Ilanarama!

I heard from several sources today that the Colorado Sec of State office has released the most current totals about registered voters as of June. The Dems have made something like a 30,000 person jump, which is good news. But the big change is that Independents are now the LARGEST voting block, topping the Rs by a couple of thousand.

No doubt there will be a ton of speculation about this in the papers and the blogs in the next few days. Off the top of my head, what I think it means is that the public does indeed want a change, and a significant number now have doubts about BOTH parties' ability to lead in an honest and Constitutional way.

Strap in tight, everybody. We're in for a bumpy ride this election year.

In other news, I took part in the monthly conference call for county officers with state Dem headquarters, and (among other things) learned I might just have a shot at one of those seats in Bronco (Invesco) Stadium in August, when Obama gives his acceptance speech. How cool would that be??

Some much wasted time, yet I got good stuff done, too!

The good:
- ToAU 44 date set! Woo! I have a good feeling about this. :D
- Chaser hit Gold 94.5! 400K in plat ingots bought (ugh), but level 93 still ended up in profit because most of the plat/stones came from chocobo digging. It was too early, but I needed space so I did the level 74 elemental ring synths (gold 102). She didn't even fail one, yay! And each will sell for about 300K, which rocks since I made all of them for 100% free! (Ori gotten from digging, ores came from digging or growing them.) Now that is how you skill goldsmithing! It may be slow, but 100% profit = yay! I traded Thistle's flame rings in for a pair signed by her. :)

The bad:
- I tried to farm for tree cuttings. (Why not make my ores 100% free, right?) Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. More than an hour of farming gave me three mosses and nothing else (/THF). Blech.
- Since I was in the area and the time was right, I decided to just check on Noble Mold. Just check, peek in and then go home. I ended up standing there for three hours. >< I hate that mob, but I want a rain hat so bad!

The RL:
- It's so darned hot and dry that my contacts are killing me. I step outside and they give little screams and try to jump off my eyes. All the smoke around here doesn't help...
- I <3 my doctor so much! She's so amazingly positive. My bloodwork keeps getting better and better (yay!) and she says such good things about me. I wish all doctors were like that. I know I'm overweight, I know I need to lose weight, nagging is the exact wrong thing to do. She never ever nags, and she's so honestly happy for me when I do well.

The future, RL:
- As soon as this heat wave breaks, I need to get back to exercise. I hate doing it, but it's one of the last changes I need to make. I just need to stick with it (for once)!

Edit: WTF at the end of Hell's Kitchen? Bah. >

Lisa has been "twittering"

• 21:24 proofreading article & soaking skeeter bitten itchy feet n saltwater before slathering in cortisone & benadryl-maybe a quick blog before bed #
• 22:54 blog is posted; good night tweeters #
• 05:23 crazy neighbor lady woke me up after 11:00 PM yelling for her cat again. My BadKitty left a big, fat juicy hairball on the carpet #
• 05:25 train just stopped between Sumner and Auburn, WTF now? #
• 10:49 crap! forgot my swimsuit; no swim for me today #
• 11:58 couldn't stand the thought of salad for lunch again; rode by bike to Taco Bell-sometimes ya just gotta make a run for the border. #
• 16:46 Almost missed the train; missed the van, Deb drove me, I had to jump out and run a half mile due to traffic; darn near puked when I got on #
• 16:47 hot out and I was carrying a 17 pound pack; not geared up for running-bad hip hurts now, but at least I'm home and there were no dead people #
• 16:48 glad I was not stranded at Kent Station for an hour-no martini money this week; it would have been torture to be that close to Dukes #
• 18:13 @una1967 you iz da party gurl!!! #
• 18:14 @DaleCR628 what's a "short 15"? #
• 18:43 No responsibility tonight-laying on couch in my underwear drinking a margarita-will go to bed early tonight #
• 19:14 No magazine deadline-no logging into work-apartment is clean-just get to relax... bliss #
• 19:24 going to take a hot bath in lavender oil and sea salt-then will slather bug bites in more benadryl #
• 20:02 @dalecr628 you know where to find sympathy-in the dictionary between shit & syphillis #
• 20:06 '@dalecr628 that WAS the response you were trolling for #

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Ah, there is nothing like trashy summer reading. *absorbs self in book some more*.


...yes, it's the second sparkly vampire book. I can't help it. It's crack. Bad crack! But I can't stop reading. Um, no wait - it's research so we know what the girls in the house are reading. *nods firmly* Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Happiest of birthdays to chopchica, a very special person I am glad to call friend. Hope this little offering brings you a smile!

Perfect Timing (J/R, c. 2800 words, rated R)
WARNING: Spoilers for SGA 5x01

It's only a parody, kids. The real Michael Bay is a very bad man but this parody can't hurt you. It might make you laugh, though.

.
Today I:

• Did not much. Did torching on a lot of master pieces...
• Listened to the Zappa records from the library, and some Miles Davis, and that new Ellen Allien.
  
• Started to fix a production mold with a bad problem, I'm attempting to fix it in a bold way that I've never tried before, involving "sewing" the rubber with annealed wire.
  

( Oh, that just can't be good. Cut for icky TMI. )

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Dubya exports bull semen to Iran

...but fear not, Amerika, all is not lost, because he has reserved the bull manure for the people of the United States.

Image # CF10 View in Gallery.

Series description: Interface -- the boundary between air and water.

Water can be a mirror, and it can be as transparent as glass. When wind disturbs its surface, the reflections of what is above and refractions of what is beneath come together to create constantly changing patterns.

I've recorded some of these patterns, found at local lakes and ponds during different atmospheric conditions and times of day, and by enhancing contrast, careful cropping and occasionally rotating the image 90 degrees found meaning in the chaos.

It is simplystars' birthday today! Stars, you are a delightful, funny, excellent human being and I'm happy to know you; even happier to have met you, finally, at bitchin' party! I hope you have a great, great birthday.

In entirely unrelated news, and for reasons that do need exploring at this juncture, because, ( Cut for reference to season 4 tv previews ) I have been reimmersed in my Michael/Mahone love today.

And let me pause a moment here to say that while I apologize if I spoil you for already-aired episodes of Prison Break, I also don't think being spoiled for Prison Break is a big deal. I mean, objectively? It's not really a great show after season 2, and when I do my Big Post of Michael/Mahone Pimpitude that is coming someday (that's a promise, not a threat), you'll get all the salient spoilers for seasons 2 and 3 anyway. The above picture is from a currently airing promo for season 4. Caught up? Let's move on.

Because of the above picture and subsequent reimmersion, I re-watched some bits and pieces of season 2 episodes. Which leads me to this: while I'm here wishing Stars a happy birthday (the ultimate intent of my post), I'm also going to leave you with a few screencaps of Mahone being hot. You're welcome!

( Under here )

I don't know why I've come over so post-y lately. Must be the circle of LJ life.

SCC trailer, OMG!

Image_JpegMarkerReader and Image_JpegXmpReader are out. These are PHP packages relating to JPEG images. Image_JpegXmpReader, which you may find useful, extracts the metadata (title, description, photographer credit, etc.) found in JPEGs produced by Photoshop and compatible programs (*). This is accomplished quickly and painlessly, without the need to load extensions written in C.

At P'unk Ave, we needed these capabilities to quickly and painlessly import photos into GPTMC Pressroom, a site we built for the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation. The GPTMC has zillions of photos; their staff knows Photoshop. We could make them reenter all that metadata. But we don't, because we rock.

The Image_JpegMarkerReader package, which you are less likely to use directly, provides support for fetching individual "markers" from a JPEG file. A JPEG file is made up of two things: "markers," which contain descriptive information like XMP (among other things), and the actual image data. Most people won't need to deal with this package much, but perhaps you want to fetch something else from a JPEG marker, something Image_JpegXmpReader doesn't cover. In that case, Image_JpegMarkerReader is for you. You can subclass it just as I did or use it directly.

Soon you'll be able to install these packages with a single pear command, which will follow the dependencies and install both:

pear install Image_JpegXmpReader

For now, though, you'll get warnings that the package is in beta, an error message, and an explanation that you can manually install them like this:

pear install channel://pear.php.net/Image_JpegMarkerReader-0.5.0
pear install channel://pear.php.net/Image_JpegXmpReader-0.5.0

This is all it takes to do what 99% of programmers will ever want from Image_JpegXmpReader. If the image has no XMP marker or just doesn't contain these particular fields, these methods return false. Yes, there are fancier methods provided for fancier cases.

require 'Image/JpegXmpReader.php';
try {
  $xmp = new Image_JpegXmpReader($file);
  // Photographer credit
  $creator = $xmp->getCreator();
  // Long description
  $description = $xmp->getDescription();
  // Caption
  $title = $xmp->getTitle();
/ // Returns an array of tags (like "shopping" or "education") that
  // have been assigned to this image
  $tags = $xmp->getSubjects();
} catch (Exception $e) {
  echo("Exception thrown while parsing $file, it's probably not a JPEG\n");
}

And that's pretty much all there is to it. Hope you find it useful!

You can find a somewhat fancier test program here.

(Note: both packages require PHP 5. If you are still running PHP 4, I'll start feeling sorry for you whenever I get through laughing at you. Unless it's at your employer's insistence, in which case I'll skip straight to feeling sorry for you.)

(*) Photoshop used to save this stuff in EXIF format, which PHP can handle "out of the box," but Adobe decided to move to XMP instead. For flexibility and XML-ness, I suppose.

( 4X17 - Tempus Fugit )
( 4X18 - Max )
( 4X19 - Synchrony )
( 4X20 - Small Potatoes )

The UPS truck should be here pretty much any time now to deliver my shiny new The Tracey Fragments DVD.

Unfortunately, there's no way I'll be able to watch it today unless I take the laptop into the bathroom with me.

That would be excessive... right?

FYI: "Cool Blue" Gatorade is not awful. Given today's circumstances, this is a ringing endorsement. *chugs another quart*

SuperFanBanana is no 85.



He's the first of the footy-related lambs I've encountered. There are a few more scattered about the city. I really like this one. Of course I am biased, since I support Liverpool, but he really does look very nice. I like the pale yellow and the red ribbon. And the line from You'll never Walk Alone.

It's something special when you hear the Kop sing that song. It feels like la Marseillaise, or the Russian national anthem. If you don't feel anything while something like that's going on, there's something seriously wrong with you, no matter where you're from or who you support.

Hope in your heart indeed.

AppleCare shipped my computer on the fourth.

To my old address in Ithaca.

Which I didn't bother to point out was inaccurate, because I specifically told the Mac genius (*cough*) that I wanted it shipped back to the Apple Store, since I wouldn't be home to sign for it.

*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*headdesk*

The manager at the Apple Store was very helpful, and she's trying to track it down now, at whatever Fedex depot it's gotten sent back to. But. Computer! WAH!

Who knew? Fanfic mailing lists are still good for something. This fluttered into my inbox today:

Long Time Walking by Jill Kirby

It's a Pretender/Doctor Who crossover, set during last year's finale. It focuses on Miss Parker, and it's absolutely awesome. MP is MP, Jarod is Jarod, and somewhere offscreen, you know Martha is being Martha. But of course, neither MP nor Jarod know that, and how they react to hearing about Martha is so very them.

You know I don't often rec, but this, yes, absolutely. (And not just because it lets me use my MP icon. *g*)

In short: Fantastic. And definitely, absolutely worth a read if you're familiar with both shows.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )