[d] enclosed in brackets chaotic perfectionist for hire

Is mother nature on a bender or something? Is she recovering now?

Seriously. This has been one of the weirdest winter-ish seasons I can remember, and this is New England. We had a week in January where it was 55 F (12.8 C) one day, then a high of 18 F (-7.8 C) the next day. It doesn't normally go above the mid 30s in January and Ferbruary, and it's not unusual for there to be a two or three week period where the temperature doesn't go above 20 F (-6.7 C). We've gotten a lot of snow, but along with the huge piles of the white stuff that we've shoveled, there have been days where the snow has almost been sublimating (evaporating directly).

Then there was this week, where it's been in the low 30s F (around 0 C) over night, then in the 40s during the day... then it SNOWED this morning. That would be fine, except I just put my summer tires back on my car (only to pass inspection). I was planning on putting the winters back on for a few more weeks...

For some reason, Nature isn't the word I'm thinking of after Mother right now.

</rant>

As I've mentioned before, I'm in quite a few communities and signed up on a lot of sites. This includes Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, and Tumblr - all different, but in some ways much the same. Right now I'm pretty much tracking what happens through Twitter only, through IM (Pidgin). I tried using IMified, but the bot for gtalk died for me or something.

Is anyone using something to post to multiple sites? I know of a couple, but they're not for Windows (I'm on XP Pro, SP2). Would that be like a reverse aggregator?

Quick thing - I was searching for "bonsai mame" (pronounced 'mah-may' - they're very tiny bonsai), and this is what started coming up in the search suggestions:

Look at the third suggestion down. Are there really that many people looking for it?

Have you seen Ravelry? It's an invite-only community for people who knit and crochet, and they slowly add more people each day. You add your name to a list, and they send you a link when it's open for you to join. In case you're not willing to wait, they have an "antsy" list that shows you where you are in line. It was started by a husband and wife from the Boston, MA area (that's kind of local to me). They wanted a community and a way to keep track of what they had and wanted... and I think they've done a great job so far.

I put my name on the list sometime around the 20th of February this year, and received my invite late on the 23rd. I've been a member since February 24th. Besides the community, there'syour own personal database for yarn (aka your stash), needles, projects (in-progress, queued, and favorites), as well as a library (books, magazines, PDFs, etc).

Once you have your "notebook" filled in, you can look through the people and groups - there are a ton of different groups, from Men Who Knit to Geek knitters to knitters in your area (probably), and... well, you'll have to look around.

If you're a knitter or a crocheter, check it out. It's worth waiting for the invitation, and it's a very active community.

There's an Extreme Craft article about knit graffiti (which references the original AP story). Apparently, there's a group of people in Yellow Springs, Ohio who do this (among others, I'm sure), and there's a shot of one of the trees in town in the link. The picture to the left is from Flickr, by kelly__m.

From there I also found a link to Knitta:

Knitta began in August 2005, when the soon-to-be-Knittas were discussing their frustration over unfinished knitting projects: half-knitted sweaters and balls of yarn gathering dust. That afternoon, they knit their first door handle. Then it dawned on them… a tag crew of knitters, bombing the inner city with vibrant, stitched works of art, wrapped around everything from beer bottles on easy nights to public monuments and utility poles on more ambitious outings. With a mix of clandestine moves and gangsta rap — Knitta was born! Today, Knitta is a group of ladies of all ages, nationalities, and… gender.

Where to start...? There has to be a group around the Boston (or Southern NH) area for this. If anyone can find information on it, please let me know. I'm not sure how much I could contribute, but I'm willing to try.

The ideas that I write about seem to come in waves. It's not like I have something to post every day, but sometimes there will be several things I want to write about in a whosrt period of time, then nothing for a while - just look at my posting dates to get an idea of this.

While writing last week, I thought it would be good if Drupal had the ability to write something up and save it as a draft (saved, but not published). It was brought to my attention again while writing my this post when Firefox (3b3) crashed and I lost what I had written. Blech. There have been discussions on the Drupal site for a while, but nothing that was "in place" for it. Then I found this site, which suggested I use the Views module (which I have and am still learning about). Why didn't I think of that earlier?

The Views module allows you to create different content pages (among other options) with a defined set of nodes on it. In the case of creating Drafts, I set it up to show any nodes (postings) that aren't marked as Published. Now, instead of worrying that I'm not going to be able to recover in case of a Firefox crash (or anything else), I can save an unpublished version of what I'm working on and finish it later. It also works as a kind of "Save as..." in the meantime.

Sure, other CMSs out there already do that, but we'll get there.

Top o' the mornin' to ya, and happy St. Patrick's Day!

Oof, that was a little too cheesy, but I'll leave it in. St Patrick's day is good on several levels, ranging from Guinness to everything green (which is, and pretty much always has been, my favorite color). Speaking of Guinness, I didn't like it that much until a couple of years ago. Maybe it's an acquired taste...

I'm also close to Boston, MA, which is home to the earliest celebration of St. Patrick's Day in the US.

What do you do for St. Patrick's Day, and are you even a little Irish? I'm about 1/4 Irish, not that it really matters. The people who get the most out of this day (in the US anyway) are kids in school (kindegarten through college) and anyone who wants to have an excuse to get their drink on.

Even if you're not drinking, don't forget to dye something green for fun. Try green bread, but make sure it's not moldy. Any (bad) ideas you've seen for making something green? I think it's funny sometimes, but some people take it a little overboard.

I'm going now - it's time for Irish panini sandwiches (not sure why our office decided to do that, but I'm ok with it), and some neon green bagels.

Yes, today is Pi Day (based on American date format). In fact, there's even a site dedicated to it (of course there is). There are also several other sites with a lot more technical information about Pi and its history. Feel free to Google them all and come back.

There's a level of geekery to it, but celebrate anyway. Since you can't really have 3.1415926 beers, you might as well round up to 4 and be done with it. At least have some pie. While you're at it, please share some of that pie with me.

My wife's uncle has a Mac laptop, with a camera built in and Photobooth installed. If you haven't seen or heard about it, Photobooth allows you to take pictures with the camera, with added effects like warping and filters (black and white, sepia, etc). Very fun, and I was reminded of that while reading the Lifehacker article on documenting your party (so you don't have to miss it).

That prompted me to start looking for software to give me the same fun, but for Windows, and available offline for the times I can't be connected. That's not nearly as easy as it sounds, at least not without paying for it (which I don't want to do for many reasons). My first stop was Cameroid, which was great in the effects and filters. It's also free, and the only real drawback is that it's online only - not as much of a problem these days, but still a consideration. I took this picture with it, and it reminds me of the photos on Webmonkey (even if they're a different color scheme). It's pretty good stuff, and allows you to save the picture right away and/or share the link (very useful these days).

There are others to look at, like sigost (which only came up on one of three system I tried it with), Dr. Jekill (yes, spelled like that, and it's trialware), phozi (stamps and drawing more than visual effects), and photoboof (works like the old-school photo booths).

Ok, ok, the real reason to use it is to make goofy pictures. Here you go:

Happy now?

On New Year's eve, my brother and his girlfriend brought over Perpetual Commotion.

In case you haven't played it, commotion is a very accurate description. The idea is to get rid of your pile of 13 cards faster than the other people you're playing against. That's the easy part of learning how to play.The hard part is actually getting rid of them before anyone else.

Start with four to six people (or if you like chaos, you can get additional decks). The game says you can play with two or three as well, but the game play is more fun with at least four. Count out 13 cards facedown, then flip five cards in a row face up next to them. This is where the fun begins.

The idea is to make colored piles, starting with a Start card, then going numbers 2 to 12, and finish with a Stop card. The piles are in the middle of the table, for anyone to play. The Start and Stop cards can start or finish any pile, but the numbers must be matching in color. Instead of confusing things any more, you can check out the instructions to see how it's played. Once someone goes out, you add up the points - first one to 150 is the winner.

As it was New Year's Eve the first time we played, there was a bit of imbibing happening, so things were a little slow. K and I got to play again Saturday night (and again Sunday afternoon), and we want to play more. Once you get into it, there's chaos... and a lot of swearing. It's not for the faint of heart, and some self-control is needed if there are little ears around. Anyone up for a couple of rounds?