Meta-blogging

Mon - January 26, 2009

Changing bits and pieces

Category renames

"Exploring the Bard" has now become "Why anybody would wanna be an actor..." The category name is a take-off on one of Miss Hannigan's lines from Annie: "Why anybody would wanna be an orphan is beyond me." The change is so that I can stick other theater-related stuff besides St. Louis Shakespeare in here -- reviews of plays by other companies that I see, and also any other futile forays I make into the acting world myself, such as last Saturday's exercise in futility, or maybe if I dig up the bucks and convince Hubs to go to The Prom (aka The Kline Awards ceremony.)

I'm also moving all my "From the birds..." stuff into the "Nature" category, just to simplify things a wee bit.

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Tue - January 13, 2009

Whoops, I missed it again

Another anniversary gone by

With school starting back up, my blogiversary flew right by without me noticing. 4 years and counting.

My first posts were made January 9, 2005 -- copies of some of my previously-written humorous essays. Since then the blog has been filled with birds, kids, humor, geekiness, the popular media, the local theater, and life in general for a soccer mom in the midwest. The posting rate has slowed down as the busy-ness in my family life has picked up because of my three kids becoming teenagers.

Thanks to everybody who hangs around.

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Sat - April 19, 2008

Excellent

I gots me an atta-girl

KC at All the World's a Stage gave me an award! Now it's my turn to pass on the love to some of my favorite bloggers: (In no particular order, guys.)

Yeah, but Houdini didn't have these hips -- Family life (including Down Syndrome) for an aspiring writer.

Konagod -- Opinions, cats, gardening, home maintenance, and more opinions. Some great music vids. Pics to go with.

Sir Robin Rides Away -- Books, movies, travel, and being a dad.

writing as jo(e) -- Teaching, family life, and a great appreciation of nature. And some of the most gorgeous nature photos you'll find on the web.

Destined to be the "crazy cat woman" -- kids, cats, and just about everything life can throw at you. All at once.

Yeah, there's a pattern here. None of these are "theme" blogs. They're all diaries; people sharing their lives. And although there are excellent blogs out there for politics, or entertainment, or to bring together a community of people who share a particular interest or disease, this is the kind of blogging that interests me. These people have become friends, and I check up on how they're doing regularly.

Soooo, you guys -- spread the cheer, and don't forget to let me know when you've done so!

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Mon - January 7, 2008

Blog-iversary

Three years and still going

Wednesday is the start of my fourth year of blogging, but seeing how this week is going, I'm apt not to remember to say anything. So I'm jumping the gun. Sue me.

I don't keep category statistics separated out by year. For the three years, there have been 926 entries. No new categories this year. Mom-blogging leads the way with 238 for the three years. Commentary comes in second with 126. Fangirl is third with 115. After that the counts drop below 100, with things like Food, Fun and Games, Home Maintenance, and Humor running at 50 or greater.

Highlights:

I started off the year announcing both our big Hawaii vacation and my intention to get my bod a little more svelt for the occasion. The vacation was fun (though the flights were not) and I did drop somewhere between 10 and 15 pounds before it happened through both diet and exercise, both of which I need to get back to work on.

For Valentine's Day, I got a killer case of bronchitis and a bright pink iPod to accompany me to the gym.

In March my husband lost his youngest paternal aunt to cancer. This was also the time Elizabeth Edwards was dealing with the reoccurrence of hers, and I had a bit to say about dealing with diagnosis and treatment.

In April I rearranged the blog to the three-column format you see on the main page.

In May we got a new kitchen floor, and I explained the difference between "random" and "evenly distributed" as it relates to the iPod shuffle function and assured Brave Sir Robin that honestly, his didn't secretly know his social life.

In late May I got the bright idea to redo Daughter's bedroom a la japonnaise. Because the hot weather lasted well into the start of the school year, we never got the walls painted or the roller "shoji" screen installed on her window, but you can check out all the other projects in Home Maintenance.

In August my observations on Shakespeare productions, both local and via Hollywood / Pinewood, got me hooked into the local acting crowd via their blogging contingent. I resolved to start crewing for them, should my crazy schedule allow. Hubs and I ended up working the fundraiser for St. Louis Shakespeare, where I purchased a walk-on roll in their spring production of Comedy of Errors. Auditions? Who needs 'em? (Bonus: no nasty lines to memorize. Walk here, stand here. Cheer. I can do this semi-convincingly.) Oh, and the water heater and the dryer both went on strike at the same time. The dryer was fixable. The water heater was not.

I made a couple of fun birthday cakes this year, and a great, genuine Louisiana po-boy place opened up close to us.

I put out our hummingbird feeder this year, and saw a peacock strolling down the sidewalk of our neighborhood .

We did lots of memes, but perhaps the most telling was the one about music from when you were 18. I added YouTube clips, because misery loves company. Macros were big this year and of course I jumped on the bandwagon, but everybody's favorite funneh was the Pachelbel Rant.

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Mon - November 19, 2007

Virus alert

Auuugggghhhhh

I'm getting all sorts of reject notices for spam...

Which means that somebody who has my blog address in their email address book, or somebody who has a blog I've commented on, has a virus.

Most of the addresses rejecting the spam are from countries in the former Soviet Union, so I'm not too awfully worried about my blog email being on their spammers list. But all the reject notices are making it through my spam filters and it's really annoying.

Everybody scan now!

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Sun - July 1, 2007

Hey Na, Hey Na

My iMac's back!

No, I didn't take a little impromptu vacation.

You know the joke about how computers must really run on smoke, because if you ever let the smoke out, they don't run any more?

Last Monday afternoon I was surfin' teh Internets when my computer powered off. No muss, no fuss, just "click." Even though I hadn't moved, I immediately checked to see if I'd kicked the surge protector strip. It was still lit and happy. So I punched the power switch on the computer.

Nothin'.

So I cycled the power on the surge protector strip, then punched the power switch on the computer.

Smoke started coming out of the slot on the back of the computer. With that nasty, stinky, melting electrical-insulation smell.

Oh. Sh!t. I unplugged the computer from the surge strip, and cranked the kitchen ceiling fan up on high. The whole first floor stank.

Of course, I'd skipped the automatic monthly back-up just a couple of days earlier because I was in the middle of something and couldn't be bovvered to hike down to the basement and grab a DVD. I figured I was, um, screwed.

But luckily we'd paid the protection money, er... purchased the AppleCare package. Because guess who is one year and TWO MONTHS old.

We took her to the Genius Bar Tuesday. The guy said it was probably just the power and that the hard drive should be fine. Whew. He said, "Yeah, it does stink, doesn't it?" Then he said it didn't have to go out of town to be fixed. They were running a couple of days behind with the big iPhone release Friday, but they ought to have it for us Saturday.

Wednesday he called to say that he'd replaced the power but it still didn't boot, so he was waiting on a part that was on order. He still thought it would be ready on the weekend. "And boy did it stink when I opened it." Ok, I get it already.

They called today (Sunday) after lunch and we went up to get her. Turns out the other part was the mother board. Baby had a melt-down, yes she did.

We plugged her in and powered her up, and everything's right where it should be. Yays.

But if you get your nose right up on her, she still stinks.

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Thu - April 5, 2007

Fooling iBlog

In which I make more work for myself

I've spent most of two days trying to convince iBlog to have it my way. I just wanted to go to three columns so one did not have to scroll clear to hell-and-gone to find my blogroll.

Like all "assisting" software, it wants to do a lot of things for me that I don't want done. Therefore I spend time not only teaching myself how to code the html for what I want done, but then I must teach myself what my software is doing (and where) that means it's ignoring my html.

So now we're in three-column format on the main page; fun junk to the left, blog navigation and blogroll to the right. The rest of the pages (category, single-entry, search-by-date) are still in two-column format, but I've tried to take most of the left-column stuff out of them, and the blogroll.

iBlog, being its usual lazy self, won't change some stuff like category pages until I've made an entry in that particular category. And the search-by-date stuff may never change for old years. Or maybe it will. What-EV-er.

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Wed - April 4, 2007

New blogroll section

Entertainment pull-out

I've taken the strictly-entertainment blogs and sites and given them their own section. Aren't you thrilled?

There are a couple of bloggers who discuss various shows every week (when they aren't in reruns) but their blogs aren't in this section because that's not all they're about.

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Tue - April 3, 2007

I've added to my wish list

I'm just sayin', is all

Because you can't tell when I've updated it otherwise.

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Sat - March 24, 2007

What's in a name?

Because. That's why.

Every once in a while somebody says, "Great blog name. Why'd you pick it?" Once in a blue moon somebody asks if I'm a fan of the Scottish band Camera Obscura.

The answer to the second question first: No. Didn't even know they existed until I went Googling about looking for a good icon for the blog. I understand they're pretty good, but they just haven't pinged the radar big-time on this side of the Pond yet.

Now the first question -- why'd I name the blog that. About the time I started blogging, Girl With a Pearl Earring was in heavy rotation on HBO and Cinemax. Not only was I entranced with Peter Webber's ability to make a movie where nearly every shot mimicked a famous Dutch painting, but the geek in me loved that the painter character of Vermeer brought in a camera obscura to insure that what he was seeing in three dimensions would work as well in two dimensions. Legend is that the real Vermeer used a camera for all of his paintings; he painted from the 2-D image projected by the camera rather than by looking at his model.

A camera obscura struck me as a decent metaphor for a blog: A tiny view of life is translated for the pleasure of the viewers. And now up with my email address is a link to a really good site about cameras obscura.

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Fri - March 23, 2007

Wish list

Because I am a brazen so-n-so

I've stuck a link to a page with my Wish List over there on the side with my email and About Me page. This is mostly for my parents, who are always wanting to know what I want for my birthday or Christmas and I never can think of anything right away.

Right now it's got a replacement for those cake pans I was complaining about earlier and a DVD I'd like to have. I'll probably add a couple more things as I think about 'em.

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Sun - March 18, 2007

Hey kids, what time is it?

Like you don't have a clock at the top of your computer screen anyway

Thanks to the Misplaced Midwesterner for Clocklink.com. Lots of fun clocks for websites and wallpaper.

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Mon - March 12, 2007

2007 Bloggies

Check 'em out, update your bookmarks

I'm not going to list all the nominees or even all winners; just the truly weird and wonderful, and some I intend to tack on over to the side there. Click on over to the Bloggies site and satisfy your insatiable curiosity fo' yo'sef, Elephant Children.

A special shout-out to Zoe at My Boyfriend is a Twat for winning her third consecutive title as Best European Blog.

Cute Overload beat out Dooce, Boing Boing, Gizmodo, and PostSecret for Best American Blog. Teh Cutes have got some pull with the voters. Any time you need an "awwwww" fix, head on over.

Best Craft Blog (and I think this one uses the term "Craft" in its loosest sense): Make: Blog. A quick scroll-down reveals how to make: Mylanta mint chocolate chip ice cream (urp), your own bio-diesel, a Gummy Bear Rug (that's a bear-shaped rug made of Gummy Bears), and the video for the now-famous beer-launching refrigerator.

Best Food Blog is Help! I Have a Fire in My Kitchen. It's a site that claims to be for the cooking-unknowledgable and -impaired. Right now they're running a cake contest, and the first one I hit was a recipe for Super Easy Black Forest Cake for when you're disinclined to put all of the work into one that a bakery would. Hmmm, Hubs' birthday is Friday...

The ever-snarky Go Fug Yourself won Best Entertainment Blog and Most Humorous Blog. I pop over daily for an "Oh no they di'n't" fix.

Wonkette beat out HuffPo, Instapundit, Daily Kos and War Room for Best Political Blog.

Gizmodo won Best Technology Blog and Best-Designed Blog. They'll provide you with info on the latest toys and rumors from the big guys. All you bed-potato laptoppers should check out their entry on the LapDawg. They were also up for Blog of the Year, Best Writing, Most Humorous, and Best American Blog. Popular, no?

Slashdot got the Lifetime Achievement Award, and PostSecret got Best Topical Blog, Weblog of the Year, and Best Community Blog.

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Sun - March 11, 2007

Sun - February 25, 2007

Blogroll update

A few additions

Who-vies could check out the Torchwood sites; lots of chatter and some photos of next season's Doctor Who filming.

The others are blogosphere friends: Minstrel Boy, Rachel, Liz, John.

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Technorati fun

Rearranging house

National De-lurking Week

Blogiversary