I deleted about 60 spam comments on this site, this weekend. I don’t know why I am being bombarded. Amusingly, one began with the word “Hastur”. Perhaps Old Ones are spamming my blog. I will just have to find an anti-spam WordPress plug-in (I think they exist?). [Update: The first spam I received after this entry began with the phrase "please forgive". So that's not creepy at all, then, is it. Hmm.]
I was THIS CLOSE to seeing Coraline over the weekend, but it didn’t work out (as in I then remembered I had a church nursing home service and it’s hard to justify skipping out on visiting widows to go see a movie).
Did anyone see Coraline yet? I did read the book. Next I will have to read The Graveyard Book. Speaking of which, it is the 8th anniversary of Neil Gaiman’s blog, and I suggest you go check it out. It’s excellent.
http://www.neilgaiman.com/
One other dissapointment over the weekend – I found a gift card for my favorite craft store that had already expired in 2007. I feel like I earned negative money over the weekend.
While I’m plugging ineresting websites, let me get in a word for Cabinet of Wonders. This site is a wonderful (no pun intended) aggregation of information on things true and/or quirky. It’s much better than my blog, so go check it out right now. It has photos! I always intend to have photos, but I usually type this up during lunch at work, and don’t have access to my camera. Not a good excuse at all.
I was looking at some excellent photos of clockwork at the Cabinet of Wonders site, and pondering the whole Steampunk genre, and wondering how clocks actually work, and found this great site that explains the mechanics of, er, mechanisms: http://www.flying-pig.co.uk/mechanisms/
I will be looking at that one a lot later today.
Kris Johnson tagged me to list sixteen random (presumably both true and somewhat interesting, and if not, at least true) things about myself. So here goes. Actually as I write this, I am feeling silly talking about myself so much! The focus in my life should not be on me, but it’s so easy to focus on yourself!
- I’m left handed at writing and art and using silverware, but right handed at sports and a lot of other things (using a mouse, putting on makeup, etc.).
- I’ve had the same job since I graduated from college. I’ve gone to the same church since I was about 5.
- I’ve wanted to be a magician since I was about 4. I’m not so dedicated when it comes to practicing, though. I’m pretty good at acquiring the requesite “box of magical junk that looked better in the ad copy”. And always interested in books, though now I feel marginally guilty to be reading Knepper and Bannachek books full of secrets without even performing. [Don't bother asking anything, because I'm not telling.] I also love wizards in fantasy novels. Sometimes I think it’s odd that there is such a disconnect between “people who are magicians for a living” and “people who are magicians in stories”. I don’t think there should be such a disconnect – both are fantasy! Isn’t it odd how both a guy in a blue star-studded robe and a guy in a tuxedo might do magic tricks? Fascinating disconnect! Mario Dongu (of The Game Master Show podcast) feels the same way and had a good audio essay about it in Misfit Brew Podcast a couple of years back. (I got to meet him at Origins!) If you are a magician I recommend (the, sadly, expensive) Neo Magic Artistry by S. H. Sharpe. And if you are a fantasy writer, I recommend it even more.
- I’m bad at math. In college “they” thought that perhaps giving me Ritalin would help, but I thought that was unreasonable and just decided not to get a B.S. since that would require a year of calc. But I really wish I had one. Instead I have a B.A. in Biology.
- I don’t buy games that are rated M for Mature, because I don’t want to be that mature.
Harry.
- I’ve had one dog, and one cat in my lifetime. I got the dog when I was about 5. She was a half-pomeranian, half-something-with-a-lot-of-terrier mix, and I named her Sweet Polly Purebred (yes from Underdog), though she was neither sweet nor purebred. The cat I got about 8 years ago, and he is a huge black stray that followed my mom home. He’s named Harry Houdini because he likes to escape. He’s almost completely silent, for some reason. He looks pleadingly at you for a treat and makes tiny squeaks, poor guy.
- I had a three hour commute in to work, today due to the rotten snow storm. Brrr. Usually it’s just an hour. YES I have a huge carbon footprint, go cry into your tofu. (Actually I love tofu too.)
- I have almost always been involved in children’s ministries at my church – I started teaching AWANA when I was in High School, and now I work with the teens and also teach the (mostly adorable) 4 & 5 year olds in Sunday School. Some of my paper-airplane, balloon twisting, my-little-pony-drawing, kite-flying, soap bubble-blowing skills are handy here! Also it gives me an excuse to go into the toy aisle which I was going to do anyway. I want to have kid(s) someday, God willing!
- I HATE CILANTRO.
- Someone hid a Geocache Travel Bug in my honor! Someone is awesome! Someone is triptychr.deviantart.com!
- I got a gift certificate to Bead Paradise II for Christmas (an awesome store!!) and can’t think of how to use it, since I have way too many beads already (unless you want to buy some of my jewelry). Though I know if I walk in there I will easily be able to spend it without batting an eye. Beading and working with polymer clay are two hobbies of mine. Along with sketching and sometimes writing little stories that generally don’t have an ending because I get frustrated halfway through. Bad me. No NaNoWriMo for me – I don’t get that far.
- My “Supreme Lunch of all Lunches” would generally be sushi followed by ice cream.
- I came to know Christ as my personal Savior at the age of 5. Seems like a lot of things happened when I was 5. Anyway I was listening, I believe, to J. Vernon McGee (or that’s how I like to remember it, because he was cool. He passed away, but you can also download his sermons as podcasts, and I do. He has a neat southern drawl while we’re at it.) on the radio, and we were driving to my grandparents house around Christmas time. Then and there I realized that I had done wrong things and God couldn’t allow me into His perfect Heaven since I was imperfect (as we all are!). But Christ took the punishment for those things I did, by His death on the cross in my place.
- I have an electric toothbrush but I hardly ever use it because 2 minutes feels sooo loooonnng when you’re hurrying in the morning/tired at night.
- I am a night owl and usually only get 5 – 6 hours of sleep a night. This is a shame since dreams fascinate me and I don’t get many that way.
- I owned this domain for about 18 months before I actually got around to putting anything up on it!
Ok I’m not going to tag anyone, because I am too lazy.
Ok I have no idea what this is, but I just saw a post about it on Boing Boing.
Apparently “Down the Rabbit Hole Day” is the day all bloggers post for a day in a completely different style.
I don’t even feel like I have a style to my blog posts yet, so I, uh, guess the new thing I’m doing today is posting twice.
Wow.
Unless someone has any suggestions for what I should be doing for Down the Rabbit Hole Day, since I really don’t know.
This Friday is the “All Nighter” that happens once a year, with area teens (around 450 of them!) who come for a night of sports, evangelism, and lots more sports. This will be my third year of being a leader/chaperone-type-person there.
Anyone have any good tips on how to stay up all night and semi-enjoy it? (No playing WoW is not an option – but bringing those energy potions is.)
- Mana Energy Potions
Main suggestions include energy drinks & eating chocolate covered coffee beans.
Will sleeping a lot this week let me store up for the overnighter? Does sleep work that way, even?
Tips and random blathering appreciated!
I hopped merrily into my car this morning and fiddled around hooking my Zen: Vision to the trickle charger/fm transmitter, and let it charge during the hour commute this morning.
When I got to work I forgot about it, checked e-mail, etc. Twenty minutes later I tried to turn it on and it didn’t turn on – and it was blazing hot. And so, somehow, my poor Zen is fried. The IT guy at work took it apart and disconnected the battery, which was running hot without stopping. He thinks it is a circuity failure and not a battery failure. I don’t suppose it matters much.
Anyone have suggestions on a replacement?
I tossed this idea out on Twitter and got various replies.
High in the list are the new Zens and the Zen X-fi. Also high in the list is the Zune.
I have around $300 to blow prayerfully consider spending, and would like at least 30G space on the thing.
No, starting with the letter Z is not a prerequisite.
I am trying to add to this blog, if not every day, a lot more often than I did in December (or else how would anyone even find it?), so pardon me if some topics are kind of weak. While we’re at it, I’m sure it’s wrong and terrible to start a blog with an apology about its contents.
Do you have a blog? And does your blog have a topic? (plug your blog in my comments!) I am afraid this one doesn’t really have a set topic; it’s usually just about something I feel like writing. It’s not quite my LiveJournal (at which I fail) or NaNoWriMo, but I am trying to write more, until it is somewhat a habit. I should see if Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing podcast says anything about how to write engaging blog posts.
I, Rachel Ross, sole author of Glimmerville.com, give you, dear reader, permission to SKIP this blog whenever you want, because I’m pretty bad about reading other people’s blogs. Stick it in your Google Reader or any other convenient RSS aggregator, and if the headline appeals to you by all means read it. But if it doesn’t I promise not to be mad at you for not reading it. There isn’t a single blog out there that I read every entry to.
But I don’t know much about crafting blog entries.
So I thought I’d check out a few lists of tips by people who do.
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/40-ways-to-deliver-killer-blog-content/
http://www.jackhumphrey.com/fridaytrafficreport/the-quillo-method-to-creating-killer-blog-content/
http://website101.com/RSS-Blogs-Blogging/blog-writing-tips.html
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/
http://www.instigatorblog.com/5-blog-writing-tips-to-get-more-comments/2006/10/04/
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/02/12/writing-tips-for-non-writers-who-dont-want-to-work-at-writing/
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2007/05/07/best-blog-basket-101-ways-to-create-original-blog-post-content/
Now I’m off to take notes on these myself!
I’m sure this blog post violates all the principles of a good blog.
Also check out this authoring software:
http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter.html
I just finished “decrapifying” my desk at work.
It now looks slightly more professional, though I still have a colorful amalgamation of fantasy/steampunk items. (But hey, the hourglass is functional… and so is the brass rolling desk loupe… and the USB owl…and everyone needs potpourri, right?)
It was a lot easier to clean this “finite cubicle” than it ever is to clean the “craft areas” at my house (or my bedroom, for that matter). My problem is when I say “decrapify” or “clean” sometimes it ends up really meaning “Put the offending miscellania into a box and move the box into a closet/attic/car trunk/under the bed/out of sight until I find it again and discover ‘all this really cool stuff’, or until I take each item back out piecemeal as I need it and forget to put it away again.” I have a compulsion to buy “just one more Rubbermaid tote” to store things, but it is invariably the wrong size. And I will spray Simple Green on anything. (While we’re at it, both Tide sticks (that you can carry with you) and OxyClean really work at removing just about any stain I’ve ever had. It’s nigh miraculous).
I have seen people rail against clutter as everything from a psychological issue to a spiritual problem, but I really don’t mind a generous and eye-pleasing (to me) amount of artisinal clutter (ie. look at the artistic arrangement of stuff on the counters in an Early American Life magazine spread). I especially think it sparks creativity when I’m doing arts and crafts. If I see the pile of fiber laying next to the eyelets, and rubber stamps next to the deckle edge scissors and those “cute star-shaped brads I just had to buy” – it can spark a great idea!
Keep in mind I am not talking about “garbage hoarding” and I definitely did throw things away as I was going through my desk drawers. And the “perfectly decent” things I don’t want I will take to Goodwill. And hopefully I will not want them back again next week (but chances are high they will still be in a box in my car on the way to Goodwill for awhile).
Do you have any organizational tips/trials/tribulations?
Posted by: Nycteris Tags: boring
I changed the widgets down the side of this site, and added a “check this box if you want to keep following your comments thread” function, since someone asked for that feature.
Any other features you are interested in? Please let me know!
I don’t know how to code them, but I can sure google “WordPress Plugins”!
Monday
Monday I had Jury Duty.
Of course, in my head when the judge came out I called him “Udgey” and when the prosecution came out I called him “Edgeworth” and the defense was “Phoenix” – and, strangely, it was a little bit like that.
No the defense and prosecution and judges weren’t like that, really – the jury was!
Stolen from DS Fanboy
The defense and prosecution started out by asking questions of the jury, to see if anyone was unfit to stay (due to some kind of bias), and it was amazing the weird stuff that came out of the woodwork.
They disqualified one person, and the replacement was the granddaughter of the previous judge in the court. (And she looked like someone that could be in an Ace Attorney game, too – she was about 19 and had loads of blond ringlets and was continuously chewing gum.) Another jury member turned out to be the neighbor and friend of the prosecuting attorney. They asked if anyone had ever had a crime committed against them and fully half of the jury raised their hands to say they had had their homes/cars broken into. And this is a small rural village, not some kind of grimy downtown depressed area!
I had no idea it was so hard to pick a jury, even in a little case like this.
Anyway they didn’t pick me to stay on the jury, so I actually got some other things accomplished like sending a package to Philippa Ballantine (go read her books/listen to her podcast novel) and getting my snow tires put on. I helped babysit a 5 year old for about an hour, too. I went to get out all my old action figures so he’d have something to play with and I had 2 Darth Vaders, 2 Darth Sideous, and 1 Darth Maul Uhh… well everyone knows bad guys are coolest anyway.
Other things I did yesterday include impulsively buying The Secret Sketchbook of Brian Froud. (I’m not sure I’m happy with this purchase.) I even made some art [$5 + shipping, if you are interested, e-mail glimmer (at) glimmerville].:
$5
Also, the description of this Tome of Levity game supplement book cracks me up. Any game mechanic that lets you eat the fruit out of still life paintings is awesome.
And one more parting link: A poem by G. K. Chesterton, that was quoted in part on The Sonic Society.
