Articles by spinstah

On Friday, I finished knitting my second pair of socks. They took quite a while - I cast them on in December 2007. This was mainly because I got distracted by other projects. Once I picked the second sock back up and turned the heel, it was pretty smooth sailing.

These are a gift, and I am really, really hoping that they fit the recipient. They are a little too small for me, so hopefully they will fit her (that said, I think they might turn out to be a little bit big for her anyway. We’ll see.) I haven’t woven in any of the ends. I don’t know that I will have the strength to rip out the top of both of them and turn the heel again if they are too big, but it would be quick & easy enough to make them a bit shorter if she finds them too tall, or to decrease a bit if they are too big at the top. We’ll see what happens. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s what I completed in November. Links below take you to my reviews on Goodreads.com.

• American Gods, Neil Gaiman
• Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories, Steven Millhauser
• Amnesia Moon, Jonathan Lethem

In which I review “Use of Cloud Computing Applications and Services,” a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

There are some other great cites in this issue as well . . . including things I have saved to read someday. Mayhap I shall just read the cite instead.

If you send holiday cards and always seem to wind up with a couple of extras, pop them in the mail to the Red Cross. They’ll be delivered to a wounded soldier or a veteran.

Please send cards to this address, following the guidelines listed below:

Holiday Mail for Heroes
PO Box 5456
Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456

I’ve obviously cut off the guidelines, so go take a quick look at them. Basically, your card must be postmarked by 12/10 and cannot contain any inserts (photos, gift cards) or your contact information.

If you have the resources to do more this year, you can send a calling card or a care package.

This blooper reel from Martha Stewart was on the Craft blog not too long ago.

A couple of days ago, I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader. I had started thinking about it a few weeks ago, when Bloglines was having some weird problems. Then they cleared up, and I stopped thinking about it. And then, of course, late last week there were more weird problems - every feed in my inbox was updating, in some cases showing me hundreds of old posts. This is not the point of an RSS aggregator. I gave up and exported my subscriptions from Bloglines and dumped them into a Google Reader account, and I’ve been using that since I think Thursday.

So far I like it. I like that you can toggle so easily between list view (headlines) and expanded view (stories). I prefer to go through my subscriptions feed by feed, so I tend to skip the homepage, where Reader mixes together all the updates from all your feeds. (I also feel like there is too much stuff on that page. There are three columns — the regular panel on the left with your updated feeds & navigation for Google Reader, the middle column with the stories themselves, and then a right column that has a box recommending new feeds and another box of ‘tips and tricks.’ It seems like I can’t get rid of the right panel. It’s not really busy, per se, but it still feels cramped.) The only ’save’ feature I was using within Bloglines was the ‘keep new’ checkbox, which Google Reader also has.

I can’t see any reason to go back to Bloglines (except to bookmark the few things marked ‘keep new’), which is a shame. It feels like the end of an era, especially since I taught so many of my GSLIS classmates about RSS by getting them started with Bloglines. I hope they haven’t been too frustrated with it, or if they have they’ve given another reader a try.

UPDATE 11/19: Jon points out the Better GReader Firefox addon, which is pretty slick. You can get rid of the nav at the top and also bypass the “add to iGoogle or Reader?” page when you add a new feed. Thanks!

Recently, I haven’t been blogging much about my knitting & crochet proejcts. (Seems the last thing I mentioned was an update on my Icelandic Turtleneck.) So, I thought I’d do a quickie update on everything.

Read the rest of this entry »

(Unfortunately I can’t figure out the original poster of this image, but my friend Ellen pointed it out at this link.)

Also, maybe I will get this to wear for the inaguration. Here he comes to save the day!

You did, right? Good. So did I. Lines weren’t bad at my polling place this morning around 9am. (I actually waited longer to see my dentist than I did to vote.)

Here’s hoping that the Enoch Pratt Free Library bond issue passes, since part of the money will go specifically to my local branch. (Here’s also hoping that one of the things they do is add wi-fi.)

The October issue of Current Cites is out, featuring moi as one of the new reviewers. Take a look at my review of a JASIS&T article from September (”Personal Communication Technologies as an Extension of the Self: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of People’s Associations with Technology and Their Symbolic Proximity with Others”) and save yourself from trying to read & comprehend the whole thing.