August 2003 Archives
Phew! Everything seems to be back to normal now. Sorry I was quiet for a bit. Since I was rapidly expanding out of my size and bandwidth limitations, Ryan helped me find a new host. I now have much more space to fiddle around with. Woo! Soon I'll be bringing a photo album online and stuff like that. It'll be keen.
I ran into a few issues installing MovableType on this new server, but that's all fine now. Just a bit of miscommunication with the hosting company, but I finally stopped babbling and made sense enough to them. :)
Posted on August 4, 2003 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Some people who know me know that I'm a huge PBS geek. One new show that I'm really enjoying is History Detectives (featuring the Elvis Costello tune mentioned in the title as the opening). The show features a motley group: two antique appraisers, one professor of sociology, and one professor of architectural history. Each episode features 3 stories taking place in one region of the country. One or two of the detectives go to some place and given a mystery to solve. For instance, one episode featured a drawing of George Washington and the owner wanted to find out if it was real or a forgery. Another episode had these two old ladies who owned a dirk that was supposedly given to their ancestor by Napoleon and they wanted to know if it was true.
It's really a fascinating show and it tugs at my both my enjoyment of antiques and history. What's really interesting is that they don't just say they do all this research, they actually show you the methods they use to do it. The only odd thing about the show is that it seems a bit schizophrenic at times. The material (and time slot) is obviously aimed at adults. Yet sometimes it comes across like the Reading Rainbow. Still... I'm loving the show.
Posted on August 5, 2003 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
When I was growing up, I read all sorts of science magazines. Discover, Sky and Telescope, Omni, and a few others I can't even remember. I really enjoyed them and I think recently I'd been missing having a good magazine to read.
Until Sarah got an offer in the mail to subscribe to the Smithsonian Magazine for only $12 a year. Seemed like a bargain, so we tried out the first issue. And I must say... I'm enjoying it quite a lot. Not as heavy as National Geographic, it suits my limited attention span and slow reading speed very well. And with a broad range of subjects such as art, history, politics, and science, it's always got a good mix of interesting articles. And the price can't be beat. Hell... I signed up for 2 years.
Posted on August 5, 2003 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
While Sarah and I were at Falcon Ridge, we saw on the tour schedule for one of the artists that something called A Day in the Woods would be happening shortly after at Merriweather Post Pavilion. I decided to look for more information on the event when we got back. While doing so, I stumbled upon a couple radio stations' sites that were running contests for tickets. Since the pricing was a little funky for the show and we'd just spent so much at Falcon Ridge, I figured I'd enter them to see what happened.
And I actually won tickets. Decent ones, too. Not great ones, but good ones. I was shocked. I rarely win anything. Winning something worthwhile seemed out of the question. But I did.
And we had a great time. We didn't stay for the whole thing and didn't really feel obligated to because of the freeness of the tickets. We saw the acts we wanted to see (mostly Dar Williams and We're About 9) and left. There were a surprisingly small number of people there anyhow. When we arrived, we were afraid that we'd gotten the wrong day somehow. There were more people by the time we left, but it was still nice to see a show at a place like Merriweather with very few other people.
Posted on August 5, 2003 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Argh. This country is getting more and more scarily insane.
Posted on August 6, 2003 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
I just finished turning my old MP3 of the Week thingy into a MovableType blog. I sort of wish I'd done it slightly differently now, but I think the way I did it was more flexible anyhow. Unfortunately, I deleted all the stuff I said about each entry every week, so only a few of the entries still have text associated with them. Also, most of the comments don't make any sense because of that. I'll see if I can do anything about that. Anyhow... hopefully this will make it easier for me to do things, so it'll actually be weekly more often.
Next project... get a firmer grip on CSS, so I can redo the whole site using them. Whee!
Posted on August 9, 2003 9:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sorry to anyone I haven't been good at e-mailing or calling (like my parents). I've been sick since Monday night. And, stupidly, going to work half of the days since. My temperature has fluctuated between normal and 100 degrees. I'm mostly back to normal now, but not quite. It's definitely been fun.
Posted on August 9, 2003 9:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Last night was another Indigo Girls show at Wolf Trap. With the way work's been lately (and since I felt a little ill during the whole thing), it was hard for me to really get into the show. Still... it was a very good show.
The opening act, Cordero, was a lot better than I expected them to be given the MP3s and description on their site. I don't know if I'd ever go out and buy any of their CDs or anything, but they were entertaining.
The Indigo Girls show turned out to be what I was hoping for from a non-album tour... just Amy and Emily with acoustic instruments. They played quite a lot of new stuff from an album they just finished recording but won't be out until early next year. Because of that, though, I kinda wish they'd balanced it out with older stuff a bit more. Though they played a few songs off of the first few albums (including the ubiquitous Closer to Fine), it wasn't quite enough for me. With such a huge repertoire now, though, I guess I can't expect that to happen. I don't think anything will ever match the show I saw during the Swamp Ophelia tour.
Still... I had a good time and we had great seats (row M, best we've ever done for the Indigo Girls, I think) and this is the way I like to see Amy and Emily play. And the weather cooperated so it wasn't QUITE as stifling by the time the show started. Huzzah!
Posted on August 19, 2003 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
On Saturday, we got together with my older brother, his wife, and my very cute little niece and went to the National Zoo. We didn't manage to get there until around 5:45. Buildings close at 6, but the grounds were open until 8, so we thought we'd be O.K.
What we didn't understand was that when the buildings close, the animals pretty much disappear. No gorillas. No cats. The one cheetah we saw was lazing around in some tall grass, so we could barely see it. Two hippos were hiding in some murky water. Giraffes and elephants had been moved indoors.
Basically, the only wildlife we saw were the squirrels that dashed around all over the place and a couple of arthritic camels. In fact, we saw more wildlife trying to get back to civilization afterwards in the form of three deer in the forest bordering the zoo.
We'd been to the zoo only once or twice before during the day and that was a great experience. This was not. But at least I got some good pictures of my niece.
Posted on August 31, 2003 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)