Happy Samhain everyone! And Day of the Dead. And Diwali. All the fall holidays! Plus some politics and dont forget to change your clocks on Saturday.

In which I share a moment with my cat and relate some links I found interesting.

After spending a decade writing the novel “Digital Dryad,” I’m considering bringing my writing and web programming skills together to create dynamic games inspired by the vivid world of my novel. Some of my ideas include language learning games that teach you how to converse in “Dryadic” and exciting “choose your own adventure” narratives as well as other ideas. I’m exploring an assortment of game concepts. Gamification of your novel is a wonderful way to expand the reader’s experience in the world of Digital Dryad.

Digital Dryad is out now! Pick up your copy today from Amazon. Available in paperback or Kindle ebook format. It’s also available on Kindle Unlimited.

My author copies have arrived. Only two weeks until they will be available for sale on Amazon! And even my cats approve.

I was wondering why so many YouTubers were upset by a silly meme question. But then I rewatched a Northern Exposure episode, and it makes a lot more sense now.

Bookmarks, postcards, and stickers. Oh my!

Ever been caught off guard by a change in schedule that ruined your plans? Ever felt a surge of unfairness mixed with annoyance and the reluctance to confront it due to the fear of being labelled a complainer?

While I agree that the worst effects of AI are ahead of us, I do not agree that the concerns I have about AI are not valid. I got so annoyed at this article in Writers Digest that I had to comment on it.

I am exhausted by the trend of companies switching to subscriptions. Why should I be excited to pad their pockets when I can barely afford to feed my cat? Here’s what I said to CleanMyMac when they surveyed me about switching to a subscription-only model.

A post where I delve into the concept of chokepoint capitalism. I explore how connector companies accumulate immense market power, impacting consumers and small businesses. Drawing on examples like Amazon and personal experiences, I shed light on the detrimental effects, such as limited choices, reduced competition, and potential societal implications that arise from this phenomenon.

I’ve discovered Mastodon Okay, that isn’t that thrilling a discovery. Many people are there before me. But if you’re interested, here’s my link. You can follow me. Or not. As you wish. Invite link: https://indieauthors.social/@htmljenn Image by F. Muhammad from Pixabay

I have a ton of books on my kindle that I either haven’t read or read so long ago that they have lost their ‘read’ status. So rather than spend money I don’t necessarily have, I decided I should try to read what I’ve got.

Deciding to quit is tough for me. I was raised to believe that winners never quit. But in just the last few years I’ve realized that quitting things that aren’t working works for me.

Sometimes reading email is a chore, and other times, it’s a delight. Today was one of the latter days.

My tastes in reading have changed. I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise, but it was to me.

I never used to like the phrase “it is what it is.” It seemed like something people would say when they were dismissing my very real anger or frustration. Or something they would say when they were trying to pretend they weren’t feeling anger or frustration themselves. I know now that the reason I didn’t like the phrase was because I didn’t understand it. I hadn’t truly lived it. Along came 2020.

A friend of mine calls the folks arbitrarily buying up every random thing in the store (e.g. TP and bottled water) “panic hoarders.” Honestly, that is an excellent name for them. I mean, I understand the people frantically buying Purell by the gallon (why, oh why didn’t I buy stock in Purell???), but bottled water? Did Covid-19 get into the plumbing? I guess I will invest in a LifeStraw. That way I can drink from the creek in my backyard.

It’s been a long time coming, but Digital Dryad is nearly ready for me to show it to agents and publishers. I’ve gotten some amazing feedback from my alpha readers and the Barnsian Nobility (my writing group) and it’s turned this story into something I’m proud of. Of course, that means that if I share it with an agent or publisher, they will likely 1) ignore it/me 2) trash it. At least that’s what I’m afraid will happen.

I’ve written 50,366 words in November 2019. I’m a little under half way through the novel. It’s been fun, and not really all that stressful. I had hoped to cross the 50K mark a little earlier in the month, but life got in the way. However, it’s all moot as I’ve proven to myself for the third time now that I can write a good chunk of a novel in 30 days if I just push myself to do it.

This year I discovered that outlining is my jam. In August, I finished Digital Dryad (currently in editing and alpha readers). I had been working on that novel since around 2009, but I was able to complete the entire second draft–a complete rewrite from scratch–in around 28 days. That novel is currently 79,000 words. I was able to write this draft so quickly because I created a comprehensive outline first.

From WorldCon 2018 I thought it might be fun to show some of my other notes that I’ve taken in Notability. I use an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil, so that makes it easy to draw. I would say the only issue I have with Notability is that I can’t figure out how to export it as an image. So I end up exporting it as a PDF and then converting the PDF into an image.

Today was a busier than usual day. First I nearly got my Elven Druid killed when she insisted on yelling at the top of her lungs in a cavern where a bunch of people had died. We didn’t die, and she is no longer cursed, so I call today’s adventure 100% positive. Then I went home and let the dogs run around for a while. Padfoot has discovered that being fenced in is not his style, so he spends most of his days attempting to find ways around the many fences we have been erecting, repairing, adjusting, raising, and so on.

I set a plan to write for an hour today from 10:45am to 11:45am. And I did. 1220 words in my novel are now down on digital “paper.” Next step on my plan is to make and eat lunch. I wonder what I should have.

I read an article (recommended by a friend in my writing group) today about 10 ways to stay fired up about my writing goals. It was all the things you expect, but in an order that made it more palatable. In other words, “write every day” was not the first suggestion. Nor was it the last. I loved number 3 (“Accept your messy life and your messy house”). So I’m putting this post up here as my answer to number 9 “Enter the game.

The morning started foggy. I was worried we weren’t going to see the eclipse too well because of the fog. And if the sun was eclipsed, would it be strong enough to burn off the fog? So I tested with the monocle before the eclipse started, and yes, I could see the sun’s full disc on my hand. So that was a relief. I was using Mark’s monocle to shine the sun onto a piece of white paper.

I’m getting really excited. This time tomorrow I’ll be outside with a pinhole box, a monocle, and a tripod attempting to watch the eclipse. #eclipse2017 This is the closest I’ve ever been to a total eclipse–we’re around 92-94%. Preparing for eclipse Mark prepared a pinhole viewer with a box. And set up his monocle on a tripod and showed me where to aim it. I’m all set. But I won’t be at work until it’s over.

[caption id=“attachment_1445” align=“aligncenter” width=“1024”] View from my Office[/caption] Summer is hot here, but at least I have flowers.

~ Robert Collier I’m focusing on the little things to repeat so that I can find success. And if I can’t, then at least I can enjoy hummingbirds.

I’ve known this for a while. I first learned it when I was writing a test for my TEFL students. I had to figure out questions that were hard enough to demonstrate that they understood the material, but not so hard that they would be completely demoralized. I also had to make sure the questions were on the material the students legitimately should know, and not just on English language in general.

“I give you my word, as a Spaniard.” “No good. I’ve known too many Spaniards.” This was the exchange Inigo and Wesley said to one another after Inigo had cut the rope and Wesley continued climbing up the Cliffs of Insanity in the movie “The Princess Bride.” Inigo wanted a chance to fight the man in black, and he didn’t want to wait. But Wesley did not want to be betrayed by a Spaniard.

I typically walk at the Brightwater sewage treatment plant several times a week. It’s one of those places where if you don’t live here it sounds strange to consider wanting to go to. But I really love this area. Several years ago, King County (the county south of here) needed a new sewage treatment plant, but because of space considerations and, let’s face it, NIMBY they couldn’t get one built in their county.

I’m trying to wake up.

[caption id=“attachment_1331” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] a happy cat[/caption] It’s been a while since I’ve written. That seven word sentence says so much more than it seems. I haven’t written in this blog since October. Other sites I write for have languished even longer. This would be fine if I could say I was working on other things. But I can’t even say that. I finished working on my RWD videos in early fall and then the world fell in on me.

For a few weeks now, I have been creating a motivational image for myself. Some of them I really like. Most are based off a quote that I find somewhere. Today’s quote was found in my Focus app and is apparently a Latin proverb. Either way, it’s good advice. Or as Dory might say “Just keep swimming…”

We were farming today. With a small tractor, a medium amount of mud, and a lot of manure, err, I mean compost.

Insurance to cover what they won’t cover This is fucked up. My insurance company wants me to pay them gap insurance for a gap in the insurance they are selling me. What is gap insurance you ask? Gap insurance is insurance that covers you if your car breaks down soon after you buy it. Your car insurance won’t cover your expenses if your brand new car gets totaled immediately after you buy it.

Mark and I got a Christmas box from a relative who can’t be bothered to remember our last name. We’ve been married for 18+ years, and we both changed our name when we married. We combined the letters of both our last names into a new last name because we wanted to represent the blending of our lives in a more tangible way than just merging the linens and sharing the bills.

I was watching this TEDx video: Margaret Heffernan “Dare to Disagree” and it really made me think. https://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_dare_to_disagree One of the reasons I suspect I was laid off from About.com was because I had the temerity to disagree with staff. I would point out bugs and flaws in their code or design. I had discussions with both editors and senior executives about how the site could be improved and what I thought was going wrong and right.

My son and I love Legos. He loves to build them, and I love to help. Plus I love the different scenes you can build and I’m especially impressed with the Hobbit and LoTR sets. We just bought the Smaug set and had a blast putting it together. Now Smaug can fight the Indominus Rex from Jurassic World and we’ll finally know which is more powerful—dragons or dinosaurs. When we bought the Smaug set, we were sent a survey asking us what we thought of the purchase process.

Or, How T-Mobile Gave Me Something to Be Mad At, When I Needed to Be Angry tl;dr Today I was getting frustrated with my (lack of) connectivity in the back of my parents’ house and so I decided to check out T-Mobile’s site to see how much it would cost to turn my iPhone 6 into a mobile hot spot for the month. This was not easy. In fact, I still don’t know how much that would cost for sure.

I have been playing with hypermiling (the idea that how we drive affects our gas milage) for a few years now, and I find it very entertaining. I mostly enjoy the reactions I get from people both on and off the road when I’m doing it. But today’s reaction was perhaps the best I’ve ever seen. But before I tell that story, let me explain what I do, and to a certain extent, what hypermiling is.

Yesterday was an epic day for packages. We got Christmas presents from two different family members as well as a box from Amazon for Mark (that is apparently for me for Christmas). Jaryth was beside himself opening the boxes and putting packages under the tree. But the best box, from my perspective, was the heavy box from Pearson. My book has come out! It has been a long time in the making of this book.

As a professional technical writer for nearly 20 years, I should have this tattooed on my bones, but for some reason it always comes as a complete shock to me. Over the last week or so I’ve been combatting what, in retrospect, was a really stupid move on my part. As you may know, I write about web design and HTML for About.com. And About.com is in the midst of a lengthy birthing process of a redesign.

I get a lot of PR requests in email. Most of them I delete, periodically I consider doing a review or article about it, and every once in a while some PR person sends me something so stupid I just have to respond. This week I got a request to review a new “app for Moms.” This is stupid mostly because they sent it to me at my About.com address—where I write about web design and HTML.

I know, I know, they need more money, the stamps cost more, they are offering more services, Saturday delivery is going away, no it’s not, yes it is. But seriously! What is UP with them? I was very excited when they announced more tracking. It’s great to think that I might get a notice when a package is coming. When I do tracking with UPS and FedEx, I get a listing of where my package is almost up to the minute.

A few years ago I learned that my local Barnes and Noble had a monthly writers group come and meet on Mondays to discuss writing. The first month I didn’t bring anything of my own, I just came to see what the group was like. I was immediately sure I would like this group because almost everyone who did read was reading science fiction or fantasy. And I love science fiction and fantasy.

I’m still having a lot of fun writing my novel. I took the first chapter to my writing group last night. They professed to enjoy it, but that may have been more relief that I wasn’t forcing them to read more HTML documents. But I did have fun reading it to them. What’s funny now is that I’ve kind of lost the thread. I think once I get this novel done, I’m going to work out more of a plot arc in advance.

Today was slow going, mostly because I have other things in my life, like work… that I need to do. But I still managed to get out four articles (most pretty short) of non-fiction and another 1700 words on my novel. Stats for November 4, 2013: Novel Migraines for Magic: 12,016 words Non-fiction: 6,713 words Too bad I’m not counting all the words towards winning NaNo, I’d be at almost 19K words right now.

Yesterday was tough. We had a power outage most of the day, and we spent a lot of that time driving around looking for someplace that had power so we could get some lunch and make sure we had enough gas for the generator. The power was out for several miles around us and it took a long time. But I was still able to get my novel up to over 5000 words.

This year, because I’m stupid, already have way too much to do, and just want to drive myself insane, I’m doing NaNoWriMo. But I’m doing it not once, but twice. My first version is the official version—a novel tentatively titled Magic for Migraines. Here’s my status for that so far: But I’m also doing an unofficial version, attempting to write 50,000 words of non-fiction through the month, as well. I realized that I can write about 1200 words of non-fiction in about an hour, so adding another half hour would give me 1800 words which is more than the daily minimum of 1667 words to win at NaNo.

Here are two videos of Her Excellency fighting at the Sergeantry Trials this weekend. It was amazing fun, and anyone who wasn’t there missed out! [video width=“960” height=“540” m4v=“https://capstone.kyrnin.com/~jenn/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Eoin-vs-Sineidin.m4v"][/video] Be sure to watch this next one to the end. [video width=“960” height=“540” m4v=“https://capstone.kyrnin.com/~jenn/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/SineidinvsThePike.m4v"][/video]

[caption id=“attachment_771” align=“alignleft” width=“150”] This site displayed in a minimalist theme - very different from my last theme - and probably from my next theme. Click to view larger.[/caption] I’ve been trying out a bunch of new themes and frameworks lately, in an effort to determine what would be easiest for both me and my clients to use. In fact, this site is demonstrating that right now. Although I suspect as soon as I get some free time, I’m going to be changing it, probably drastically.

And then I start to cry… It’s been a rough week, and it’s been a fun week, and the fact that it’s been fun makes me feel guilty and then I start to cry. I feel so bad that I wasn’t here when you first started ailing, and that I didn’t do more when I found you that first night. But I was so worried about getting to the meeting on time (and I was late anyway), that I left you there under the porch and then I feel even worse, and the crying continues.

I’ve had this theme for around two years now. And I’ve been working on a new WP theme for a client and it’s gotten me all interested in building themes again. And then I mentioned this to Mark and he said he wants me to build a custom theme for his new site Tech for Anyone. If I were smart I would go about this redesign like I tell all my readers on About.

A few weeks ago I decided (for some crazy reason) to show solidarity to my brother by giving up caffeine. He was giving up a daily mocha fix and I felt I would give up my multiple cans of Diet Coke per day. This decision was incredibly hard. I spent a lot of time taking Advil and wondering why I was doing this. This wasn’t helped by my friends who constantly posted messages to me about the benefits of coffee, how coffee was good for you, and that a little caffeine really wasn’t that bad.

Our fence was crushed in several places today when one of the big trees next door decided to end its vertical existence. No animals, children, or adults were harmed in the creation of these photos. But there was a lot of adrenaline spewing about. [caption id=“attachment_704” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] fence #1 taken out by the base of the tree[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_706” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] middle of the tree took out the fence on the other side of the pasture[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_705” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] The top of the tree takes out the playset[/caption]

Today I read an excellent article on the state of the pet rescue industry—Who Killed These Dogs? on Dog Star Daily. This article hit many of the points that I have felt about the rescue environment these days. In 2000 when I adopted my family’s first dog, we walked into the local shelter, found a batch of puppies, played with two of them, and then took one home. Shasta was the most amazing dog.

I posted a review of one of the O’Reilly Head First books today. Like all the other HF books, it is quirky and fun and fairly easy to read. [caption id=“attachment_693” align=“aligncenter” width=“180”] Head First Web Design Image courtesy O’Reilly[/caption] But as I was skimming it in my final scan before writing up my review, I realized one thing that startled me: There was only one woman photo in the entire book (okay, perhaps there were two…).

Today is the last day of the Great Online Marketing Scavenger Hunt, and I’m partly relieved and partly sad. I’m relieved because DANG! it was a lot of work! But I’m also pleased because I met some great people. I’m hoping I can keep up with them. I met Rie Sheridan Rose The Barnaby Poet, who wrote a guest post on my Bloggers Create! site: It’s a Great Time to Be a Writer.

According to Komo News weather: This time, we’ll be dealing with scattered heavy showers with possible thunderstorms and – get this – maybe even some thunder*snow* in the Puget Sound Convergence Zone areas. And for those playing along at home, yes, I live in the “Puget Sound Convergence Zone.” I’ve always thought of it as the “zone of wacky weather” myself, but I guess the official name is better. [caption id=“attachment_680” align=“aligncenter” width=“168”] Screen shot courtesy ThunderCats Lair[/caption] Thundersnow!

[caption id=“attachment_673” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] Don’t put that on me, dude[/caption] I’ve started doing the Firepole Marketing Great Online Marketing Scavenger Hunt. And it’s been a lot of fun. The first week I was very focused on it, but the second week I realized that I needed to do some other, actual, work. The great thing about this is that I’m getting practice at doing things to help my site(s) get better and better.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked the 80s—big hair, power ballads, CDs, Miami Vice, break dancing, lingerie as outer wear (okay, maybe not that last one). But one thing that I don’t miss is the idea that the only place you can do work in a corporate environment is in an office. Saying that you “work from home” was equivalent to saying you were unemployed and preferred to sit around at home watching soaps, eating bon-bons, and generally slacking.

I’ve always felt that life is never dull, but sometimes I help it along a little too much. What’s funny to me is that over-scheduling seems almost natural, but these days my idea of over-scheduling is much less rigorous than it used to be. I used to schedule myself with 60+ hours of stuff to do in a week. “Sleep is for the weak” was my motto. These days, I like to sleep.

I’ve been doing web design work since 1995, and one of the things I like best about it is how much it changes fairly regularly. When I started, writing HTML required that I know vi and be able to edit the files directly on the Unix server. Then I started storing files on my local hard drive, editing there in a text editor (Homesite was my poison), and then uploading them to my web server.

I have to say i’m very impressed with myself. On July 1, 2012, I started on an 8-week program of attempting to eat not only no sugar, but also nothing sweet at all (i.e. no Diet Coke, no fruit, no stevia, etc.). The first few weeks were tough. There were points where I thought that I would chew my arm off in the hopes that my blood was sweet. I would get frustrated at the drop of a hat, and don’t get me started on the headaches and general grumpiness.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of answering a survey about health care. Normally, when I get those types of robo-dialed call-center calls, I wait for the person on the line to say “Hello,” but for whatever reason, I said hello first. And then, when asked if I’d be willing to do a survey, I uncharacteristically said “yes.” It was interesting to take the survey both because of what I know about health care and my opinions on it.

July 25, 2012 Update I couldn’t do it. I spent all month trying to get a Ruby dragon, and yesterday I got one. The egg was going to hatch today. But Jaryth played the game this morning, and he sped up the incubation (using all my gems) and then sold the dragon egg for gold I didn’t need. When I found myself almost crying because of this, I realized that I needed to stop playing this game.

Week three started last Sunday on my quest to purge my system of sugar. This week, the goal is to eat no more than 10-20 grams of sugar per day (1 tsp = approximately 5 grams), or between 3-6% by weight. In some ways this is pretty easy, as I’ve already removed the crazy sweet things from my house. In fact, when I get a craving most of the time I can’t really do anything about it because we don’t have any sweets available.

Help fund the Creative Dubuque Letterpress Post Card Series! I love this project for two reasons: it’s Letterpress! it’s cheap If you’ve never contributed to a Kickstarter campaign before, this is a great one to join. You get a nice letterpress postcard for just $5. How cool is that? [iframe src=“http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pfraterdeus/creative-dubuque-letterpress-post-card-series/widget/video.html" frameborder=“0” width=“640” height=“480”] Letterpress is one of those things that I’m actually afraid to learn to do because I’m afraid I’ll become addicted to it.

Sugar sucks. I gave up eating anything sweet three weeks ago, or was it two weeks ago? I guess two, but it seems like forever. I keep hoping that there will be a point where I won’t feel these intense cravings for sugar or something sweet. In fact, I can say with some honesty that the cravings are not as bad today as they were on July 1st. But saying that is like saying that my bathtub isn’t as wet as the ocean because there isn’t as much water there.

I’ve been building web pages for over 15 years now, and one thing I know is that the web is not stable. Things happen that cause problems and the more you can do to protect yourself and your work the better. So an exchange I had on a forum I read was very interesting. I asked the question “what offline blog editor do you use?” And this prompted several replies. At first I was pleased, as I was hoping to get suggestions for offline editors.

So my newest life plan is to try out quitting sugar (and basically anything sweet) for the next few weeks. I started on Sunday, July 1st, which must have been a week ago now, right? I have discovered a few things in the short period I’ve been off sugar: I am, sadly, addicted to caffeine. Mark was telling me that and I was sure he was wrong, but man, today without Diet Coke, my head was aching and my temper was short.

In order to open our gate, I have to crouch down to dog level, reach my arm through the slats in the gate to pull up the latch and then push the gate open. Normally, this is a pleasant opportunity for my dogs to greet me. McKinley will push his head through the slat and Storm would jump around trying to find the best way to get to me. [caption id=“attachment_593” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] Stormageddon and McKinley guard the gate[/caption] But today McKinley didn’t come to the gate right away, and this gave Storm the chance to get right up to the slats where my face and arm are reaching in.

I was reading Leo Babuata’s site Zen Habits for a while now, and one of the things he recommends is the idea of living without goals. This is something I struggle with. I struggle with the idea that I should declutter my life of goals. I could argue that goals are how I’ve achieved what I have in my life. But when I think more closely, the reality is that the goals were a side note.

Stormageddon is a great dog. She’s smart, and very friendly and happy, and she loves to eat. I should clarify, when I say she likes to eat, I should say that she likes to eat anything that even slightly resembles food. Other dogs in my life have liked to eat, and liked food, but not to Storm’s extent. She eats just about anything. Grass and grass clippings are a favorite. Shasta used to roll in grass, turning himself green, but as far as I could tell, beyond the occasional snack, he didn’t eat grass.

[caption id=“attachment_574” align=“alignnone” width=“300” caption=“Storm and McKinley playing with the tug”][/caption] McKinley is enjoying having someone to play with.

So, for some reason my blog has gotten targeted by comment spammers just recently. The comments on this blog are (were!) moderated so none of the lame attempts to spam my site were getting through. But I still had to deal with getting dozens of notifications a day. I received 48 new comments to moderate in just 12 hours. So I turned comments off. Who knows, I might turn them on again at a future date.

So, I’ve had an iPad since the first day the iPad 1 came out. And I’ve been reading books in the Kindle reader for iPad almost that long. I am a long-time book reader. In fact, when I got the iPad I didn’t think that ebooks would hold that much of a draw for me. After all, I love the feel of a good book in my hand, the smell of the glue holding the perfect binding of the paperbacks together, the crispness of the pages, yes, even the jolt awake when the hardback falls into my face while reading in bed.

So, this morning we got back from our shopping trip and walk and I brought in the grocery bag (in my reusable wolf bag) and the cat carrier we are using to transport our new puppy in. [caption id=“attachment_456” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“Stormageddon the day after we got her”][/caption] I thought about being lazy and just put the kennel down and thought, “No, I’ll put it away right now, so it’s not cluttering up the kitchen.

One of my favorite holidays is St. Patrick’s Day probably because I get to drink beer, eat corned beef and potatoes and just have a good time with leprechauns. This is a picture I drew of a leprechaun. I did it based on instructions from the About.com drawing and sketching website. Thanks Helen! Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone!

I grew up knowing I had my heart on my sleeve. Every emotion I feel seems to start on my face, move to my mouth and then register in my brain. So when I find myself thinking “they should just calm down” about someone (other than myself, of course) the irony isn’t lost on me. For the fourth year in a row, I am participating in the About.com Readers’ Choice Awards.

I’m starting to wonder if other web design sites DELETE the anachronistic and ultra-conservative design comments. It seems like whenever I write a post talking about a more modern style design, I ONLY get comments talking about how horrible it is because it’s new and different. Of course, they don’t say that’s the reason, but that’s what it really comes down to. Makes me depressed, as I really like looking at the new stuff, but when the only feedback I get is “eww, that sucks, the scroll bar makes the car move, it doesn’t scroll down the page” it’s hard to stay motivated.

Helen, the Drawing and Sketching Guide, then pointed out that I’d have gotten smoother lines using a vector drawing tool instead. But I had a lot of fun drawing this stegosaurus (my favorite dinosaur!) using her tutorial and my Bamboo tablet. I am trying to get comfortable drawing on the computer directly, rather than in a notebook and scanning. I have been resistant for a while, primarily because drawing with a mouse is challenging.

The hard part of changing my lifestyle is that while it’s going great, it’s easy to keep doing and not get frustrated. But when it’s not, it’s not. I’ve now had two weeks in a row of either no weight loss or weight gain, and my measurements have gone back up. And this is after I started going to CrossFit twice a week to try to get more fit. I know, I know, if I’m weight training I’m going to grow muscle and that weighs more than fat.

So, Apple has been pushing their “iPad App of the Year” in my face every time I open the app store for the last few weeks. So, because of repetition, I finally broke down and watched the video displaying it (see below). A very pretty blonde woman attempts to pretend that she’s manipulating the world’s largest wall iPad using Snapseed. Unfortunately, the only thing I got out of that video was that Snapseed can be very hard to use when pretending to use it on a giant wall iPad.

This December I was busy doing a lot of things, from Disney World with Mark, Jaryth and Mark’s parents, to both our birthdays, to Christmas, to work, and more. But one of the fun things I was doing (okay, all of those things are fun for me) was making some books. These are some of the books I made in December (and early January): Elves My mom sent Jaryth some mail art of some elves, and every picture had one elf sticking his foot out.

So far, everyone I’ve spoken to this weekend has asked me if I’m going to dress Jaryth up for Halloween. Up until today, I’ve been telling people my idea is to rip some of his older shirts and pants, put some black splotches on his face and call him “zombie toddler” and leave it at that. But the real answer is “no.” He’s 3 1/2 years old and he has no idea what Halloween is.

[caption id=“attachment_398” align=“aligncenter” width=“320” caption=“Cover of my 2011 Holiday Book”][/caption] This is the outside. On the inside it’s blank except for the instructions. The idea is that everyone who gets a book can then customize it with their own family memories. I’ll be taking mine to Thanksgiving this year to get people to write in it. [caption id=“attachment_399” align=“aligncenter” width=“320” caption=“The inside of the holiday book for 2011”][/caption]

I’m doing the proof edit of my book, this is my last chance to fix typos or correct errors. Naively, I thought there wouldn’t be very many because I’d already had my draft copies (written in Pages and converted to Word) reviewed by me, two tech editors, my acquisitions editor, my development editor, my copy editor, and me again. HOLY SHIT! was I ever wrong. You see, whenever the copy editor made a change to one of my headlines, that resulted in crazy stuff happening in the Word conversion.

I know, I’ve ranted in here about email before, but seriously, the messages I receive sometimes send me around the bend. In the last week or so I’ve had the following (paraphrased) gems: One man asked me for some help in building a complex website. He sent his first message on day 1 and when I hadn’t had a chance to answer it, he sent it again on day 2. I finally responded to his question suggesting an answer and that if he had more specific questions, he should post them to my forum.

This is a “podcast” or audio recording where I’m trying out doing an audio recording of my thoughts. What I notice is that when I was staring at the computer it was very hard to talk, as I kept getting distracted by the machine. Some things I talk about: idea for an article on Webmaster tools and Google analytics working on editor reviews and my plan to create a video of my favorite web editors thoughts about a new(-ish) category of web editor—the WYSIWYG editor so people don’t need to know HTML at all should I create a separate evaluation of these editors?

Here are all the finalists in the NPR Science Fiction and Fantasy Vote for 2011. As I finish them I’ll put a ✔ next to them along with the date I finished. If I write a review, I’ll link to it. If you’re curious which ones I’ll be reading for a second (or more) time, I’ll indicate that with a ☞. 1632, by Eric Flint✔Started August 13, 2011 Finished August 15, 2011 ☞1984, by George Orwell ☞2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C.

It’s stupid how I fall for giveaways so often. When the reality is that they are done solely so that the blog or site owner can get more readers and more comments. They have no interest in you as a person, and are most likely going to give their products away to people they know (either IRL or because they’ve posted lots of times before). They may also give away to people who write the most “heartwarming” response.

Every dog I’ve ever owned came from the pound or a rescue organization (okay, Homer might not have, but my parents got him before I was born, soI don’t think he counts). But wow, trying to get another dog now that I’m not likely to burst into tears at the though of Shasta has become, ahem, challenging. Some of the challenges: every rescue I’ve found lists their available animals on Petfinder.

So, I just finished reading 1632 by Eric Flint last night (from the finalists list). This was a book I saw on the shelves when it came out but I passed it by for several reasons, including: I’ve never been a fan of alternate history The idea of knights mixed with pickup trucks seemed ridiculous And I just didn’t think I would like the book But I couldn’t have been more wrong!

I was reading an article yesterday about how facial recognition is getting so good that there are apps being built for cellphones that can identify random strangers from photos (taken as you walk along with your cell phone). The article was bemoaning the fact that this was a “further invasion of our privacy” and that pretty soon nothing we do would be private. I then moved on to another article that talked about how Google(?

Very happy to report that I now am getting both Analog and F&SF delivered to my iPad. The layout is somewhat hard to read in the default mode, but I quickly switched to one column viewing for a better experience. The first story I will read is by Robert Reed. You may be wondering how this will fit in with my goal to read all the SciFi finalist novels, and that would be a good question.

I have decided to read or re-read all the books on the list of finalists for best Science Fiction and Fantasy from NPR. I just finished Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre. This is one of the first science fiction books I remember reading and re-reading. I know I read others before this one, but this one really stood out in my head as something really interesting. Mark was laughing because my copy (most likely from 1978 when it was published) was tattered and worn.

Here are all the finalists in the NPR Science Fiction and Fantasy Vote for 2011. As I finish them I’ll put a ✔ next to them along with the date I finished. If I write a review, I’ll link to it. If you’re curious which ones I’ll be reading for a second (or more) time, I’ll indicate that with a ☞. 1632, by Eric Flint✔ (August 15, 2011) ☞1984, by George Orwell ☞2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C.

I finished Chapter 19 last night. Very stoked. It’s moving along quite nicely. Chapter 20 is currently Offline Web Applications. But I think I need to re-order it to put Web Storage before it. The other thing writing this is doing is making me more and more interested in writing a new theme for this blog. I’ll make it HTML5, but I’m not sure if I’ll use my art for it or not.

If you didn’t know, I’m working on a book—Sams Teach Yourself HTML5 for Mobile Application Development in 24 Hours, and it’s been taking up a lot of my time. I just finished chapter 17—HTML5 Links. Whew! And I hope to have chapter 18 done by Saturday. It’s hard because this weekend was the first really sunny weekend we’ve had all year, and I had to sit inside for a good portion of it writing about HTML5 Drag and Drop.

I was hoping for a long morning alone with my writing. But instead I got to help clean up a flooded bathroom and attempt to fix the washing machine that hit it’s planned obsolescence date today. Mark thinks the pump cracked. We bought an expensive washer 3 years ago thinking naively that if we paid a lot for a good brand it would last longer than the cheaper model we’d bought 3 years before that.

Jaryth was downstairs weeping piteously. Mark could not console him. I had no idea what was wrong. Then suddenly he was calm again. Phew, the crisis is averted. Then “I want that!” he yells. And before Mark can respond, “Where’d the zombies go?” Followed by some more crying. I can tell that having a son that is probably going to be a gamer just like his dad is going to result in a lot of humorous statements.

So, Thursday or Friday I got a note from my mail carrier saying that I had a box waiting for me from Amazon.com. Since I have received all of my Amazon orders I was not really sure what it could be. Since it was addressed (on the note) to J. Kyrnin, I was thinking it might actually be a present for Jaryth because his birthday is coming up. So I head to the post office this morning, and after waiting in the long line (of course!

So I have a goal of getting our living room (and bedroom) rug cleaned by the end of March. And in order to accomplish that goal, I have a number of mini goals. These primarily revolve around tidying the bookshelves that I haven’t looked at in a while to make sure the books that are in it are ones that I want, need or haven’t read (so can’t decide). The sad part of this goal is that I discovered that some of the books in that case have not been looked at or touched in so long that there was a fine patina of dust covering them.

I think of myself as a rational but open-minded person, but one of the more “woo woo” theories that I strongly believe in is the power of intention. I believe that if you set your intentions clearly and deliberately, you will manifest those results in your life. Whether or not you believe in this as a type of mysticism or just a practical application of goals setting, I have done it in my life many times with great success.

[caption id=“attachment_303” align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Some people may have wondered why I stopped talking about the drone.”][/caption] It took six 2000x3008px shots to build this panorama shot. I was standing approximately 50 feet away from the base of the tree when I took the photos.

We got a Parrot A.R. Drone for our birthdays (Mark and I) back in December. And we had a blast with it. Jaryth absolutely loves it. He daily asks to see the drone. And when the weather is bad, he comes indoors and watches our video of our drone as well as other YouTube videos of drones. But then, come January, I stopped talking about it. Why? Well, it got stuck in a tree.

Our current process with our son goes like this: wake up between 7am and 8:30am play hard all morning lie down around noon for around 15 minutes, but don’t fall asleep play hard all afternoon until about 4pm fall asleep hard, and nap for an hour to two hours play hard until mom is exhausted (any time after 10pm) and then lie in bed fighting with her because he’s not tired at all 8 hours of sleep is barely enough for me, and I’m not convinced it’s enough for him.

The most common complaint I see about content farms is that they serve up lousy information written by under-paid (or non-paid) writers. I can join the ranks of people who will tell you of the lousy results they found on eHow (or insert your other favorite content farm to bash) here. Yes, I don’t like doing a search for “how to build a web page” and getting a result that says, essentially: step 1.

My mom sent me instructions for a box that I modified to hold my Firefly ATCs. Here are some pictures.

[caption id=“attachment_289” align=“aligncenter” width=“400” caption=“My First Sushi - Carrot Sushi”][/caption] For those who scoff at the idea of carrot sushi, well, I have nothing to say to you. I didn’t have any daikon or other more traditional veggie-sushi veggies. Maybe next week will bring more “real” sushi foods into the house. But really, carrot sushi was yummy. I debated trying celery sushi too. What about tomato sushi?

that I wanted to buy seeds online again like I did last year. The problem is that I had recycled the last seed catalog I’d received. So I was just going to go online to choose my seeds. Then Mark came in with the mail and what was in it? Besides a packet of LTCs (some very cool ones, by the way) was a seed catalog. Yay! Apparently I need to buy seeds.

I’ve decided to compile a list of all the things that I’d like to change in my life (or do or improve, etc.). This is kinda like a master goals list. The point is that I can’t achieve my goals if I don’t know what they are. So here goes in no particular order: Eat less junk food - ultimately I want to get it down to 1 day a week or even just a few hours on that one day Bake my own bread Eat NO feedlot or factory meat.

So, I’ve watched the vegetarian sushi video a couple times, I’ve bought my sushi rice and sushi vinegar (wasabi and soy sauce are already staples in my home) oh and the nori. Now I have to do two things: finish my work for the day stop being a wimp/chicken and start my attempt at making sushi! Oh and we got a new 7-cup food processor (or “food robot” in my translation of the French) today.

So my two goals for the next week or so are to make: vegetarian sushi cheese I’ve been told before that making cheese isn’t terribly hard. Of course finding rennet could be challenging… but one step at a time. There is a beer and wine making supply company in Kirkland that also sells cheese making supplies. And I want to make some bread. I think I need to get my Laurel’s Kitchen bread book out again.

So, I read my previous blog post to Mark, and his first response was “Good luck!” And of course, I got a bit frustrated because that’s the sarcastic (for those playing along at home, yes, he was being sarcastic) response I dread when I talk about trying to be greener and eat more healthy. But after we talked for a while, we came up with an initial game plan: Salads for dinner – Three years ago we implemented the plan of having a pitcher of water on the table for dinner every night.

I am reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver right now. And at the same time, I have been regularly reading The Zero Waste Home (a blog). What’s interesting to me is that I started both of these reading projects by reading some reviews and comments about them. And the comments I read went along the lines of “this is impossible!”, “what you’re asking me/us to do is not possible except for crazy zealots,” and “I don’t believe that your kids are all that thrilled by this plan for (zero waste or growing all your own food) as you imply they are.

Vonage’s transcription of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer as sung into our voicemail: “Rudolph the red nose reindeer had a very shiny though and if you have Verizon hand and you even say it glows.” If you have Verizon hand? A shiny though? Surprisingly, it usually does a pretty good job. But this was particularly funny.

I was cleaning up my photos from the last few days and I found this one taken by the Drone. It’s not that great a shot of our bathroom window from the outside. But if you look closely you can see the drone hovering in the reflection in the window. :-) [caption id=“attachment_251” align=“aligncenter” width=“1024” caption=“Photo from the Drone of our Bathroom”][/caption] I attached the full size image, sorry if you have to scroll.

3" of rain in Seattle equals some flooding in our barn. And our creek has overflowed its banks. This is where there is a pipe under the road. It’s full. The overflow pond above the pipe is full too. And the water is flowing down from the neighbor’s property, and missing the creek entirely. P.S. It’s still raining.

Jaryth and I drove the drone around the house today. I tried to send it up to Mark’s window, but I misjudged the roof and couldn’t get it up there. I’ll try again later. This is a photo taken from the iPad as the drone was flying. It’s looking at me! I would say that if you have any interest in RC planes, the AR Parrot Drone is a great toy.

Jaryth liked licking the icing. I also learned that marshmallows must be eaten on a stick (courtesy s’mores we had last summer). He yelled “stick! Stick!” over and over until Mark gave him a toothpick.

So, carved a stamp for a Zodiac ring and when I mentioned that the carve was approximately 5"x5" a couple people freaked, saying it was too large. So I made this ATC that showcases the print but is still only 2.5"x3.5". It’s a card AND a pop-up book. ;-) closed open

I decided to carve a three layer print. It looks odd at first, but as I stamp the layers it really comes out well.

I got an email yesterday from someone who wrote (paraphrased): “I read your top 10 list of best web editors, and it was interesting. I use ___ editor, and I was wondering if there was a better one than it available.” Really? The editor he mentioned was not on the list. I honestly don’t know what to tell him. I mean, seriously, if his editor was not on the list (and it does qualify to be on that list - it’s free and it’s for Windows), then chances are, I believe that all ten editors on that list are better than the one he named.

The phone is ringing. The caller ID says it’s “Telemarketer.” Should I answer? What do you think? Oooops, I accidentally decided to write this blog post before I answered. And now the phone says 1 missed call. Too bad.

I decided last Thursday to take some time off from my About.com site (and clearly I still am…) because I was tired of HTML editors, didn’t want to talk CSS, wasn’t interested in updating old pages, wanted to finish a project for my art class, and was upset about a change in pay and how they tried to spin it to make it sound like it was chocolate-coated bad news. (It’s not really that bad of news, it’s just annoying how staff feels the need to spin things.

I’ve been using Norton Antivirus (NAV) for a long time. Honestly. And not because I worked for Symantec for 9 years. I used it even before I worked there. And I continue to use it even though I don’t work there any longer. But let me tell you, every day, often many times a day, I’m annoyed by this software. I’ve even gone as far as finding a new product that I’m considering switching to as soon as my definitions expire (in a month or so).

He can’t decide what he wants to watch today: “Rocky and Bullwinkle” or “Mythbusters.” He watched an episode of Mythbusters where they tried to pop popcorn with a bomb and with a laser. And all Jaryth wanted to see was the house get “broke all to bits”. And the “big fire!” When they switched to the car driving really fast (Jamie testing if driving fast in rain with the top down will keep you drier), Jaryth wasn’t interested.

I got an email today asking if there were an easier way to take my online class because when she clicked on a link that she thought was the next step, she was taken somewhere else. I really don’t know what to tell these people. It isn’t that hard, people! Of course, it IS that hard if you need someone holding your hand the entire way. Step 1, do this, step 2, do that, step 3 go here, step 4 go there, poof, you’re a web designer!

Jaryth is downstairs yelling “Emo! Cars! Emo! Cars!” Mark replies “Which one? Nemo or Cars?” “Emo! Cars! Emo! Cars!” “You can only watch one at a time.” “Emo! Cars! Emo! He’s gonna swim with Dory!” In this instance “he” is Jaryth referring to himself. I guess he not only wants to watch “Emo” he wants to go swimming with Dory.

I did it! I got my link checker to zero. Or as the tool says “empty container”. [caption id=“attachment_188” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“Woo-Hoo! Linkchecker at Zero”][/caption] Now I suppose I have to go back to writing actual articles! Of course, I also need to finish cleaning up the HTML Tag Library and I should work on updating the CSS Style Properties Library. Those are tedious jobs too. :-) But for now, I’m just going to bask in the delightful glow of zero broken links.

So, I’ve started cooking again. I figure it’s not good karma for me to let Mark do all the cooking forever. ☺ But in order to facilitate this, I’ve started looking at online recipes. And I have two questions: Why does Cooks.com get listed so often when their recipes are all the same? I did a search for something the other day, and was excited to see that there were like 20 recipes listed on Cooks.

I got this mail series yesterday and today. It’s still not very informative… ——– Original Message ——– Subject: Re: Re: Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:49:30 -0500 From: Noah Hansen xxxxxx@xxxxxx.xxx To: Jennifer Kyrnin <webdesign.guide@about.com> lol ————————————————– From: “Jennifer Kyrnin” <webdesign.guide@about.com> Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2010 6:21 PM To: “Noah Hansen” <xxxxxx@xxxxxx.xxx> Subject: Re: > You’re right. This mail isn’t very informative. ☺ > > Was there something specific you were feeling was not very informative?

[caption id=“attachment_178” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“Buttery Sticks - Margarine is for losers!”][/caption] Yummy! It’s sad when marketing has decided that “margarine” isn’t yummy sounding enough. Psst: Nucoa people… Buttery sticks makes it sound like I’m about to use twigs that have been basted. And, personally, I’m not a huge fan of twigs.

Jaryth saw his first movie last Saturday - Finding Nemo. And he loved it, what he watched of it, that is. He’s known who Nemo is for a while, because he has a Nemo swimming suit. Of course, he calls the fish on his suit “Emo” and “Emo’s Dad. But you can’t have everything. What’s funny to me is that now he wants to watch Nemo every day. We watched it on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and now he’s downstairs watching it with Mark.

There is this big rock off Highway 9 that we pass when we’re going to the Post Office. And the local high school students regularly paint it with various things. The typical paintings are like “Sarah loves Jesse” and “Panther’s Rule!” but today the rock says: “Get your own rock!” And on the other side it has the icons for Snohomish High School. I don’t know what they were responding too, but I’m guessing that students from another school painted it and SHS students were “taking it back”.

Today I received a comment on my web design blog complaining that a previous comment was “clearly spam”. The post in question talked about web design books I was looking forward to seeing. And the (possibly spammy) commenter linked to an ebook he was looking forward to. My question is: what makes this spam? The fact that he bolded the title of the book? The fact that he included a link to the ebook’s web page?

In the spring of 2010, I took an art class at Everett Community College. In that class I learned about a whole lot of different art techniques including: drawing in graphite and charcoal drawing with pen and ink drawing with color pencils painting with ink and brushes painting with watercolors And I fell in love with watercolor painting. Previously, my efforts at watercolor were ugly at best, but this class showed me different techniques, different paints and brushes, and different papers (Yupo paper is really cool!

I have been writing professionally since 1993, but I haven’t spent a lot of time writing for myself. So this space is where I’m allowing myself to write about what interests me. If it interests you as well, well, I’m glad. But if it doesn’t, frankly, I don’t care. Here is the boring info about me: I write about HTML and Web design at About.com I’ve written two books that my mother has read (or at least looked at) but you probably haven’t I’ve worked as a manager, Web designer, Web producer, Webmaster, Web writer, and Tech Support Rep I’ve also herded monkeys and cats, cleaned up after toddlers and library patrons, taught English, translated Uzbek, and bitten baby sheep – all for some sort of remuneration If I could I would spend my days doing three things: playing with my son, reading Science Fiction, and riding my horse If I ruled the world, mean people would be executed, but sarcastic people would be rewarded – as long as it wasn’t mean sarcasm.

I’m hot, which is a nice change from the whole of June, where we had fall weather, but still, hot is no fun. Because it’s hot I’m furious that the post office can’t seem to mail my post cards. I’ve sent the below postcard twice already. And yes, i’ve added new stamps to it. And this is one of three that the postal carrier can’t seem to grasp DOESN’T need to go here.

I love reading Marc’s Green Living Blog. I do try to be conscious of eco-friendly or green choices, but his blog offers so much more than just that. Yesterday’s post “Finally, My Flying Car is Here” is a great example! I mean, would you really think of flying cars as something green? I mean, heck, they’re totally important, don’t get me wrong. As an avid Sci-Fi reader I’ve been waiting for the promised flying car for years!

I know, I don’t need any more sweets in my life. But Pepperidge Farms hit the jackpot with me with their Chocolate Goldfish Grahams. Jaryth doesn’t like them, but that’s okay, I do. :-)[caption id=“attachment_139” align=“aligncenter” width=“99” caption=“Yum!”][/caption]

Jaryth was a bit scared of his first lesson. But as I told Danielle, his teacher, starting low means he has more room for improvement. He cried less on day 2.

We are participating in a garage sale today and tomorrow, and it’s been interesting. In the morning you get all the people who look like they are searching for a Van Gogh hidden among our clothes. They glance at the stuff and sniff or if they are feeling sorry for us tell us they like our house/barn/dog/tree before they walk away. They do an awesome job making you look at the detritus of your life and think “wow, I bought a lot of crap!

I was talking to my Dad today about Jaryth’s language. He was wondering if we spoke baby talk to him or if we tried to encourage him to speak correctly. I then commented on how we had been trying to get him to use the pronoun “I” rather than “he” or “baby” or “Jaryth” when referring to himself. So, just now, Jaryth came upstairs and was asking me where the remote controlled car was.

One of the reasons I struggle with writing a blog, is the idea of audience. When I write in my personal journal, I know that my audience is me. (Except in the unlikely scenario where Mark picks it up and reads it - luckily I’m very boring…) The challenge with a blog, no matter how much I know that my audience is really just me, myself and I (and, yes, we can be a narcissistic bunch), there is the idea that maybe, possibly, in some outer realm of probability someone else is reading this stuff.

So, my design is scheduled to be presented tomorrow, and I’ve already got a new design in mind. Holy, cow, Jenn! Why not stick with a design for, oh, say a week to try it out? Or at least until you’ve finished your presentation. But the “shiny!” Step away from the shiny, Jenn. You’re feverish, just walk away from Dreamweaver for right now.

What you can’t really see from this picture is that he’s playing Plants vs. Zombies. When the zombie apocalypse comes, he’ll be ready with his biters!

So, you said that it was very square, so I rounded some of the corners, just for you. Of course, if you were viewing this in IE, you’d still see the square corners because I didn’t do it with images but with CSS (faster to download). Luckily, I know you’re not viewing it in IE. And this method works for Firefox 1+, Safari 3+, Opera 10.5+, Chrome 1+, and browsers that use Gecko or Webkit.

My editor sent me a note about Apple’s new HTML 5 Showcase and my first reaction was to chat with her about it. But then my brain kicked in and I realized that she wanted me to write something about it. :-) I’m slow, but I do catch on eventually. I posted a note about writing this template and discussed the virtues of using HTML 5 or lack thereof. I still think HTML 5 is cool, but if you know your audience is using Internet Explorer, you need to head back to HTML 4/XHTML 1 -land if you want it to work.

Memo to self: if you’re going to send a ranting email to a mailing list, it’s best to find out if the person you’re ranting about is also on that list… [[forehead slap]]

I’ve got my new template up and running. I’m sure I’ll continue to find things I need to tweak and fix on it, but for now I’m pleased with it. This is my first foray into my own images for a design. Or I should say, it’s the first time I’ve ever used a painting or drawing I did. I really like how it turned out. If you’re curious to know more about why I built this template, check out the About this Site link in the navigation above.

My dad used to say to my brother and I “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.” As a kid that statement always bothered me, as clearly I had something to cry about - why else would I be crying??? But now, as a parent, I understand the impulse to say that. After a 10 minute moaning/crying jag just now, I was about ready to “give him something to cry about” myself!

I have a form on my site asking for people to define what they feel a webmaster is. It asks: “Share your thoughts. What is a webmaster?” And I received this reply: “Title: Webmaster description…OMG I just read several responses to what others opinion are regarding what a webmaster is and quite frankly, the grammar, spelling, and English are deplorable. If one cannot master the fundamentals of communication, then the game is over.

I started downloading the disk images of CS5 for my reviews today. Yay! Of course, one of the images failed. Hopefully the other one will work. Then I’ll start the second one alone. Downloading Master Collection seems like a bit of overkill. At least I have a nice new BIG hard drive to store the 2 disk images. Then the second image failed as well - of course they wait until they are fully downloaded before they die.

I don’t know why, but I’m interested in puzzles lately, and I thought it would be fun to create an app to let people post and fill out puzzles. Of course, I’ll have to limit how the puzzles work at first, but this should be a fun exercise in planning and implementing a site. And if I’m lucky, I might even have enough documentation at the end to actually get a few articles out of the idea.

So, today I got fed up with my current iPad note taking app (Sundry Notes) crashing and taking my notes with it and decided to look for a new one. Wow! There are a lot of sticky notes, cork boards, and note taking / drawing apps out there! They could be a category all their own. EXCEPT They all do the same damn thing. Let me tell you, if you’re planning on creating a note taking app for the iPad, your app will not be “stupendous” “amazing” or “revolutionary” (no matter how many times you use those or other superlatives in your description) if all you have is the ability to write notes and change the background color/pattern of the paper.

It’s really hard to not feel like everyone in the universe is greedy for more more more when most of the apps that I used regularly on the iPhone have new, bigger iPad brethren that cost more, a lot more. I’m starting to think that apps that are universal will get an extra star from me, or maybe that apps that have an iPhone version that is cheaper than the iPad version would lose a star (or half a star?

I’m enjoying the drawing part of my class, but the writing part, not so much. Holy cow! I honestly don’t care about what Margaret Kilgallen’s influences were/are. And it’s frustrating that I have to figure something out to write about them. Edited to Add… So, I worked on my paper, and after talking with the professor, got some great ideas. I was still stumped for a while, so I made a little pictorial book of her influences.

If you’re asking me a question, and I reply saying “I don’t understand what you mean by this word.” Don’t reply saying “I just need information about the same word.” Last week I got an email that read: I am a college student and I am having my thesis right now. I would like to propose a topic regarding CMS and my thesis should use an algorithm. Do you know any algorithms used for CMS?

So, I love my iPad, don’t get me wrong. I love it so much that I set up all my email to go there as a way to stay curent and up-to-date with my mail even when I’m not at the “big-big-computer” as Jaryth calls it. But holy spam insanity, Batman! All of my accounts have spam filters on them at the server level. And they work at about 3 different effectiveness levels:

My 27" iMac has a shiny screen that is remarkably similar to my iPad (if slightly larger). And in the box of goodies that it came with was a fancy black cloth for keeping it shiny. However, since I don’t touch my iMac screen nearly as often as I do my iPad (except when I forget that it doesn’t have multi-touch built-in), so it doesn’t have as many fingerprints. So I liberated the cloth and it now travels with my iPad (along with the iMac’s bluetooth mini-keyboard.

I have been writing for the Web since 1995, and you’d think I would know by now not to engage the loonies, but every month or so I still attempt to interact with them. Today’s email gem was from a woman who found a typo/spelling error on my blog. A simple way to report a spelling error is to write: “I found a typo or spelling error on your site” and then point out the word and the URL where it was found.

I am drawing my NGPA for a project for my Art class. And to stay inspired, I decided to also try out a challenge from Sue’s site: Out of Border It’s fun! [caption id=“attachment_48” align=“alignnone” width=“300” caption=“NGPA Out of Border”][/caption] I think what would be even cooler is if I wrapped the text around the edge of the birdhouse, rather than having it appear above it. But this is definitely a start.

This is just too cool. So much easier to type on the iPad than the iPod. Plus it has all the help that the iPod has like the double space for a period and capital letter. Silly to be happy about that but I am. I’m trying a bunch of new apps for the iPad. I’ll have to give an update of all of them later. I’ve already watched a tv show, downloaded a book, and tried out a bunch of apps.

So Mark found some analysis of possible prices for upcoming iPad apps and they are insane!! apparently they appear to be planning to charge anywhere from 2 to 4 times more for an iPad app as for the same app on the iPhone. TUAW is falling down by not reporting on this (or not asking in their interviews). They posted a “first look” at Polyhedra XL which I have the iPhone version.

I was reading a post on the US Conservatives blog on About.com. As I read that post I was first nodding, then pausing, and finally gaping. It’s not that I disagree with the premise that people lose healthcare when they lose their jobs. But the statement that healthcare is guaranteed in this country just made me laugh. I suppose if you ascribe to the belief that people who lose their jobs and thus insurance will then only need medical care for ER type things.

I was reading TUAW this morning, and they were talking about the Apple.com site and how some people were reporting that the Downloads section was gone. In a nutshell their article was just saying that no, it’s not, it’s just not on the navigation now because they needed room for an iPad tab. My favorite quote from the article* was: “Fortunately you can easily locate the downloads section simply by typing the word “downloads” into the search box.

Went to the vet with a limp, came home with terminal bone cancer. 9 years isn’t enough!!!

I’m currently reading Booklife and one thing that he mentions is the idea that school literature programs have made people bad readers. At first I was somewhat taken aback by this assertion, but as I read more about what his premise was, I started to agree with him. In a nutshell: in literature classes in high school and college we are taught to read literature with an eye towards what is not written.

Okay, I’ve mentioned that I am looking forward to the iPad release. If nothing else, it will be nice to be able to type a little more accurately with my fat fingers. But I have to say that while it’s nice that a lot of developers are working on iPad specific versions of their apps, I hope they don’t all go that route. For instance, I have 2 ereaders on my iPod.

This latest version of MacJournal includes “support for syncing with MacJournal for iPhone” but the iPhone version isn’t available.

I’m currently reading Booklife by Jeff Vandermeer. One of the first chapters talks about Twitter and he says that he doesn’t really like Twitter because it “fragments [his] attention”. Like him, I don’t find Twitter all that friendly. Many of the people I used to chat with on Twitter now have so many people in their timeline that they never even see my posts. And I’ve never had the experience of asking a question or for help and getting more than a minimal response and often a snarky, negative one.

I’ve got a few apps on my iPod that would be so much more pleasant to use on a larger screen. Take this WordPress app for instance. I find it humorous that many of the complaints about the iPad are that it’s just a big iPod. That’s why I want one! Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPod. I use it everyday! But a larger screen to read and a bigger keyboard to type on would be awesome.

I just finished the 4th season of House. And of all the characters to kill, why did they need to kill ___? It’s something Whedon would do. He was my favorite of the team. I understand that it pushed forward a plot point. But it was still disappointing to have the nice character die, especially by suicide.

Okay, I woke up with migrating pain in my sinuses. Taking advil and some antibiotic turned that off. Now the dull pain in my jaw is back. Makes it hard to focus or concentrate or write. I wish this were over with. I wish I hadn’t believed that the pain would stay manageable until Thursday and just made the appointment for Monday morning. Ah if wishes were fishes I’d be well fed for Lent.

Why do medical practitioners insist on treating their customers as cogs in a machine? Some offices use random numbers, others use parts of your social security number, and still others use your birth date. But what about something that is unique to me and I’m used to responding to, know by heart, and makes me feel like a person rather than a computer? I know this is going out on a limb, but maybe my NAME?

I saw this advertisement today, and it made me laugh. King county decided that all restaurants must put calories on their menus so people have a better idea of what they are ordering. A year or so later they decided to see if this had changed how people order. It did. Now they make their kids eat more healthily while ordering the double-big-mac-large-fries-chocolate-shake for themselves. I’m taking my first step to be a better role model - I’ve made a dentist appointment (and haven’t cancelled it yet).