[d] enclosed in brackets chaotic perfectionist for hire

count me in on that action.

Paula Deen is awesome enough with the "and a stick of buttah" in almost everything she makes. This time she ups the ante with bacon... wrapped around mac and cheese. Oh yeah, and it's fried. Awesomeness.

PS - anyone know of a home arterioplasty kit?

Judy's Magic Cast-On seems to elude me.

It's not that I don't get it, it's just that I can't seem to get it to work the way I think it should. I searched for videos on it, and it's tough because I'm using DPNs instead of circular needles. The video below is the closest, but I still feel like I'm missing something.

Once I've done a few of the rows, I feel like it should be pulling together with the increases, but it still looks flat to me. Anyone care to offer advice?

I signed up for another service. (wait for shocked looks to fade)

It's lifestream.fm, and so far I like it. This started from mentioning that I was posting to about 10 different places - I actually got one reply, and she mentioned that she used this service. The idea is what I wanted to do here, but a) haven't tried too hard, and b) haven't looked that much into it. For example, the following shows the last seven updates for my lifestream page - and there are definitely some duplicates from using ping.fm, but that's ok:

I like that I can see what I've been doing in all those places I post various types of content to (and hope I'm not spamming by doing so). Sure, it's not a really new idea, but it works and it's usable. What else are people using, and how do you keep track of what's going on?

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?

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.

I definitely can't say it better than they did, so from drupal.org:

Downloaded and updated on my localhost. It's nice, although I haven't had a chance to play with it much so far. The update process was really smooth, with no errors throughout. We'll see what happens when I try it on this site. Time for the checklist, starting with a full backup (just in case).

How long to wait though... that's my next decision. I think I just need to have a chance to make sure I have modules and themes ready to go when I make the jump. 

Whether you're starting fresh or upgrading, start here for information and download links.

Ever since the movie The Saint (with Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue, not the TV series with Roger Moore), I've wanted a phone that flips open - not just a clamshell, but something with a keyboard inside. I thought that was the coolest thing, and until I saw the price... it was practically mine. I don't even remember what the price was, just that it was WAY out of my budget.

It went to the back of my mind as I got my first mobile phone in 1999. It was a sweet Nokia 5160 and I thought it was (almost) the best thing ever. That was replaced by a Motorola v60i (good except for the snap-off antenna), then a Motorola v265, then a Motorola e815 (see a trend?).

Our "New Every Two" was up last May (whee, Verizon Family Plan), and we finally got around to picking new phones. After looking at what I could get for free (if I had the money I would've liked the vx6800), I went with the LG enV Green. After waiting a couple of days, it came in, and I like it.

Has anyone else played with one? It's got a good look and feel, plus green *is* my favorite color. There's plenty to play with, but it's still really good as a phone. Speakerphone is easy to use and turn on/off, whether it's open or closed.

Now, the next step is to see how much I can get onto it. I want to be able to make my own ringtones, and I don't want to have to send them to myself (regardless of having unlimited messaging, which I don't have). Verizon is a pain and won't let you do it on your own, at least without messing with a few things first. Luckily, the camera is pretty decent, but I still want to get all of the pictures from my old phone onto it. If anyone has any tips on transferring data and/or ringtones, please let me know.

In working on a couple of web design projects, I've needed to test out what the site looks like on various browsers, on different operating systems, all with different versions. Designers would have a much easier time if browsers worked more like TVs - you don't see a different looking show on a Sony than a Panasonic TV.

Unfortunately, some of the older browsers *cough-IE-cough* were really bad about rendering pages, and people coded for them because they were the most popular. In these cases it's old and outdated code that looks bad on modern browsers, but is in there to help the people who haven't upgraded since Windows 95 and IE3. blech.

Fortunately, there are ways to test these designs out, even if you aren't on Windows, or a Mac, or Linux. On the last project I did, The design looked great on Firefox, IE7, Opera, and Seamonkey. What I didn't know at the time was that it looked atrocious on IE6. I'm working on a new site for someone (more details soon), and finally got the theme together. He went to look at it while he was home and it came out... wrong. Again, I didn't know what it looked like, and couldn't fix it as is.

When it happened the first time, I half-looked for a way to check browser compatibility. At the time, I didn't find something to use, and stopped looking once I had fixed the issue. This time, I needed something... and I (re)found Browsershots.org. Yes, they've (he's?) been around for a while, and many people use them, but I hadn't realized how useful it is.

Now I know that the pngfix for IE 5.5-6 is what's breaking it in those two browsers, and I can work on fixing them. I'll post some screen shots soon, but in the meantime, go visit the site and check it out.

A few years ago, I signed up for an account at Cafe Press. I made a couple of designs, but then promptly forgot all about it (yes, big surprise). A few months ago, I started looking for a new place to sell t-shirts and other stuff through - but I haven't touched Cafe Press.

Does anyone have any suggestions for good places to use? I've seen a few (and saved the links):

• Spreadshirt
• Printfection
• Zazzle

I signed up on Spreadshirt, and it seems pretty decent (minus a few typos on the wording in a couple of places). There's no specific reason for me to do this right now, but I've had a couple of ideas for shirts that I think would be good... and I'm planning ahead on a long-hibernating project (more on that later).

Yes, a little slow to get on board, but I finally signed up for an account at Remember the Milk. I didn't think I had all that much to put on it, but apparently there was more than a few things to get organized.

If you haven't used it, try it out... It allows you to manage your to-do lists in a pretty useful way. It's not over-bearing and it seems to have some decent integration (including gmail through a Firefox add-on - summed up on the RTM blog). You can also print out your lists and subscribe to them as RSS/Atom feeds.

Oh, and you can share tasks with other users, so there's a good collaborative feel to it. That could be useful for projects where people aren't necessarily in direct contact. You know, in case you actually *need* to remember the milk.

One last thing... Does anyone else think of Sesame Street when they see it? "A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter..."