Take a small Flash file. Send it to a bunch of artists and tell them to make whatever changes they want and send it back. The result: Blankimage (by way of Bifurcated Rivets)

A wonderful New Year’s ebullition from Eric Norlin: “Laugh more than I worry.” I like that!

This is just beautiful. Did you know Bernard Shifman is a Moron Spammer? Well, now you do.

You know, I look at this and I’m reminded why I need to get a subscription to National Geographic. (Link from Flayrah – sorry for leaving out the attribution earlier!)

We’re thinking about getting an iBook for desktop publishing. I came across this site that has useful information for poor, ignorant Intel junkies like me. (I just ran the numbers to see what a brand-new super-spiffy iBook would run. $1,827. Ack!)

I want my Gay TV!

I confess: Takaza and I are complete Survivor addicts (by the way, check out this hysterical summary of the final episode) The Advocate has an interview with gay Survivor Brandon Quinton, who didn’t get nearly bitchy enough about that homophobe, Frank.

Here’s a great new book for your family:

(Courtesy of this page)

Hmmm…LiveJournal was down last night. How annoying.

I finally got the pictures from the Christmas Year’s party up! Yay! Look closely at the pictures here and here. There you’ll see Dan and I completely at a loss for words. Janelle and Beth presented us with a beautiful work-in-progress and commitment-ceremony gift: a quilt, in gorgeous blues and tans. You can’t see it in the pictures, but the tan squares have little paw prints all over them! They’ve been working on this since September, and will give it to us when its done, sometime in the next few months. Our friends are so amazing!

(and not the Styx song…)

Not too much to do at work today. The reaction I’ve been waiting to run since Thursday still can’t be done because the fume hood where the reactor resides is still unusable due to a burned-out fan motor. I sure hope it’s up and running tomorrow, otherwise it’s going to be crunch time come Thursday.

Why Thursday? It’s a short week for me. We set out for Chicago Friday morning aboard American Airlines. It was originally supposed to be Friday evening, but we clicked on the wrong option on the website. The tickets came, and lo and behold: they said 9:40 AM instead of 6:40 PM departure. Ah well. We’ll be having lunch with Dan’s mom and dinner with friends on Friday night, so it’s fine by me.

And for the curious, here’s the post that I’ve been thinking about – I just sent it off. I think it’s worth repeating here. “Number 7,” by the way, is another one of those anonymous, complaining, useless malcontents for which alt.fan.furry is so famous.

From: Duncan da Husky
Newsgroups: alt.fan.furry
Subject: Re: Work the media
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 13:39:40 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID:

Number 7 wrote:
> Press liaisons are indeed wonderful things, WHEN they do their jobs.
> Midwest FurFest had a press liaison their first year, and look at what
> happened: They were the stars of not one but TWO media pieces that
> depicted furries as kinky sex deviants…..

Pray tell me, what proof do you have that the press liaison didn’t do their job?

Were they supposed to be riding in the car with George Gurley and Ostrich, monitoring every word?
Were they supposed to have been at Foxwolfie Galen’s computer, telling him not to type what he did?
Were they supposed to be in Yote’s room, politely suggesting they speak of other topics?
Were they supposed to be in the rooms of the other fans interviewed, quietly telling them that editing could make them look foolish when the final film was assembled?
Were they supposed to have final editing privileges over all works that mention the convention, so they could prevent the omission of all of the materials and information they provided?

The press liaison did their job. They made sure both Gurley and Castro saw the charities that raised thousands of dollars, the multitude of G- and PG-rated art in the art show, the folks having fun at the dance. They provided printed materials that explained how Midwest Furfest is a family-oriented convention, where people from all walks of life are welcome to attend and enjoy themselves.

In my opinion, the job of the press liaison is to put the best face on a convention, to introduce the media to our admittedly non-mainstream interests and explain why we do what we do. The job of the press liaison is not to be by the side of the media person 24 hours per day, all three days of the convention, protecting fans from themselves. I believe that the jobs of conventions are not to be the saviors of the fandom – they have their hands full doing what they are created for: providing entertainment, programming, and meeting space for people in furry fandom to congregate and have a good time.

-Tom

Good morning!

Nothing like starting the day with a good dose of comics. (You can also build your own)

It’s the ultimate SUV, coming soon to a suburb near you. If I saw a yuppie driving around in this, I’d assume that a bumper sticker that says, “My penis is too small” would be redundant.

Great quote from diveintomark: “13804 » January 14 1:49 AM. Dubya faints after choking while eating pretzel Must…fight….urge…not…to…snicker…….”

I didn’t get the party pictures up yesterday, but not for want of trying. First, I found out my thumbnail program‘s evaluation period had expired. I deleted it, tried another program, and had to reboot. Seven times. It finally took, but it’s just an additional reminder that it’s time to wipe the ol’ hard drive and reinstall from scratch. Too many new programs and too much new hardware makes Windows 98 go barf. I spent the rest of the afternoon backing up everything important in the event the whole thing goes to hell in the near future.

Feren has reduced this whole journal entry thing down to a script. I aspire to his level of efficiency 🙂

I’ve written a response to the article on alt.flame.furry that was pissing me off, but I’m sitting on it for now. We’ll see if I post it or not.

Well, that’s enough randomness for this morning, I suppose.

For no particular reason whatsoever, here’s a yummy chicken recipe. This one has a fun history – I served this to 160 people at an SCA event in 1998. It has the benefit of being inexpensive and relatively easy to prepare. Enjoy!

Orange-Glazed Baked Chicken
(Recipe by Lord Duncan MacKinnon of Tobermory, aka Tom Brady)
(serves 8)

Ingredients:
2 fryer chickens (3-4 lbs each)

1 cup granulated salt
2 gallons water

6 oz. frozen orange juice concentrate
4 oz. water
4 oz. white vinegar
½ cup honey
2 Tablespoons orange marmalade
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon powdered ginger
1 medium seedless orange

Procedure:
1. BRINING: Mix ½ cup of salt per gallon of water. Use 1 gallon of water per chicken, making sure that the chickens are not too crowded in the brining container. Soak the chickens in brine in a refrigerator for 8-12 hours.
2. Remove the chickens from the brine and wash them thoroughly, paying special attention to the cavity, wings, and drumsticks.
3. GLAZE: In a large saucepan, add the OJ concentrate, water, and vinegar. Bring this to a boil, stirring frequently so that it doesn’t scorch.
4. Turn down the heat so that the pot is at a simmer. Add the honey, stirring constantly with a whisk so that the honey doesn’t burn on the bottom of the pot. Simmer for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
5. Place the ginger and cinnamon in a small bowl. Using a ladle, remove a small amount of the OJ/honey mixture and add it to the bowl. Stir it until all the liquid is absorbed. Add a little more liquid and stir. Continue this until the mixture in the bowl is a thin liquid, then add it to the pot. Add the marmalade. Simmer for 5 minutes more, then remove from heat.
6. Wash the orange, then slice the orange into thin (1/4″) slices. Cut those slices in half.
7. Preheat the ovens to 350°F.
8. Place the chickens on greased baking sheets, lying on their backs. Insert as many pieces of orange as possible between the breast meat and the skin. Place a few slices in the cavity of the chicken, if you have some oranges left over (it helps to wear latex gloves during this process – it looks weird, but it works!).
9. Pour the glaze over each chicken, allowing about 1 cup of glaze per chicken.
10. Place the chickens in the oven. Baste every 15 minutes.
11. When the temperature of the thigh is 175-180°F (50-60 minutes), remove the chickens from the oven. Baste one last time. Let stand for at least 10 minutes before serving.

Tom’s notes: I think the brining is the key to this dish – I picked it up from a wonderful magazine called Cook’s Illustrated. If you enjoy cooking, I recommend the magazine highly.

OK, I’m now well caffeinated, it’s a beautiful day outside, and life is good. Now I get to ramble some more.

On flames…

You know, it’s very rare that you’ll ever see me flame someone, on email or on Usenet. There’s a reason for that. I learned a long time ago that writing under the influence of anger only gets me into trouble – I take a few hours (or days) to calm down and reflect on how to reply, or if a reply is even warranted at all. That’s one reason why you rarely, if ever, will see me partaking in the more contentious discusssions in the flamepit. The only reason I mention this now is there’s something there that has really irritated me, but I’m going to think some before replying. Maybe someone with a cooler head will post a more suitable reply. Either way, I’m going to wait a bit.

On our social life…

The party last night was great fun. I’m still pretty bummed that I couldn’t enjoy any of the wine or champagne (for those coming in late – in November a blood test showed one of my liver enzymes was abnormally elevated. I’m off alcohol and Tylenol until my next blood test in mid-February). The food and the company was good, though. We took lots of pictures, and we’ll have those up on our website by the end of today. For other comments on the party, see the journal entry by Takaza. Yep, he’s got his LiveJournal up and running now to. The virus spreads…

On Leftovers…

We still haven’t gotten out thank-you notes for the gifts we received at our commitment ceremony. We suck, I know. We’ve got the list, we’ve got the cards, it’s just a matter of putting them together and taking the time to sit down and write them. Miss Manners says we have three months, but I hope we don’t push that.

In possibly brighter news, we got an email from Jonathan, our photographer, that the pictures from the commitment ceremony should be arriving soon. Of course, that was nine days ago – still no pictures. This is really annoying. We hope to have pictures in hand when we come to Chicago next week, but we’ll see what happens. I suppose if nothing else we can hunt him down in Berwyn…

And finally…

Check it out: an improptu Internet art exhibition!

At the party tonight, we were discussing TiVo and ReplayTV and the possibility of networking appliances, when someone mentioned the existence of networked refrigerators. Trying to see the value of such a product, we postulated there might be a thin screen on the door, and it could be used as an Internet appliance. Then, Dan figured out exactly what its main use would be: Fridge porn!

Well, it made sense at the time.

Gonna be a bit rambly here, so bear with me…

Well, the appearance of my journal has changed a bit off and on while I’ve been playing with styles. There’s a lot of flexibility there, but it’s going to take some time to sort things out.

Here I am, slave to technology: sitting on the living room sofa, typing on Dan’s laptop which is connected wirelessly to our Network Access Point upstairs in Dan’s office. I’m playing MP3’s that I’m pulling from my desktop which is in our bedroom (where Dan’s still asleep). The gas fireplace is turned on (it’s a bit nippy down here this morning) and the TiVo is whirring away recording, I believe, the latest airing of “Hometime” (aka “Ken and Barbie Do Home Repair”). Meanwhile, I can smell the bread in the bread machine starting to rise.

Damn, I could get to like this.

Well, we’ll be heading to the store today to pick up one more gift for tonight’s Christmas-Year’s Party. The Gang down here – a loose conglomeration of Virginia Tech alumni, former SCAdians, and adopted coworkers – agree that everyone is too busy in December for a party then, so we combine Christmas and New Year’s parties into one party in January. We’re at John Franklin‘s new house this year. Gee, I hope he got more furniture…

Planning continues apace for our trip up to Chicago next weekend. We’ll be at NoCoasterCon on Saturday, then the first Midwest Furfest staff meeting of the year on Sunday. I have no concerns about those events, though the flights up and back might be a bit exciting.

Well, what do you know – I thought you had to be a paid member for at least a week before you could invite someone to set up a LiveJournal account. Evidently not. Well, I’ll send that off to Dan – I reckon we’ll be seeing a new journal from him soon.

Hmm…my pictures aren’t showing up next to my recent diary entries, though they do appear int eh comments. I wonder what’s up with that?

I guess I’ll wrap up with some juicy bits of linkage that have caught my eye this morning:

– This site is just plain awesome. A few clicks and you’re opted-out (at least temporarily) of some of the biggest pop-up/popunder services on the net. I need to remember to do this on my desktop upstairs, too. Thanks to BoingBoing

– What do you do when you arrive in a city very late at night, the hotel loses your reservation, and the night clerk gets snarky about it? Why, you prepare a very funny PowerPoint presentation about it and put it up on the net! (After you see the presentation, see the ensuing fallout, which included a story in USA Today)

– TiVo is rolling out Series2, with improved features and functionality. Seems to me like they’re playing a bit of catch-up with the Replay4000. We’ll stick with our older Phillips 30-hour TiVo for now, but I’m keeping an eye on it. For those of you who haven’t heard, the PVR revolution is here, and astonishingly enough, the hype is true: it really does change the way you watch TV.

Laters!

Just got back from what was supposed to be a night of dinner at Tasca Brava, a new tapas place in Cary, and seeing Lord of the Rings with Rob and Janet (she’s a fabulous artist, check out her site).

Well, that’s not what happened. Dinner was late since we missed our reservation by 15 minutes (granted, there’s all of 12 tables in the place) and weren’t seated until after 7:00 PM. The food was only so-so, and overly-expensive. We got to the theater just in time for the 8:15 PM showing of the movie, only to find that the 8:15 showing was actually the 8:00 PM showing and by the way, it was sold out. Bleah.

Just to prove that we can have a good time anyway, we found our way to a local coffee house and indulged in cinnamon muffins and lattes and talked for a couple of hours. It was All Good.

I’ve been a big fan of blogs for the last few months. I like to start every day reading Doc and Dave and Bifurcated Rivets and BoingBoing. Blogs are a reminder of what the Internet can be – a community, a network of friends and friends-not-yet-met, where ideas are the coin of the realm. On a more local level, it allows folks to keep up with friends they don’t hear from often enough, and to let their friends know what’s going on in their life.

I figured it was high time for me to join that community. I just hope I can keep up my end of the conversation. Talk to you soon!