“Is it just me, or does she look like a goth librarian?”
—kitanzi, on Liv Tyler’s appearance at the Oscars
Month: February 2004 Page 1 of 3
So, I’m thinking that if I actually start talking about the books I’m reading, it’ll encourage me to spend more time reading them. I used to read a lot, but in recent years I’ve started spending too much time in front of the computer and not enough time with a book in my hand. Time to fix that.
Currently, I’m in the middle of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, which is one of the most entertaining general overviews of science and the history of science that I’ve ever come across. I really enjoy a genre of non-fiction that I call “anecdotal history”, by which I mean “history told in a nonfiction but entertaining manner”. I also have Kenneth Davis’s “Don’t Know Much About History”, which I’d read before but only recently reacquired.
Last week, I read Nerve.com’s Guide to Sexual Etiquette, which was a marvelously informative book with a droll style. It was slightly different in focus from The Bride Wore Black Leather (And He Looked Fabulous), which is a different sex etiquette book focusing more on altsex than more usual fare. And I’m reading Dan Savage’s Savage Love in pieces. As a collection of columns, its easy to read in small pieces. (What I sometimes refer to as a “bathroom book”).
So, what are YOU reading right now?
Yay, snow! It snowed it snowed it snowed!
Living my entire life in the southeastern United States, snow has never been the sort of thing we got enough of really lose its fascination. I love waking up and finding a soft blanket of white covering everything, seeing the frost in the trees and the air being impossibly crisp.
I love standing outside in the dark when the snow is falling heavy around me. I love curling up next to a fire with a good book, while outside heaven drifts down to the earth in tiny flakes.
Yeah, I like snow. Even if it’s just a half and inch and the whole city shuts down as a result. Folks from up north like to make fun of us for this, but I don’t care. I know the reasons, and I know that it will just be a memory in two days time. There’s no need to shovel, or salt the roads, or do any of those things, because it’s just a moment, and the moment will soon be gone.
But until then, there’s snow, and I am seven years old again and school is closed and mom has told me I can go out and play until lunchtime.
Bliss.
The following conversation occurred on #filkhaven this morning.
Gwenzilla boggles at a mailing list message.
<Gwenzilla> I have never seen anybody spell “library” with a “y”.
<Gwenzilla> Lybrary.
Gwenzilla> WTF?
<Gwenzilla> Am I just too pedantic? I mean, how could someone possibly think it might be spelled that way?
<phydeaux_work> Are they being silly, offhand?
<phydeaux_work> I know I used to have an “evylle grynne”
<phydeaux_work> But that was deliberate
phydeaux_work is amazed nobody’s yet called me on the grammatical error in my LJ “me in a box” posting
<doc> perhaps yt’s an ardent feminist womyn who has determymed that the letter “I” is a tool of the patryarchy and must be removed from all wryting to enure true equalyty?
Gwenzilla twitches.
<phydeaux_work glares at doc
<doc> or a new ager who thynks that usyng y for i makes it look more eldrytch and ancyent?
<phydeaux_work> femynyst, dude
<doc> oops. myssed yt. do you know how hard yt ys to wryte thys way?
<phydeaux_work> Y have a slyght ydea
<phydeaux_work> Gwen: Perhaps they misspelled lye-brary, after reading too much of HL Mencken’s caustic humor
Gwenzilla aies.
<doc> now, yf thei’re preppi new agers, thei wyll not onli replace the i with y, but vyce versa.
<doc> thys ys almost as bad as l33t speek 🙂
<phydeaux_work> Owys! That makes mi brayn ache!
Gwenzilla readies the knife.
<phydeaux_work> Y thynk Y’ll go and get miself some more tea ynstead
One of my dearest friends, behind a friends lock, posed to us, her friends, a series of questions on the nature of love, and expectations, and meeting the needs of partners while getting one’s own needs met. With her permission, I am reposting my answers to her questions here, since there are some people who read this journal who do not read that journal.
Earlier today, I posted my entry in the “Meme in a Box” meme. epi_lj started up a variant which I liked, as modified by eleri, I think:
The new variant is: “So, say I’m meeting a new person–blind date, new friend, who knows. And I want them to have some idea of what kind of person I am, and who I am. But I can’t actually tell them in so many words. Instead, I want to give them a box, with things in it for them to look at/read/listen to/taste/whatever beforehand.
What one thing would you add to the box to represent me or my tastes?”
Once upon a time, I took a lot of photographs. Whenever I go somewhere with a descent camera, I tend to snap off a lot of pictures, because I enjoy it. And when I get home, I put them on my webpage.
What I’ve always been really bad about is actually going through and captioning them, and providing thumbnails, and all the other things that really make a photo archive usable by, say, people who aren’t me. It was always one of those “things to get around to” that I never got around to.
Well, some time ago,
Wow.
No, let me make this clear…
WOW!
The software was everything I wanted and more. It took a couple of hours to get working, mostly having to do with upgrading PHP and Apache on my server and installing several graphics manipulation packages for the program to do its magic. But once it was working, it was amazing. It automatically generates thumbnail pages, in a grid sized to your choosing. You can manipulate images on the fly, rotating them, resizing them, reordering them, however you like. If you want to remove a shot, just click on the “delete photo” button, confirm your choice, and its gone, and the thumbnails are regenerated to get rid of the gap. I was impressed.
The first batch of photos I set up were the shots I took at the Quinze Filk Festival last October. Those had seen these before will know that there were a large number of completely useless shots mixed in with some that were rather good. Once they’d been imported into Gallery, kitanzi went through all 900 shots and threw away nearly half of them. There’s still some that are fuzzy or blurred, but the overall set is quite watchable. (And now needs to be captioned.).
The program managed uploading pictures as well, so it can be used to completely take over the management of this entire set of my webpage. You can even enable it to allow visitors to leave comments on pictures, so they can help with captioning, or just giving feedback on your photography.
I’m very happy. If you want to see the whole archive, go here. Note that large sections of these photos STILL aren’t captioned. Its the ongoing project. But the photos are all there.
Now, I just need a new camera. I was lusting after the new 8 megapixel cameras while browsing at Circuit City last night, though the reviews I read on the Sony DSC-F828 lead me to believe it’s not quite mature enough to spend that kind of money. I am thinking strongly about the Canon G5, which fits much more easily into my budget. Then I can take a few thousand MORE photos for my website.
bounce Happy ACat!