Octopus, Snake, Bee.

Free to good home.

In my continuing effort for completism, despite having finished watching Series Two of Doctor Who on DVD, I'm not letting myself start Series Three (which I also have on DVD) until I've finished watching the contents of the last disc of the set, "Doctor Who Confidential".  Because apparently they had a show which was talking about Doctor Who stuff related to each episode.  Even cut down (the original 45-minute format was apparently edited down to closer to 15 minutes for the DVD release), it's taken me three separate sessions to get through them.  And then there's another item in there, David Tennant's Video Diary, which I started on before noticing how slowly I was progressing; apparently it's closer to 90 minutes long.  Not enough time for that tonight, though what I watched did seem interesting.

After I finish with that, I suppose it's on to Babylon 5 Season 2 rewatch Disc 1.  I already watched the special feature disc for B5S1, you betcha.  I feel less self-conscious going through the Special Features like that when it's just me watching on my computer, which may be why I've been doing it perhaps more than I usually would.

So apparently kickstarter is not the right way to fund scaling up your social network.

Their guidelines prohibit campaigns "to fund websites or apps focused on e-commerce, business, and social networking."

Interesting. But there are lots of ways to go about scaling the site, and the work before us right now doesn't require more money. It requires solving the riddle of building interest and bringing intact networks of friends aboard.

I stumbled across this discovery while hoping to answer an unrelated question: how to fund adding certain features to the Apostrophe open source CMS. That, my employer could do on kickstarter, but it sounds out of their usual line.

Today I changed logins so that your login should "stick" for a long time, rather than just the current browser session. And I added a little nudge to invite a friend if you haven't done so yet (or more accurately, not since today, since I just started keeping track).

Also, Sean Puckett shared a post about his work toward improving the look and feel of the site. Can't wait!

OK, I will be good. 

My old boss invited me to his birthday at the Brewery.  It did not occur to me until this morning on the way to work that there was a good chance The Sphincter might be there.  It's a long  story.  But I hadn't seen Old Boss since Feb of 2013 when I left NASA with a boatload of angst, embarked upon 7 months of retirement followed by re-employment at a place that is, essentially, European. 

I went to the event anyway.  At a brewery.  I was kind of hoping there was an attached restaurant so I could get a burger. Um. Nope. 

So, I threw all caution to the wind and ate pizza, which I should not, and drank beer, which I also should not.  Since these things used to cause me intense discomfort, sinus pain and arthritis like pain for about 36 hours.  Well, on the theory that this is all a result of leaky gut syndrome and the fact that I missed lunch today made me stu...er adventurous.

My sinuses are a little unhappy.  So far, not so bad.  Haven't eaten "regular" pizza since before 2000.  It wasn't that great, but hell.   If my gut has healed up sometime in the last 14 years maybe there's hope!  Not 100% sure it's  "gluten" issue - since the "gluten free" beer in Bavaria still killed me.

Tomorrow will tell.  Or maybe tonight, is this the incipient headache or is it just me being hypochondriac?  Will not even consider checking the blood sugar, there's naught to be done about it.

I said not a word to the Old Boss about the beer/pizza and only a few about how awesome the new workplace is.  He was happy when I mentioned I still use one of his metrics (it's OK to wait on the customer, it's NOT OK for the customer to wait on YOU), and that I selected the "pig" stein out of the pile of give-away steins, of which I did not take a photo.  And we have a deal to take the motorbikes to Richmond.  Soon.

So if I can avoid serious joint pain and sinus explosions in the near future, life will have gotten both easier and harder.  Easier to worry about finding a meal away from home and harder to avoid the temptation of the evil carbohydrate.

Yes, I'm working on revamping the design for One Post Wonder, with a goal of making the act of reading more joyous.  

I've made some good strides in test, but am also challenged by needing to do some home renos this week while the neighbour is away camping (so I can put a ladder up on the south side of the house).

Also there's the danger of RSI, which often happens to me when I type or mouse with too much "focus" for too much time. I felt a little of it yesterday and immediately walked away from the keyboard. 

Hopefully by Monday there should be some changes in production. I like the idea of OPW, and Tom's done some good work on building in functionality that makes it useful and usable.  So I guess my message right now is, bear with me, it will get better soon.  

Also keep posting, so I can have stuff to test against.

I try to go at least once a year.  For practice.

Last month I downloaded Davíd Garza's "A Strange Mess of Flowers" on eMusic.  As I sometimes struggle to use up all 90 of the tracks I'm paying for each month (which, as I mentioned, I'm getting a deal on), I actually leapt at the chance to download a 71-track "four-disc box set" or tracks, on the basis of a bunch of 30-second samples.  (I can't remember if I listened to all of them or not.  Because that's over half an hour right there.)

I was not a huge Davíd Garza fan, though I did like his "This Euphoria" album, which was at the top of my Amazon wishlist for some years, mostly because I happened to add it first after listening to it from the library, so it was mostly the convenience of not having to think as much about my eMusic downloads for the month.

But I'm getting tired of the album now, and ready to go on to someone else, even interspersed with bits of my other playlists as it's been.  The songs are okay, but few of them are standing out--well, I just heard one called "My Sister" that seemed interesting, but I can tell that I'm not retaining them in my head, and a week from now I won't get any snippets of remembered music when I look at the titles.

Ah, well, it's not the worst eMusic download I've done.  A few months ago I took a chance on a double album by a band named Science Fiction, which turned out to be basically AOR--occasionally quite bad AOR, with lyrics written by someone whose first language was not English.  (The best songs were thus the ones which they sang in their native language, because I couldn't tell how bad the lyrics were.)  I'd take Garza over that any day.

And, let's be honest, if I actually spent the time to listen to the album and get to know it, it may very well grow on me.  But who has the time to do that any more?

This morning I got a cappuccino at Balzac's, in downtown Kitchener, toward the beginning of my walk to work.

This, in and of itself, is probably not worth a post, given that I think "what I had for breakfast" is not really a one-post wonder. 

But there was this cute moment where both the patron next to me and I wanted to get lids for our drinks, and we both couldn't find them. 

"Where are the lids?"

"They're in that tub."

"It's empty."

"No, they're there."

"No, it's empty."  *pause*  "Oh!  They're dark-coloured, and in the shadows.  I'm really sorry."

"That's okay.  I probably should top them up.  And I make a rule not to expect much of people before they have had their coffee."

"That's very generous of you."

It was also a good cappuccino.

OK, that was really over the top.

I participated in a flash mob tonight.

Some band called World Town Sound System played Rittenhouse Square, and they put out a call for salsa dancers to show up.

I could see several problems as soon as I got there:

1. The song wasn't salsa, exactly

2. They'd restricted access to the front of the stage, where they wanted us to be

3. They had no idea how many of us there would be

But hey, what the hell. It worked out. I came across a salsera of my acquaintance who hadn't shown up with a partner and we managed to dance without harming ourselves or others in the tight space available.

The band ain't bad. Their songs kinda sound similar to one another for the most part, but the energy's great.

In One Post Wonder news: I've been offered help with the visual design of One Post Wonder, and Progress is being Made. Thanks to Sean Puckett for jumping in.

So I've eased up on my own changes to the look and feel to see what happens there. I'll be concentrating on the functionality in the meanwhile.