kayray.org

If you’re a Mac user, you’ve got to try Jumpcut.

Jumpcut is an application that provides “clipboard buffering” — that is, access to text that you’ve cut or copied, even if you’ve subsequently cut or copied something else. The goal of Jumpcut’s interface is to provide quick, natural, intuitive access to your clipboard’s history.

It’s free and extremely handy! It creates a little scissors icon up in the menubar. When you copy some text, it stores the copied text somewhere. The number of copies that it’ll store is configurable — I think the default is 40 or something. When you want to paste some copied text, click the little scissors and you get a drop down collection of all the stored copies, and you just choose the one you want. Soooo handy!

I added Jumpcut to my login items. It’s easy to do this:

Hit the blue apple in the upper left corner of your screen and choose System Preferences

Choose “accounts”

Choose your account and then hit the “login items” tab. Click the little Plus sign and find Jumpcut in your applications directory.

Presto!

Woke up at 6:20 this morning which was too late to take my getting-back-to-sleep Lunesta (I decided it was stupid to take it at night, since I rarely have any trouble falling asleep — it’s staying asleep that’s the problem.  So if I wake up before 5:30am I take one then), so I listened to Loveline for half an hour and then got up.  Uploaded photos from Aperture to my gallery, then did a couple of blog posts about socks. You can find them in the handmade section if you care about socks.

I did not have to DRIVE anywhere today, yay!

Henry tried out a couple of recipes from his new cookbook after we sat and read through it together.  He made a fruit-and-yogurt smoothie for breakfast and loved it. (Perfect — I like to make fruit salad with yogurt most mornings, and he won’t eat it.  So now he can throw it all in the blender and drink it happily, heehee!)
And then he decided to try to bake bread!  There’s a recipe for simple white bread near the back of the book, and he found all the ingredients and did almost all of the work himself.  I sat at the table, ready to lend a hand if needed.

While the bread dough was rising, I recorded a chapter of some book about Pirates.  As an experiment, I tried hooking my mic and USB interface to my macbook instead of my iMac, and the mysterious clicks went away!  So it’s not an audio equipment problem after all.  Dan says he’s pretty sure he can make my iMac stop clicking, but even if he can’t I can always just record to the laptop. (in case you’re curious, yes, I tried rebooting, defragging, and reinstalling drivers on my iMac)
Tired.  And Dan’s home yay!!!

Several pages of math
baked bread
handwriting

029 – The Story of King Stephan

Green Jawoll sock yarn, needles size 1.25mm (0000). Toe up. Cable pattern “Pretzel Braid” from Barbara Walker’s 3rd treasury of knitting patterns.

64 st. Round toe done from temporary cast on. White strings mark round 1 of 32-round cable rep. Instep gusset starts beginning of 3rd rep.

Notes to self, so the second sock is the same: Work instep gusset to round 20 of cable chart.  Then work little heel flap on 12 stitches, for 12 rows.  Pick up stitches on both sides of heel flap and work in rows, decreasing gusset stitches with ssk on right-side rows and p2tog on wrong side rows.  Dec to 72 st. total — I think I’ll need these extra 8 stitches in the leg.  Start working in rounds again on round 21 of cable chart.

I finished these socks a couple of weeks ago. They’re toe-up socks, and for fun I worked two different kinds of backwards heels, which is why they don’t match exactly.

Close-up of heels:

The left sock shows an ordinary Dutch/German heel (my favorite heel) worked just as usual, but of course starting on the bottom of the foot. You can see how the heel flap ends up under the heel.

The right sock shows a much more elegant solution — “Denise’s Reverse Dutch Heel” — a heel worked literally backwards. First, work instep INCREASES, then work a tiny flap which represents the bit you get when you turn a heel, then pick up stitches around the sides of the little flap and work the heel flap, getting rid of a foot stitch at the end of every row. Then meet up with the rest of the foot stitches and continue the leg. Sweet! Better instructions here: http://www.socknitters.com/toe-up/lessonfour.htm

I probably won’t make cotton socks again.  I prefer the resiliency of wool, and when it’s barely cool enough to wear socks at all, thin wool socks are more comfy than cotton anyway.

Dropped Henry at his classes, came home and did Actual Work for Librivox. We’ve got Howard Pyle’s Adventures of Robin Hood in the works. It was started by a fellow who disappeared before it was finished and cataloged, taking the completed files with him. Since I’m the top of the chain-of-command for that project (the “MC” or Meta-Coordinator) I took on the unpleasant job of tracking down the completed files and chasing down readers who had claimed chapters but hadn’t yet submitted them. The project has been stagnating, about 3/4 completed, for months. So today I sent emails and PMs around to all the readers with outstanding chapters, to see where we stand and try to ascertain whether I should parcel out any abandoned chapters to other, more eager readers. I’ve already heard back from most of the readers, which is encouraging! I’m sure we’ll get it completed and cataloged within the month.

We’ve also had a nearly-complete solo version of Emma sitting around waiting to be completed since May. The wonderful soloist seems to have gotten too busy with Real Life to finish the few little edits and things that needed to be done before the book can be cataloged, so I took it upon myself to re-read the two too-quiet chapters and find an editor willing to re-edit the few little glitches here and there. The lovely and talented Starlite volunteered to help with the edits, and I already recorded those two chapters, so I feel confident we’ll get this wonderful nearly-solo Emma cataloged Real Soon Now! Maybe even next week. I’ll post a link when it’s up — Sherry did a fantastic job reading and any Jane fan will enjoy it.

Raced over to the dojo at 4 to exchange Henry’s too-large new Gi for a size smaller, raced home and got it washed, dried, and hemmed in an hour and 15 minutes, in time for his evening class. Amazing. We listened to Tom Lehrer all day. Lol.

I made Chicken Parmesan for dinner and both Henry and Dan loved it! It’s rare for BOTH of them to like any given dinner ;-)

Art class — watercolor landscape
Science — air-powered rockets
Spanish — colors
Read more about Ancient Celts — House and Home, Food and Farming, Feasts and Celebration, Religion and Ritual
Karate class
Piano — playing along with Tom Lehrer

028 – The Story of the White Ship

Today is Henry’s birthday, yay! He spent the night at his dad’s house last night but will be home soon, and we’ll have a fun day together — no piano students today, no activities planned, so we can do whatever we please.

On a totally unrelated note, the amazing Gord Mackenzie showed us a neat google trick that lets you find LibriVox recordings by your favorite reader. Paste this into google:

“Kara Shallenberg” “read by” -“previous topic” site:librivox.org

Replace my name with any oher reader’s catalog name (not forum name nickname, of course). Neat!

Helped teach little kids’ karate class
Field trip to Palomar Planetarium — constellations and Our Solar System
Mythology class
Musical Theater class

Today was very educational, heheh. First we went to the dojo so Henry could help teach the little kids. Then we zoomed out to San Marcos to the Palomar College Planetarium for a fabulous homeschooler field trip! It was so much fun! Then over to our charter school for Henry’s Mythology class and Musical Theater class. He took his Aboriginal Boomerang to show the mythology class. I knitted my green socks (photos soon I swear) and played some Harvest Moon. My plan is to build a Mushroom Shed or a Bird Shed next, when I have enough lumber or rocks saved up. I unlocked the blackjack-dealing sprite but poker is a lot easier to win big at. Then we came home, and I taught a piano student. Then Henry’s dad picked him up and Dan and I went out to do a little grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s. It was really nice having Dan along for company, and he carried all the heavy grocery bags for me, even though he’s a bit under the weather! Bought a cherry pie for Henry’s birthday dinner tomorrow.
Yawn. Tired. Salad and quesadillas for dinner, with homemade salsa. House is on tonight!

027 – William the Red

I got enough sleep last night!  Woohoo!  After getting only 4 1/2 or 5 hours the night before, and staying out relatively late at Chloe’s house, I was so tired that I managed to sleep soundly from midnight to 8:30am, and then doze on and off until 9:45am.  Lovely.  If only I could get 9 or 10 hours every night.

Earlier today I recorded/edited/tagged/uploaded chapter 5 of The Getting of Wisdom, and now I’ve just recorded Adventure 2 of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — The Red-Headed League.  It was 1 hour and 6 minutes long unedited, but I’ve just trimmed out all the goofs and it’s down to 59 minutes.  It’s 11pm now, though, so I’ll leave the proof-listening until tomorrow.

Also wrapped a pile of presents for an upcoming 11th birthday!

Woke up around 4am, despite having taken 2mg Lunesta last night in the never-ending Quest for Enough Sleep. Lay in bed and listened to an entire episode of Loveline (Seth Green was the guest), realized I just wasn’t going to get back to sleep, and gave up trying. Time crept slowly past and it was eventually time to make breakfast (my favorite, well, the only breakfast that ever seems tempting: fresh fruit salad — banana, nectarine, strawberries — with plain yoghurt and granola mixed all together).

Then Henry’s dad picked him up, then I went with Dan to the dentist. Worked on my new green socks; ripped out my 3rd attempt (a twist-stitch pattern that I decided I didn’t like) and started a cable pattern instead. After dentist we ran a couple of errands, came back for lunch, which was leftover homemade burritos from last night. I learned how to make them from Hugh.

Then we headed down to Chloe’s house for a nice long visit! Dan fixed broken things and I installed Firefox on Chloe’s computer so she can see the Quicktags in her WordPress Write-a-Post, and we watched hilarious cat videos, ate pizza, talked, etc. Also watched part of Team America which was obscene and very very funny, though it got late and we didn’t quite get to the end. We love visiting them soooo much. Wish we could get together more often.

Read three or four chapters of Murderous Maths — time, clocks, angles.
Discussion about Jazz while listening to good old swing bands.
Read more about Ancient Celts – migration, clothing, jewelery.
Henry created a new cardboard sword and shield with great diligence and artistry.
Listened to part of “This Side of Paradise” together.

I decided, instead of starting a new solo project right away, to help with some of LibriVox’s collaborative projects.  Since I’m a huge fan of The Great Gatsby (which was, alas, published just a bit too recently to rise into the public domain) I decided to help with our production of This Side of Paradise, which I’ve never read.  The Book Coordinator has divided the rather long chapters into nicely-sized sections.  I read a half-hour chunk yesterday, and a 40-minute chunk today.  Though I’ve only dipped into the beginning in a couple of places, I’m really enjoying it, and have signed up for yet another section.  This afternoon, as I was proof-listening my second recording (which described Amory’s life at college, the car-wreck in which one of his friends died, and his first kiss with Isabelle), Henry came downstairs to work on a new cardboard sword and shield (Zelda-style) so I unplugged my headphones and let Fitzgerald pour into his brain.  He said he really liked it, and asked if I’d recorded any more chapters, so afterward I played the first section that I’d recorded.  Wonderful.

026 – Death of the King

Art class: warm and cool colors
Science: alka-seltzer rockets
Spanish: drawing with captions

A few months ago I installed a nifty Firefox extension called Google Browser Sync on all my computers. The premise is wonderful — the extension (theoretically) syncs passwords, cookies, history, and bookmarks between browsers on different machines. And most of the time, it works. However, on all three of my machines (an iBook, an iMac, and a Macbook Pro — all running the latest Firefox and the latest version of OS X) Google Browser Sync occasionally gets completely stuck and just sits there, claiming to be syncing but in reality permanently frozen. Or, sometimes it’ll claim that my upload is too large and that I should disable some components. Well, that’s fine, so I disable history and bookmarks and cookies, thinking that not having to remember my passwords is good enough. Nope, still it sticks and freezes, using up 70-90% CPU while it’s sitting there spinning. I solved this problem in difficult and round-about ways several times (deleting my Firefox profile, then copying over bits of it a little at a time worked once, I think) but it’s just broken AGAIN on my iMac and I’m fed up.

So long, Google Browser Sync. Become more stable and I’ll gladly reinstall you.

UPDATE!!
I found a bookmark syncing extension that actually WORKS:
Foxmarks

YAY!