My Archives: July 2005

Sunday, July 31, 2005

Ha! Literally is a blog that documents mistaken uses of the word "literally" in the news, on the web, or even in overheard conversations!
Literally pays for itself, literally like a candy box, literally overflowed with information...

Via Adam Vandenberg.

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Posted by Anita @ 08:08 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]

Friday, July 29, 2005

We had a good time last night at the Pine Lake Ale House for Jeff Sandquist's weblog gathering. I don't think I've ever been out that way before! The place was pretty busy, but the group managed to grab three tall tables near the bar but on the right side of the barrier so our grandson who is under 21 (by about 19 years) could sit with us. There were about twenty folks in attendance, by my estimate. I didn't talk to everyone but I did speak to most. I wanted to make sure they knew about the other weblog meetups in town! I brought along the nametags but we ran out. I should have made notes of who was there, but I didn't. Here are some of the attendees -- I'll add links as I find out more.

Grandson R---- was well-behaved mostly. He only fell off his tall stool once, he ate a good portion of his cheese quesadilla, and he played with his car and stacked up the swag t-shirts (vacuum-packed into tiny bricks) into a tower and knocked them down over and over. We had to leave at nine (he was getting pretty tired) but we were actually getting kicked out because minors aren't allowed after that time.

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Posted by Anita @ 04:56 AM PST [Link] [3 comments]

Thursday, July 28, 2005

In addition to next week's East Side Blog Meetup, there's a gathering being organized by Jeff Sandquist that's happening tonight. Location is the Pine Lake Ale House, 640 228th Ave NEl, Sammamish, WA 98074. Lots of good beer and WiFi, I hear! Start time is 7 pm. We'll be there!

Posted by Anita @ 06:09 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]

Next Tuesday, August 2, it's the East Side Weblog Meetup! Start time is 7 pm, location is Crossroads Mall food court, between the stage and the big chessboard, 15600 NE 8TH Street, Bellevue, WA 98008 (Google map). Look for the sign! Weblog folks and weblog-curious who live and/or work on the East side are invited.

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Posted by Anita @ 03:28 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

We are trying to work with (or on) grandson R----- to reduce the amount of interrupting he does. This is a bit more difficult because when he and I are alone together, I wouldn't classify his speaking as interrupting unless I'm on the phone.

So I did a bit of searching and came up with a few articles that gave me ideas:

Maybe we could apply some of these strategies to adults in our life who interrupt us?

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Posted by Anita @ 04:36 AM PST [Link] [3 comments]

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

I was interested by this page from the Economist's style guide, warning those who wish to write for them about indiscriminate use of Americanisms. Some of these I didn't know were Americanisms! "Regular is not a synonym for ordinary or normal: Mussolini brought in the regular train, All-Bran the regular man; it is quite normal to be without either." Do you think district is preferable to neighborhood? The two don't sound like exact synonyms to me. In Seattle we have the "International District" (instead of Chinatown because it was never only Chinese), but surely I used to live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

If I followed these suggestions, would my prose sound more British? (Via JJG.)

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Posted by Anita @ 04:36 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]

Monday, July 25, 2005

A ton of discussion at Arthur Hlavaty's LiveJournal when he posted about the Dove "Real Women" ad campaign. I have seen these ads and they look fine to me. But when I was reading his post I was thinking "Dove chocolate." What a disappointment to remember that these ads are about skin-firming creams that I don't believe work.

I've been tempted to do a controlled study by putting some magic lotion or other on only one side of my face or one thigh.

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Posted by Anita @ 05:20 AM PST [Link] [1 Comment]

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Imagine being a White House TV reporter who has the same name as the Supreme Court nominee! ('ware popups) Says John Roberts of CBS News, "After my four and a half years covering the Bush White House, I couldn't imagine the name 'John Roberts' and the phrase 'widely admired for his intellect, his sound judgment and his personal decency' being used in the same time zone, let alone the same sentence. More likely would have been 'John Roberts' and 'should join Judith Miller in jail'; or 'frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs'; or, 'Oh yeah, we've got a dossier on him'.

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Posted by Anita @ 05:35 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]

Friday, July 22, 2005

We've been watching Firefly due to the kindness of Janice Murray who lent us the DVD set, and enjoying it. There were only fourteen episodes filmed, so it's a doable project in preparation for the Serenity movie coming this fall. If you don't want to buy the DVDs, SciFi channel is broadcasting the series starting tonight. kate_nepveu explains why you should be watching in this LiveJournal entry. "Perhaps it's easier to start with reasons not to watch Firefly. If you absolutely, positively cannot stomach being in the same room with science ignorance like an apparent lack of inertia, or technology that was designed for aesthetics rather than workability, then this is not the show for you. The worldbuilding is also somewhat sketchy; in particular, I'm sure it seemed like a nifty idea to have the entire society be bilingual in English and Chinese, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Basically, this is not meticulous hard-sf extrapolation. Instead, the world is a place to explore the characters, who are the great pleasure of the show for me. There are nine of them, which is why you should watch the series, because even the best two-hour movie can't do justice to so many characters."

Kate rates each episode for enjoyability and importance, and includes a few snarky dialog samples:

MAL (Captain): Well, look at this! Appears we got here just in the nick of time. What does that make us?
ZOE (First Mate): Big damn heroes, sir.

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Posted by Anita @ 05:00 AM PST [Link]

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Last night's weblog meetup was a lot of fun! Jack, grandson R---- and I arrived in good time despite my Neurotic Promptness Syndrome worries -- three in the car lets us use the 520 HOV lane. I was able to get the furniture optimzed and my laptop set up before too many folks arrived. Those who attended:

Scott Laird would have won the prize for biggest camera! His photos start here.
Jake Ludington brought free laptop desks for all!
8Bit Jake
eric and ben
Harry Love -- his report and photos.
Andrew Ferguson dot NET won't be back until the end of the year as he's off to school until then. Andrew, start a blog meetup at your college!
Beth Goza and Phillip Torrone apologized for lack of gadgets (I said we loved them even without gadgetry) but PT did bring a copy of the third issue of MAKE for people to look at. They supported Ralph's Grocery and Deli by actually buying a (small) grocery cart's worth of groceries!
samantha
Robert (SEABlogger)
Stuart and Louise Maxwell were back after a first meetup last winter.
Manuel
Jack writes Antigravitas and Jack's Tasty Links. He found a new-to-him beer to sample: Monty Python's Holy Grail Ale.
Dylan
Annabel
Clark Humphrey
Ryan Anderson
Tara Shea
Staci of Daymented attended for the last time for a while -- she's moving to Canada!
Mark Ayers joined us for the first time -- his journal.
josh of sciencevsromance.net and seattle.metblogs.com
Chas who also does Radio Free Redmond

We had three toddlers present: Ben Soroos, Annabelle, and grandson R-----. Our grandson did fairly well behavior-wise; he was friendly to all, played bottle cap games with Mark Ayers and immediately starting to leap up and down when Mark asked if he was a "bouncy boy." He hugged a non-plussed Philip Torrone. He only ran out of the deli a few times and returned directly (he was doing a loop around the refridgerator case). On the negative side, he leaned back too far while sitting on Jack's lap and fell to the floor. Wailing ensued for a few minutes, but ice on the back of his head helped him calm down quickly. I don't want to bring him every month, but an appearance from time to time will be acceptable.

I think I talked with most everyone who was there (Jack did some grandson-wrangling). A good meetup!

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Posted by Anita @ 05:00 AM PST [Link]

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Kris Markel (my office mate when I was first contracting on the IE4 team, before they moved me into the Contractor Scum Ghetto with the red velvet curtains) has started a special-purpose blog with his wife Johanna. Most of the entries are either in French (Johanna is studying French in prep for a move to Paris) or are concerned with what Kris is eating.

Looking at my old journal entry, I see that Kris was vegetarian back then. No longer! "I was super hungry on the way home, so I stopped by Dick's Drive In and got a Deluxe, fries, two ketchups, and a medium root beer. I don't know why I frequent this place. The hamburger was full of gristle and way overcooked, and the fries were soggy and cold. The root beer, on the other hand, was fantastic. Dick's always has great root beer. I don't know how they do it."

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Posted by Anita @ 04:45 AM PST [Link]

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

An entertaining and interesting link via the MAKE blog: a guy uses Google Maps to get a traffic ticket thrown out! "I asked her honor if she was familiar with 42nd Street. She nodded and I continued to mention how all of its neighboring streets have indication arrows of the direction, with one exception: 42nd Street. Everyone knows that this is a two way. The judge said that due to lack of memory of the officer she will have to dismiss the violation. Thank you Google Maps, you rule."

This couldn't happen without WiFi in the court house since the map was a last-minute improv for the defendant.

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Posted by Anita @ 04:58 AM PST [Link]

Monday, July 18, 2005

The Salwar Kameez has become a trend among the fannish women I know (what does fannish mean?), due to Teresa Neilsen Hayden's experiences buying a custom-made garment set on Ebay. Potlatch 15 chair Ulrika O'Brien explains the salwar boom to us. "When I was in the UK on my TAFF trip, and staying in the East End with Rob and Avedon, I was positively tortured by the luscious dip-dyed Punjabi suits in the shop windows, but it seemed utterly pointless to ask in the shops. East Indian women tend to come up to my chin, and have bones so small that the bangles made for them that a friend brought back from India had to be given away because they wouldn't go over my hand. Even if I weren't also carrying around the excess avoir du pois, I would rate my chances of squeezing into an off-the-peg salwar kameez at approximately nil. In L.A. and Orange County, there just isn't much of a South Asian population, so even finding sari fabric, let alone a tailor who could make salwar kameez, was just not on. So while for yonks I would have loved to have one, the confluence of money, and time, and tailors, and access to same to get me into a salwar kameez never seemed to arrive all at once."

The phrase "salwar kameez" chimes so pleasantly on my tongue -- I wish for a song with that refrain.

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Posted by Anita @ 04:47 AM PST [Link]

Friday, July 15, 2005

My dance buddy Steve Steiner is a Microsoft guy who posts rarely to his MSDN blog. I do enjoy it when he actually posts! Reading Joel Spolsky's book The Best Software Writing I (isbn.nu, online sources of the essays) made him think about some lindy hop stuff related to Alex and Elan, two local dancers who are also developers (geek overlap with lindy hop is bigger than you might imagine):

I remember Alex as being the dancer most likely to try some odd ball move [that] would end with both him and his partner on the floor. I suspect follows were more than willing to take that chance as Alex was a great dancer. Elan on the other hand practiced and practiced this one insane move from a class David Dalmo taught at the Beantown dance camp until he was able to do it. The move involved flipping yourself up into a one handed handstand from laying on the floor. And yes this was incorporated into a partner dance. Lindy hop is not exactly the Waltz.

Elan is the probably the most likely person I know to be remembered 100 years from now. Not because he can flip himself up into a one handed hand stand, but because he is working on ARG's when they are in their infancy. He in one of the founders of 4orty 2wo entertainment [link] and one of the prime people behind the games "The Beast" and "I Love Bees". I last saw him at a swing dance right as "I Love Bees" was ending. His crunch time was over (running an ARG seems like a 24-7 logistically nightmare if you ask me). He shared a few stories about what was going on and the thrill of seeing people have a real emotional connection to the game. Also ... after much prompting he flipped himself up into a one handed hand stand.

Steve mentions looking for Rands who has an essay included in Spolsky's book. I didn't know Rands' real name until I looked at the list of online sources for the essays linked above -- Michael Lopp. I first encountered him at Jerk City.

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Posted by Anita @ 04:39 AM PST [Link]

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Next Wednesday, July 20 at 7 PM, it's the July Seattle Weblog Meetup! Location is Ralph's Grocery and Deli, 2035 4th Ave in the Seattle Belltown neighborhood, across the street from the Cinerama (map, info). Food, drink, and free wi-fi available -- you can buy stuff in the grocery area and bring it into the deli, too. Look for our sign in the deli area. Parking can be tight but I usually get a spot on Sixth. You don't have to be a Meetup.com member to attend, but if you join I can contact you about any last-minute changes (these are rare). Thanks to the members who have already RSVPed! That helps me plan.

What happens at the Meetup? Local weblog folks (and often some visitors) chat, eat, and drink. Conversation topics are tech and non-tech. There are photos of previous meetups on flickr. See you there!

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Posted by Anita @ 04:50 AM PST [Link]

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

I still take my grandson R---- to the Seattle library (instead of Redmond because I still don't have a King County Library card). The Central library kids area is great, with tons of books, natch, and puppets, puzzles, toys, and so on. But what makes it possible for me to bring home books for him is the Begin with Books theme kits. On a shelf near the back of the room are plastic containers each pre-filled with books on a specific theme, with resources for caregivers and an audio or video tape on the topic included. We've borrowed "Things that Go," "Bugs," and "Out of Diapers," along with others. Instead of hunting the shelves while wrangling a two-year-old, I just grab the book box and go!

I find a lot of parents that I speak to while the kids are playing there don't know about these, so spread the word! If you visit neighborhood branches more often, you can request the kits via the library catalog online and have them sent to your branch.

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Posted by Anita @ 04:52 AM PST [Link]

Monday, July 11, 2005

I never would have predicted that cupcakes would be the big snack/dessert trend of the new millennium, but so it is. Andr00 and Helen compare cupcakes from a new store at "Bellevue Mall" (really Bellevue Square) called "New York Cupcakes" to cakelings from the gold standard for local cupcakes, Cupcake Royale at Verite.

"the 'NY' cakes were slightly more styrofoamy in texture, though still moist, and certainly not as gloopy as a starbucks pastry. The flavor was quik-like and inoffensive, without the luscious density of a C.R.. The frosting was buttercream, but obviously squirted on soft-serve style instead of spread, and had an unpleasant tang reminiscent of a soft drink. We know from news articles that the famous cupcakes in New York are meticulously and artfully frosted. We can then rule out the possibility that this is a transplant from that area. A simple web search reveals that there is only one of these at the moment, this very mall location. Indeed, the website still bears the distasteful 'under construction' motif. They are not imported either, so that leaves the marketing explanation for the name, which is corroborated by its location in an unimaginative, safe mall and by the labor saving technique of frosting by mecha-squirt. It does not take much imagination to conclude that the oddities in flavoring come from preservatives added to the batter, to allow long-term storage of large low-overhead batches. [...] The cost cutting measures and commercial anti-interest factor make the winner decisive: Cupcake Royale will remain top cake for now, with the atmospheric bonus of not being located in the most sterile mall in the Pacific Northwest."

Not martha has pictures.

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Posted by Anita @ 04:59 AM PST [Link]

Friday, July 8, 2005

Dev evangelist Jim Blizzard posted what started as a normal vacation-style entry about visiting Sea World -- until it devolved into manatee farting! "Sea World has an exhibit with this endangered species. There's not really that much to it as far as exhibits go. And the manatee don't really do that much. They're huge, docile creatures. They don't swim fast. People don't ride around on them or get tossed 20 feet into the air by them like they do by the killer whales at the Shamu show. In the exhibit area there's an above water viewing area, a below water theater in the round (lame movie – at least it didn't last long), and a below water viewing area. The above water viewing area was best. Why? Because one of the manatee had gas."

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Posted by Anita @ 04:09 AM PST [Link]

Thursday, July 7, 2005

Tuesday's East Side Weblog Meetup was fun! Hamburgerlad made one of his last appearances before going to China for two years (but he says we'll see him in August as well). Tommy Williams was there and took a good set of pictures. I especially like this one of Jack! Our friends Jim Kling and Ivy, and their friend Dicky, drove down from Bellingham and stopped by for a few hours on their way to the airport (Dicky had been visiting from Texas). Grandson R---- had fun being entertained by them (thanks, guys!) and, indeed, was most pleasant for the whole evening.

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Posted by Anita @ 04:14 AM PST [Link]

Jake of 8bit Joystick posted his OPML file for your delectation. (What's OPML?) I imported it into Sharpreader and found a few RSS feeds that I wanted to subscribe to. Jake reads a lot of sites that are game-related which isn't a topic for me, but I kept Slacker Manager, 43 Folders, and Anil Dash (who I've been reading for years).

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Posted by Anita @ 03:44 AM PST [Link]

Wednesday, July 6, 2005

Manuel takes advantage of the Seattle summer by doing some snorkeling, diving into Lake Washington and raising the junk people have dumped there in the past. SNORK I for this year was very cold. "A lady busting out of her window and asking us to remove a tall piece of metal we'd stuck in the stump of a pile last year, tainting her lake view. 'It's been bothering me' "

SNORK II got Manuel and his buddy Trav involved with the King County sheriff, aquatic version. "We were lectured about the hazards of swimming amongst motorized propellers attached to drunken boaters."

SNORK III was a short revisit to Madrona and Leschi. "Leschi Marina is a gold mine. Underneath the docks are decades worth of equipment, poles, ropes, bottles, cans, tools, sprockets, springs, and anything else that can fall off a boat. It's like an archeological dig."

SNORK IV was a bonanza, with many gorgeous photos of what was found and brought to the surface. "We dove in at the same parking lot near Madrona Beach and quickly went to work liberating garbage cans from the bottom to the shore. (Y'all bitches wanna throw stuff in the lake, we gonna throw it back!)"

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Posted by Anita @ 05:02 AM PST [Link]

Tuesday, July 5, 2005

Even though I've been away from the DC area since 1988, I still miss the Folklife Festival (now called the Smithsonian Folklife Festival). It's a cultural fair (free!) that happens on the Mall, with food, music, crafts, dance, and more. Each year a different country, region, industry, and/or tribe is featured. Northwest Folklife here in Seattle does not compare, though nice in its own way.

Jon Singer made it there this year (Anita and Jon Singer), and describes how Al Cornell, a Forest Service volunteer, made fire.

We saw him use three methods: bow drill, string drill, and pyrite. He mostly makes his strings for the string drill and bow drill techniques from available materials, which in the wilderness means things like the fibers from yucca leaves, or rawhide; but he is also interested in cordage, and he showed us samples he'd made out of things like videotape (I am not kidding) and disposable/recyclable plastic grocery bags.

I would have guessed that "primitive" methods of starting fires were difficult and time-consuming. (Insert imaginary film of someone fussing with a bow-drill for many minutes and getting very tired before actually managing to light anything up.) Huh-uh. No way. Under ordinary circumstances, with reasonably dry tools and materials, this guy has hints of smoke within 5 seconds from a bow-drill or string-drill, and tinder in flames within 60 seconds except possibly with pyrite, which can sometimes take him a whole minute and a half. We were just astounded.

Posted by Anita @ 04:26 AM PST [Link]

Monday, July 4, 2005

On our way out of town for the weekend trip, Jack realized he'd forgotten to bring a book to read at his folks' house. At first I didn't want to stop, but when Jack told me he actually had a book on order at the local Barnes and Noble that he'd forgetten to pick up, I said okay. Grandson R and I waited in the car for a few minutes, then Jack returned with Non-Zero, and David McCullough's 1776 as an audio book (unabridged, of course). (New Yorker article.)

I really enjoyed listening to 1776! That first year of the Revolutionary war is examined in great detail. Jack, who knows a lot about that period of history, told me he learned some interesting details about incidents that he'd only known about in a general way before. Washington dominates, but there are briefer portraits of figures from both the British and Continental sides. We've gotten through over half the book -- audio books are great for trips!

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Posted by Anita @ 07:10 PM PST [Link]

Friday, July 1, 2005

Jack and I are going to see his parents in Oregon this weekend. TDavid has a more extensive road trip planned, from Seattle to LA with a loop to Arizona, Utah and Nevada. He really does some detailed planning, with notes on probable trip costs and the tech hardware and software they'll be taking.

Equipment / Hardware
Sony VAIO laptop
M1400 Tablet PC + external CD/RW drive, USB mouse and keyboard
HP Digital camera
Aiptek DV100 video camera
Xbox + games
Playstation 2 + games
PSP + games
Two portable DVD/MP3 players
*Burned MP3 CDs (numerous)
Crossover cable
one DC to AC converter (need to purchase a second one)
Power strip

Software
Microsoft Streets & Trips w/ GPS
OneNote
Skype
Firefox, Internet Explorer
iTunes (podcasts mostly), Yahoo Music Engine, Winamp
SecureFX, SecureCRT (for FTP and ssh)
Notetab Light
Outlook 2003, Gmail
Adobe Photoshop
Zinio (for reading magazines)
Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies

Sounds like a great trip, especially if you like to drive! "3,359.9 miles with drive time of 52 hours, 37 minutes, which according to software projection is 7 days of scheduled driving."

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Posted by Anita @ 04:33 AM PST [Link]

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