The comments section on Apartment Therapy's post on the pro's and con's of bidets yielded this link to CIH's unintentionally hilarious site featuring smiling animated yuppies and baby boomers extolling the virtues of hosing down after doing your business. Firefox warning, the bandwidth needed to view the site does induce a little address bar freeze.
Muchos gracias to Pam's Mondoboston.com, for pointing out this commments thread to their readers!
They pull me back in. In case you've noticed the rash of articles recently about the burgeoning film industry in Massachusetts, here are my insider tips on the reality of working in the movie business:
1) Watching movies is fun, making movies is actually pretty boring. Hours of preparation equals 2 minutes of screen time. But if your idea of excitement is watching 50-70 people walk around in circles trying to find decent cell phone reception/their next gig, then knock yourself out.
2) "Movie stars" are usually just about the least visible people on set. It's amazing how many people will park themselves on the edge of a film set for hours, hoping to get a glimpse of So and So as they run from their minivan to set, usually hidden from view by umbrellas and nervous PA's.
3) Working on a film set, the average crew member has 2 states of existence: 1) Rushing around frantically with about 50 other co-workers wielding big pieces of equipment in a very small space or 2) Sitting around eating yet another bagel/donut/handful of M&M's because they are so damn bored. Also, they rarely have any interaction with the Big Star, so stop asking them what So and So's really like because they don't know.
4) Teamsters may appear to be big fat semi wiseguys who sit around all day and get paid a lot of money for nothing, but there's a reason that guy's sleeping in the cab of his truck in the middle of the day; he was probably up at 5am driving the truck to location and he'll have to drive it back around midnight. They also drive the actors back and forth to the set and it wouldn't be good for business if one fell asleep at the wheel with So and So in the back seat now would it?
5) Thinking it would be cool to allow a film crew into your newly renovated home to show it off/pay the contractor bills? Just close your eyes and imagine a chapter of the Hells Angels led by General Sherman camped out in your home for 16 hours a day. Movie crews don't want to destroy your home, but the combination of 18 wheelers, damp New England weather and sleep deprivation can produce some frightening results.
"Penguin now?" "Penguin now?" "Penguin now?" "Penguin now?" "Penguin now?" "Penguin now?" "Penguin now?" "Penguin now?" "Penguin now?" "Penguin now?"
It started so innocently. I saw the little segments entitled Winter Warm-Ups with Pingu in between episodes of "Choo Choo" (AKA Thomas the Tank Engine) and thought to myself, "kids like penguins, maybe Chloe will enjoy this." The fishing episode triggered 6 straight minutes of belly laughing and now when I go to sleep at night, all I can hear is the little house music number from the show.
I think of it as the "methadone" to treat what was becoming a serious Barney addiction.
1) Salem Public Library kids' room
370 Essex Street Salem, MA 01970. Telephone: (978) 744-0860
Free, books, toys, lots of room to run around and a very welcoming staff.
2) Bonkers
Even if they are too young for video games, it's still fun for them to run around and the "tot lot" off to the side has tumbling mats, a slide, "hamster trails" and lots of PVC structures that make their hair stand out straight, which is fun.
3) Chuck E. Cheese
Great if you need to go to Market Basket in Danvers and want them to get rid of some energy first.
Because how else can a person find out where the good baby-changing bathrooms are?
I made a chocolate cake on Saturday for no particular reason. I goofed up and put the top layer on upside down so that when I put the frosting on, the whole thing split into 3 large chunks about halfway down. I wanted to cover up my stupidity, so I ended up eating really big pieces of cake for breakfast and lunch on Sunday. That
s the binging part.
As for the purging, fall always makes me want to make changes and start new, so I began with the bedroom. Clothes are easy for me to get rid of. My rule is, if I don't absolutely love to put something on, then I get rid of it. Luckily, there's a really great vintage store close by that's very reasonable, so I don't feel bad giving old stuff away. I even got all inspired by watching a couple of episodes of "Clean House" and "repurposed" an indian print tapestry to hang in front of the bed. (Author's note: 18 month olds love playing peekaboo with tapestries hanging in front of a bed)
So now, at least when I walk into the bedroom, it feels like a place I'd actually want to sleep in.
I'll get to my three foot high inbox one of these days...
We had to make a room darker for a software training session where I work part time. Apparently, the manager of the building didn't even notice until people started teasing him about the fluorescent yellow and pink window panes on the second floor.
Good to have if your 16 month old can't stop saying "Neigh, neigh" and HAS to hear "The Very Busy Spider" before she goes to sleep! Apple season's coming up too.
1) Stroller-friendly retail. You know, the kind of store that doesn't cram in everything but the kitchen sink and has a level entrance more than 30 inches wide. Although, I credit the impossible-to-navigate Ben & Jerry's doorway with helping me to lose my baby weight.
2) Playgrounds. ( I think this has been done though)
3) Safe parking for more than 2 hours at a time. Then again, if you know of a place like that, why tell people?
4) Toddler-tolerant restaurants. Where the staff won't look at you funny when your child starts acting like a chimp on crystal meth (not that MINE does ;^) ).
5) Stores open after 7:30 at night that sell diapers and milk.
6) Free tourist-y stuff that doesn't have hundreds of tourists around. (I nominate the garden next to the Ropes Mansion.)
I feel like this guy...
But every time I think about interviewing, I'm worried I'll come across like this guy...
Wish me luck!
Currently reading "Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix" in which a drunk-on-power government leader slowly wears away at Hogwarts students' rights "for their own good" all the while denying the existence of the real enemy and obfuscating a conflict that is threatening the wizarding world's existence. Hmmm...
By page 300 I was checking the publication date. 2003. Hmmm.
Anyway, here's some "Order of the Phoenix" eye candy to tide you over.
Note: if you want something that loads faster, go here.
Sometimes out of curiousity I go to my local Chamber of Commerce site and check up on my colleagues' sites to see what's going on. Then, I noticed something, the ladies outnumber the guys around here. Funny, I was just reading about how everyone seems to think it's the opposite(comment #68).
Trial and error, rinse, repeat…
Things are getting down to the wire for launching my first CSS-based design onto the web. After aeons of coding, tweaking and tweaking, and testing in Safari and Firefox, then checking IE and balling up my fists and sobbing, then tweaking again, things are coming together in a good way. It’s not going to end up on Webcreme, but hey, it’s an insurance site. I figure that people go to insurance company websites for basically two reasons; either they want to get a quote on insuring some aspect of their lives, or they need to file a claim because of some sort of calamity. They probably won’t be in the mood to marvel at pretty colors and fancy animations. So I focused on making the information as clear as possible, and putting in lots of useful links.
Here’s what I learned:
1) Just because the client says something looks fine, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to need changing eventually. A.K.D.F. Always Keep Design Flexible.
2) Bigger doesn’t always mean better. Case in point, the client wanted a form like the one on the “big” company’s site(AUTHOR'S NOTE: I was going to do the "big" site a favor and link back to them, but luckily I tested the link and it "traps" the browser so one can't go back, which further proves my point!). I dutifully went to the url they sent me to check it out and it was a sticky mess of tables, inaccessibility and non-usability. I kept trying to explain that simple was better. After all, the “big” site’s form only had room for 2 or 3 questions per page and there was no way to go forward and check to see how much the user was getting into! Plus, it was pretty difficult to locate it on the company’s site.
3) Sometimes it’s the little things that make a big difference. I spent 15 minutes tearing my hair out over changing a div’s border to a nicer color only to realize that DreamWeaver’s “code-hint” tool had neglected to include the semicolon on the end of the attribute. One keystroke, and everything worked again.
4) When in doubt, go to a site that you know has the format you are going for and hit View>Source.
5) When nothing seems to be working right, go take a walk.
How to spot a web designers’ convocation
It’s funny how things come together sometimes. I went to this event in Cambridge yesterday, and ran into 2 people who practice the same kind of digital voodoo that I do and we realized that we all live within a triangle of Salem about 1 mile square.
At any rate, I had a great time and it was cool to talk shop/commiserate with other people who hunch over a keyboard all day. Actually, when I looked around, there were almost more people hunched over some kind of digital device than there were drinking and talking with each other. I highly recommend the Spring Training IPA.
I just did a search for “Harry Potter” on Google and I think I broke their hard drives. At any rate, the browser window seized up for about 3 minutes and then shut down with a faint whimpering noise.
No, I haven’t been living under a rock for the past 10 years, I’ve just been ignoring most of the hype.
But then my father was talking about the books and how they were more involved than the films and I was intrigued. After all, this was the guy who gave me“The Chronicles of Narnia”
(author’s note, take the quiz on this site to find out if you are a bigger geek than me!)
for Christmas when I was 7 and had original hardcovers of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy laying around the house.
. And then Salem, originally just a town I had moved to for spatial-economic reasons, hosted a Harry Potter convention
complete with a Quidditch tournament, played in true Hogwarts style: in the pouring rain. I started noticing people walking around Essex St. wearing cloaks and pointed hats like it was no big thing.
So now that I’m already on “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”, when I walk around downtown, it’s unsettlingly like visiting Hogsmeade.
You’ve got your magic shop , your corner tavern, and you can take your pick from the dozens of stores selling anything from broomsticks to dragon figurines. Judging from the frequent sightings of people in capes and robes, (usually worn over an XXXL tiedyed ensemble), a lot of other people think so too. It’s fun to watch, but I’m like one of those people who live in NYC their whole lives and never go to the Statue of Liberty. It just isn’t done. If someone asks, though, I can tell them where to find a good deal on a crystal ball or where to find an ounce of wolf’s fur.
Thought I would expose Chloe to a little "cultcha" so I took her to the brand new Joseph Cornell exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum yesterday. If it's threatening rain, the PEM's usually a safe bet because a) it has a handicapped entrance with button operated entrances, b) the galleries are spacious enough to accomodate our SUV-sized Graco stroller and c) I can show them my driver's license and get in free since I'm a Salem resident. Unfortunately, the galleries' entrance doors are not handicapped equipped so I usually find myself relying on the kindness of strangers to manuever the Graco 2000 through the glass doors. Once I got inside, I was immediately approached by one of the guards who gave me a very detailed rundown of the Cornell exhibit and then asked me if I had ever taken Chloe to the Children's Museum. I glanced around the darkened, hushed gallery with its maze of glass cases surrounded by upper middle class baby boomers carefully studying the art works on display and wondered if he was trying to drop some sort of hint. Luckily, Chloe picked that moment to give out one of her Incredible Hulk-like yells and I told the guard that she was eager to see the exhibit and pushed on.
Some of the PEM's exhibits are fairly kid-friendly with lots of things low to the ground at their eyelevel and full of details and bright color. The Cornell exhibit, though, was a little less accessible to the stroller-set intelligentsia. The boxes, objects, assemblages whatever, were mostly displayed in cases that were decisively set at adult eye level. As Chloe's grunts grew louder and shriller I tried to steer her through the wandering crowd. One of the Graco's wheels began to squeak and in the thoughtful silence it sounded like a Red Line train pulling into Harvard Sq. We escaped to the connecting catwalk outside where I failed to spark her artistic sensibilities with the enormous silkscreened photos of post-WWII New York. From there we progressed into the film exhibit but since Cornell's found footage assemblages don't have anything resembling large rotund brightly colored anthropomorphic creatures with television screens in their midsections, Chloe's interest began to wane. Finally I gave up and retreated downstairs to the Art & Nature center where there were other little humans and things were more at her eye-level.
Brought to your attention by the folks at Web Worker Daily. whoissick.org lets people track health symptoms in their area and is a great idea. I really hate staggering into CVS for cough syrup and listening to everybody else hacking and coughing in the aisles. My husband spent 5 hours in the ER at Salem Hospital last week, coughing so bad that he was almost suffocating, only to have an intern poke him for about 2 minutes before saying "Yep, bronchitis, it's been making the rounds lately." Three days before that, our daughter woke up vomiting at 5 in the morning. After 12 hours of watching her spew from both ends we broke down and called a nurse only to be told, "Yep, it's that stomach bug going around." So finally, somebody got sick of closing the barn door after the horse escaped and came up with the kind of site that the World Wide Web was invented for; a public health wiki.
Chloe's a one year old! It feels strange leaving the word "months" out of her age when people ask how old she is. (I refuse to join the ranks of people that say "oh, she's 45 months old.") Truth is, I'm usually too tired to do the math.
