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More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 8: The May King

Take the Geek Quiz: http://www.innergeek.us/geek-test.html

I scored 31.75542% which ranks me as a “Total Geek”, but only a few points away from “Major Geek” (highest is Dysfunctional Geek at >75%)

I did not feel miserably tired today! Yay! I did a bunch of recording while Henry was at his classes this morning. Let’s see… I edited the three chapters I did yesterday, and recorded three new ones, too! So that made me feel really happy.

And I started a new pair of socks for Henry, using my lovely new knitpicks Risata yarn — a cotton/superwash wool/elastic blend that is fantastic to work with. I’m using the “dusk” color which is a nice denim blue.

Socks are 44 stitches on size 0 Brittany Birch needles. I’m using June Oshiro’s Double-Helix (DNA) cable pattern for the front panel of the socks (Panel is 20 st, plus 2k at each side — 24st total), and plain stockinette on the back (20st), with 10 rounds of 1×1 rib at the top.

Sorry, that really only shows a bit of the rib, but I’m well into the cable section already so better photos soon.

Also finally took a photo of Dan’s 3/4 finished Nine-to Five socks:

This evening Henry and I went to our local game store for Board Game night, and nice older gentleman named Kent taught us On The Underground, a very entertaining and well-balanced game. Similar to Settlers, there are several ways to score points, and you can go for short-term bird-in-the-hand points, or more risky long-term points. Another guy showed up, a young military-looking fellow, and he played with us too. Quite a funny group, we were. Henry and I had a great time and are looking forward to the next board game night!

My Knit Picks’ “Harmony” wooden interchangeable circular needles arrived today! I love them. Here are a couple of unboxing photos:

The needles are much more beautiful in real life than they are in photos. The layers of laminated wood (for strength) almost shimmer, and the colors are more subtle than I was expecting. The finish is nice — smooth, but not slippery. The points are suitably sharp. Dan says the screw threads are very well made. The needles screw onto the cables easily and seem very secure. The cables are extremely flexible. A set of needle tips (size 5) was $5.99, and a set of two 47″ cables plus four end caps and a turning key was $3.99. Shipping was $2.50. So affordable! I will be purchasing lots more Harmony needles in the future :)

I transferred my Cobblestone Cardigan onto them and knit for a bit, and they are just as nice to work with as they are to look at. Good job, knitpicks.com!!!

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 7: The Ghost

My lovely sister pointed me to the Free Rice Vocabulary Game. Lots of fun! Their FAQ explains how the game works.

FreeRice automatically adjusts to your level of vocabulary. It starts by giving you words at different levels of difficulty and then, based on how you do, assigns you an approximate starting level. You then determine a more exact level for yourself as you play. When you get a word wrong, you go to an easier level. When you get three words in a row right, you go to a harder level. This one-to-three ratio is best for keeping you at the “outer fringe” of your vocabulary, where learning can take place.

There are 50 levels in all, but it is rare for people to get above level 48.

Here’s a screenshot of me hitting level 50:

I did not cheat, by the way, though I did have to guess quite a few, or use my deductive powers. It helps if you’ve read a lot of really old books. Trilby? Caleche? No problem.

Murrain means plague, in case you care. I stayed at 50 for a while, then missed a couple, then got back up to 50. I rarely drop below 48. Some of the definitions are odd. I would not, for instance, say that “colobus” means “monkey”. It’s a type of monkey. But whatever :)

Chloe and Bob came over yesterday and stayed for hours, which was a huge treat. We watched three episodes of Survivor China (Jaime thought she had an immunity idol, lol) and talked, and watched stuff on youtube, and played guitar hero, and played real music. Well, Bob and Dan played real music while Chloe and I watched The Soup.

I got a lot done on my Cobblestone-inspired Cardigan. A while back I decided it was much too large, and ripped back past the last round of increases. Now I’m a few inches past the underarms again and it’s looking great.

Last week I ordered one of Knitpicks’ new Harmony interchangeable circular wooden knitting needles, size 5, with 47″ cables. I can hardly wait till they get here so I can try them out. They were only about $12 including shipping (the Addis I bought were over $20 — GAH. I don’t even LIKE metal needles). I’ll test them on this sweater, and then if I like them I’ll ask for more for Christmas. Although the interchangeable ones only go down to size 4, they sell non-interchangeable wooden circs down to size 0. Hallelujia!

I have a headache. Have I mentioned lately that I hate it when the time changes? Also, the power is flickering. I shut down and unplugged the iMac, since I’m pretty sure it no longer has any surge protection since its UPS died. Not sure if the lappy has surge protection so I unplugged it and turned down the brightness for optimal battery life.

World’s Happiest Jack o’ Lantern, designed by Henry:

Dan and I hid in the house in our trick-or-treater-free neighborhood. I knitted while he played Guitar Hero 3 and became obsessed with The Metal. Henry went trick-or-treating with friends and had a wonderful time :) He was so tired at bedtime that he let me read two chapters of Pride and Prejudice to him.

As of today, October 30, 2007, LibriVox has 1000 free, legal, volunteer-read, downloadable audiobooks.

We’ve been counting down to the thousandth book, having no idea at all what it would be. It turned out to be a recording of Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue, read by a relatively new volunteer, Reynard (who is a fine reader with a delicious accent), and cataloged by a brand new admin, kmerline. It was her first cataloging job! Yay Reynard and kmerline!

Download LibriVox’s 1000th book here:
http://librivox.org/the-murders-in-the-rue-morgue-by-edgar-allen-poe/

Way to go, LibriVox volunteers!!! Without each one of you, we wouldn’t have gotten where we are today.

Check our catalog. You’ll find lots more great books to listen to.

Got Leopard? It took a few days for the google coders to bring sshfs and macfuse up to speed, but it works now! I’ll just paste my instructions from a few months ago. They’re all the same but the Finder in Leopard does not show mounted servers in the sidebar automatically anymore. I thought sshfs wasn’t even working! The solution is to go into Finder preferences and tell it to show connected servers on the desktop. Then drag the server from the desktop to the Devices area in the Finder sidebar. Drop it when you see a nice blue line and wait a few seconds for it to show up. Voila!

How to install sshfs on your mac:

Do you have a mac? Do you use ssh, scp, or ftp frequently, perhaps to and from your personal server? If so, you’ve got to try MacFUSE:

MacFUSE implements a mechanism that makes it possible to implement a fully functional file system in a user-space program on Mac OS X (10.4 and above).

Ok, I know that sounds pretty dry, but stay with me. When Dan first told me about MacFUSE I was not particularly interested. It doesn’t sound nearly as useful as it is! He installed it, and sshfs, on my Macbook and I started using it and fell in love. If I need to copy a recording over to my webspace, I just drag it over in Finder. When I need to update a podcast feed, rather than ssh in and use vi to edit (or worse, to ftp the file back and forth), I just double-click the file in Finder and it opens in my local texteditor (SMULTRON). (And next time I can just Open Recent from the File menu!) I can’t tell you how useful it is. Today I installed it on my iMac, and, though it may sound a bit daunting, it’s easy — anyone can do it.

Go to http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/downloads/list. Download the MacFUSE Core Installer Package dmg and the sshfs filesystem dmg. Install the MacFUSE core first, and then sshfs. Run sshfs. It’ll ask you for a server and a username, and then a password. Once you’ve connected to your server, it’ll show up as a drive in Finder, just as if you had an external hard drive plugged in. You can quit sshfs now. Now you can use your mounted server just as if it were a local box!

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 6: The Rivals

I just finished The Other Side of the Story, by Marian Keyes. Great story! I loved it. I got all teary-eyed at the end. I hope I can find more Marian Keyes novels soon!

We had a great time at the Joust! Here are some photos — trying out a flash-based wordpress flickr plugin. Let me know if it doesn’t work for you, or just go check out the set)

Thank you, Gwen, Jeffrey, the Archery Guy, the Frazier Museum, the competitors, and everyone else who helped make it happen in spite of the fires!

Fires still burning on the hillsides, but most refugees can return home. We are quite safe. It was very foggy on the coast this morning, so I went out for a few minutes and breathed the clean-smelling, moist air. It probably wasn’t actually clean, but it sure smelled better than it did yesterday.

This morning a guy from SDG&E came, to see if our stove was leaking gas. Good news! It doesn’t! Later, a couple of guys from Sears came to see if we needed a new fridge door. Good news! We don’t! They just had to, um, bend the gasket or something. (I was downstairs recording — Dan dealt with the Sears guys for me.) While the fridge was moved away from the wall, I cleaned behind it. Yech. Also mopped the ash mud off the kitchen floor again. It looked good for a little while, at least.

I recorded three more chapters of Part One of This Country of Ours today (only one left!), and my half of The Goody-Naughty Book. And Dan helped me upgrade to Leopard on my iMac! So far it’s very very nice. Everything is running well and my computer feels much much faster. Leopard! I have LEOPARD!!!

Pretty soon I’ll go pick up Henry from his dad’s house so we can go to The World Invitational Joust in Poway tomorrow, which we assumed would be canceled but is still on, YAY! I’m looking forward to it sooo much. It’s an actual competition, not a Renaissance Faire… they even ask people not to come in costume. Hooray! No pirate-fairy-wenches. It looks as if they are sticklers for historical accuracy. They’ll have other exhibitions and displays going on all day, including a bowyer, which Henry will surely love. Should make up for our not doing much in the way of “social studies” this month, heheh. :)

Fires still raging, a quarter of a million people are still evacuated. We are safe here in north-west Oceanside. The air is bad and we are staying indoors, though I did tie a wet bandana over my nose and went out to run a few errands earlier today. Here is how the entire county looks tonight:

and here is our part of town:

In non-fire news: I went back into the Hourglass dungeon today and got the last sea chart! Henry showed me where a few shortcuts were and reminded me what to do in the upper levels, and coached me through the lower levels (though he hasn’t beat it yet). I got through the first section in 3:15 and he was most impressed :)

Also worked on his Halloween costume for hours. He’s being a Leaf-Chonin (?) ninja from Naruto and needs a green vest with all kinds of specific shaping and decorations. I made the pattern and cut everything out yesterday, and got most of the construction done today and it rocks. Henry is very pleased. It’s made of fleece, fully lined, sturdy and warm, so I hope he’ll get some post-Halloween use out of it as well! Photos tomorrow I hope. Also made a new pair of Naruto Shoes yesterday. I hate making Naruto Shoes, but I am really enjoying the vest. It’s quite a puzzle to translate a cartoon image into a real garment.

KPBS deserves an award for their fire coverage. They have covered it, live, for 75 hours. Thanks, KPBS!!!

Thanks to kpbs.org for keeping this map up to date, for their twitter feed, and for their live streaming radio coverage, which was very hiccuppy last night but smooth and fine today. Good job kpbs!!! This is how the map looked at 10:00am on Tuesday, October 23, 2007:

It’s not clear to me what the red and yellow areas indicate. Red might be actual fire zones or extreme danger zones, yellow might be evacuation areas. Anyway, they’re not good, and it’s unheard of for wildfires to threaten our coastal areas. We live under the “Oceanside” text, just north of the 78 and very near three of the evacuation centers — if they’re sending people to those schools for shelter, we are still safe. I just heard that residents of Solana Beach are being sent to the mall that’s just south of us across the freeway.

Approximately 1200 houses destroyed so far; 300,000 people evacuated.

Fires are burning all over San Diego. So far we, in the north-westerly-most part of the county, are safe, but we are ready to evacuate at any moment. Here’s a frequently-updated fire map, courtesy of kpbs.org, who also has a twitter feed!

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 5: William’s Hobby

Dan’s been talking about Leopard, the soon-to-be-released update for Mac OS X, for quite a while. Last week he showed me the page which lists 300+ new features, and some of them seemed really neat! For instance,

Quick Look:

Look inside any document without launching an application. Use Quick Look with documents, images, songs, and movies and get a large-size preview of the file. Flip through multipage documents, preview movies, even add images to iPhoto. You can use Quick Look in Finder, Mail, and Time Machine.

Spaces:

Organize your activities into separate spaces and easily switch from one to another. Make a space for work or play. Choose from a number of convenient options that make moving from space to space fast and easy.

(I haven’t had proper workspaces since I ran linux)

Scroll Non-Active Windows:

Scroll any open window, even if it’s not active. Simply position your mouse over the target window and scroll.

Path Bar:

See the path of a file when you view it in the Finder. Just choose Show Path Bar from the View menu and the path is visible at the bottom of the Finder window. You can also drag files to any location in the Path Bar.

So I got a little more excited about Leopard. And then, a few days ago, Dan downloaded the Guided Tour and we watched it together, and my head exploded and I became a rabid fangirl and now I can’t WAIT for LEOPARD! LEOPARD LEOPARD LEOPARD!!! Features that didn’t seem that interesting in print (stacks, time machine, new Finder layout, search shared Macs, etc.) look fantastic in use.

Only 5 days to Leopard! Yay Apple!

We had such a good day today! Last night we stayed up until 1:30am playing Civilization 4, so this morning I slept until 10 or so, very nice. In the early afternoon we went to Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas. I haven’t been there since my big sister took my little sister and me in the early 80s, and Dan had never been there. It’s only 20 minutes from our house and is a beautiful, peaceful place, so we’re planning to go back a lot more. We bought a family membership, in fact, which was only $60. We strolled around, looked at plants and trees, enjoyed the shade and the good-smelling air, and took a billion photos. We got there a little after 1pm, and before we knew it, 3 hours had passed! We had planned to buy an office plant for Dan at their annual plant sale, which was taking place near the parking lot, but they were packing up by the time we got there, so we’ll get his plant another day.

The gardens are divided up into zones — an Australian Garden, a Tropical Rainforest (with waterfall and pond), a Bamboo Forest, an Herb Garden, etc, with paved main paths and little dirt side paths as well. The place is huge. I don’t think we saw half of it. I’ll post a lot more photos after I’ve processed them, and I’m sure Dan will too. We’re so happy knowing a nice place, closer than Balboa Park, to take out-of-town guests!

After Quail Gardens we stopped by Dan’s work to pick something up, and I got the tour of his new building. When you have an internet start-up in coastal California, you have:

(if anyone can tell me how to align those two photos in a row, please let me know. I tried some basic html alignment code which failed miserably) Edit: Ada suggested a table! Thanks, Ada!

When we got home, I did some recording and LibriVox work (we’ve got 981 finished audio books!), and then we watched Knocked Up, which was very enjoyable.