFINITELY WANTED to take pictures of my knitting last night but then pooped out around 10PM after ripping back the clappy to get rid of an increase row and save some yarn. this was a great idea that wasn't executed correctly. i unintentionally twisted some stitches that i shouldn't have and then tried fixing them one by one on the needle. completely tiring and frustrating and i decided just to live with it but then was too tired to take pictures and upload them.

i DEFINITELY WANTED to write up a nice, long blog entry about what a stupid asshole pat robertson is, but then i realized that the majority of my audience already knows this. my main question here is, if you're a fundamentalist christian, isn't abiding by the commandments considered a good thing to do? isn't one of those commandments "thou shalt not kill"? or is it supposed to be "thou shalt not kill unless you're going to kill a communist dictator and then it's only partly ok.. you're going straight to purgatory"? so anyway, it appears that my view of what's good and what's bad in this world is in the minority... and i'm an atheist! i thought that religion was supposed to teach people fundamental principles of morality. guess i was wrong.

*update* from cnn.com: Robertson had insisted he was misquoted claiming "I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out'." HAHAHA, that is the most lame ass CYA i have ever heard of. pat, if you were the godfather and said that, chavez would have been swimming with the fishes by now. what an idiot. THEY MEAN THE SAME THING!

i DEFINITELY WANTED to stop buying yarn for a while and then i saw that herrschners was having a great sale on summer colors of paton's grace. i had to have some. it's in the mail.

i DEFINITELY WANTED to work on marc's site all this week and i'm not getting very far with it because damn work keeps interfering. sue me.

so, i guess i'm on the road to hell but, in the end, at least i have someone to walk the path with me.

###

not but one day after i'm singing london's praises for getting the olympics, it suffers deaths and destruction at the hands of terrorists. i'm deeply saddened by this.. it just brings back so many painful memories. my heart goes out to all of britain. keep your chin up and you'll be back on your feet in no time.

###

after four years of carrying around the behemoth, i finally decided it was time to get a camera that i could actually carry in my purse. i love my leica, don't get me wrong. it's a fantastic camera with a stellar lens and all the manual features you could ask for. it's also HUGE and quite slow. i bought it four years ago and, at the time, it boasted one of the fastest capture times (to the card and also the time between when you press the shutter and when the picture is actually taken) but they are woefully inadequate nowadays.

thinking back on it, i'm not sure what has changed with my photography style that makes those camera qualities so inadequate now. i think that i've become a photographer that likes to catch moments as they happen and not stage them. i used to setup shots in portrait fashion but now i like the photojournalist style of seeing something and capturing that smirk or that smile in the split second that it existed. this really requires a camera that's fast and the leica just wasn't cutting it.

i decided to upgrade to a 7 megapixel casio exilim which i picked up at J&R last night. the startup time is blindingly fast and captures photos to the card quickly so that you can take a multitude of pictures over a short period of time. it also take MPEG-4 video which one amazon customer claims is not for apple users... but he's mistaken. if you spend $30 on the upgrade to quicktime pro, you can view and reformat MPEG-4 movies to whatever you like. one thing this camera is missing from it's previous incarnation (the 5 megapixel version) is the "pre-shot" feature which lets you double-expose your picture. i'm bummed about missing out on that feature. i thought for sure that would be one that carried on from one version to another. oh well. the camera excels in every other way.

here are my new things this week: camera, OSW almost done (with corks to protect the needles!) and a new set of denise interchangeables that i got for a steal on ebay (of course).

since last week was project playwright: the show, i took over 250 pictures with my leica of the production and still need to get them into iphoto, correct them, then upload them to the madair gallery. mixed in with those photos are ones from friday@the.point of me and my fellow spiders (this is what my husband likes to call us.. we knit, we're on the web.. go figure) and i need to get those posted as well. you won't be seeing them till monday at the earliest. i have a nice holiday weekend (4 days!!) ahead of me and i plan on relaxing. once all that is taken care of, i'll be upgrading to tiger finally!! should i totally reformat or just archive & install. i have a ton of apps and files that will be a pain to reinstall? any suggestions?

###

well, with all the hubub over tom cruise lately, i thought that nothing that came out of that man's mouth would sound even remotely sane. the whole scientology religion (based off of a book by a scifi writer!! .. and i have to say that if any religion should be based off of scifi, people should really look at frank herbert) is such a crock. there's nothing that it offers that you can't get on your own by being a good human being. but i found this this morning and, frankly, am impressed.

of course, tom comes off as a major asshole by asking if the reporter is "arrogant".. i would say "deluded". humans are so very homocentric. we believe that we're the center of the universe and that what's happened here on earth can only happen here and nowhere else. yes, that's arrogant and extremely short-sighted. i couldn't agree more, and hell, it certainly makes a good deal of fiction more interesting.

###

i can't think of anything interesting that's going on with me. it's been a busy couple of weeks at work, and after work i spend a great deal of time either working out at the gym or going home to work on crafty things (slowly, i might add.. i must be the slowest crafter on earth.) since my hubby is still traveling for work, life is lonely at home. i miss my daily talkathons with KP where i let everything loose that's happened that day and feel the stress just melt off of me. since we both are not great at talking on the phone, the talkathon time is greatly limited and i feel even more rundown than usual because i can't lift the weight off my shoulders.

i love spring. i really really really love spring. there's something about feeling the sun on your face after so many months of frigid cold new york weather. there are a few things that i could do without though. it's a time of year that most people go berserk. i have a friend who has repeatedly ignored me for the past two months and i get the feeling that it will only get worse now because the weather is getting nicer. another friend opted out of a trip to visit me in NYC so that she could take a last minute trip to japan. i'm feeling a bit slighted by all this. it's going to be a long time before i can get the money together to make my trip to japan and the opportunity is starting to drift away. i'm beginning to wonder if it's even worth it to keep dreaming about it. i'm the only one from my japanese class who has not been to japan and i feel like a freak, like i'm some silly japanophile that really has no right knowing as much as i do about japan and its culture since i haven't even been there! ah damn, i promised myself that i would never turn this blog into a pity party so please don't mind me. i try not to get too down about this sort of thing. i'm healthy, have a good job, married a wonderful guy, am still alive, and that should be enough, no?

in the meantime, mainichi daily news keeps me abreast of the sakura sightings. cherry blossom viewing (hanami) is a national sport in japan and it's even better if you throw in some beer and food at an all-day hanami party. take a look at what's on offer this year.

continue reading -»

when i was a kid my mom asked me what i wanted to do when i got older and i pointed to the sky and said "fly". not, "i want to be a pilot" or "i want to be a stewardess", i just wanted to fly because i loved being in planes. remember when flying was fun? remember when it was a treat to go someplace on a plane and not in a car?

i remember the first time that i ever flew on a plane by myself. i was 13 and on my way to (i know, i know, i'm such a geek) space camp (which was the best summer i had ever had as a kid, by the way.) i had to change planes in newark and i figured that, since i was in new jersey, i would call my grandmother from the airport to say hi. she was completely stunned that i was flying all by myself and immediately called my mother to make sure that i hadn't taken off all on my own. she still talks about that to this day. i flew to atlanta, found the representative that was supposed to pick me up, and got on the bus to camp. i remember "wild world" played on the speakers lulling me into a reverie as we passed red soil and bright green trees; a hot summer in atlanta. well, that was probably the last time that i had a great experience flying anywhere.

nowadays, i fear for my life when i fly. in the time since i was 13 till now, i have had close to 500 dreams of dying in a plane crash or watching planes crash out of the sky in front of me (i also regularly have dreams that there's an emergency and i'm trying to dial a phone for help but i misdial everytime or the numbers on the phone keys switch around. completely frustrating.) usually the scene is so saturated with color that it hurts. everything is in slow motion and i'm powerless to move. of course, 9/11 made all of my anxiety that much worse and i find myself hoping that i don't have to fly alone on trips, that my husband will be there next to me so that i can squeeze his hand on take-off and landing.

the essential problem here is that i love to travel. i have an insane desire to see most of the world before my time here is up. i still have to go to japan (hopefully this fall) and europe and africa and south america.. the global field trips list is quite long. so in an attempt to stop my fear of flying, i educate myself. i've found that salon.com's ask the pilot column (by, patrick smith) is a great place to get honest information from the pilot perspective. knowing that there are contingency plans for almost everything that can happen and that these pilots are experienced and, yeah, really smart helps me put more faith in my travels. this week's ask the pilot was especially good as it touched on a subject i have long wondered about: fuel and how much of it is needed to get where you're going. smith linked to two (1 & 2) great wikipedia articles on two flights that had to glide into landings due to lack of fuel. believe it or not, this is actually reassuring! it demonstrates that, should something like that happen, there is a flight crew that can make the decisions to land safely despite all the engines going out.. and the instruments.. and the landing gear not opening properly. seems impossible, no? i thought so, too... and do every now and again.

the education still continues.

###

i know that this is a touchy subject with many people. i asked a friend about it over IM today and got a "no comment" comment so i know that it's hitting many people in a sore spot. it's the terri schiavo case. you know, it's all a bit sickening. since when is it the government's business to interfere in these sorts of personal decisions? i guess they figured that they could quash gay marriage and gloss over the line between church and state so who's it going to hurt if they tell people when they can live or die. i know that the appellate court has ruled over and over that she should be taken off of life support because it was her wish so why do her parents keep on trying? do they really hope that one day she'll pop out of her coma and be the same person she was 15 years earlier? seriously, delusion is not a pretty sight. let this be a lesson to us all that we should head to our lawyers right now and make out living wills so no one can mistake our intentions should something this awful happen. i for one never want to be sustained on life support if doctors don't think that i'll come back. what a horrible thing to do to my family and myself if i did! i'm really looking forward to this being over so that we can see something else in the news that doesn't make me say "WHY WHY WHY!" over and over again.

in other news, it's 50 degrees in new york today! get out there and enjoy the beautiful weather while it lasts. hopefully i'll be back tomorrow with something more cheerful to write about.

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heather reminds us all that if you want to play hardball you better have an anonymous email address. what an idiot matt jackson is!

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i know that this is a lot to ask but i need help! a lovely reader has informed me that my comments may actually be malfunctioning in some manner which is why they have been dead-to-the-WORLD for.. hhmm.. about the past month. ok, so here's what i'm asking for, if you ever came here and tried to leave a comment but were denied, i was just wondering if you might try to comment again. i just realized that i updated the blog and mt-blacklist a while back but forgot to delete a ton of banned IPs addresses i had stored away. i'm thinking that some of those addresses were reassigned and causing havoc in my unkempt blog. if you try to post a comment again and succeed, i'll know because your comment is there. otherwise, if it fails, would you mind using the contact form to let me know? i'd be ever so grateful. i actually was talking to my friend marc about it tonight and thinking that i should just turn off the comments altogether because the blog spam is just KILLING me even with blacklist and it's not like they were getting much traffic anyway. i guess i'll see now, huh? testing 1... 2... 3.

for all those others that choose to remain silent, i came across this link today about japanese emoticons (^_^) i think that i may switch and go 2-byte!

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i got on the train and there were no seats which only happens to me 40% of the time so i stood in the center aisle with the other passengers and stared at the advertisements. NOTE: it's winter and quite cold outside. this year, i decided that it was more important to be warm than fashionable (i'm forever in the minority on this issue as is apparent from the women strutting the streets in this town) so i bought a black, long, super warm coat from lands end. it's not ugly but not stylie either. it is a bit large though and evidently it makes me look pregnant.. or it did to the young lady who offered me her seat this morning. no joke. she looked at me all concerned and said, "do you need to sit down?" and i thought, damn i must look tired! but she was eyeing my midsection (bulked up due to the coat and scarf) and i'm sure i had this horrified look on my face two moments later when i incredulously blurted out, "no! why?" she just shook her head to indicate she was sorry and went back to reading. how incredibly depressing! all i wanted was to be warm this winter and instead i look pregnant! and all women know that no one wants to look pregnant unless they ARE really pregnant. ugh.



why do women wait till they are on the train to apply their makeup? personal grooming in public is inherently LC (that's "low class" people!) and ranks up there with those who cut their nails in public. gross. i watched a woman put on three coats of mascara on the F train this morning. i couldn't help but imagine the train stopping short and the mascara wand jabbing her in the eyeball. that'd teach her.

it's also unacceptable to subject fellow travellers to your hideous singing voice and, yes, we CAN hear you singing while wearing your headphones. put a SOCK in it!

two things to follow up on. salon's mac/windows debate really heated up and they had to publish more letters to keep the tide stemmed. i really enjoyed sasha gelbart's letter on page 2. clear and concise.. and yes, macs and pcs are apples and oranges. i know that.. i'm just partial to apples, as it were. also, the awful antics of the new york DJs that made fun of the tsunami victims came to blows yesterday and the radio station has issued an apology, fired the DJs, and donated money to the tsunami aid groups. hopefully this will stop anyone from doing anything so similarly stupid.

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a busy week online makes gleek a happy but tired person.

1. apple released new powerbooks (i think that i'm going to get one instead of an ibook!) and then the blogosphere (plus salon.com, slashdot.org) erupted with all types of pro- and anti- mac talk. get this straight people! i hardly ever have problems with my mac. the one i own is old and dying, but, at four years old, it's fairing better than PCs the same age. i owned a PC once and it was the most horrid experience of my life. i had more problems with it in one month than i have had with my powerbook over 4 years. my mother (bless her) has to reformat my grandmother's windows computer every six months because of viruses and next week i am going to do the same for a friend whose PC has been taken over by demons. i work daily on windows machines and mac machines and i can honestly say that macs rule. i know that i'm about to lambasted by all types of PC users but i don't care. seriously, whatever your beef with apple is i can come up with a good explanation and an alternate beef about windows. don't even try it.
2. i found del.icio.us and realized that i read WAY too many blogs. also, that i have WAY too many bookmarks. (see sidebar... yes, over there --->)
3. i perused all of the entries at the bloggies and exacerbated my problem. see #2.
4. i never made the rug that i was hoping to make because jean fabric is too heavy. instead, i used all of my cuttings to stuff a door snake (you know, those things we put next to the door to stop drafts?) anyway, at least i accomplished something this weekend.
5. i've found the beauty of ourTunes and managed to leech music from all of my friends on the network. for my own personal use, wakatta?

check back on the reading site later. i finished wicked two days ago and am still mulling over my review.

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yeah! my upgrade to MT 3.14 went sooooo smoothly. KP was amazed when i was done because he didn't hear one curseword from me the entire time, hence it must have been easy. i also managed to upgrade mt-blacklist as well and hopefully that all works as seamlessly as it once did. so far i've noticed no difference.

the other piece of news is that my reading blog is now online with my first book review of 2005! i read a lot so hopefully this site will remain up-to-date with my latest bookworm adventure. feel free to use the comments to discuss the book or recommend other books that you think i would like. i usually read what other people recommend or give me quickly. i need to add links back and forth to the two blogs along the sidebar but i'll do that tonight. i must get off this computer before my eyes fall out.

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it's so cold here in nyc that i've lost my will to write up a great review of house of flying daggers which i recently saw on DVD. i'll write it up later this week when it gets a bit warmer. in the meantime, check out these articles at the nytimes today: festivus for the rest of us, admiral boom's bark mitvah, & the perils of moving to nyc. both have great slideshows worth a look.

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oh boy, another email is making the rounds about keeping god in the government which is clearly not where she belongs. people! listen up! the forefathers of this nation saw fit to make this place available to people of all religions, all creeds, all races, not just christians. you know why they built the separation of church and state into the constitution? because back in england, if you weren't anglican, then you were a heretic. those pilgrims fled here to escape religious persecution much as my grandmother's family fled ireland and then scotland to avoid being burned to death for being catholic. there really should be no mention of god anywhere in our government, period. this way if you're christian, muslim, buddhist, or atheist, your government doesn't seem like it's going to side with anyone because of their particular beliefs. the law will protect everyone in good faith.

the email and a well-written response from a friend:

You may have heard in the news that a couple of Post Offices in Texas have been forced to take down small posters that say "IN GOD WE TRUST." Anyway, I heard proposed on a radio station show, that we all write "IN GOD WE TRUST" on the back of all our mail. After all, that is our national motto, and it's on all the money we use to buy those stamps. I think it is a wonderful idea. We must take back our nation from all the people who think that anything that offends them should be removed. If you like this idea, please pass it on and DO IT. The idea of writing or stamping "IN GOD WE TRUST" on our envelopes sounds like a great idea to me. I'M HAVING MY STAMP MADE TODAY! It has been reported that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore, I have a very hard time understanding why there is such a mess about having "In God We Trust" on our money and having God in the pledge of Allegiance. Could it be that WE just need to take some action and tell those 14% to "sit down and shut up"?

response:

You may have heard in the news that a couple of Post Offices in Texas have been forced to take down small posters that say "IN GOD WE TRUST." Thank, well... God for that!

Anyway, I heard proposed on a radio station show, that we all write "IN GOD WE TRUST" on the back of all our mail. How ludicrous! After all, this nation belongs to EVERYBODY -- regardless of their belief in a Christian God or any God(s) at all!! It's bad enough it's on all the money we use to buy those stamps.

I think it is a dangerous and arrogant idea. We must take back our nation from all the people who think that right wing Christianity is the only viewpoint that matters!

If you, like me, think this idea is awful, please spread the word that the idea of writing or stamping "IN GOD WE TRUST" on our envelopes is arrogant and will offend our fellow citizens who have just as much right to this country as Christians do, regardless of their religious affiliation or lack thereof.

I'M HAVING MY STAMP MADE TODAY! It says: "SEPERATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: IT MAKES AMERICA GREAT!"

It has been reported that 86% of Americans believe in God. Sadly, many of them have a very hard time understanding why there is such a mess about having "In God We Trust" on our money and having God in the pledge of Allegiance. After all, why should THEY care about those in the minority? Because this is America, and the truly great thing about this country is the diversity of ideal and beliefs.

Can you believe that these so called "Christians" think the right thing to do is to take some action and tell those 14% to "sit down and shut up"? I ask those people -- if Jesus is the one you follow, how can you look in the mirror everyday and be happy with the intolerant person looking back at you? Apparently those "WWJD" bracelets were just a fad and not a way of life.

ha! you tell em.

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i haven't felt much like blogging lately. i guess i don't have that much to say! (which many of my friends and family would laugh at, no doubt) we had a brilliant thanksigiving at home this year with some friends instead of trucking ourselves out to new jersey or long island to be with our families. our menu was scrumptious and included:

homemade red cabbage and mango autumn rolls with a tangy citrus dipping sauce

fresh mesclun green salad with pomegranite and persimmon

shitake potpie with a polenta crust

cherokee canuchi stew with root vegetables

steamed fresh kale

apple dumplings and homemade cinnamon maple pecan ice cream

chocolate mousse pie with raspberry sauce and candied almonds

yes, everything was vegan except for the ice cream (we had a soy dream cinnamon caramel substitute for KP)! it was so delicious and we were absolutely stuffed by the time 10pm rolled around. then we sat around and drank wine until KP started yawning and that was the end of that.. mmmmmmm..

anyway, besides thanksgiving being absolutely grand, wired news has been running articles lately that i find incredibly intriguing about the continuation of space exploration. james cameron (of titanic and abyss fame) has been sitting on the advisory board of NASA and has an earful to say about why we should continue to shoot for mars. i agree with him 150%. what we have done in space exploration, basically going into orbit and back, in the last 20 years is pretty paltry. we went to the moon people! in the 60s! here it is, 2004 almost 2005, and we've not progressed one inch further than that. it's a damn shame. humans are curious. humans like to explore. the only region left on this earth that hasn't been conquered yet is the ocean so where else are we going to go? up, i say, UP!

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it appears that you can now catch homosexuality much like the flu.

from wired news' furthermore

If It Quacks Like a Duck ...
"It might be fun today (for a boy) to dress up like a little girl -- kids think it's cute and things like that. And you start playing around with it and, like drugs, you do a little here and there (and) eventually it gets you." That's the opinion of one parent at an elementary school district in Spurger, Texas, and "it," presumably, refers to homosexuality. This parent, backed by a Christian legal group, is complaining that a long-standing school tradition of reversing social roles for a day will promote homosexuality. Although arguing that so-called TWIRP day has nothing to do with cross-dressing or sexual orientation, district officials eventually buckled under pressure. Instead, the kids are now being encouraged to dress in camouflage. What kind of message does that send? If it moves, shoot it?
-- Tony Long

and here is the furthermore archive. sheesh. texas is like a whole other world! backwards as hell. did you know that texas ranks #1 in number of people killed by handguns, highest prison population, and people put to death? they also rank dead last in adequate health care for the poor, and people who have a high school degree. perhaps if they actually had personal income tax (they are one of 11 states that do not) they could fix their state. but no! everyone would rather keep their money and turn a blind eye to the problems. selfish.

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i decided to do some updates to gleek.net in order to make it more update friendly. i got rid of the underlines in the main text area so that i can start to include images in with blog entries. i also cleaned up the xhtml and css so that it will be closer to validating. unfortunately, because of the rikai modules i use under the navigation and several other problems with the validator itself, this site still doesn't conform. oh well. there's nothing that i can do about ampersands in URI lines and i personally don't see anything wrong with putting a blockquote in a span, but i don't make those decisions. at least the site will look almost entirely consistent between all browsers!

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i've often thought about the passage of the sun in the sky. being in the northern hemisphere, you always look for good southern exposure when searching for an apartment. KP and i were lucky to find such a place and our plants are loving it. my guess is that our friends in australia look for windows facing the north in their apartments. for those not astromonically minded, this is all because the earth lies on a tilt as it orbits the sun. one hemisphere is always closer to the sun than the other hence the seasons and why when we have snow in new york it's blistering hot in sydney. the passage of the sun in the sky over an entire year is known as the analemma and, according to this wired article, is very hard to photograph. i would actually love to give this a shot if i could do it with my digital camera. i'm sure that taking an image once a week of the sun from a certain position and then stitching them all together with photoshop would be cheating, but i don't own a film camera anymore! anyone out there ever try to do this?

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yes, yes, i'm from michigan. when people think of michigan they think "cold", "midwest", "cars" but i can assure you those are not the only prominent features of the great lakes state. we have plenty of great college football (which can consist of hours of drinking), kowalski sausages, and vernors (possibly the best ginger ale out there!) but if that doesn't impress you, here are 6 things that you didn't know about michigan (actually 5 since i already mentioned vernors.. yes, it's that good.)

so, i'm sure that you all watched the debate last night, right? well, i didn't. i can't stand to watch george bush.. he literally makes my stomach queasy. but i'm curious as to the mysterious bulge on his back that is all over the news lately. is it a bullet-proof vest and if so, why isn't kerry wearing one? he is a senator! or is it a transmission device? what do you all think? only 19 more days till i have to decide whether to move to europe or not!

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sometimes people can be really dumb. for instance, we have a desperate man trying to impress his wife and a robber who never suspected technology would get him. really. you need a lot more brains than that to pull the wool over people's eyes nowadays.

i'm just getting into the swing of things here so posting will be sporadic while i think of something to write about. have mercy.

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have you ever given up your seat on the subway? i have for pregnant women, the elderly, the disabled, and for mothers with their children but i balk at the idea of giving up my seat for someone just because they ask. i got there first! this article was too good to pass up and i'm wondering about other cities than new york. in tokyo, do people often ask for seats? what are the results? what about in paris? london? i completely sympathize with the students who did this experiment. i would have to be violently ill or pregnant before i ever asked someone to give up their seat.

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it was a nice long weekend here in the states. the weather was gorgeous on saturday and we went to the beach. the rest of the weekend we spent relaxing at home. i ran across an article on cnn last week about a signal received from space at the arecibo listening station in puerto rico. the signal was processed through the seti@home application that runs on many desktops throughout the world and scientists are currently working to find the signal again and look it over. it's interesting to note that the researchers involved have already looked into the possibility that the signal was possibly faked. given the origin and peculiarity of the signal, though, that doesn't seem possible. i'm intrigued by two points in the article.

1. the signal's frequency is drifting by between eight to 37 hertz per second...(read more of the article for further details)
2. SHGb02+14a seems to be coming from a point between the constellations Pisces and Aries, where there is no obvious star or planetary system within 1000 light years. And the transmission is very weak.

points #1 and #2, i believe are related on this. now, i'm no astronomer nor scientist but if this signal is coming from a region where there is no obvious star or planetary system, and the signal is weak, and it drifts, i wonder if the signal is coming from a moving vehicle? hey, i'm a dreamer and i always believed that if there were/are aliens, then they would find some way to come to us since we send so many signals into space. what animal does not follow breadcrumbs if they are truely hungry? the thirst for knowledge will always be a driving force for history.

p.s. after checking the seti@home website, i see that they are downplaying the viability of this signal as coming from extra-terrestrials. that's fine. someone's gotta keep the public in line.

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this is a fabulous way to see the country. one man, a segway, and a couple of friends are making their journey across the U.S. at 10mph documenting their trip on the web and on video. the photos of wheat fields under vast open skies are gorgeous and their website design is extremely competent and user-friendly. follow them along as they put-put their way to fame and fortune (well, maybe fame.. if they're lucky.)

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i never expected carly patterson to win.. in fact, i thought that the romanians had it in the bag until the actual day of competition for the all-around finals in women's gymnastics. i was even a fan of svetlana khorkina a