Jinjifore

Losers by a Landslide

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:45:08 GMT

I am so behind on NaNoWriMo today. (So, naturally, I'm posting instead of writing.)

I've been playing with AO3 today and haven't even put word one on my NaNoWriMo story. I've got a comfortable cushion at the moment, but my goal is to be done before I go to my Mom's to become her Thanksgiving helper. The cooking process begins, ideally, two days beforehand, so that doesn't give me a whole lot of time. Granted, we're celebrating on Friday instead of Thursday this year, but that's only one extra day.

We're having Thanksgiving a day late this year for a number of reasons, one of which is that my sister lives in North Carolina. Many of you probably heard about the 1-40 landslide closing off the main route through the Smokies from North Carolina to Tennessee. A lot of you also probably saw the video of the landslide that occurred a couple hundred miles south, on Highway 64.

What you probably don't know, unless you live in the area, is that Highway 64 is one of the better alternate routes through the Smokies if one is heading from North Carolina to the area around Chattanooga, especially if one's hometown is right on 64 (like ours). My sister and brother-in-law are probably going to make lemonade from the lemons and just detour all the way through Atlanta so he can visit his family, but that's a pretty significant detour.

So, Friday Thanksgiving. At least the grocery stores will be open if we run out of stuff.

Elbow Room, Elbow Room ...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:31:55 GMT

Aaah, the twice-yearly hard drive purge. Nine whole gigabytes in which to stretch out, for a while anyway. I tend to dread doing it, because while my backing up involves sticking a thumb drive in and throwing over the few tiny text files that are new, the Great Hard Drive Purge involves actually moving computer stuff around and disconnecting drives from PCs and hooking them up to Macs and other gargantuan efforts. Which is why I only tend to do it when I'm having to delete yesterday's podcasts to have room for today's.

I realize that 9GB doesn't sound like much, but my entire hard drive is only 80GB, and frankly, if it wasn't for my habit of saving certain podcasts, I'd probably not even be close to filling it up ever. Fan fiction, after all, doesn't take up a lot of space. It took me three years of obsessive story saving to hit 500MB on my Torchwood folder, after all. Though, admittedly, if I saved the HTML instead of just the text, it would likely be about ten times that size. Which is why I save the text. :)

Then again, I have about two terabytes hooked up to the PC, so it's not like I'm practicing hard drive economy anywhere else.

Well-Meaning Cats

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:09:21 GMT

Greebo tried to assist in my word count yesterday. When I'm using the computer in bed he thinks it a prime opportunity for snuggle time. He may be right about this, but he also tends to want to snuggle right on top of where I'm using the mouse. This means that sometimes the mouse does things I hadn't necessarily planned, especially when I give up trying to move it around under seventeen pounds of cat and just leave it there. Yesterday, he managed to select all the text in my Nanowrimo file, and when I pasted it all in later my stats returned a miraculous 22K+ word count, almost exactly twice what the count should have been. One of us (and I have my suspicions) had duplicated the entire novel in the file.

Good kitty.

NaNoLOL

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:16:22 GMT

I'd totally forgotten about the NanoCat Word Counter. (Because it is very important to see my word count in as many forms as humanly possible.)

This is why I was very happy to see that the widgets are finally working today. Well, mostly working. There seems to be a bit of decimal issue with the full progress reports, but it's not a big deal. Unfortunately, I discovered that, despite my doing my own math, I actually missed my word count yesterday by 14 words. Fourteen. Words.

Is this really a big deal? Well, okay, no. But I like to see those little green squares/bars/fields instead of the red ones, and it niggles me that I was 14 words short of that magic green yesterday, despite over producing by four hundred or so words just to be sure I'd made my goal.

I know how it happened. 50,000 / 30 * 5 = 8,333, and yesterday's total was 8,724. I was, therefore, ahead of the minimum pace of 1,667 words a day. In fact, according to today's progress report, I only need to hit 1,650 a day to finish. Yesterday, that mark was 1,654 [The year of Christopher Marlowe's birth! Exciting!]. How many words did I actually write yesterday? 1,640. So, despite being ahead of the minimum pace required to finish, I still didn't get my little green status. Dammit.

And yet, I have still managed to crack 10,000 words. :)

NaNoWriMo--Paranoid? Me?

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:59:16 GMT

3883 / 50000 words. 8% done!

I don't know if it's aided my writing productivity, but since I started using the CPAP machine I have dreamed and dreamed and dreamed. I had regular dreams before, but it's astounding the scope and depth and length of the dreams I've had the last four nights. I guess that's what happens when I'm not waking up forty times a night and interrupting my dream cycle. My brain has free rein to work through the day's crap without interference, and it seems to be making up for lost time.

I'm a bit paranoid about NaNoWriMo this year because last year was the first year I'd ever finished early and you all know what happened then. While I feel pretty certain that that was a one-time mishap (pretty certain), I can't help but think that I should maybe push a little harder this year, too.

Just in case. :)

This and That and NaNoWriMo

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:42:35 GMT

Yep, it's that time of year again, when I move my NaNoWriMo bookmarks up to the Toolbar. Of course, the site designers have, as usual, rearranged everything so that most of them are broken, but re-setting the links is always a nice time-waster those first few days.

I have to say that, despite thinking about what I'm going to write since the beginning of October, the actual arrival of NaNoWriMo snuck up on me this year. I've been tootling along with it in the back of my mind, then suddenly I look up and it's three days before the start.

In other news, I picked up my CPAP machine today. I think it says something that I'm looking forward to strapping the thing on at bedtime. (Probably that I'm willing to do almost anything for a good night's sleep. :))

I also discovered that if you wait until the last few days to buy Halloween candy, you a) don't have time to eat it beforehand and b) can get it on sale. Also, Cheetos are not kosher.

I Am Psychic with My iPod

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:26:53 GMT

I had my second sleep study over the weekend, and it went really well. I used the CPAP machine all night, and did not, according to the sleep technician, have any apneas. \0/ (I did, in fact, make actual victory arms when he told me this.) I did feel claustrophobic a couple of times, but it was very mild and I was able to talk myself out of it by remembering that the machine was there to help me breathe.

The mask wasn't too bad, and didn't really keep me from sleeping. We'll see if that changes once I'm no longer so tired that I don't care, but for now I'm more than willing to strap the thing on if it means better sleep. I'm also, on advice from thewordoffred, going to look into the possibility of just using a nose tube. We'll see.

I also found out that I apparently re-arrange my iPod in my sleep. I go to sleep listening to podcasts, and while I'm falling asleep I move the iPod from side to side as I turn over. This behavior, according to the sleep technician, does not change once I'm asleep (or, indeed, after the iPod's sleep timer has turned it off). As I toss and turn, I move the non-functioning iPod around with me without ever waking up. This may explain why I haven't yet strangled myself with the headphones in my sleep. :)

NaNo-NaNo

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:28:22 GMT

Since all the cool kids are doing it...;)

I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year. I even have a story idea and everything. If you want to buddy me, my NaNoWriMo username is Jinjifore, my user number is 129439.

I don't tend to post a lot about NaNo during the month, bar the occasional word count updates, so if you're still putting up with my daily Torchwood tweets NaNoWriMo will be a mere drop in the bucket.

Also, for some reason the site isn't showing that I participated (won, even) last year. I need to find out what's up with that. ETA: Found out. I have to update it manually, which you'd think I'd know from having had to do it every year before.

An Eggs-acting Science

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:57:00 GMT

Remember the Great Boiled Egg Debate? My sister has unearthed the answer: We were all wrong.

Our New Heroine: Ardi

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:50:46 GMT

Boo has been really fascinated by the discovery of "Ardi." It started last week, when she asked me why we have hairs all over our bodies, and I explained about our evolutionary ancestors having hair to protect them. Just a couple of days later the news about Ardi finally hit the front pages. When the drawings of what Ardi may have looked like appeared, I showed them to Boo and explained a bit about how Ardi's traits have changed some of our thoughts on hominid evolution.

But I think the big attraction for her, really, is the simple fact that Ardi--and Lucy--are girls, like her. I know it was just chance that two of the major game-changers in hominid evolution happened to be females, but it really hit me hard to see how much that simple fact changed Boo's perceptions. Ardi and Lucy might be hairy, and have ape-like features and long arms and--in Ardi's case, anyway--feet that look like hands, but they're still both girls, and she can identify with that.

I really hope that as she gets older, we don't always have to go back four million years for our female role models. :)

Sleeeeeep... Apnea

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:42:09 GMT

In order to avoid blathering incessantly about Yet Another Health Issue, I decided--this time--to wait until I had a firm diagnosis.

You may recall the Back Pain Issue of a couple of months ago. I was actually given the thumbs-up by my physical therapist week before last over that, which was terrific. I'm back to functioning normally again. Unfortunately, "normally" has become, "must chug a constant stream of caffeine to avoid face-planting into my dinner."

I thought at first that it was a holdover from the muscle relaxant I was taking for my back, but when the symptoms weren't much better a couple of weeks later, my doctor referred me to a sleep specialist. After reviewing my history, he said that there was a really good (80-85%) chance that I had sleep apnea. I had a sleep study last weekend, and yesterday the doctor confirmed the diagnosis.

He described it as a mild case, which I was glad to hear because he then told me I'd stopped breathing 46 times during the study. (?!) Apparently, it averaged to eight times an hour, which is right in the range of 5-10 apneas per hour that defines "mild."

The go-to treatment for the type of sleep apnea I have is to use a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine during sleep. The idea is that the machine will force a constant stream of air into my mouth and nose, keeping the airway open. It's inconvenient and the mask reportedly gives the wearer a certain Darth Vader-esque look, but it works. I have another appointment set up three weekends hence to fit the mask--meaning I go back to the sleep center and they'll figure out the minimum pressure levels I need to overcome the apnea. Since I'll still have to breathe out against the pressure inside in the mask, it's important find the lowest effective setting.

I have to say that, while I'm a bit freaked out (46 times!!!), mostly what I'm feeling is relief that there's a fix for this. I haven't been this tired since I was pregnant, and at least when I was pregnant naps helped. It's been a real struggle to accomplish even a bare minimum of physical tasks, which haven't even included things like housework. I'm told that I'll feel much better once I start using the machine, so that's what I'm going to believe. :)

Mama: 1; Vowels: 0

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:23:46 GMT

One of Boo's homework assignments is that she has to write a sentence every day describing something she learned in class. Usually I ask her what she wants to write, then I help her with the spelling by sounding the words out. Not surprisingly (because this is, after all, English that she's trying to spell), she doesn't always guess the correct vowel, and last night she got really discouraged about it.

This is one of those parent situations where there was really nothing I could think of that was encouraging. Saying what I felt was the truth ("Yeah, English is a bitch to spell and even if you're really smart you'll probably be really grateful for the invention of the spellchecker for the rest of your life") wasn't, I thought, exactly the uplifting words of encouragement she needed.

So, I told her about The Great Vowel Shift instead.

My thinking--if it can be called such--was that if she knew that the vowel sounds weren't always spelled the same, that they were arbitrary and messy, she might feel a bit better about finding it hard to do. Amazingly enough, this worked.

Later, I had to Google how to spell "pink" in Hebrew, but still, mostly a win in the mom column.

Speaking of Computers...

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:06:46 GMT

I'm restoring my confidence by messing with the Windows computer, and I decided that I would conduct my semi-sporadic search for a multi-file search and replace utility for Windows. At the moment, I'm completely unable to survive without TextWrangler, which allows me to re-do those teeny coding errors I might make across twenty files. The only difficulty is that it's MacOS only.

Shockingly enough, I found one this time. It's called Actual Search and Replace and it does exactly what I want. It searches across multiple text files for words or phrases, displays them in context and also--as the name suggests--can perform multi-file search and replace. (Take that, SmartQuotes!) Joy!

Well, if "joy" means "worth $30." The free version works for thirty days, which is enough time to make a decision about buying it, but I've been really spoiled by Bare Bones freeware the last fifteen years. Still, it would possibly enable me to not go completely insane if my Mac craps out on me, which is certainly worth thirty bucks.

I just hope I'm not jinxing my Mac by eyeing other utilities...

My Huge Computer Freak-Out

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:05:29 GMT

Just had a huge computer scare, :( which I will now inflict upon my friends' list in excruciating detail because I'm still freaked out.

I spent the last couple of days shuffling stories around my Torchwood folder, figuring out which stories I'd already tagged, and which ones I still needed to go through. The whole folder has nearly 3,000 stories in it, and one way I organize them is to assign them color labels for their genre/quality (Liked, Hurt/Comfort, Humor, etc.). Unfortunately, the labels don't transition to Windows, which meant that I couldn't find stories as efficiently from my netbook. So I came up with the brilliant (at the time, anyway) idea of making a duplicate folder for my PC backup, one that used folders instead of labels. I copied all the sorted files over and organized them into tidy little folders. So far, so good.

Then I tried copying another batch of stories over, and realized at the last minute that I'd forgotten to use the option key, and I was moving, not copying. I canceled the transfer...and that was when it all began to go wrong.

First, I noticed that everything after "Pa" was in the new folder and not in the old. No problem. I selected them, and tried to move them back en masse. Error. Couldn't copy. So, I went through and matched up the stories and copied them over in smaller batches, trying to figure out which file was causing the problem. Got everything back into the original folder, and decided to just delete the copies in the new folder and start over. I hit the delete option, and the trash was suddenly empty without my emptying it. Oookay. I remembered that I wanted to do something to one of the new folders, opened it...and it was empty.

Now I was starting to freak out. I checked another new folder (the Jack/Ianto one, which has, not surprisingly, most of the stories)...empty. I checked the old folder, still there, thank goodness.

I decided that restarting was in order ASAP, but first I decided that right now would be a good time for a backup. I had a backup copy of the files, but I really, really didn't want to have to sort them all over again. So I popped in my flash drive. Files wouldn't copy. And the folder I tried to copy to, which was my OMG-my-other-two-backups-have-failed backup? Suddenly empty. I took the drive out, tried it on another computer, and the files were there. I started breathing again, but by now I was in a cold sweat because I couldn't back anything up on an external drive. Right, I thought. Zip the folder, and upload it to Megaupload or attach it to an e-mail.

No list of files available for the archive. I was really freaking out by now. Fine, I thought. I can sort it all again if I have to, I just need to save the stuff I created in the last few days. The files wouldn't archive, but I was betting that their little plain text butts would copy-paste into Gmail just fine, even if I couldn't attach them individually.

Which proved to be the case. I had about ten text files that I needed to save, so I attached them to an e-mail and sent it to another account. I discovered in the process that the attachment browse window showed all the disappeared files as existing, so I was hoping it was just a Finder freak-out over the aborted file transfer, and not the end of everything. I was also relieved to find that my backup process is apparently more ingrained than I thought, because I didn't even remember making the last backup, which included everything except the aforementioned ten or so files (and the small heap of fanfiction I'd downloaded, but I wasn't so worried about that because I bookmark everything I want to save, and I knew that, barring sudden deletions, I could just download it all again).

The anti-climactic conclusion: Computer restarted, everything's fine, I do not have to re-sort 3,000 files from the unsorted back-up. I'm currently testing the existence of the disappeared files by backing them the fuck up. Again. Then I'm having a beer. Possibly two.

I'm also taking this as a sign that it might be time to start saving for a new Mac laptop.

Best Thing Ever

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:21:03 GMT

Why didn't I know about the iPod Sleep Timer function before?! I discovered it by accident while trying to use the (useless) alarm feature, and it's the Best Thing Ever. I go to sleep every night listening to podcasts or audio books, and the biggest drawback is that if I fall asleep before turning it off, I have to backtrack for hours to find my place (not to mention the battery issues). If I turn on the Sleep Timer, the window shrinks to fifteen or thirty minutes. Best Thing Ever.

It's the little things that count, really. :)

If It's Alien, It's Ours

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:59:29 GMT

So. We have met Boo's new Head of School...

...and she is Yvonne Hartman.

My husband and I went to a Meet the Head of School and Have Coffee thing this morning, and as I listened to her talk and answer questions I really, really had to work hard not to roll my eyes. Okay, I understand that management jargon is probably the way Things are Done now, but I felt like I was listening to a politician dodge the press rather than a Head of School talk to parents.

I do understand that it's not an easy gig. (In fact, I was amused that the questions were evenly divided between "why aren't the kids running around more?" and "why aren't the kids studying math/science more?", neatly displaying the never-ending conflict of parent expectations in microcosm.) I don't, though, like to come away from a meeting feeling that the person in charge hasn't really said anything. I also feel like that a meeting with her would be more like a battlefield than a conversation.

It's entirely possible that this first impression will be proved wrong, and it's also possible that, even if it isn't wrong, these will be qualities that will make her a good Head of School.

That doesn't mean I won't still think of her saying, "If it's alien, it's ours," every time I see her.

iMom

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 05:12:38 GMT

Spent the weekend at my mother's, doing iPod maintenance and continuing iPod education. My mom, as I may have mentioned, has two iPods in order to keep up with her audiobook habit. While we were on vacation, iPod number one--which had already shown signs of wear and tear--began to really screw up. I brought it home, downloaded the files from it (confirming, by the way, that it was Seriously Screwed Up), and put them all on a new iPod. So far, so good.

While I was in there, and had the files on my hard drive, I decided to look into converting some of her digitized-from-cassette-tape files. The software she was using to capture the audio was called EZ-Something, which not surprisingly didn't have a lot of options. Among the missing options was one to save in any format other than WAV. I knew the WAV files would be gigantic, and I'd always meant to get around to showing her how to convert them to MP3 in iTunes, but it wasn't until I dug into the WAV files she had that I realized how bad it was.

If you've never confronted the hugeness of the WAV format, here's one example:

45-minute audio book file, saved as a WAV: 458MB

Same file, converted to a 56kps MP3: 16MB

After converting her tape files, I saved my mom a total of 100GB of space over both her iPods. Since you can usually get an entire audiobook in a little less than 1GB, that's 100 more books she can cram on. :) We got her backed up and sorted out this weekend, so she's got some room for her backlog.

I lugged home her USB tape deck so I can convert a couple of boxes of her books on tape for her. She'd kind of given up doing it because of the huge files and the tedious process of making them. You have to physically play each tape in order to record the sound on the computer, then you have to export the file as an MP3, which takes Audacity about an hour and a half for a 45-minute file. The math? A 10-hour book takes 30 hours to convert. There's also no way to automatically shut off the recording software once the tape stops playing, so you have to be around to stop the recording (or have a big hard drive :)).

This is my mom's birthday present, by the way. She's just lucky Elizabeth Peters didn't put out a new book this year. :)

Helpful Mouse Tips

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:19:57 GMT

If you buy the same mouse for both your laptops, and for some reason are using both laptops at the same time, try not to wonder why the mouse isn't working every time you pick up the wrong one. At least not after the first three times you do it. Also, possibly be smart enough, after this has happened more than three times, to put stickers or something on one of them.

If you are smart enough to only use one laptop at a time, but have both the trackpad and mouse enabled, make sure that your cat is not sitting on the mouse while you use the trackpad, lest you become convinced that your computer has locked up.

The Great Egg Experiment

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:04:39 GMT

If you don't care about the color of the yolks of your boiled eggs, move along.

If, on the other hand, you're curious about the things that are topics of earnest debate in our family while on vacation, proceed to the cut for two amazing photographs of...boiled eggs.

So, context. My mother can't stand to have dark yolks on her boiled eggs. My sister is less averse to them, but she'd rather they not be, you know, green or anything. (These are things of which I was completely unaware until our vacation, by the way--I honestly don't care what color my boiled eggs are, so long as the yolks aren't either rock-hard or runny in the middle.)

We each boil our eggs thusly:

Me--I put the cold eggs in a pot of unheated water, put them on the stove on high, and set the timer for 25 minutes. Sometimes I wait until the water boils, add the eggs, and then set the timer for 17 minutes.

My mother--She also puts cold eggs in cold water, but then waits until the water boils and sets the timer for 10 minutes.

My brother-in-law--Cold eggs, cold water with--and this is the important part--a dash of salt. He sets his timer for 15 minutes from the cold water stage.

Both my mother and sister say that their techniques result in non-dark yolks. I really never paid much attention (obviously) to my egg yolk color, but sure, I get green-edged yolks sometimes, which I eat quite happily. The issue, as you may perceive, is whether boiling time or salt make the difference. My mother boils for only a short time, my brother-in-law boils for slightly longer and adds salt.

Since we only boiled two batches of eggs during our time at the beach, and didn't really think about experimenting, my sister asked me to please add some salt the next time I boiled eggs and see if it made a difference in the yolk color.

The results:

So, there you are. Slightly green-edged egg yolks. The world can rest easy tonight.

Although, now that I know that you can boil eggs for only ten minutes and have them not be runny, I'll probably be saving myself some egg-boiling time in the future.

Cause and Effect

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:54:22 GMT

When Boo was around a year old, I was diagnosed with arthritis on the left side of my lower back. My doctor told me it's not uncommon for new mommies to develop back problems, because we spend a lot of time picking up and carrying twenty-pound babies, and tend to do it consistently on one arm/hip. I took an anti-inflammatory for a couple of months and changed how I lifted and picked up things and how I sat, focusing on making non-spine-twisting moves and on balancing my baby-lifting. That took care of the pain, and I hadn't had any problems for the last five years.

(You can probably guess where this is going.)

Since I hadn't been bothered with the arthritis for so long, it never occurred to me that, for the last seven months, I've been doing almost everything with my left arm. Lifting, carrying, pulling, etc. And a couple of weeks ago, I suddenly began to feel that familiar "hey, it feels like a knife is stuck in my back" sensation.

This time, though, I was a bit smarter. Instead of waiting for weeks until the pain was nearly unbearable, I made an appointment with my doctor the moment I got back from the beach. The pain was also accompanied by a knotted muscle in my back, so in addition to the usual NSAID regimen, I'm also taking a muscle relaxant. If that hasn't un-knotted the muscle at the end of two weeks, I get to return to physical therapy.

The pain is already a lot better, mostly because I know, now, what kinds of movements and actions make it worse. The muscle relaxant has also helped, I think, if for no other reason than giving me some amazingly good naps. One of the biggest problems with arthritis is that even if the pain doesn't keep you actively awake, you don't get a good sleep cycle when you do sleep. I've been sleeping a lot more, but also feeling really good and well-rested when I wake up. And, frankly, after the pre-surgery pain in my wrist, this is totally bearable. I have every reason to believe that I'll be better in a few weeks, and that the intervening weeks won't be that bad.

I'm just hoping this is the last side-effect of my fall. :)

Catching Up

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 02:53:23 GMT

I've realized that I haven't actually, formally updated anything about my wrist lately. As it happens, no news is good news, but since I've been blithering about it for months I might as well offer closure, too. :)

I went back to the surgeon just before leaving for the beach, and he basically said, "You are healed, go forth." I have about 40 degrees of forward movement in my wrist, and about 60 degrees backward movement. This is not as good as I might have hoped, but in practice I've found that I can do pretty much anything I want. Well, anything that doesn't involve leaning all my weight on my right wrist, but I'm working on that, as well. I'm also continuing to stretch the wrist, in hopes of eking out just a little more freedom of movement, but I'm pretty happy where I am.

I'm also knitting again. :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

I also fared rather well in the "purely vanity" category. I don't think I would actually have cared that much if I'd ended up with a huge messy scar, not if it meant fixing the pain, but as it happens I don't have to test my own vanity. I have one three-inch-long scar on the back of my hand and another about three-quarters of an inch long on the side of my wrist. They're obvious, but not particularly noticeable, if that makes any sense. I'm not sure what my level of self-consciousness would be, but it's apparently way below what I ended up with, so I'm very pleased.

All in all, I feel pretty darn lucky. It was a hellish winter, but I came out of it with all the important things (for instance, knitting) still possible, and I'm not in pain anymore. This is all good. :)

In other news, I'm done rescuing files from my Mom's malfunctioning iPod, and am about three-quarters done transferring the files back into iTunes so I can load them onto her new iPod. This has taken some time, both because I want to make sure that everything's being transferred, and also because I'm converting a bunch of WAV files to MP3. She has a machine that converts cassettes into digital audio, but it saves the files as WAV and we've never really coordinated that "How to convert files to MP3" tutorial I've been promising to do for her. So far, I've saved about 50GB (!?) of space.

I've also plowed through the backlog of Torchwood stories that were posted on LJ during my vacation. Without going into brutal statistics, I estimate that I had to read roughly twice as many stories, and tagged about the same net number as I would have pre-Children of Earth. I would despair, except that I sort of suspected that this would be the case. I also saved a bunch of stories that I didn't tag, some of which may end up working their way into the rec list. We'll have to see.

All in all, it's good to be back.

I Have Returned

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:56:58 GMT

It's 2:30am, and I've reached skip=600 on LJ. Unbelievable as it seems, that actually took me all the way back to the point where I left.

The beach was completely wonderful. I managed to keep both Boo and myself from getting sunburned, despite the fact that she did nothing but run around in the mercilessly hot sun for six solid days. There were four adults to one six-year-old, and between all of us we managed to mostly keep up with her. Mostly.

There was no internet at the condo where we stayed, and I didn't manage to get to anywhere with wireless, so even with the backwards scan through LJ I still have some catching up to do. Starting with the huge pile of Torchwood stories posted in the last ten days. :)

Departing in Pieces

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:44:10 GMT

I'm leaving tomorrow morning for the beach. (Yay!) I won't have internet access for about the next ten days, so I won't be engaging in my usual hobbies of story-finding and Delicious tagging. I'm really hoping I can get occasional access and at least download stories and podcasts, because if not the ten-day backlog of post-Children of Earth stories alone will likely bury me.

I'm actually already packed, and am a little disconcerted with the crap-volume of my packing. Somehow, packing more than four shirts is not a priority, but having three spare sets of earphones is. I'm also thinking that, with my flip-flops and rubber beach sandals, bringing along my Birkenstocks as my civilization shoes might be overkill. There's absolutely no way, though, I'm going without both the PowerBook and the NetBook. And both iPods.

Let's also not mention the ten-day entertainment requirements for a six-year-old, which includes a shoulder bag crammed with sparkly pink My Little Pony accessories, three separate board games, and her own knitting bag.

*Checks priorities*

Yep. Looks good to me.

Take care, everyone!

HTML and Accessibility

Sun, 24 May 2009 07:52:07 GMT

I saw this on metafandom, and think it's important to share:

Nerdy PSA by hope

It's a brief guide to some important information about using the right HTML to make your posts and/or pages more accessible to people who might, for instance, be using text-reading programs. I was really embarrassed to not know that the em and strong tags have an important function for text readers, that they actually affect the inflection of the reading, unlike bold and italics tags. I also wasn't using the title tag for my links--at least up until now--and I wasn't always careful about making the linked text informative. This is what happens when you learn just enough HTML to be dangerous around 1997-8 and never upgrade.

A lot of the information in hope's post is from the HTML Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. I feel that this will be an invaluable resource to help me join the 21st century. :)

Boo's Beach Drawing

Sat, 23 May 2009 15:28:01 GMT

Every year, my mom takes myself and Boo to the beach. Boo drew a picture of the beach, and as it encapsulates our experience pretty well, I thought I'd share.

If you want to know what each of the words is and who the various people are and what they're doing, click on the picture and go to Flickr, where you can read the notes I've added. The condensed version is that I'm on the left, Uncle Fred is next to me, Boo is riding her boogie board and Aunt Jami is pulling her. My mom is watching from beneath her umbrella on the beach.

After drawing and labelling the people, Boo felt it was important to explain what everyone was doing. Gaby is "watching," Boo is "surf boarding" and Aunt Jami is "pulling." I, of course, am "my mom." And Fred? Fred is "the boy."

Two months until the beach. I can't wait. :)