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Aaron’s comment in the below post reminded me that we made a list on the whiteboard in our bedroom of Known Cylon Models. We call them:

• Sharpdresser
• Sweaty Guy
• Xena
• Al
• Black Man
• Hot Blonde (or Number 6)
• Sharon

Sweaty Guy creeps me out. No wonder I had anxiety dreams last night.

And now for something completely different: some Finnish men in shorty shorts and tube socks. Don’t miss the keyboard player’s eyebrow move:

We watched the first two episodes of BSG season 3 last night, so of course I had anxiety dreams all night and woke up too early. Bah.

Here are some photos:

I turned the heels on both of the gray penny sock mods a couple of days ago:

Heel detail:

Also made ten more morsbags over the last few days. The eight green ones are from an old fitted queen-size sheet that Mom didn’t want, and the polka-dotted ones are some scarps that Margaret gave me:

Henry brought a Go set home yesterday and we played a lot today. Fun! Read about it on his blog.

Also did a mega-super-grocery shopping together.

Um, we did lots of other stuff today but too tired to think so that is all for now.

Things I did this weekend:

• Turned the heels on both top-down Penny Socks
• Played music with Dan. Kashmir was too hard, Sunday Bloody Sunday is ok, Free Four is super-fun. I need to practice!
• With Dan’s help, migrated ALL of our mp3s to my iMac (Strangelove). Am now working on removing duplicates, adding proper tags and album art, fixing genres, etc.
• Ate tamales
• Read half of The Sea of Trolls, by Nancy Farmer. Excellent kids’ historical fiction, takes place in the 8th century!
• Moved my recording setup upstairs to a more comfortable place
• Recorded a poem and a chapter of More William for LibriVox
• Interviewed Dan for the LibriVox community Podcast
• Started sewing another 8 morsbags
• Picked ants off of myself — the sofa is their new favorite place
• Watched three bad episodes of BSG and two good ones

Bedtime!

A few months ago, Damian Kulash was a guest on Loveline. He sounded unusually intelligent and was a great guest. They mentioned something called “the treadmill video” which sounded intriguing so I found it on youtube and watched it. Again and again and again. Then I found several more OK GO videos on Youtube, and liked every song. I set up a Pandora station based on OK GO and have realized that, while a lot of the stuff pandora picks for me is perfectly pleasant, every time an OK GO song comes on it’s something special! They have a great sound, beautiful vocal harmonies, good crunchy guitar, hard drums, interesting bass, intelligent lyrics, and their songs are not all identical to one another. I’ve never heard an OK GO song that I didn’t at least like a little bit, and they tend to grow on me more and more. Hooray for OK GO! I put their special release collector’s edition dvd/cd on my birthday list :)

Since Hugh is out of town and probably won’t be posting his Friday Youtube Music Video Mixtape, I’ll do one for OK GO. (edit: Hugh is back and he’s pissed off at Bell Canada — for good reason!)

Song: “Oh lately it’s so quiet”. Here’s an adorable fan-made video. I love the hand-clap/guitar bit for the solo, and the creeping girl!

Here’s a live version of the same song! <3 <3 <3!!!

Here’s Do What You Want, the wallpaper version:

And, for those who have been living in a cave, here’s their backyard dance video and the treadmill video:

Thanks, OK GO, for not suing people for posting (and making) videos! You rock!

From boingboing:

Oh, how I love pop culture flow charts!

While I was writing the previous post, I found myself once again wishing for some way to keep a few snippets of text on a permanent clipboard. I type the same strings over and over and over, especially when doing LibriVox work or setting up blog posts full of photos.

So, on a whim, I googled “permanent clipboard” and the very top link pointed to a way to use my beloved quicksilver for just this purpose!!

It took a bit of poking about to make it work, so I thought I’d document it and save you some time.

1. Go to quicksilver -> plugins -> recommended and enable “shelf”
2. Go to quicksilver -> prefs -> actions and scroll down to “put on shelf” and enable it
3. Invoke quicksilver. Type “.” and type or paste your text string into the window. Press tab, then down-arrow until you see “put on shelf” and hit “enter”
4. invoke quicksilver, type “shelf” (choose “shelf”, not the “shelf & clipboard catalog” thing), hit “enter”, then down-arrow until you see your shelved item. Drag it into your document (or whatever). Voila!!

Oh, wonderful wonderful quicksilver! No mac should be without it. Did I mention that it’s free?

The Penny Socks, take two, from the top. I cast on 70 st and worked the ribbing for four cable crosses. On the fifth cross, I converted the 2×2 ribbing to 5-st Coin Cables by k2tog in the middle of the cross, so it’s hidden:

Henry doing archery yesterday at Margaret’s:

Henry at the beach on Tuesday:

Tired and headachy today. Here’s a post full of random thoughts and a small amount of griping.

I like BoingBoing a lot, and a few days ago I realized one reason why (besides the general wonderfulness of the items they post): no reader comments! Therefore, no posturing know-it-alls and flame wars to irritate me. Just links that the boingboing team finds interesting, take them or leave them. Nice.

Finished Brat Farrar, by Josephine Tey, this afternoon. Marvelous book. I first read it years and years ago, when I was about Henry’s age. My sister Kathy recommended Tey to me, so every time I read a Tey novel I think of her!

Lying in bed listening to my “Benny and Fred” pandora station. Some of the songs I’ve heard this afternoon:

Artie Shaw, “These Foolish Things”
Glenn Miller, “Fools Rush In”
Benny Goodman, “I Know That You Know”
Count Basie, “Moten Swing”
Fred Astaire, “Cheek to Cheek”

I had to thumbs-down just a few drippy things. How I do love pandora.com.

Henry had a great time at Margaret’s park day today! He wanted to start up archery again so we got there early for the archery session. He, um, arched, for a solid hour and never once complained about the heat, AND said he loved it. Yay! Margaret is so awesome. She provides all the necessary equipment, careful supervision, and a bit of instruction for only $5/hour. And then Henry asked the big boys if he could join in on their RPG session, which always takes place on a big table in the shade while the younger kids play, and he had a fantastic time playing with them for two and a half hours while I read and rested and listened to Loveline on my iPod in the car. The rest of the moms sit in the shade and chat but I’d rather sit by myself in the quiet.

Travian is fun: http://travian.us/. Work on your resources first, before building or improving other things. You’ll need more wood, clay, and grain than iron at first, so focus on improving those resources.

I have a lot of photos to upload — Henry at the beach, Henry and Dan playing Starcraft, Henry shooting arrows, the beginning of a new pair of socks, but I don’t feel like dealing with them right now so you’ll have to wait.

I gave mom a computer help session today. Virtuous daughter, me. Now she knows how to download, find (!), and open a pdf. Yay mom!

I’m minding the LibriVox email while Hugh is out of town. I don’t know how he does it full-time and keeps his sanity. People sure do feel entitled to complain about any little thing that doesn’t suit them. Keep in mind that our audiobooks are entirely, 100% free, created by volunteers who pour their hearts into making recordings for anyone who wants to listen. We get complain after complaint — “I don’t like Reader X, why on earth do you let her read?” “I don’t like readers with foreign accents.” “Books written by English authors should only be read by English readers” “Books written by men should only be read by male readers” “Recording X has background noise, don’t you have any kind of quality control?” “I don’t like your catalog search page, it doesn’t work at all!” (The user was typing the author’s name into the title box. Oops!)

However — we also get some wonderfully kind and thoughtful email from listeners. A fellow thanking us for giving his 80-year-old visually-impaired dad books to listen to. Lots of people saying they can’t believe they’ve found such a great resource. Thank you, kind people, your email really helps counteract the complainers :) And of course we do want to know when files are chopped short in the middle or have permissions problems that make their tags uneditable!

What do the ants want? WHAT DO THEY WANT?????? They seem to just wander aimlessly around looking for the Ants’ Holy Grail, whatever that might be. I’m so used to picking them off of myself while I’m sleeping that it doesn’t even bother me anymore.

I like WebbAlert. It took me a little while to get used to her, um, enthusiasm, but now I like her just fine and enjoy the content!

We went to the beach for an hour this morning. I finally remembered to take my camera! Sorry the voice-over is so quiet. We’ll do better next time :)

I turned the heel on one of the Penny Socks tonight. Ugh. Not a good heel for my foot. So I’ve ripped them out. I really loved the cable pattern, though, so I’ll probably start a top-down pair using those cables and a good Dutch heel :)

I’ve just installed Subscribe to Comments 2.1. If you leave a comment, you should be able to check the “subscribe to comments” box and be notified of follow-up comments on that post. Handy for extended discussions of knitting and books :) Give it a try and let me know if it works!

Jon Stewart. Rofl.
Daily Show explores mysteries of missing stuff in Iraq

On Thursday night, Mom and I went to see Hamlet at the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa park. It was just wonderful! I thought Polonius was especially good; his timing was exquisite, and, while he was rather muddled he never seemed stupid. Um, I could go on and on but you might as well just read this glowing review. And I do agree with the review about Ophelia’s “two gestures that reduce the mystery of her madness”. Those gestures (heck, no one who reads this is going to mind spoilers — she cradles her obviously pregnant belly in the Mad Scene) felt false and unnecessary to me. But really, that was the only part of the entire show that bothered me. It was a magical performance.

Here’s a picture of the theater (though our show was in the other, less impressive building, heh):

And the nearby Museum of Man:

Mom, looking exactly like Grandpa:

And me:

My birthday is coming! August 27! Just in case you’re longing to send me a present, here’s my wishlist: http://wishlist.confusticate.com

I realized that I have plenty of Brittany Birch needles size 0, so I decided to make the Penny Socks in parallel. I figured out how to do both cable crossings, regular and coin, without a cable needle!

Finished! I love these socks. They were extremely fun to knit, and the finished socks are beautiful. I loved the spiral rib pattern! It’s a four-row pattern, easy to memorize, and it’s also easy to tell which row comes next so you never never get confused. It made the knitting seem to speed along. The pattern is free, and very well written. highly recommended! Thanks, Nicole! Nine-to-Five Socks, by Nicole

Because of my skinny feet, I worked them on 60 stitches instead of 72 (ten spiral ribs instead of twelve). The heel was on 30 st, plus the m1 to make the pattern balance — such a nice touch! In order to make the heel turning work out, I started as follows:
k16, ssk, k1, turn
p4 (not 5!), p2tog, turn

And my heel ended up nicely centered. Took me forever to figure this out :)

More photos!

Having a nice at-home day today, ignoring the errands that need to be done and just hanging around the house, very relaxing. Henry and I played WoW for a long time (grinding in the Western Plaguelands) and now his anime-loving friend, Matthew, has come to play. They’re making Matthew a Mii :) we did the Wii firmware upgrade this morning, nothing thrilling but it’s nice that they keep making improvements.

Last night we went to Margaret’s house for an ensemble rehearsal. Henry got to play percussion and he loved it. He’d never been in the situation of playing music he was unfamiliar with and following a conductor. He did well, and I was proud
of the way he picked up the feel of each piece. They did a couple of Lord of the Rings pieces, a little celtic thing, In the Mood, and Kokomo. Henry really picked up on In the Mood and added nice little fills on the snare from time to time. We’re looking forward to the next rehearsal! I had a great time knitting and listening, and am ready to knit the toe of my second nine-to-five sock:

And here’s a bonus photo for you, Henry at Karate on Monday. That’s Cassidy behind him. Sorry about the Ultra-Grain! My battery was dying and I didn’t want to waste time fiddling with the settings:

Feeling significantly better today, still constantly coughing up gunk but I feel more like myself, and even went grocery shopping! When we were in Montreal, Hugh served us an appetizer of kielbasa (handmade by his Hungarian butcher), tasty bread, and cheese. Henry loved the kielbasa and dubbed it “Pink Meat”. Today I noticed that Trader Joe’s sells a kielbasa now — no nitrites, no nitrates, no msg, no preservatives. Not quite handmade by a Hungarian butcher, but worth a try, I thought. Dan and I just had some with slices of a sesame demi-batard and some double cream gouda and it’s very good.

Two of the stars of American Body Shop, a new show on Comedy Central, were guests on Loveline the other night. They were entertaining and the description of their show sounded interesting so I asked the TiVo to get it for us. Should be an episode on tonight. I watched a short clip on the internet. It was only a minute long, but it entertained me and made me laugh once or twice, and there’s no laugh track — yay! Can’t watch laugh-track shows anymore. It looks like an Office-type show, which is a promising start if they’ve got good writers and and a good cast.

Now I’m sleepy so I’ll lie here and nap and watch Dan play starcraft. My feet are hot. Fascinating Fact: In winter my feet get unbearably cold and in summer they get unbearably hot. I sleep with an ice bag at my feet in summer.

Here’s an entertaining video:

The Potter Puppet Pals in “The Mysterious Ticking Noise.” Family safe.

After my marathon knitting sessions to finish the Ravenclaw Bag, I developed severe pain in my right wrist. This has happened before, and I knew it would clear up if I stayed off it, so to speak, so — no knitting and very little typing yesterday! It’s feeling fine today and I’ll try a little gentle knitting later. I’m working the heel of the second nine-to-five sock, so, if all goes well, I might even finish it this weekend.

Still recovering from this nasty virus, so I didn’t do much yesterday. Lay about and read, mostly, and coughed, and did some LibriVox work. Henry got a ride with a nice mom to and from the last session of afternoon Hogwarts Summer Camp, so I didn’t even have to go anywhere.

At one point in the afternoon I felt too tired even to read, so I *gasp* turned on the TV and looked around for something good. Watched someone hwking knives on QVC for a while, then found a channel called Ovation that was playing a live performance of a Bach Cantata and felt like I’d dropped into an alternate universe of good taste and culture. Watching/hearing the cantata led to a memorable dream last night:

I was in Germany with Dan, Henry, Susan, Jack, Chloe, and Bob. I think there was someone else in our party too, a tallish thinnish rugged-type. Steve McQueen, possibly. I have no idea how he got into my dream. There was some flooding, but we went to a cathedral to hear a choir performing Bach. The audience was led up to a gallery that ran around the edges way up high near the roof. We could hear the choir but not see them. Of course, my dream featured actual Bach choral music. The lights went out and everyone left, but I was left behind and had to try to feel my way in the dark, and I got lost up among the rafters on a little ramp. Dan and Henry came back and found me, and we made our way down to where the musicians were rehearsing. The flood waters were coming into the church in places but no one was worried. The choir was rehearsing The Magnificat at this point. Just before I woke up they were at the section with the amazing brass so I’ve got that in my head now, though only vaguely and I don’t seem to have The Magnificat in my iTunes so I can’t track it down but if I can find my CD later I’ll figure out which section it was.

To quote Radar O’Reilly: “Ahhhh, Bach.”

Recorded Fahrenheit 451 off the Ovation channel and watched it last night with Dan. Good movie, a little perplexing (we both read the book but long ago. I read it when I was about Henry’s age), and with commercials cut in about every ten minutes, smack in the middle of scenes, really jarring.

Now I’m cataloging Peter’s recording of The Natural History of Selborne. For our 2nd anniversary August documentation cleanup, I’ve promised to update the huge document full of guidelines and procedures for librivox coordinators… It’ll be quite a job and I suppose I should get started.