paprika1910

I'm doing a lot. But none of it is in a fit state to write about in any kind of conclusive way, so I haven't been writing about it. It just feels weird to post about things I'm half-considering of doing experimentally. But anyway, here's some stuff:

• Because the business launch is going slowly (hello economy) I may try to find a short term contract job after I get back from Idaho next month.
  
• I'm going to Idaho at the end of the month for my mom's 60th birthday. I am staying half of the week at the intriguing Japan House Suites (intriguing because finding Japanese culture in North Idaho is like... I dunno, a Turkish bath in Minnesota?) and the 2nd half at my cousin's new lake house. I am excited about this lake house. It has a lake, and I will be there by myself for 3 nights.
  
• I plan to torture my relatives by interviewing them on video, so I'm working on pulling together questions as I continue to wrestle with my memoir.
• I started a Facebook reading group and we (or at least I) just finished On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. I'm about halfway through the next book Lush Life by Richard Price. Find me on facebook or send me a message if you'd like to join and follow along.
• I decided to see if I can sell some of my photos on Etsy. I'm not at all sure how this is going to work out, but at least I have a shop up and running. 
• I'm hoping to start volunteering  at 826 Seattle in the next couple of weeks, helping them with web and database updates over the summer, and taking a tutoring shift in the fall.
• I'm creating Squidoo "lenses" on a few topics to see if I can generate enough interest to actually develop a site about something that interests me.
• Bank of America is angry with me. I had to stop paying... I hope to start again before the end of the year... but what are you gonna do? No money is no money.
• I just discovered that my IRA from years ago has been sending my statements to North Carolina. No, I've never even been to North Carolina. I'll probably need to cash it out soon, so I called to see why I haven't been getting statements. They said they must have gotten the address through a database search. Puzzling.
• For my business I am researching and joining all of the best social networks. You may now find me everywhere.
• I'm getting really "into" Yin Yoga. My body needs it badly.
• I have 5+ active "action lists"... that never seem to get shorter.
• I will be making vegetarian enchiladas for my week's main dish. I'm trying to get more into cooking BIG dishes so I always have leftovers.
• I took the ferry to Bainbridge Island yesterday, where I got a minor sunburn and drank mai tais. It's not really the mai tai sort of island, but the weather was right anyway.
• For the 4th of July I went to a pool party at my ex-husband's best friend's parent's house in Bellevue. There were no explosions, but there was an inflatable Orca.
• I have registered my own domain. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. Well, some idea... but no time to flesh it out.
• I'm utterly fascinated by Amazon's Mechanical Turk. So fascinated that I earned a whopping $0.90 in a half hour.
• I really really want to rearrange furniture in my living room, but I cannot figure out where to put the ugly black metal shelf. It seems to be in the way no matter what. But the shelf space is needed, so.... I just sit and stare at it, willing it to "fit" somewhere. Black shelving should be outlawed.
• I don't have a boyfriend. This is not to be considered problematic. I'm just trying to be OK with it.
• Saw the Star Trek film last week. Good clean fun.
  

Originally posted on kgi.vox.com

chaircrusher

I had an interesting talk a couple weeks ago with my brother about his job at Digg, and Diggs interaction with the people at Google. Without going into the industry gossip, the takeaway from the chat is that above all else, Google values algorithms. Their business model, the companies they’re interested in acquiring, is all built around two things: collecting data and doing interesting and lucrative things with that data.

Well, to paraphrase Robbie Burns, the best-laid algorithms o’ mice an ‘men gang aft agley.

Cette vidéo n'est pas sur les chats.

Originally published at Do My Eyes Look Scary?. You can comment here or there.

optic_food

http://food.perkowitz.net/2009/07/mediterranean_chicken_patties.html

We wanted to do a sort of pita-sandwich-falafel type thing with chicken and came up with the following recipe. The patties came out very good, and we snacked on them for several days. The recipe was completely ad hoc, so there basically aren't any amounts here.

Ingredients
chicken patties
1 lb boneless skinless chicken (about 2:1 thigh to breast), ground
several leaves swiss chard, de-ribbed
panko
oregano, basil, salt, pepper, finely-grated parmesan

yogurt dip
1 c greek yogurt
feta cheese, cubed small
2 green onions, finely chopped

pitas
4 pitas
1 tomato, sliced
1/2 cucumber, sliced

Directions
Steam the chard in a covered pot in about 1/2 inch water until soft. Mince the steamed chard and add to the ground chicken. Add the other stuff and mix well, but don't overwork it. Heat oil in a skillet on medium-high. If you want to check your flavor, fry one small patty first. When you've got the chicken mix to taste, form into small (about one tbsp) flattish patties and fry on each side until done, about 5 minutes per side. Fry in batches until all are done and put aside on paper towels.

Meanwhile, mix all the yogurt ingredients to taste. Serve the patties with tomato, cucumber, and pitas (either halve them and split open the pockets, or just wrap ingredients in pita gyro-style, if you have really good soft pitas). Slather a pita with the yogurt dip and add chicken, tomato, and cucumber. Good served with hummus and veggies (e.g. carrots and snap peas) for dipping.

optic_food

http://food.perkowitz.net/2009/07/day_after_larb_salad.html

A couple days after making the larb, I wanted to make a quick and fresh salad with the leftovers. I basically freshened the larb with more veggies and some nuoc cham and it was delicious again! This especially made sense because the larb dried out and mellowed a bit from when it was fresh. This should work with whatever's in the fridge, and nuoc cham, plain fish sauce, lime juice, etc. I thought about putting this in baked wonton cups but had places to be.

Ingredients
2 c leftover larb
1 c leftover brown rice
lettuce leaves, in thin strips
red cabbage, coarsely chopped
napa cabbage, in thin strips
thai basil, coarsely chopped
cilantro, coarsely chopped
ground peanuts, a mix of coarse and fine
nuoc cham
red pepper flakes

Directions
Put everything in a bowl. Mix. Adjust to taste. Eat.

chaircrusher

Someone twittered This interview by Bill Moyers with Wendell Potter of Cigna. Quick summary: they make their money by denying sick people care. They spend millions of dollars to prevent meaningful health care reform.

Everyone needs to be lobbying their Representatives and Senators to force them to do something real about health care in the United States. If we don’t threaten to toss their sorry asses out of office if they don’t, nothing useful will get done. The insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies and doctors and for-profit hospitals will continue to dictate the terms of how you receive health care. And even though they are theoretically in the business of helping others, they do not care about you. They care about their profits, and about maintaining the status quo.

It’s important, when the talking heads are throwing up a smoke screen and trying to say there’s a ‘debate’ about health care to remember some simple facts about how things work in the United States:

1. We have the most expensive, least effective, and least fair health care system in the industrialized world.
2. There is no debate about universal health care. A solid majority of Americans want it.
3. The people who are fighting to keep it from happening are not your friends. They’re not a reasoned, loyal opposition. They are the people that bankrupt sick people and let them die, in the name of making a profit.
4. The people complaining about the cost of universal health care are being disingenuous. We’re already paying through the nose for NOT having universal health care.

It’s a complete cliche to trot out Edmund Burke in a blog post but I’m going to do it anyway: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

We elected Obama to, among other things, fix health care, but he’s just the President — he can’t do it alone. Every one of us has to be an active proponent of fixing the system, or it won’t get fixed.

Originally published at Do My Eyes Look Scary?. You can comment here or there.

turbogrrl

_k

mrs_fujiwara

One by one my classes for the first semester are finishing. This week we thanked and said goodbye to my two favorite teachers. One of them was always enchanted by my clothes and kept asking me about my interest in Lolita fashion every time we would meet. They also made me understand Japanese as I never thought I'd be able to, so I am really thankful. And even though this is two out of six classes per week, this weekend will be full of work and studies. I am going to meet my advisor for the second time next Wednesday, so I have to review things I wrote in my thesis three years ago. And I also want to cover everything that will be on my finals so that I can enjoy Mana's concert freely next weekend.

Talking about it, when I was preparing things for my Osaka trip on Friday I realized I still don't have proper boots to wear with my EGA/Kodona/etc. outfits. Nothing seems to please me when it comes to boots, it's annoying actually. I keep checking shop webpages though and I really like the new Metamorphose's Engineer Boots. But I am still not convinced. So yesterday I decided to go to Shinjuku after my classes to try and look for something nice. Especially because it was the day the tickets for Kaya's in-store event at the end of the month would be distributed, so I’d do two things at once.

As expected, I ended up at the Alice and the Pirates shop. I've been eyeing the crown boots for a while and decided to have a try. What was my surprise to discover they were with 50% of discount at the store because of the summer sales. That settled it. And since they were half the price I was expecting them to be, I bought a lovely long-tailed and sleeve-less blouse to sum up to the original amount.

It's funny because I always go for the shop lady that has been helping me since I came here. She is chubby and lovely, speaks in a very low voice and has a huge smile on her face every time she sees me (probably because I always spend generously there). I am actually embarrassed when I buy shoes because she just kneels on the floor with her huge Lolita outfits to help me and end up even lacing things for me. And she also keeps apologizing effusively with this mortified expression when I ask for something I've seen on BtSSB's site and it's not on that store. So cute.

So while she was there lacing my boots and telling me how dashing I looked with them (this always makes me laugh) I asked her about Kaya's event on the 25th because there wasn't a single sign about it there, even though they kept playing his songs over and over. She stared at me with wide-eyes for a while and then hastily confirmed they had the tickets with a most adorable half smile. I felt like she was surprised a foreigner was interested in Kaya's works to the point of being aware of the event. And even though it was only the first day of the tickets distribution I was surprised to see my ticket was number four. I thought Kaya's fanclub members would be rushing to get the first ones.

Anyway, it sounds like it will be a fun event. Kaya will talk about his new single, Ophelia, which will be released on the 22th, and about his collaboration with BtSSB to make his new dress. There will also be something like a Q&A, a handshake and sign session and we will receive presents. Oh, and on the event day we will receive double points in our fidelity card when purchasing something, so I am really looking forward to it. Especially because I'll already be during my summer break. And it will also be the third time in three months that I'll meet in person one of my three favorite musicians/bands. How awesome is that?

At the end, of course, the shop lady said something like "so, we will meet again at Kaya-san's event" while handing me the bag at the shop entrance. And she bowed so low and thanked so much it made me slightly uncomfortable in front of the other shops' people.

+++++

snej

>Is there a reason that you switched to a boolean argument rather than the enum
>that I suggested?

Yes: because I felt that was a better change.

toastednut

Originally posted on liz.vox.com

chaircrusher

bassmusicblog ponders The Remix, how to do it, etc. With Slam’s “Positive Education” as a f’rinstance.

Originally published at Do My Eyes Look Scary?. You can comment here or there.

duffymoon

Is this fella someone we know? No way a dude can be out there, working in public on a Webster XL-747 (what?! you all knew what it was, too.) and it's someone who's unknown to ALL of us.

So, who is this guy?

chaircrusher

The Sonuus G2M Converter is, at $99 almost cheap enough for me to impulse-buy. But I’ve played around with guitar-to-midi converters from time to time and I’ve always been disappointed, and besides, after paying bills I’m already broke for July.

This thing is, of course, monophonic, and who knows what it does if you play a chord. That is usually pretty comical, and not musically useful with this sort of device. What I liked is the way the sales copy seeks to turn the drawbacks with audio to MIDI conversion into a virtue:

“For optimal MIDI conversion, your guitar playing needs to be clean and accurate. Accidental notes, resonating open strings and other sounds can often be converted into undesired MIDI notes. Often you don’t hear these when playing guitar yourself, but can detect them easily when listening live to the generated MIDI.

“Striving to improve MIDI note accuracy, encourages clean picking and accurate fingering, with good control over non-sounding strings by damping them.

“Not only will your MIDI output be more accurate, your normal guitar playing will sound clearer and more professional. It’s like having a tutor sitting beside you giving you advice. It’s also great fun!

In other words this thing is no better than any other attempt to extract note & pitch information from audio, and you’ll have to practice to build enough technique for it to be even marginally useful…

Originally published at Do My Eyes Look Scary?. You can comment here or there.