Category: Everything Else

You Learn Something New Every Day

Sarah Hornik is an extremely talented artist who lives in Tel Aviv. She makes some of the most beautiful glass beads I’ve ever seen; each one is a colorful jewel, completely unique, whimsical, fun, and loaded with color. She also has a blog, and this week she uploaded a video of how she makes her beads. I’ve never actually seem lampwork done before, and it was fascinating to watch how fast she worked.

So, if you’ve ever been curious how someone would make something as beautiful as this:

awesome bead!

then check this link out.

She sells her work on her website, as well as on eBay, if you decide you have to own some of her stuff (although the bead show above has already been sold, sorry. And not to me.)

Bourdain Blogs

And the good news of the day is: one of my favorite food writers, Michael Ruhlman, finally got bad-boy chef Tony Bourdain to officially be a guest blogger on his food blog.

His first official guest-blogging post is not as accessible as his recent rant on the various Food TV celebrities; rather, he’s weighing in on a recent spat between a NY restaurant owner and the NY Times food critic. Nevertheless, it’s worth a read just for his choice of imagery:

Maybe I’m being cynical here but the Message seems to be: “Even a freakin’ strip club–where you get lap dances offered between courses is better than your soulless, overpriced meat-emporium. I’d rather spend time in a hot tub with Bob Guiccione than you!” Subtext? “Don’t Fuck With Me!”

Welcome to the blogosphere, Tony. Enjoy the ride.

A Different Glow

One of the big issues with converting from old-style Edison light bulbs to compact fluorescents is the cost. I wonder whether the news today that Australia intends to ban old-style light bulbs will help drive down CF prices over time.

The Australian government on Tuesday announced plans to phase out incandescent light bulbs and replace them with more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs across the country.

I’m all for saving energy and reducing greenhouse gases, but I have to say that this news also makes me feel a bit sad. “Old-style” light bulbs give off a warmer glow than CF bulbs, and I like the feel of that warmer light.

Ah well.

So Much For “New Hotness”

Nothing busts up a morning quite like discovering that your less-than-six-months-old Melitta coffeemaker has given up the ghost.

I suppose that’s what you get when you buy discontinued merchandise from Woot!, but the other stuff I’ve gotten there hasn’t had problems, so maybe it’s just bad luck.

I had some vague plans of heading over to a car dealership and starting the long process of looking for a new car, but instead a trip to buy a new coffeemaker is definitely in order. Yes, the coffeemaker has a warrantee, but I don’t want to wait several weeks to get it repaired. I want a coffeemaker now.

Upgrade In Progress

The back-end upgrade from MT 2.64 to MT 3.34 went almost shockingly well. Nothing seems broken, all my old entries & comments are still here, and (what I was most worried about) my templates are all still working.

So far, so good. I’ll have to wait and see how the new comment spam system works as compared to my trusty old MT-Blacklist installation.

The next stage …. the front end. I’ll be playing around with my Rome travelogue to see how the new StyleCatcher plugin works as far as skinning the site goes. If I can’t get it to work & look good over there, I may leave things as-is here. It will depend on how much hacking I need to do to the CSS and templates to make my ancient, customized templates work properly.

UPDATE: 1:56PM
As I suspected, those old templates are causing trouble. I had to completely overwrite them to get StyleCatcher to work. As of now, a new template is up and running on the Rome blog, and I’m going to try to figure out how to add some of the old stuff back in.

UPDATE 2:30PM
I got Sitemeter back on the Rome blog but have not have the nerve to do any more significant hacking. Taking a break for a while. It’s a really lovely day and I don’t want to spend it all indoors.

UPDATE 6:25PM
The Rome blog’s in decent shape now. Once I got the hang of the template widget module system, getting some customization into the sidebar wasn’t tough at all. I tried a couple of different skins but for now I’m using a very basic one (Vicksburg Desert) that’s not too different in look and tone from my old one.

UPDATE: 8:30PM
I’ve widget-ized and updated the templates for the main site. And for good measure, I installed a 3rd party plug-in called “Promote This!” to add some social bookmarking links to my entries. I’m thoroughly impressed by how easy it’s all been — easy being a relative term, of course. What’s easy for a moderate geek like me would be pretty damn difficult for a non-techie, but then, that’s what Blogger and TypePad are for.

It’s a little weird not seeing my trusty old templates anymore, but now that I’ve got the version 3.x templates installed, I can skin to my heart’s content. Probably tomorrow, though. I think that’s enough work for one day.

TGIF

It’s been a long, busy week. Today was a gorgeous, warm, springlike day, though, which was a very nice way to wrap the week up.

And this is some very welcome news too:

The U.S. House of Representatives denounced President George W. Bush’s Iraq troop buildup on Friday in a symbolic challenge to his unpopular war strategy that is expected to lead to a mighty struggle over financing the extra troops.

The Democratic-led House voted 246-182 for a resolution that voices support for U.S. forces but opposes the Republican president’s decision to send 21,500 more troops to bolster security in Baghdad and violent Anbar province.

[snip]

The resolution passed with support of all but two of the House’s 233 Democrats and 17 of its 201 Republicans, many worried about their political fate should they stick with Bush. Polls say most Americans oppose adding troops in Iraq.

That’s a very nice way to start the weekend.

In other news, I am going to take advantage of the three-day weekend upcoming to try upgrading the blog to a more recent version of Movable Type. Three+ years on version 2.6x is long enough. With luck, all will go well and I’ll finally get some new features and a new look to the blog.

One possible outcome is that I utterly hose the site and get stuck starting from scratch, althought I dearly hope that’s not the case. Either way, if you stop by over the weekend and things look a little odd, that’s probably why.