DC Metafilter Meetup

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Jessamyn was in DC for a visit, so local MeFites got together for a meetup at Palace of Wonders Argonaut on H St NE. (Palace of Wonders turned out to be closed, so Argonaut served as backup venue. Careful clicking, the sites are Flash-based with sound.)

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The last photo is in the back of MrMoonPie and EvilTiff’s car, of me and hugsnkisses just after I discovered that she is actually nedrichards’ sibling, a fact which tickled me pink. It’s a Small Web After All. What were we doing in the back seat of the car? Well, riding to the Metro, of course. That’s all.

More photos here. I must say, Metafilter users are remarkably photogenic. Fun day, fun company, fun meetup, and so-so calamari. We now close the weekend with this video of MrMoonPie transitioning from a robotlike dance (?) to a one-handed demonstration of the Numa Numa.

Pandora With Halo

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Yeah, yeah, I know, five days in a row with nothing but linklog. I’ve been rather busy, and will probably continue to be swamped all summer. But just to break the flood of linklog posts for now, I offer you this photo of Pandora with a saintly halo:

Pandora With Halo

(It’s the lamp shining on the wall at the far end of the room behind her. But doesn’t she look beatific?)

Line Numbers in TextWrangler

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My text editor of choice on Mac OS X is TextWrangler. For free, TextWrangler gives you a basic text editor with all the standard functions, plus a robust set of extra features: syntax highlighting, FTP/SFTP editing, and loads of internet-smart text manipulation features like email quoting and unquoting, and the magical Zap Gremlins.

I had just one major annoyance with TextWrangler when I began using it: the profound hidden-ness of a Line Numbers gutter. First-time TextWrangler users with no BBEdit experience will search the standard Preferences panel and View menu in vain for a “Show Line Numbers” option. Rather, one must hunt for the somewhat less intuitive dialog under Edit > Text Options to find “Line Numbers” as first in a series of “Display” checkboxes. Alternatively, as illustrated above, the “Text Options” button in the toolbar (a cryptic set of UI elements which tell you nothing about themselves till you roll over for a tooltip) drops down a menu which includes a Line Numbers toggle. The option does not persist to the next session.

DC Heat Wave 2006: Part 2!

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Just when we thought it had gotten as hot as it would get, it gets hotter this week, as the heat wave that has been killing people and baking much of the nation now heads for the East Coast. Warming Warnings are up, so here are a few tips on how to handle the coming inferno like a pro:*

  • Avoid water. That way you sweat less and stay less sticky. Instead, drink a diuretic, like Coke.
  • Get out in the sun a lot. It’ll make the shade feel cooler.
  • Dress with lots of heavy layers while you’re out in the sun, to block its deadly ultraviolet rays.
  • Turn off that air conditioner. You’re just lowering your tolerance for heat, and burning precious fossil fuels, which contributes to global warming and makes the world even hotter.
  • If you start feeling faint or dizzy while out in the sun, run around real fast and jump up and down as hard as you can to tell your body that it can beat the heat.
  • Avoid sunscreen, which can cause skin cancer in high amounts.

More from CapitalWeather. Me, I’m seriously considering purchasing a Thobe.

* I’m joking. Please don’t follow these tips.

Office Chair Assembly Timelapse

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Here is a timelapse video of me assembling a discount executive leather office chair I ordered from OfficeMax. It took me about ten minutes to realize partway through the process that I had put the arm rests on backward. In this video I am wearing my favorite batik house pants.

Vox

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I’m trying out Vox, the new hosted weblog service by Six Apart (makers of Movable Type and Typepad, and acquisitors of Livejournal). So far I’ve been mostly disappointed, but that’s probably because my expectations of a weblog service are rather different from what people usually want. Apparently most of you out there want an easy WYSIWYG editor with one-click posting of photos and other media — while I want full control over my HTML, with just line and paragraph breaks handled by the weblog app. Vox gives you tons of the former, with easy options for image size and alignment displayed in a slick multilayered javascript-based UI, but there’s nary an “Edit HTML” button in sight.

Matt Haughey takes a different perspective, however:

It’s funny how things come full circle — when I started out I hand coded blog entries, then I wrote my own CMS, then eventually I moved to a commercial CMS package and now I would prefer to never have to maintain a server or backups and I don’t really feel like designing my own blog templates anymore

I’m starting to understand how he feels about that tension between writing and coding, but while it’s nice to have ways to quickly insert preformatted multimedia into our websites without worrying about the validity of the code, sometimes you still want to get into the guts of an entry to mix things up a bit. That’s where Vox has so far failed me. Still, for the much wider market of MS Word-accustomed non-HTML users out there, this will likely be a much easier alternative to creating rich media weblogs, and in that I wish Vox the best. While it may not be a primary solution for me, I will still make good use of my Vox page as a repository to gather the drippings of my hidden obsession.

The service is still in build-up-hype-mode beta, so registration is closed to a precious few users who signed up to try it out, but each one of those users gets a few invitations to share with others — two, in my case. Want them? Come and get them.

Empty Encampment

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mo_572_.jpg This is the entrance to a Pepco power station on E Street near New Jersey Ave NW. There’s usually a homeless guy named Reggie camped out under the awning here, but lately he’s been gone, and the awning has been vacant. (Pepco put up the gate and NO TRESPASSING signs to try and keep him out, but he just used it as a way to pitch a tent.)

Saturday afternoon, I found a tired-looking, middle-aged black woman sitting in Reggie’s spot. I asked him if she knew were he was, and she answered, “Legally, I’m his wife. He’s in jail.” She was undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer — not a grift, as the large, painful-looking lump on the side of her neck was quite prominent — and had just gotten out of the hospital, with nothing on her but the clothes on her back. Medicaid provided her with her three prescriptions for $1.50 each, and the local shelter would give her a bed for $5 a night, but she had not even that much on her. Her husband, obviously, would not be of any help. She would be able to visit him in prison on Tuesday, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to, since he had been philandering with DC’s other homeless females.

It rained that night, but she found shelter with the help of some cash and a copy of Street Sense from a kind stranger. I hope Reggie gets out of jail soon, and figures out how to get on his feet rather than go back to that awning.

Make friends with a homeless person and help her or him out — not necessarily with cash, but with some coffee or a hot meal once in a while. Yeah, sometimes they’re grifters, but more often they’re completely out of luck and don’t know how to start over. DC-area residents, TouchDC can point you to housing and employment charities if you’re interested in donating or volunteering.

Installing Sound Packs in Trillian Basic

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Applying a skin to Trillian is easy, but for some reason there’s not a lot of documentation out there on how to install sound packs. It took me a while to figure it out: you have to copy the sound pack folder into /Program Files/Trillian/stixe/plugins, then open up Trillian Preferences > Skins, click on “Advanced,” and select the sound pack from the “Sounds” dropdown menu.

I mention this because I found an iChat skin for Trillian Pro. I use the free Trillian Basic, and being something of a default-mode lover (more on that some other time), I’m okay with the standard Trillian skin — but I wanted a gentler sound scheme. While the iChat skin is only for Pro users, it does come with an iChat sound pack which can be installed into Trillian Basic just fine, using the directions above. It’s so nice to have light and gentle “whoosh” sounds accompanying my messages now, rather than the urgently shrill notes of the default Whistler theme.

Beginner’s Iced Mocha

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It turns out mocha is surprisingly easy to make. Remember to leave room for lots of milk and ice, and remember to use more coffee ground while brewing, to keep the blend strong as the ice melts.

  1. Brew coffee as you usually do. Pour into any mug or styro tumbler.
  2. Add two teaspoons of sugar, two teaspoons of Nesquik, and about half as much milk as coffee.
  3. Mix. Add ice. Mix more.

Note that you want to mix things before adding ice, since heat increases solubility, then mix again after adding ice to get everything cold. Don’t underestimate how much ice you need; it’ll melt fast.