Feeling rather Martha today, I made soap. Veteran soap makers would say I actually just "rebatched" soap, since I have no patience and decided to melt Neutrogena in the microwave and add some smelly things. First idea, jasmine tea with dried lavender, induced nausea, so I opted for grated lemon peel and (in another bar) rosemary. The bars aren't very good looking and still pretty much smell like Neutrogena, but my creative urge has been satisfied.
The soundtrack to Velvet Goldmine is popular in South Korea (#12).
Apparently Portland (Oregon) is being called the Silicon Forest now. Maybe if New Orleans or Florida become big tech hubs, they could be the Silicon Swamp.
Let's think back to 1984 for a few minutes. Remember Hard Hat Mack? While I was never so ubergeeky as a child to play video games all day, I did have a few token favorites, and this was one of them. Pop those girders into place, bolt them in, retrieve stolen lunch boxes, and sneer at the vandals who said bad things about your momma. Now, jump forward about eight years. In the late nineties, I did a web search for the game, to no avail. But, (now back to the near-present) last night I searched again, and voilą, there it was. And an Apple IIe emulator to run it. My, but how the web has grown.I must apologize for my slanderous remarks about Netscape not being able to handle PHP. My bad; Netscape and PHP are good bedfellows. It's poorly-formed tables that Netscape can't handle, which as I've had trouble with that before, should have been my first guess. Turns out Dreamweaver auto-added some code to one of my files (gasp! how GoLive-esque!) that closed off a table too soon, and poor little Netscape couldn't figure it out.
Nerd tip: If you have server-side includes that have opening tags (like <td>) without the corresponding closing tags (</td>), and you don't want Dreamweaver to close them off for you, go to Edit > Preferences > Code Rewriting, and uncheck the "Fix Invalidly Nested and Unclosed Tags" box. Okay. That's enough nerdliness for one post.
My uncle is now blogging.
Finally got the europe photos online. Plus, I put my PHP diva skills to work and devised a whole new indexing scheme complete with thumbnails for all of the events in the photo gallery. Caveat: So far I know it's IE safe; Netscape seems to be having some bugs serving the PHP (raise your hand if you're surprised).Ben made me cry yesterday. He has a great love for firefighters.
Addendum: You'll have to click "previous" on his page a few times to find the Sept. 18 entry, since he doesn't have permalinks.
Don't you hate it when you inadvertently start some gargantuan application (like Word or Netscape) while trying to do something else? I'm always bumping the wrong icon on the Win98 toolbar on my way to some other program. And quite frequently I'll want to look at a jpeg, and instead of just dragging it into an already-open browser window (bringing instant gratification), I'll just double click it (trained like a monkey, I am) and wait while Photoshop goes through its lengthy startup process. Shouldn't there be a quick-cancel button somewhere to put those pesky programs away before they start fully? Who's with me?
In response to the national crisis, Brad suggests the following policy changes:
- I support the reinstatement of the draft in an extremely limited form. Specifically, I think the President should draft Aaron Sorkin as his speechwriter, and should petition the Congress for sufficient funding to keep Aaron supplied with 'shrooms or whatever pharmaceuticals he needs to craft the inspirational rhetoric he gives the fictional President on The West Wing every Wednesday.
Watched the BBC's delightfully whacked Gormenghast last night. Included scenes like the following:
Paranoid sister: "I swear I heard a noise upstairs. It sounded like, well, a little like feet.
Brother:"Well, sister, when you boil it right down, what's the problem with feet? You know, I've always found them quite useful. Especially for walking. It's almost as if they were made for the very purpose.
You know you're a big nerd when you notice misspellings in HTTP environment variables (HTTP_REFERER).
While it feels futile to even comment on the tragedy, I thought I might point my handful of readers to some useful resources. First, as Jish reminds us, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" (Ghandi). Amazon is making perhaps the best usage ever for its Honor System by accepting donations. Jason has links to some chilling eyewitness accounts from bloggers in NYC. And, as someone who had a family member on a (non-hijacked) plane on Tuesday morning, I'm extremely grateful that the FAA was able to bring so many passengers safely home that day.
Seeing all of these simply designed web pages, I just want to redo my whole site. (What? Add a new section without having to tweak Photoshop layers in some graphic?) While other things (like finding a job) should take precedence, don't be surprised if this here locale gets a little makeover within a week.
Catching up on my old New Yorkers, I pretty much devoured the music issue (Aug 20 and 27) in one sitting. Brilliant article about Erica Feidner, a Steinway salesperson who matches people with their dream pianos. Thoughtful interview with PJ Harvey. And, a movie review with lines like "This is a winter's tale wrapped in crappy knitwear," and "[He was] a sort of Thor Heyerdahl without the spirit of adventure."
Thoughts on cars, traffic, crosswalks, etc.:
- First, a usability gripe. All around Europe are the audio crosswalk cues. When it's safe for a pedestrian to cross the street, the crosswalk controller beeps repeatedly, alerting those who can't see the green man. Great, right? Well, yes, but really only at simple intersections. They seem to be extremely hazardous at multi-street, islanded intersections. A few days ago I saw a blind woman and her guide dog nearly get hit by a Ford Focus when they tried to cross a wide, twisty intersection that was only safe to cross as far as the center island.
- And speaking of the Ford Focus, it appears to be the VW of Europe.
- When I first arrived in Europe (and Drea will attest to this), I acted like an adolescent male, oogling all of the cars. My favorite superhero green is more prevalent here than in the US, and on the smart cars and Renaults, prrrrrr.
Grammar hounds: which of the following words can you omit from the following sentence (found in a tour brochure): "and it includes a burial site to bury the dead."
Dublin building names: it's where it's at. (Feel free to interpret that grammatically questionable sentence any way you choose.) Yesterday, I passed "The Waxie Dargle" and "Knobs and Knockers" (which is either a pub or a hardware store, not sure). Check back in a week or so for a picture of the storefront.
Went on a groovy bike tour this morning (that makes three, count 'em, three bike tours in three cities in a week and a half) throughout the cobbled roads of Dublin. Included a pint (well, a wee glass for me) of ale at a discreet pub that closes its doors after letting the 7 AM croud in. Felt quite the local.
Coming soon: a list of vegetarian-friendly restaurants that Andrea and I have visited on our travels. We've done much better than expected (barring the fish and potato soup incident in Valencia), mostly just by serendipity.
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