My Archives: January 2007
Next Tuesday, February 6 at 7 pm, it's the East Side Weblog Meetup! Weblog folks who live and/or work on the East side meet at Crossroads Mall, NE 8 and 156 Ave NE, Bellevue, WA 98008. Look for us between the main area by the stage and the giant chessboard -- there will be a sign. Please pass the info along to any East Side webloggers you know!
(tags: WeblogMeetup, SeattleMeetup, BlogMeetup, EastsideMeetup, Meetup, Weblogs, Blogs)
Posted by Anita @ 05:45 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]
Monday, January 29, 2007
If you like old comic strips, check out Steve Canyon, now being reposted at Humorous Maximus. The first Sunday strip was yesterday. Author and artist Milton Caniff took a whole week to actually show the main character! Via the Comics Curmudgeon.
(tags: SteveCanyon, MiltonCaniff, HumorousMaximus, ComicsCurmudgeon)
Posted by Anita @ 05:53 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Another long-time favorite romance author of mine -- Roberta Gellis! She was interviewed yesterday at Word Wenches, talking about difficulties with her Historical Novels going out of print, her favorite genres, and what she is working on now -- a historical fantasy series with Mercedes Lackey (This Scepter'd Isle, Ill Met By Moonlight and two more to follow).
Jo [Beverley]: Your recent fantasy fiction has been based in history, too, in particular, the Tudors. Tell us more about those books.
Roberta: That's really too general a question, but I can state the basic idea Mercedes Lackey and I had. We were not going to do alternate history, which is usually what is done in historical fantasy. We were going to relate the known events of history as accurately as we could and bring in the fantasy in other ways. When I started to research the events of the reign of Henry VIII and Mary, I discovered that although all the serious historians agreed on what happened, none could agree on why it happened. There we had it. Mercedes and I felt with so much flat disagreement among serious historians, the addition of elves (the Sidhe) would not do much more damage.
(tags: RobertaGellis, WordWenches, JoBeverley)
Posted by Anita @ 06:46 AM PST [Link]
Friday, January 26, 2007
Jack wrote a health update about me in his LJ -- it's hard for me to talk about it here. The cancer and side effects aren't too terrible right now -- losing hair, fatigue for some days after treatment, and so on.
(tags: JackWilliamBell, AnitaRowland, Cancer)
Posted by Anita @ 05:05 AM PST [Link] [4 comments]
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
When I've mentioned my keeper romance authors, I think I've neglected to mention Laura Kinsale. Maybe that's because there have been long gaps between new books from her. At any rate, she is one of my favorites -- unusual situations, great writing. These "lightning review" posts (Part One, Part Two) by Candy at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels give short run-downs of all of her novels. "The Hidden Heart: This is Laura's debut novel and holy crap, she does a great job. The hero, Gryphon, has suffered some pretty horrendous emotional trauma and is terrified of loving anyone again. Tess, the heroine, is one of the best Kinsale has created: strong without being annoyingly feisty, sweet, but not sickeningly so, and kind of an outsider because of her eccentric upbringing. It's an old-school romance in that the hero and heroine are together--no, they have to separate!--no, they're together--no, they have to separate!--no, they're together again--but most of the other earmarks of old-school romances like purple prose and the hero raping the heroine are mercifully absent. The book's dark core is lightened up considerably by flashes of humor. It should be illegal for an author to write this well for a debut effort. A-"
(tags: LauraKinsale, SmartBitches, RomanceNovels, Romance)
Posted by Anita @ 09:45 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]
Monday, January 22, 2007
I found theWorkshop.ca via a post at Makezine. FrankG is Canadian and has been documenting his diverse projects. Very entertaining! Building a pond, making maple syrup, constructing a greenhouse over a flat roof, inventing a visual field augmentation device (Frank has Retinitis Pigmentosa), and more!
(tags: TheWorkshop.ca, RuralSkills, RetinitisPigmentosa, FrankG, RenewableEnergy)
Posted by Anita @ 06:06 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]
Sunday, January 21, 2007
I was looking for chai recipes (I've been drinking a lot of chai lately) and found Ellen's Kitchen (site updates), a site about cooking in large quantities with recipes that actually sound good! Handy for large parties, bulk cooking in advance, or making your own seasoning mixes.
(tags: BulkCooking, EllensKitchen, Chai)
Posted by Anita @ 06:34 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]
Friday, January 19, 2007
After some to-ing and fro-ing, it's happening: Geek Dinner Tonight! I'm not sure who exactly will be there, but certainly Jack and me. Plan is Crossroads Mall, in the Food Court near the library (sounds like Clue!), at 7 pm. Hope to see you there!
Posted by Anita @ 08:22 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]
We had a good time at the Seattle Weblog Meetup the other night! (Disclaimer: I was treated to a free slice of pumpkin pie by the owner of Ralph's Grocery and Deli.) Those present:
- Jules was at the Seattle Meetup for the first time. This shows bravery, since the time she attended the East Side meetup she got soda spilled on her.
- Joe Heck is a long-time member who's been missing in action for too long. His report
- John DeRosa is working with Joe on a new startup called TrenchMice.
- Paul Andrews
- Clark Humphrey
- Jack William Bell and our grandson R
- Monica Guzman who is starting a new job as a reporter at the PI, with blogging as part of her work. They are still deciding on a name for her blog, so lots of silly and/or serious suggestions were made. (Update 1/24: her blog is now called Net Native and is now live.)
- and me!
We had lots of good conversation about tech topics, blogging and community, and random chat. Fun!
(tags: Weblogs, Blogs, SeattleMeetup, Meetup)
Posted by Anita @ 07:10 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]
Monday, January 15, 2007
Jae Leslie Adams (LJ) and her friend Chris have begun a weblog, Chris and Jae's Cool Blog of Links, where they propose to point to some websites of visual interest. (Jae Leslie is a calligrapher and graphic artist.) Looks good so far -- today they feature Anne Bagby, who does stamping, carving, painting and more, all combined into some complex images. Just click on anything to wander around the graphics. Says the artist, "I print layers of pattern, texture and glazes -- watercolor first, then acrylic, brushes, squeeze bottles and sponges. This process produces a rich, complex surface." Makes me wish I was stamping these days!
(tags: Stamping, RubberStamping, EraserCarving, JaeLeslieAdams, ChrisAndJae)
Posted by Anita @ 05:52 AM PST [Link]
Sunday, January 14, 2007
*sings sotto voce* "Heated coffee in a can, doo-dah, doo-dah....." Michael Pusateri has done a lot of taste tests and demos with photos in his Cruftbox weblog -- Spam Turkey, How to Brine a Turkey, even the Turduck(h)en. Now he's checking out self-heating cans of coffee-like beverages. "The simple reaction is water and quicklime. Quicklime is calcium oxide and the addition of water causes a exothermic (heat producing) reaction. The result is slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) which is a component of mortar in cement. Not exactly health food, but not deadly poison to be near your drink." I've linked to Cruftbox before.
(tags: Pusateri, Cruftbox, SelfHeatingCoffee)
Posted by Anita @ 07:38 AM PST [Link]
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Wednesday, January 17, it's the Seattle Weblog Meetup, New Year Edition! Start time is 7 pm, location is Ralph's Grocery and Deli, 2035 4th Ave (map and directions), in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, diagonally across from the Cinerama. Free WiFi, and food and drink are available (you can buy anything in the store and consume it in the deli area, so that includes wine and beer if you want). Local and visiting webloggers talk about blog topics and lots else.
(tags: SeattleMeetup, Blogs, Weblogs, WeblogMeetup)
Posted by Anita @ 06:33 AM PST [Link]
Thursday, January 11, 2007
We stayed home yesterday when the hail and snow hit at 4 pm on Seattle's East Side, and were very glad of it! But Katieturtle at the Seattle LiveJournal Community walked three hours from Bellevue Community College to Seattle, and lived to tell the tale. "Class was cancelled, so I started to walk down to the Park and Ride. On my way there, I watched 8 cars and a bus crash into each other on the hill behind the P and R, basically blocking traffic and any buses that may have been able to go to Seattle for a while. Hmm. So, I decided to walk to Factoria. My fiance was stuck on 520 and knowing the freeway situation, he wouldn't be able to come get me for hours at the earliest. Once I made it down the hill to Factoria, I was warm and motivated. I started walking to Bellevue. Once near the South Bellevue Park and Ride, I noticed that I was walking faster than the buses on the freeway were traveling. Well, nothing was stopping me at this point."
(tags: Snowpocalypse, Seattle, Snow)
Posted by Anita @ 05:45 AM PST [Link]
Thursday, January 4, 2007
One of the tasks I've been working on at various times, over the past week or so, is cleaning up my blog roll, which is powered by The Daily Crawl written by Matt Kingston. (I'm still using the original set of perl scripts, but it's also now available as a plugin for Wordpress). One of the few drawbacks of my system is that if folks who are on my list ping weblogs.com once, then never again, they stay orphaned at the bottom of the dated portion of the list. So I've been editing the list of weblogs that powers my daily crawl, removing the date info for all the people who (according to the text file) last pinged in early 2006, up to the beginning of October. Checking all those URLs got me current on people who have moved their sites, changed URLs (most of the LJ folks needed updating) or just quit blogging all together.
Another housekeeping task was clicking through to archived posts on this weblog. I wanted to make sure that Greymatter (there's a new version but I haven't updated yet) had done what I wanted and closed old entries to comments when they are removed from the index page of this site. Sometimes the script has timed out or otherwise barfed on me, but rebuilding the individual post page fixes things, even months later.
(tags: DailyCrawl, MattKingston, Greymatter)
Posted by Anita @ 04:42 AM PST [Link]
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
At first I thought that the new in-movie-theaters project by the Metropolitan Opera wasn't happening around here -- Washington state hadn't been listed when I looked for theater locations. So I was surprised when a trailer advertising the HD closed-circuit simulcasts played before "The Holiday" at Bella Bottega when my sister and I were there the other day. I figured that the Regal Cinema chain was showing the operas, but not the actual theater in Redmond. So I was pleased to hear (from The Seattle Times' Melinda Bargreen, via GirlHacker) that most of the operas in the series will be available here! I'm especially interested in The First Emperor on January 13 after hearing about it on NPR. There are other operas that are also tempting -- Eugene Onegin and The Barber of Seville, for example.
(tags: MetOpera, TheFirstEmperor, Opera, BellaBottega, RegalCinemas)