July 2006 Archives

The sunset was amazing this evening. The MO drove around for blocks looking for good vantage points and I lucked out with these shots.

(I particularly like the second one :-)

Penguin Lust Forever!
Originally uploaded by TXMagpie.
Penguin Lust Forever!

More here.

Quote of the day, courtesy of Gordon Ramsay in tonight's Hell's Kitchen. Gotta love that man....

At the HBAG open workshop meeting this week, Ping showed me how to make this cool little origami book. As will be obvious momentarily, I'm not a professional origami instruction writer, but you might be able to figure it out ;-) [Note: If you can't see the pictures, forget it.... The words alone will absolutely not be sufficient!]

The finished book has eight pages, and two "secret" four-page spreads (the insides of the regular pages).

Start with a square piece of paper. Fold it in fourths, and then cut half of the paper in fourths, perpendicular to the folds. (These flaps will be the pages.) Make diagonal folds in the part you didn't cut. That gives you a page that looks something like this:

Now fold the bottom section up

and the top flaps down.

Fold the right and left sides in to the center.

Now you have to do what I think of as a typical origami move (sounds impossible and doesn't make a bit of sense til you've done it). There is a sort of pocket on each side of the bottom front section, and you have to tuck it in behind.

Here's the pocket

and where you're tucking to

and what it looks like when you're done.

Now you're going to fold the pages down into their correct orientation. Start with the left set of pages. Fold them down

and flip them back.

Then the same thing on the right side.

Now just fold on the spine, and you're done :-)

Finally, here are pics of a template that shows which pieces end up where, and sketches of the process which may or may not make more sense than the narrative above....

Good luck :-)

I don't usually get too opinionated here (what can I say, I am extraordinarily averse to conflict) but this post at The Smallest Minority really got my dander up, especially when I got to this part of the quote:

I am not responsible enough to own a gun. And that is why I do not have one.

Well, holy cow. I can understand not knowing about guns. I can understand being afraid of guns because you don't know about them. I can even understand preferring not to shoot certain guns after you do know about them because they are physically intimidating. After all, I have quite the flinching problem with the MO's H&K, although I surely intend to fix that.

But I do not understand glibly declaring oneself psychologically and morally unfit for the responsibility of dealing with a firearm. That's a total cop-out. Responsibility is the key word here.

(I am assuming that we are talking about a societally-functioning adult here. A ten year old child, say, or someone truly mentally incompetent, might be a different story. Although I've seen plenty of kids perfectly able to handle all manner of guns.)

How does such a person, so lacking in control of his own faculties, lead a daily life? How does he chop his vegetables in the kitchen without going on a knife-wielding rampage? Does he consider himself fit to drive a car? I suspect it's a lot easier, skill-wise, to mow down a pedestrian with a vehicle than to actually hit someone with a pistol shot. Does he walk around with his hands glued in his pockets because he's afraid he might accidentally haul off and slap the next person that walks by?

If so, it's time to put on the big boy pants and figure out why you would abdicate control of your own emotions and reactions to the point that you feel you cannot be trusted to have simple machines in your house without wreaking havoc on yourself or the general populace.

Cripes. This is victimhood run amok. Next thing you know we'll be having lawsuits with the same party on both sides.

Won't You Be My Neighbor


Originally uploaded by TXMagpie.

OMG, it really is middle school all over again, isn't it?

I got a vox invite, so I created Pretty Shiny. I'm kind of on new tool overload lately, what with vox and flock and preloadr.... So far I like flock, although the not-keeping-your-category thing is a huge pain in the butt. Vox seems quite well-done. I'm curious to see if any of the easy-ness of vox made it into the MT3.3 release. Preloadr is a cool idea, but I haven't used it much yet. I hope they give me some vox invites soon so I can have some friends ;-)

Visible improvement at the range :-)

We had quite an eventful weekend, with a visit from The Shooting Trail crew. As always, Kim, Connie and the kids, Jack, David and Wendy, are delightful company. Add in the Layabout Sailor and his lovely lady Iris, and of course lots and lots of guns, and you have a recipe for a great time.

Saturday we met up at the Texas City Municipal Shooting Range for rifle shooting, and today we went to the Marksman Indoor Range down by Hobby airport. The MO and I are absolutely thrilled to discover two new (to us) ranges. Both places are well-run and staffed by friendly folks.

I had fun with the rifles, but what really has me (still) hopping up and down with excitement is the improvement in my pistol shooting I experienced today. Kim offered me some advice that I gather is "really basic" but made a world of difference for me. Thus I proudly post some of today's targets :-)

Granted, these are only at five yards, but you have to start somewhere. I particularly like the middle-right section on the second target. That's ten shots, thankyouverymuch. (Actually, that should be thankkimverymuch. Thank you, Kim!)

I should have known this would be on youtube! The MO and I almost fell out of our chairs laughing the first time we saw it.

In my never-ending quest to create the perfect suite of websites (ha ha ha!) I've added the latest three entries from TMI and DDC over there on the right. So now I'll be constantly reminded how often I don't update everywhere :-)

I've been doing a lot of genealogy work lately, and trying to decide just how to integrate the blog(s) with my TNG database. Still ruminating and messing about with that....

Oh, and I've been alerted to the fact that my redirect attempts were not overly successful, so I've left a message at the "old" By The Way page to hopefully give folks a hint to come over here. If you got lost in the shuffle, I do apologize! I swear, every time I tackle a web project, I wonder how it is that I manage to keep my day job. Sigh. I mean, after what I've been through at work, you'd think I'd be able to handle a simple little web page, but noooooo. Nothing like unfamiliarity to humble the thinks-she's-a-hotshot computer geek....

Billy Squier Waterloo Records 021299 03

Originally uploaded by nathan_malone.

OMG SQUEEEE!!!

The wonders you can find tag-hopping at flickr :-)

From This Mom Blogs: It"s My Luck, You Know?

...if I"m playing in the pool with the kids, and my nose isn"t plugged, I"m doomed to suck in water every so often. Makes me think that some things are inherent in some people, and not in others.

This is really dumb.

The website claims "Minisocks are unexpected." Well, yeah, that's about the nicest thing you could say. "They will give you a chic parisian touch and will enhance your favorite pair of shoes." I think my favorite pair of shoes would run off screaming if a "minisock" got anywhere near them. Not to mention the reaction The Mad One would have. Running off screaming is probably the mildest possible scenario there.

What an incredibly bad idea.