Slashdot | Use Google Earth To Track Santa
If you have Google Earth (formerly known as Keyhole) then this is a cool addon.
Month: December 2005
bookmark_borderSanta and NORAD
For the 50th year, NORAD is tracking Santa on its satellites and radars. Be sure to read the history of this yearly event.
bookmark_borderFeelings
‘Tis Christmas. Time for laughter, time for cheer.
Time for all things mushy and sweet.
Time for us all to remember what the world is all about.
And what it is about is the stuff of fiction:
A deity, one proud enough to demand to be the only one, wanted the mortals to understand. But how could they understand if the deity did not understand? He, for lack of a proper pronoun, thought it over and decided the best way would be for him to become one of them, to become mortal, human. But even deities have constraints and actually becoming one himself wasn’t truly possible. So he took a part of himself, a small part that he could just barely spare, and experienced humanity through that. As the child, for lack of a proper noun, he would still feel what they felt–despair, hunger, poopy diapers, a cracked toe on a table leg.
Because even that small part of him was special, because the very act was, to mortal humans, a miracle, it could not pass unnoticed. It is indeed a rare thing to hear a child-deity cry out that first gasp for air, bloody and wrinkled and real. What a shock that must have been! To suddenly feel!
This deity is too large to put into one box, one body, one faith. Is that child, who grew to be a man, the only path? Are the other paths less feeling, less shocking and real?
Christians, Muslims, Jews–we all follow the same deity. None is greater nor smaller nor less real than the others.
In this time of laughter, time of cheer, time for all things mushy and sweet, remember as you open your gift that God isn’t in a box, isn’t wrapped in pretty paper, isn’t written in just one book. That child experienced life as a mortal human, feeling what we all feel. God is as universal as a cracked toe on a table leg.
bookmark_borderMiracle Whip
From CripHumor:
bookmark_borderFYI
There’s an email list (and decent website) concerning “helping the people in stores, in libraries and on the Web buy, sell and lend books most wisely.”
The site is called Shelf Awareness. In the left-hand sidebar, click subscribe to join the e-mail list. They also have a new archive set up of past information.
bookmark_borderGeek Gear
J!NX has cool swag for geeks, hackers, gamers and the like. Some of it you wouldn’t understand unless you are one.
They got t-shirts, hats, stickers, and bags. Even dog gear. They got kid stuff (under the Misc. Swag heading). One is a toddler shirt that reads “N00blet”. 😆
Couple of shirts and a bag I may save up for.
bookmark_borderPopCorn Update
PopCorn got the stitches out yesterday. She’ll need to wear the helmet a few more days to let it finish settling down then it will be back to normal for her!
We also took Joella in to get a checkup. She is such a sweet dog, quite intelligent. Which meant when they came into the room with the nail trimmers, she knew exactly what they were going to do. It took three techs and the vet to hold her down and trim her nails. We started with a muzzle on her, she tends to be mouthy when upset, but the vet took it off later because poor Jo had herself so worked up she couldn’t breathe right. Everyone (but me) was surprised she freaked so bad. I told them but I don’t think they believed me.
bookmark_borderManuscript Preparation
I have set up BG1 to the specifications for Bold Strokes Books submission guidelines.
They want the first line of each paragraph indented and no blank line between paragraphs. The first was easy to do (format > paragraph) but the other was not so easy. But, it is done.
Which means that instead of being 538 pages or so, it is now 397 pages. Still double-spaced too.
That feels better now, don’t it?
So, if I can ever get the synopsis down to one page, it will be ready to send out to them.
I’m going to try Bold Strokes Books first for some reason. I had a good reason at the time but now I can’t remember it. Brain fart.
PS:
Bella Books likes each chapter heading to be 1/3 of the way down the page. After doing that, the page total for them will be 408.
bookmark_borderAttention IE Users
As far as I can tell, the sidebar issue is fixed (as in it broke below the keyword list).
The sliding text issue with the posts is still there.
Anyone have any idea what is going on and how I can fix it? I am willing to share my CSS and code for the set up.
Any other problems for IE users?
I can’t fix what I don’t know is broke and since y’all insist on using a broken browser (which 69% of the visitors do, so perhaps I ought to be nicer), I do need to do what I can to fix these problems.
bookmark_borderFirefox Extensions
I am writing this in a Firefox extension from Performancing.com. So far, it is odd but I think/hope it is just a matter of getting used to it.
For those who use WordPress on their own site (versus the WordPress.com site or other Multi-User sites), if you use this extension, there are a few things to know in order for it to work. I was lost until I visited the Performancing.com forum, read some posts, and put the pieces together.
- Click on the button on the right that says ‘account wizard’ or something like that.
- From the dropdown menu, select WordPress CUSTOM.
- Enter in the address for your blog. I haven’t a clue what AppKey is so I left it blank. But, do leave the xmlrpc.php at the end of the URL. For example, mine is https://paulaoffutt.com/blog/xmlrpc.php
- Next window, Login Details, enter in your user name and password.
- In the next window, even though the Next button is clickable, don’t. Wait for it to finish! Select the blog you want, click Next, then Finish. Ta Da!
In the window pane to the left, select which blog you want to post to (if there is more than one there) and Post away. Cool beans, eh?
For those of you who use other blogging programs/sites, this extension works with Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, and Moveable Type. But you do need Firefox of course.
NOTE: I just found out the hard way that the extension does not play well with html tags. When I figure that part out, I’ll let you know.