Tailor-shop clerks running around like little cucarachas in my west realm, and a bunch of ruby groves in the south.

(My username is "edithfrost" if you want to buy some candles or somethin’.)

Me, with a nod: “Edith.”

Clerk, smiling: “Oh! Marsha.”

Me: “Excuse me?”

“I thought you were introducing yourself…”

“Oh… sorry… I thought you needed my name. For the coffee.”

“No, I was giving you your change…”

“Oh… right. Sorry, I’m hearing things… heheh!”

“Oh okay… ha ha!”

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people you like and include me. You can’t use the artist I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It’s a lot harder than you think! Repost as “my life according to (artist name)”

Pick your Artist:
EDITH FROST

Are you a Male or a Female:
HONEY PLEASE

Describe Yourself:
MERRY GO ROUND

How do you feel:
ON HOLD

Describe where you currently live:
THE VERY EARTH

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
FURTHER

Your Favorite form of Transportation:
CARS AND PARTIES

Your Best Friend is:
EASY TO LOVE

You and your best friends are:
CALLING OVER TIME

What’s the weather like:
LIGHT

Favorite Time of Day:
SHADOWS

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:
WALK ON THE FIRE

What is life to you:
WONDER WONDER

Your last (current) relationship:
TRUE

Your fear:
DENIED

Thought for the day:
YOU’RE DECIDED

How I would like to die:
TOO HAPPY

My soul’s present condition:
TELESCOPIC

My motto:
YOU BELONG TO NO ONE

Google Voice is currently in beta with some sort of waiting list for invites; I was lucky in that I had an old account with Grand Central, which later got bought by Google, spiffed up and turned into the current service. Everybody on Grand Central got the option to turn their account into a Google Voice one, so that’s what I did. I wasn’t crazy about the number GC had originally given me but I was able to pay a one-time fee of ten bucks to get a new & more memorable one in the area code of my choosing. So now, no matter where I move off to, no matter where I’m staying or what phone I happen to be close to, I can always get my calls routed to the best place. I can give out one number that’ll (in theory) follow me around for the rest of my life… knock on wood that those years be many.

More reading if you’re interested…

• New York Times: State of the Art – Unify the Phone Numbers and All Else Follows
• Lifehacker: A First Look at Google Voice
• Lifehacker: How to Ease Your Transition to Google Voice
• Lifehacker: How to SMS with Google Voice from Any Mobile Phone
• Google forums: The Power of 406
• Sean Kovacs: GV Mobile app for iPhone
• Nerd Vittles: Nerd Nirvana: Free Google Voice Calling Returns to Asterisk

(Update: Still don’t know how it affects the feed, but it borks the comments page. So I can’t leave post titles blank until if & when I get that figured out.)

By the way, since I’m blathering about my site I might as well tell you: I think I’m going to resume the folding of my Twitter-stream into my other blog posts, the way I used to do back before I stuck ‘em into a little box in the sidebar. This would apply to both the normal web-view and the RSS feed. I have mixed feelings about this. Assuming you use an RSS reader and also care enough to follow my blog there (that’s a big also) then the RSS feed is going to be (to the best of my ability) a complete version of the various info-chunks that appear on my site, at least during the odd phases of the moon when I’m going anywhere near this so-called blog. That would be a good scenario for most people. But if you also follow me on Twitter, then you’re getting duplicate info. That’s annoying. An ideal option would be to offer a separate RSS feed for people who wanted one without the tweets. I’ll work on it, maybe… but there are a lot of things I want to do to tweak my website, who am I kidding? If it starts bugging you, let me know in the comments and maybe that’ll put a fire under my ass to get the template in place.

There’s a lot more to be refuted about the FDA’s “warning”. Like: be very wary anytime you hear the word “antifreeze” used in a press release. It’s a word that’s only useful for its shock value. I’ll stop there… let me point you towards some people who can do a better job countering all this hysteria…

From Brad Rodu, harm-reduction advocate and Professor of Medicine at the University of Louisville… The FDA Crusade Against E-Cigarettes

Michael Siegel is a grade-A lunatic zealot, but he makes sense a lot of the time… Disingenuousness of the FDA’s Press Conference is Concerning; FDA and Anti-Smoking Groups are Committing Medical Malpractice on a Massive Scale

From the Electronic Cigarette Association, a group of e-cig suppliers on a mission to inform about, and defend their industry from smear campaigns like this… Response To The FDA

Me, I’ve had great success substituting e-cigs for real cigs. I still bum a cigarette every once in awhile, but that means one cigarette every week or two, whereas before I was smoking a whole pack every day. I’m getting my nicotine now without burning anything. Nicotine isn’t a carcinogen, and it’s no more dangerous than caffeine. I have very little desire to quit nicotine, but I’m very happy to be (mostly) off the combustibles. I have no problem with the idea of a regulating the industry to insure that e-cigs aren’t sold to children (duh!!) and that the nicotine I get is clean and has no harmful ingredients… but when you talk about banning the e-cig while leaving regular cigarettes perfectly legal and available, I have a huge problem with that.

So yeah, the past few days I’ve been playing around with various music-streaming services that have iPhone apps. It sure is a whole new world compared to the old days of Live365 and Launchcast… now it’s all about music recommendation, and prediction of what you’ll like. I know Pandora‘s been around awhile but I hadn’t played with it much until now… pretty sweet. IMEEM is nice too, though maybe not quite as user-friendly. There are so many others out there… but it’s not that easy to teach a machine about the preferences of somebody as finicky as me. And I can’t invest that much time on multiple sites; I want to pick a good one and stay there. Which ones do y’all like?

I think my ultimate goal would be to keep all my digital music in the cloud, including podcasts… like an iTunes on the web. I’ll deal with backups, but please keep these one bazillion MP3s safe for me and available for streaming anytime through my iPhone or my computer. Keep my original versions if they’re unique to the network, let me decide whether or not to share tracks, and let me tweak my ID3 tags the way I want. Let me hear my podcasts and keep track of which ones I need to catch up on. I’m sure some of this is doable now, but not on any one site. And which company would I trust with all that data? Sure wish Google would stick their finger in that pie! It’s a service I would gladly pay for (within reason) if I could count on my data being safeguarded for many years to come.

At least I’m listening to music again. What a concept.

There are a few flaws in my knitting that I’m well aware of, which I’m not going to discuss here. (Any more.) Experienced sock knitters may notice those flaws right away just looking at this picture… I’d appreciate it if they’d just shut it, for now, and notice the things that aren’t screwy-looking. And praise my mad newbie sockmaking skillz.

I’m calling them “Actual Socks” because this is my first REAL pair of socks — not teeny toddler socks, but actual adult socks for myself.

I started out thinking I was doing the "Berry Season" pattern out of the book "2-at-a-time Socks" by Melissa Morgan-Oakes. But I veered off from the get-go and now I think I’m just going to wing it.

The thing was, I learned a new cast-on method, Norwegian. And it makes for such a pretty border that I decided to go ahead and use it for this project. BUT, the pattern calls for a little curl of stockinette around the top. And if you have a pretty border you want it to lay flat, not curl around itself, right? So I have to do something else. Some ribbing I guess. Maybe it’ll turn into a crew sock instead of an anklet.

The yarn, btw, is absolutely yummy to work with. Pure merino, sooo soft and fluffy compared to anything else I’ve worked with. And the color, omg — my cameraphone won’t do it justice. It reminds me of that Brachs candy my grandma used to scoop up at the Walgreen’s when I was a kid… the 3-color rectangular chewies in pink (coconut?) caramel and "chocolate". She kept ‘em in a jar and we were allowed one or two maybe. :-)

Cuffs pretty much done. I had a couple scares there — wanted to fix a twisted stitch I’d noticed, messed it up, had to get out the DPNs and crochet hook.. Dropped the offending stitch down, like 4 rows down — I’m getting pretty good at fixing ONE stitch in the middle of the fabric without unraveling the whole thing! Not that I’m afraid of ripping back, but why do that if you don’t have to? But then of course you have to get everything reassembled in the proper order onto the one circular needle. It’s good times. But I know how to do that too, now. :-)

I haven’t worked on these for like a month. Messed them up using the Magic Loop 2-at-a-time method, frogged and restarted, then got super annoyed at the curly frogged yarn, and messed up again. But goddammit I really want these socks. So I’ve decided I need to at least get them started separately on DPNs — then when the cuffs are firmly established maybe I can think about switching over to Magic Loop. Although, I’m still not convinced it’s worth the trouble, dealing with two yarn-balls at once.

These are coming out ginormous even for me. (I have really big feet.) I might have to send them to my dad, who wears 13 double-E. Dunno if he’d wear red squooshy merino bed-socks though. Hee!

I think these might work out after all! That stitch pattern is really easy and fun to do ‘cuz a full quarter of the stitches are slipped. Pretty too.

As you can see I’m still on — or rather back to — the double-pointed needles. After the ribbing I tried a round or two on a 47" circular but immediately went running back to the DPs. Magic Loop is just not for me at this point. Anyway. Do you see two socks that hopefully look exactly alike? Well, the idea of Second Sock Syndrome is so frightening to me that I went out and bought another set of matching DPNs so I keep doing these "two at a time" — just the way I would using Magic Loop, one round on Sock A and one on Sock B, but without all the yarn-wrangling and cable-yanking. Works great as long as I keep track of where I’m at in the big "circle". That’s never a problem with Magic Loop.

Ready to start the heel flaps…

Halfway through the heel flap. Now THAT’S a chain selvage. I’m being ultra careful to keep it nice and neat this time. When I did the toddler socks before, and it came time to pick up stitches for the gusset, the edges were a total mess and I had to just eyeball it. But now I’ll know exactly where to stick it! ;-)

Heel flaps are done. I would say I’m halfway finished, but my feet are 65 inches long. ;-)

Gusset decreases are done, now I’m just filling out the instep & sole. I messed up the pattern a little, over the top of the foot at the point where the gusset starts. I guess I got the order wrong ‘cuz there’s a jog there on both socks. Hardly noticeable though.

Sock A is done! And I’m just past the heel on its mate. It fits really well, although I’m not crazy about a couple of things the pattern had me do… the toe is pointier than I’d like, and I’m not a fan of the loose-ish cuff. But I love how soft it is, and it really doesn’t need to be that snug anyway since it’s a bed/house sock.

I can’t believe they’re done. They took for-freakin’-ever… okay a month. Only a couple of weeks if you don’t count the times I frogged ‘em and started over.

I guess this is my first actual clothing item for myself… no, socks are more an accessory aren’t they? Like a hat or a scarf or a pair of mittens? So I guess Actual Garment is the next thing in the queue. Still, I’m pretty proud of myself. I hope this is the first pair of many many more. All of them from here on out, actually. Seriously, I never want to buy another sock now that I know how to make them to fit my very own humongous feet! :-)

Damn, these feel good. It’s Mission Falls 136 Merino Superwash yarn, in the "Wildflower" colorway. The pattern is called Berry Season, out of the book "2-at-a-Time Socks" by Melissa Morgan-Oakes. I didn’t do these on Magic Loop though, I used DPNs.

I know these all look alike, but it feels like a project doesn’t exist until it has a photo on Ravelry…

I’ve been asking around and it seems nobody in my immediate family uses dish cloths for washing dishes. If I gave my mom one, she would try to use it as a potholder! So I guess I get to keep all these. :-) It’s nice to have a little pile of ‘em around so you always have a fresh clean one every time you do dishes. BTW I washed one and put it in the dryer, and it shrunk up by about an inch, and the colors faded a lot too. So I think I’ll be air-drying them from now on. I do that for half my laundry anyway, it’s no biggie.

Another Elizabeth Zimmermann practice cap, this time as a gauge swatch for this yarn I have a ton of, Lion Brand Fishermen’s Wool. It’s just brown, so it’s kinda like knitting with my own hair. I have some cream-colored yarn of the same variety to use for the color-pattern work.

Chuggin’ along…

That last pattern was an accident. I was trying to make just a zigzag line but the top row got offset. I guess it doesn’t matter what you do, it’ll make SOME kind of pattern as long as you keep repeating it!

If this looks exactly the same as the last picture, GOOD. Because I found a mistake I couldn’t live with, and had to rip it back about an inch. I thought about fixing the zigzag I messed up before, but I kinda liked it so I just did it again.

Normally I wouldn’t have to rip out a whole section just to fix one twisted stitch or whatever, but this was worse than that. I had some, uh… unintentional short rows in there. You can’t fix that by dropping a stitch or two down. But who cares, it only took a half-hour to fix.

The completed hat.

Yep, I felted it. Kind of on purpose and kind of not… I was experimenting with how much abuse it would take, and it immediately failed the washing-machine test. Oh well, at least I learned a lesson about this yarn! I can’t really have fabric items in my house that aren’t machine-washable at the very least. They just don’t belong here. They need to march themselves next door, or anyplace but here.

I’m on a strict regimen of Elizabeth Zimmermann books and videos. And instead of knitting a gauge swatch she has you make a little cap. So this is that cap, or at least the ribbed edge of it. I should’ve gotten that yarn-tail out of the way, like it’s not messy-looking enough! The yarn is a really soft heathery wool/acrylic blend — Lion Brand Wool-Ease, in "Blue Mist". You can’t see yet, but I’m doing little color patterns now, in gold yarn. Don’t ask! It’s not for me, it’s a special request. Unless the styling just doesn’t work out for the somewhat fussy person who requested that goldness. :-)

Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Blue Mist and Gold

I gotta do a Space Invaders hat!

I really like doing color work like this. It’s not nearly as hard as you’d think.

Had to transfer to DPNs to do the crown.

The completed crown.

…or maybe it’s a Granny Smith apple hat. This is 72 stitches, toddler size I guess. And for want of a 16" #7 circular, I’m learning to be a puppeteer with the double-pointed needles. I gotta find a yarn store that’s open. I have a Jo-Ann close to me but they don’t carry the 16" circs.

Looks like I gotta find a very big baby or a very small toddler… little kids’ heads are huuuge! Crazy huge, practically the same size as adults’ heads.

Just about to start the decreasing. This is my first time doing real two-color knitting. I might have overdone it with the loops in the back, I was being super careful not to let them cinch up too tight.

The yarn I used: Vanna’s Choice, in Sweet Pea and Kelly Green. The pattern I used is called Berry Baby Hat by Michele Sabatier.

In the Eighties I used to be hardcore into making those knotted friendship bracelets, remember those? I would get super skinny pearl string, and use about twenty strings instead of the normal eight or ten. So my knots would be really tiny and precise, and I could make more intricate patterns. I would often work with black string as I’m doing now, working patterns into the blackness that you could only see if you held it a certain way under the light. And why would I do this? I don’t know, it was just what we did in those days. Anyway, here’s the video that I sooo wish I could’ve seen 27 years ago! Amazing how easy it is once you see somebody do it up close like that. Over and over again, at various angles, rewinding when necessary… ;-)

(Update: this post got deleted by a buggy plugin; I had to recreate it. Sarah had posted a comment that got deleted along with the original: “ugh! but the music! and the super bendy thumb! I can’t watch.”)

I got my Kindle early this year, as a Christmas present (excellent gift, Daddy!!). At the time the orders were very backlogged so I had to wait 40 days for mine. Now you can just order one and have it delivered the next day! They’re a little cheaper now too, but that’s the price I paid to live on the bleeding edge.

Anyway. There’s not much I can say about the Kindle because it “just works” for me, it’s not something I need to think about anymore. That’s saying a lot because I’m a real tweak-freak, I don’t tend to leave my gadgets alone for very long! But the Kindle just does what it does so well, I really don’t feel the urge to change anything about it, apart from a few features I’d like to see in the next firmware update. (Folders, please.)

As you may know the Kindle works wirelessly through the Sprint network in conjunction with the Amazon website, so you can order any book you want (well, almost) and have it delivered almost instantly to your Kindle. Searching the web-store is super easy. I love how self-contained this gadget is; I very rarely plug it into my computer. In fact, you can do everything you need to do directly on the Kindle, no computer needed. That is elegant, my friend.

The only (small) problem I’ve had is that some of the books I’ve purchased had dodgy formatting — you know, broken links in the table of contents, or missing pages or what have you. In those cases I’ve contacted Amazon and gotten my money back, no problem. Customer service for the Kindle is really really good… from what I can tell, anyone with book problems gets their money back, and anyone with hardware problems gets a replacement Kindle. So there’s no worries about being stuck buying something that you’re unhappy with.

Reading on the Kindle is a pleasure, I must say. This thing has an adjustable font size, very handy if I’m reading in dim light and my eyes are tired. In full daylight I’ll normally use the medium-to-smallish size. I know for a fact that I’m able to read a lot faster on the Kindle than I can with a paper book. It’s easier on the hands and easier on the eyes.

I never did buy another cover for my Kindle, I like the one it came with just fine. It looks like a Moleskine notebook, which is aesthetically pleasing to me, and I’ve never had any problem with the way the cover fits. I don’t use it when I’m reading in bed (it’s a little too bulky), but otherwise it’s always in the cover. It’s especially great for reading in public, because nobody can see the cover of whatever dorky sci-fi book I’m reading. :-) It feels very private and personal that way… I could even read a self-help book if I wanted! Nobody would know! Heh.

So yeah, the Kindle has worked out great for me. I’m still keeping a lot of my paper books (collectibles, computer books and things that wouldn’t translate well to the greyscale display) but I highly recommend the Kindle as a replacement for the piles of throwaway books that tend to accumulate around the house, the ones you don’t want to collect. Of course you can always re-read a book anytime you want — just re-download it from Amazon if you’ve deleted it from your Kindle. But yeah, in my collection there’s a pretty clear line between books that are actually collectible/useful to have, and books that you’ll probably read once and never open again. THOSE are the books I want to get off my shelf and onto my Kindle!

I will leave you with one link to peruse if you’re considering getting a Kindle of your own, or if you have one already and want to learn more. It’s a mailing list on Yahoo actually, called Kindle Korner. There are almost 2000 people in the group so it’s a fantastic resource for information on anything and everything related to the Kindle. Links to free books online, discussions of the best accessories, how-tos, and what-to-do’s if you have problems. It’s all there, and although it’s a pretty noisy list due to all the people, it’s a well moderated list.

So that’s the story. I dig my Kindle. It’s just one of the tools that I use every day; no big whoop, I don’t even think about it too much anymore. It just works well, it saves me money on books, and it’s got me reading a lot more. I never expected to get hooked on an e-reader before I heard about the Kindle, but it’s really changed the way I read and the way I think about books. They’re a lot more accessible now for me and anyone else who has one, and even those who don’t. Because the mania is spreading thanks to the Kindle and other e-readers, I do believe. People want to buy books, and that can only be a good thing for the publishing industry.

(If you try this fix, I hope it works for you. But be aware that I’m NOT a plugin coder; I don’t actually know what I’m doing. So proceed at your own risk!)

The following instructions apply to TwitterTools v1.2b1, available in a zip-file here.

First, back up your files in case something goes horribly wrong! Then, open twitter-tools.php and find the “do_tweet_post” section, starting around line 272. It’ll look like this:

function do_tweet_post($tweet) {
    global $wpdb;
    remove_action('publish_post', 'aktt_notify_twitter');
    $data = array(

(etc. etc.)

Now you’ll make a new variable to display the tweets the way you want. I called my variable “tweetcontent” but you can call it something else if you like. Also, in my case I’m using an unordered list to mark up each tweet, even though there’s only one tweet per post. You don’t have to do that though, you can use whatever style-related tags you want.

So! Insert the following lines just before the last line (the $data one):

$tweetcontent .= '<ul>'."\n";
$tweetcontent .= '<li>'.aktt_make_clickable($tweet->tw_text).' <a href="http://twitter.com/'.$this->twitter_username.'/statuses/'.$tweet->tw_id.'">#</a></li>'."\n";
$tweetcontent .= '</ul>'."\n";

(You can also add a class name to the ul or the li; that’s how I style my tweets.)

So in the end the function will look like this:

function do_tweet_post($tweet) {
global $wpdb;
remove_action('publish_post', 'aktt_notify_twitter');
$tweetcontent .= '<ul>'."\n";
$tweetcontent .= '<li>'.aktt_make_clickable($tweet->tw_text).' <a href="http://twitter.com/'.$this->twitter_username.'/statuses/'.$tweet->tw_id.'">#</a></li>'."\n";
$tweetcontent .= '</ul>'."\n";
$data = array(

(etc. etc.)

One last thing. Please change the very next line:

'post_content' => $wpdb->escape(aktt_make_clickable($tweet->tw_text))

…to the following:

'post_content' => $wpdb->escape($tweetcontent)

(“tweetcontent” can be whatever variable name you used earlier, if you changed it.)

Save the plugin file and you’re done. Yup! You’re welcome. ;-) Feel free to post a comment if you did or didn’t get it working, or if you have any other TTTs to share.

I found this bookmark in an old book I bought in the early 90s when I lived in New York. So funny. I’m using it now for the CSS book I’m reading… he’s definitely encouraging me to BE COOL and keep at it. I’m 3/4 of the way through now! That’s about the farthest I’ve ever gotten in any computer book. I’m learning so much so fast, and with this dude’s help I’m determined to make it to the end!

Have you noticed the little changes I’ve been making to the site? No big deal, just messing with the colors, adding some rounded corners and trying to clean up the template code and slightly div-happy CSS, now that I know a little more what it’s supposed to be doing. The next step is going to be to make the page stretchy instead of fixed-width. I’m happy to report that I’m finally using nothing but CSS for the layout — no tables at all! Nary a one, not even in the header. Which, by the way, is a little problematic if you try to squish the page to a narrower width than around 700px, because the nav-bar wants to butt into the stuff on the left. That’s another thing I need to fix, but I’m new at this sort of thinking so I have to ponder it awhile. :-)

I wonder if this Sam Goody dude was a real character with a name and a universe? Or is he licensed from some DC comic, I wonder? Probably not. I tried Googling him, no luck yet. God, look at that mullet.

So anyway, pride be damned. Now I’m working on a book that’s way more up my alley: CSS: The Missing Manual. I kinda knew a lot of this stuff already, but CSS has always been a weak spot for me. I do write valid XHMTL nowadays, but I’ve been stuck in “transitional” mode for too many years. But now I’m really knuckling down and learning how CSS works, how to separate the content from the style. Hopefully that’ll be reflected on my site one of these days. (Don’t look at the code! It validates, but it’s a mess to look at.)

This book is really really good. It explains CSS from top to bottom, and hammers it in with tutorials where you have to work on your own computer using mocked-up sites they’ve provided. There are a lot of intricacies to CSS that I never knew about. I’m about 1/3 through the book now, and really want to make it to the end for once in my life!!