n-judah love song

tricking out typepad

Laura wrote this excellent post about how to get a favicon in the address bar of your browser with TypePad. And then my favorite TypePad design blog, swissmiss, posted a link to the favicon generator today.

Just find an image - for me, I just used the Tummy Touch logo, and presto, now you should see the favicon if you clear your cache and reload see it in your browser window.

And welllllll, I borrowed the logo, so maybe you should go buy something from them, like the fabulously sexy I Am Fearless Funky & Five compliation, which I love more than is really appropriate. As evidenced by the fact that I am using their logo as a favicon. (But look how cute! It's my favorite logo evar. Why don't they have t-shirts?)

Thanks to Laura, Tina and Time "Love" Lee.

we've got issues.

Yeah, so. TypePad had some issues this month. Mena and Ben explain it best over here.

I hate when bad things happen to good servers, but I do love being able to use the flexibilty of blogging to communicate to the users who are feeling our pain. My favorites so far have been Diva Marketing (how apropos, after the Diva post), and the user who said "system adminstrators everywhere are feeling your pain" or something to that effect.

It makes me think back to my PR case studies class (I was a comm major, go figure) and wonder what future classes will use as examples of damage control, or how my digital communication class must have changed since then. Whose blog will they use as an example of damage control, held up like the speedy reaction of PR gurus in the Tylenol case, or the Pizza Hut case?

posting from del.icio.us to TypePad.

If you haven't set up a de.icio.us account yet, do so - it's really helpful for organizing bookmarks and being able to access them across computers. Plus, I have a habit of sending yall links all the time anyway that I never get a chance to read, so this is a good way for me to keep them until I do get the chance.

(Updated to add - now you can just post feeds in the sidebar in TypePad, whiz-bang. Thanks Anil! this description is for only if you want to put these in your posts.)

I knew that there was a way to post from del.icio.us to TypePad, and it took me for.ev.er to figure out, with some help from the fabulous ladies of TypePad support, so I thought I'd tell yall how I did it.

Go to http://del.icio.us/settings/$USERNAME/daily

But replace $USERNAME with your actual del.icio.us username.  So for mine, I'd go to

http://del.icio.us/settings/miz_ginevra/daily

and click "add a new thingy". I love that.

In the text fields, do this:

job_name = links from...
out_name = My TypePad username
out_pass = my TypePad password
out_url = http://www.typepad.com/t/api
out_time = 8
out_blog_id = 43265 (this is the number you see when updating your TypePad blog)
out_cat_id = (left blank)

I think this calls once a day, and then posts over here like so with my links I've bookmarked in the past 24 hours.

• FOUND Magazine
  a magazine of, well, found things.
  (tags: art idea magazine found)

whoo!

interestingness

Flickr Explore sure is nifty.

what a wacky scientific party

While some scientists are shooting lasers at cancer cells, ecstacy is shown to reduce parksinson's in mice.

Tomorrow in science news, it will be revealed that house music is the cure for baldness.

Calling all geeks.

So, new place, old computer. Previously, my PC was hooked up to the internets with DSL and was running Windows 2000. Now I have wireless, and the darn thing won’ work. Anil kindly donated me a wireless USB key, and I got upgraded to Windows XP, and the wireless connection shows in the status window as though all systems are go. Except no web applications will work.

What’s the deal? IP address? DNS errors? Gremlins? More about how my presence zaps electronics?

no more twee electronics.

Let's talk about my trivialities again to get us back to normal, shall we?

Yesterday, I got my fourth (fourth!) iPod replacement, as I'm still under warranty. For some reason, I went out and bought a 3G iPod about a week before the 4G ones came out. I got my $100 back, but I still run into all sorts of old-school problems. Namely, that the batteries on these fuckers Do. Not. WORK. And they always choose to conk out at the time when I need them to work, like on a long walk or at the gym.

My mom used to tell me she killed a certain type of watch every time she wore one. It would work and then slowly wind down. Something about an electromagnetic field or some other hippie hocus-pocus. But it's true, she does. I'm thinking maybe my frequency or maybe MUNI's perhaps is to blame.

Regardless, I picked up another iPod from the Geniuses (Genii?), and I did get the remote replaced, and I have 90 more days now on this one, so START COUNTING. If it needs to be replaced too, maybe I'll just start making a little lithium battery graveyard. Or white plastic bracelets from the housing.

I also lost my cell phone someplace while walking in the Mission on July 4th. And no, I wasn't drunk, thank you.

However, this has made me realize two things:

1. my electronics hate me. Yes, they can hate, they have souls - ones that are black and dead inside.
2. if ever there was a shiny, pretty mp3/phone on the market that worked for shit, I would simply lose it, or it would hari-kari hara-kiri itself in a fit of pique.

 

Tivo...is kind of the shit.

As if any of you still needed to know that. But as for me, I had not marveled at recorded television since my aunt used to record "Days of Our Lives" on VCR. I have finally joined the 21^st century. I have Tivo. (insert funny tympani error noise here.) 

I've never been much of a TV girl. I tend to watch two ends of a snob's spectrum that starts with "educational" and ends with "absurdist humor".  PBS, the Daily Show, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sifl and Olly, MST3K, and the occasional stupefying indulgence of a Sex and the City marathon or Metal Day on Vh1.  I couldn't tell you a thing about when what regular, popular shows are on. I have never watched American Idol or America's Next Top Anorexic or any of that hoo-ha. Point is?  I just don't watch TV that much, and Tivo hasn't really changed that. And I would blather on about “this is the way you’re supposed to watch TV” and “advertisements are soooo yesterday” but instead I will just say this.

Jon Stewart, my dear, how I’ve missed you!

love potion number 9

When I read this article about how new love affects your brain, my good friend Todd and I immediately threw all our cynicism at the topic and discussed exactly how the pharmaceutical companies would take advantage of this new research. Of course they'll create a new drug that will mimic the experience of falling in love, and then we've got one more piece of manufactured magic in pill form. One that undoubtedly will cost squillions.

names and slogans?

Mbrace - for when you're just not quite feelin it
Affectua - act like you are nuts while standing perfectly still
Cupidex - get that first three months to last forever!
Bondor - after all, she's still cooking you dinner

Do you think they'll sell it in a twin-pak with some ED drugs?

bloggerati meetup

I organized the Movable Type Meetup last month, but this month I've decided it should be less exclusionary to just one software package. Instead, I've created a Bloggerati Meetup (said with tongue firmly in cheek, kids). I put it up on the nifty Upcoming.org site, which involves tagging and RSS feeds of your planned event, among other neato features.

If you're in SF and you're a blogger, and you like beer, you should come to the Hotel Utah Wednesday night. It'll be fun.

my spam thinks I'm cute.

From: yuzhirui@mail.jl.cn [mailto:yuzhirui@mail.jl.cn]
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 7:57 PM
To: nospam@sixapart
Subject: Honey,our do love

I love you more than the stars above.

Sweetheart, i love you more than i can say!

attachment: virusfound.txt

sin city

Tonight, a few of us went to see Sin City. Stylishly rendered, violent, sexy and overall an excellent way to spend a rainy afternoon. Mickey Rourke rules it, as does the line "I'm Shellie's new boyfriend, and I'm out of my mind."

Does anyone know what scene Quentin Tarantino directed?

insert witty adjective here

There's so much Adorable Power* combined when you put Mule Design, Adaptive Path, and Ben Brown on the same project. I just knew they had to think up something new and exciting when offered a challenge to bring the brainy, tattooed hipster set together online.

How it works is like so - you create a profile and set tags up to define your interests and qualities. So you like bike messengers into Gabriel Garcia Marquez from SF? (Rwowr, I know I do, let's hang out.) Anywayyyy, presto, Consumating has filtered those people for you. You can vote, you can rate, you can email potential ex-lovers.

I'm tickled by it. It's like Flickr with whiskey goggles.

*disclaimer: I don't know the other people involved...but I'm sure they are adorable as well. 

the cephalipod!

The fabulous Alaina made this for me.  Buy a squid shirt from Mule!

 

Originally uploaded by miz_ginevra.

error 1607 Blues

If you're ever trying to resurrect your iPod from beyond the grave in the exact fashion I did - don't. Just - don't.  Go, young man or woman, to the Apple store.

So iTunes was prompting me to update to 4.7.1. I figure, while I'm at it, I'll update the iPod software too. Ha. Ha ha ha. I should have known better to do this than on a day when I
a.)crushed my pretty sunglasses and 
b.)lost a $10 BART ticket in the shadowy ick known as "between the seat and the wall of the BART car", all
c.) before I was even really awake.

Here's my iPod flickering at me "do not disconnect" for the better part of a day. What? Why? I turned to our friend, the internet, to try to fix it. (Rather that turning to my friend, Anil, who said "Why didn't you just go into iTunes and click 'eject iPod?' Noooo, too easy.)

I got a "1607" error when trying to update my iPod software. WTF does that mean?  I have no clue. Fortunately this guy did, as well as how to get into my regedit files to give MYSELF PERMISSION TO INSTALL THINGS on MY OWN COMPUTER, then how to update Install Shield's drivers. Uninstall the old driver, uninstall iTunes, uninstalled iPod, reinstall everything, try again.

then I got an 'iPod service error". This is at about 11pm, three hours after I had promised my poor boyfriend I would only be five minutes. I gave up for the night, vowing to either fix the damn thing or throw it down the hallway.

Ok. So I connected the whole shebang to my work machine, reinstalled the iPod software, and erased it the iPod. then I erased it AGAIN at home. I imagine little rubber shavings scattered inside it.

Plugged it in, and STILL nothing. "Your Windows PC doesn't recognize the device." I then reformatted the disk in Windows Disk Management.

Again, I reinstalled iTunes. I then went out for a drink or maybe five.

Abracadabra! It worked! But not really. So I took it to our good friends at the Apple store, who gave me a nUsed one to replace the old one, saying the hard drive had failed. Whoo, warranty!

What shelf paper should I put on the new one? I'm leaned to black and white checkerboard, but maybe a really obnoxious old-lady pattern would be good too.

stylesheets

those with CSS knowledge and access to computers that are not your parents'....any idea why the left sidebar text after the first module is all in caps, and where to tweak it?

thank youuuuuu...

hacking typepad

Thanks to Todd for the new banner and help with CSS - now I have a fancy new-looking site. I've been tinkering around behind the scenes with TypePad's Advanced Templates to change order, colors, and the about page, and it sure is fun.

Drunk Geek Watching

Being as I have a long history of working with bars, I have seen more than my fair share of drunk people, especially during holidays. As I have also worked for a lot of dotcoms, I have also seen more than my share of drunk geeks, who are their own unique brand of drunks. The Drunk Geek is the kind that do not drink often but will do so with a vengeance when given an open bar and let loose from the captivity of their square light receptacles. This always comes to a crux at the company holiday gathering. Last year, it was one QA engineer who vomited Petron all over a VP's front stairwell. A few years prior, it was a production manager flinging office furniture from the roof of a bar into Dupont Circle. (It wasn't even our office's furniture. And he stayed employed. Ah, 1999.)

I had the indistinct pleasure one year of attending the Microsoft company holiday gathering at the Westin Seattle. There were six foot high topiaries of fresh-cut roses on each table, a buffet with chefs preparing your beef, salmon, and other delicious snacks. There was a live r&b/funk band, and they were solid. Very funky for the boys from Redmond. My date was gracious, my friends amusing and witty, and we got to party for a while in the penthouse, where we proceeded to pull a Ferris Bueller: lean forehead against window, gaze down at beautiful city. It was a delightful evening, Microsoft had spared no expense.

Then the night got jumpin. People drank. And drank. We took photos in a prom-like photo session, with lots of giggles and a bit of falling over.  And then everyone drank some more. Excuse me, Mister Sullen Catering Bartender-type, may I have another gin and tonic? Of course, Mister I Drink Once a Year. What a swell idea. Have another while you're at it. People were dancing. I had a madras in one hand (hey, it's a party, I can order weird drinks) and a Corona in the other. Woo! Party!

And then...it happened.

Someone puked. Onto the dancefloor. 

Yall, that is when you take your friend home. That is not when you laugh and point and then take photographs, because you are a manager of and managed by the people who are standing around you. (I may laugh an point and take photos, because I don't know you.) You have high-paying jobs that require you to be at least of driving age. Therefore, you may not leave the vomitus there for one of the paid-not-enough-by-the-hour employees of the Westin to pick up. You apologize profusely, and then GO HOME, because buddy, The Good Ship Lollipuke done sailed. 

We saw him later out on the dancefloor. Albeit on the other side of the room. 

People, please. I am never one to encourage temperance, teetotaling or even  moderation but when you drink enough to puke on a dancefloor in front of a thousand co-workers and their dates, please remove yourself. If you are a friend of one of these people, and they are in danger of...say, being seen by their boss - you must remove your friend if they are unable to do so themselves. And no, you may not blog it.

Unless, of course, they work for the competition, in which case you should photograph said event and keep it for blackmail. Mwahhahahahahah.

Just kidding, Microsoft! Way to throw a party! Woo! Pass the Petron!

yahoo is watching you

belong to any yahoo groups?

opt out of their web beacon tracking system. Be careful not to click the button on the following page once you've opted out, or it opts you right back in.

via rebecca

digital camera?

I need to get a digital camera by Wednesday night for ~$150. Small, high-quality and chock-full of memory are my dream features, but ease of use is a big one over all.

Any suggestions?

flickr

I like Flickr because I can put up photos of monkeys and dogs and whatever. And, the lack of a letter 'e'.

Guess that makes up for all those extraneous "E-blahblah" companines back in the day.

by the way, Mie posted a really sweet thing up for her friend's recent loss, and something about me and my Dell travails. The bitter and the sweet...

do dee doo de doo de doo...

a column on the second round of Jeopardy tonight? Blogs. I almost peed myself. The kicker: who is Margaret Cho? was the $2000 question. Where's my money, Trebeck?

Yes, I watch Jeopardy. Yes, I am blogging about blogs being on Jeopardy. I've reached new heights in of meta-geekitude. Shut up.

have you ever seen a good help manual?

and if you haven't, why the hell not? are they that hard to write, and to write well? why doesn't anyone RTFM?

I bet it's because they're dry as hell. I'd rather read the phone book than read a user manual, but when you need it, you REALLY need it.

if you have any examples of a decent user-friendly manual - for anything: furniture assembly, software, setting your watch...leave me one below.

click for the cure.

3M Corporation of Post Its fame is building the World's Largest Pink Ribbon; in Times Square for breast cancer awareness month in October.

For every person who clicks on this link and signs up, Post-It will donate  $1 to breast cancer research and place a Post-It in  their name on the
billboard. Please sign up and pass this along....

justify my love

look, look, I can make images justify!

This is from a really great post about the thought process towards organizing data onTypePad that Anil linked to today, which made me think a bit about how I've got these templates laid out. I'd like to do some more design work within the templates....once I have a bit more time. Anyone want to build me a graphic?

ginevra is a candy raver. how did they know?

Googlism thinks I am:

ginevra is making herself beautiful for the man she loves
ginevra is distraught and confused
ginevra is joyfully reunited with her lover
ginevra is willing to both help franco find the killer and expose serafian as indirectly responsible for
ginevra is one such
ginevra is happily in love for ariodante
ginevra is like a personal computer to me
ginevra is accused of doing it
ginevra is highly bonded to our child
ginevra is a sultry thing
ginevra is a courtesan living in venice in the 15th century
ginevra is celebrated by the dancing of shepherds and shepherdesses
ginevra is at once pathetic and monstrous
ginevra is hesitant on marriage after all
ginevra is a char
ginevra is immers gek op hem
ginevra is restored to grace
ginevra is much smoother vocally
ginevra is not alone
ginevra is still there
ginevra is not chaste
ginevra is a whore
ginevra is not
ginevra is reached up a stone staircase
ginevra is over a stone in weight now
ginevra is new to our practice this year
ginevra is supported towards her bed by two women and a child
ginevra is neither a pure angel nor a pure
ginevra is the daughter of an armourer from urbino
ginevra is also sought after by the duke of albany
ginevra is carried off by dalinda
ginevra is asleep
ginevra is a representative to the far woods from arcadia
ginevra is not a
ginevra is similarly promised to peronello but
ginevra is arthur's
ginevra is a folding
ginevra is of our world
ginevra is distinguished by the modernity of its designs which nevertheless maintain a traditional shape and character
ginevra is lost in the world
ginevra is a reveler
ginevra is a candy raver
ginevra is part of the united nations environment programme
ginevra is a sweet pink baby
ginevra is vindicated
ginevra is imprisoned under mardoc's close surveillance and on both sides king arthur's knights coming to release
ginevra is her real name
ginevra is doing fine
ginevra is elkísérte
ginevra is able to convince the killers to spare her and eventually meets up with her husband and his friend
ginevra is now queen of the west
ginevra is preparing some surprise for us
ginevra is too dear to him to allow any one to covet her
ginevra is in love with ariodante
ginevra is an original and beautiful delineation
ginevra is the only one of the five who i am truly friends with
ginevra is the best of leonardo drowings
ginevra is in sight
ginevra is elizabeth's granddaughter
ginevra is now known as
ginevra is still trapped in the horror of her blossoming magical talent
ginevra is found carrying a knife professing that she must protect herself from her family members
ginevra is strapped in securely