Recent Entries

Neil Fulton

Sad news, fellow snigglers:


Dear Alison,

My name is Helen Smith and I am Neil's sister. Unfortunately I am contacting you
with the sad news that Neil died suddenly last week. I am not sure when he was last
in contact with you but in recent months his health had deteriorated. We knew he had
developed some problems with his heart/circulation but no one had realised quite how
serious these were. We believe he suffered a massive heart attack.
I'm sorry I don't know how Neil became friends with you but I do know that he valued
your friendship. I would be grateful if you could let me have a contact address as I
may need to contact you further.

Yours sincerely,

Helen Smith

Facebook appears to be down, at least for me. Could this be true?
Sucky timing, while we're trying to coordinate emergency relief here in Vermont.
Anyone know?
I guess it'll be up before this message gets out?? Hopefully.

BoN in 9 days!!

[crossposted]

Just sent out an email to everyone that I think is coming, and a few people I wasn't sure about. If you want on the email list and didn't get it, speak up.

Nine days!! Possibly lN2 ice cream, which would be a blessing on a day like today.

-AT

Statistics Software?

[crossposted]

Oh [usenet/dw/lj] gods and goddess of geekdom:

I'm looking for a statistics software package for college students. We've apparently got a few things but none of them are exactly what we need. The stuff that comes with Excel is not quite good enough (no, I don't know why; it's another prof who's requesting it). We had, once upon a time, a Mac-based program called StatView that did a pretty good job, but again wasn't perfect. I think we have something that requires the user to write the program for each data analysis, which is a bit more work that is really necessary (or desired).

Ideas?

Neil! :)

[crossposted]

Neil is out of the hospital! He's got a post in ssm.

BoN 2011: July 29 - Aug 1

[crossposted]

Well, it was a tough choice. I ended up having to choose a weekend that more than one person couldn't make. I hate that, but there really wasn't a better option.

BoN will be Friday July 29 to Monday August 1st.
Anyone not already on the email list who wants on, please speak up.

Anything special we should do, or is hanging out in the wildflower meadow eating chocolate and other delectables good for y'all?

(Anyone reading not know what this is about? just ask)

BoN 2011 retake, continued

[crossposted]

I've sent out an email to schedule the weekend - it comes from setameeting.com and, at least in my email, has one of those "unknown date" comments in the time/date field; I hope this doesn't mean it will end up in your spam box.

If you didn't get it and want to give your input on when BoN will be, let me know. If you didn't send me your email address earlier but want in, I can add you.

-Allison

BoN 2011 retake.....

[crossposted]

Okay. So it seemed like a number of people could make the weekend after the 4th of July, but a few can't. We might tentatively set it then, but I want to try to set the weekend for as many of you as I can. And I'm no longer so sure about the later weekends that we already discussed. So I'm going to do this a different way.

If you want to come to BoN, send me your email address. Email it to my email address (if you have it) , or respond to this post with a cleverly (but not too cleverly) disguised version of your email address.

I'll be sending you all something from setameeting.com, and you can click on the days that you're available. I hope that will pin it down pretty quickly. I'll just be putting up one hour on each Saturday for simplicity, but BoN will, as usual, go from Friday evening to Monday morning.

So, I'll wait for your emails.

-AT

BoN 2011 part 2

(crossposted)

Based on the 10 or so people who have responded in various venues, the following dates are available:

July 4th weekend (Jul 2, 3 & 4)
The next weekend (Jul 9-10)

This is earlier than usual, but perfectly fine with me. We will have different flowers and fruit available than in previous years. I'm not sure what the mosquito situation will be, but it should still be past black-fly season.

Comments?

BoN 2011

[crossposted]

When should it be?

I have something happening the weekends of 6/25-6/26 and 7/23-7/24,
but I don't absolutely need to be at them if one of those weekends
is best for anyone else.

I know we've been having it early in August, which is good for some
but impossible for others. Perhaps mid-July?

Let me know.

-Allison

Because AKICIU/DW/LJ/FB

(crossposted)

So. Got a new computer (Macbook Pro, extra spiffy screen). Determined that using Migration Assistant via wireless would take about two days. (Yes, really.) So I bought the appropriate firewire cable and did it in two hours, instead.

Got everything on this new, spiffy, beautiful computer. It's all here.

But I can't access it. There are folders, with all my stuff in them. They have those little European "do not enter" symbols on them. And when I try to open them the computer says "you don't have permission to see its contents." Feh. So, okay, there was a password on the old computer. It just so happens that I chose the same one for the new computer, so if it *asked* me for one, I should be fine. But it doesn't ask.

Anyone know what I should do?

NaNoWriMo - whadami crazy?

(crossposted)

I signed up.
I have a personal goal: 2000 words. And not of a short story. Just 2000 words.

Well, hey. I may not have a life, but I have a job, five volunteer jobs (I'm guessing; I forget the number), and quite a number of housemates and sorta-housemates to hang out with, not to mention the cats, dogs, chickens, ducks and guinea hens.

Wish me luck.
Anyone out there doing it too?

basic question for 'net gods and goddesses out there

[crossposted]

So, I'm confused about some basics having to do with web pages (not having ever created one myself).

I've got a group of people who want their own domain. Let's call it xyz.com. And xyz.com doesn't appear to be claimed by anyone, out there.

Do we/they have to go to one of those registrars and pay them for the privilege of "having" xyz.com? I mean, it doesn't seem to cost a lot, so that's okay. But I hate to go out there and pay for something that someone with a bit of savvy could figure out how to do without forking over bucks.

You'd think I'd know these things by now.

BoN Date?

(crossposted)

Had a request for 7/30-8/1 or 8/6-8/8. Speak up now....

BoN 2010

(crossposted from lj)

Hi everyone,

For ten or more years, now (perhaps it's 13 - not sure) I've had an annual
long weekend party at my house in the summer. My internet friends come
from all over, and we eat lots of wonderful food, and hang out and have a
good time. Anyone reading this is welcome. Details will follow.

Right now, though - when should it be? Traditionally mid to late July or
early August. Any time from late May to early August (so as not to conflict
with that school thing) should be fine.

-Allison

AKICILJ/DW/U

(crossposted)

So. There seems to be a somewhat common meme (is that the right word?) with aunts being magical. Anyone have a clue where this comes from? Am I making it up? Samantha had lots of magical aunts. The aunts in Practical Magic are there to take care of (most of) the stuff. Sabrina (some versions at least) has two magical aunts. Charmed, maybe? maybe not. Books - Wise Child & Juniper; Witch Child (haven't read it, actually); something with a kid named Mary Smith perhaps by Joan Aiken? A housemate says the Puppetmaster is another (haven't read that, either) ... etc.

Who am I missing?

A different housemate suggests that maybe the magical aunt thing started with the realm of Roman superstition. Does this sound right?

Anyone have any ideas?

GoogleWave question

(crossposted)
So, I got this invite, because I looked over googlewave's stuff many months back and it looked promising.

Now I've clicked the link to start a wave account.... and my username ('betonica') is taken. I'm betting it's taken by me, somewhere in google-world. There seem to be others who have had this problem (there's a "Problems setting up account and integration with Google Account" thread in their support forum... with no answers from anyone at google).

Any of you net-geniuses know what I should do? I'd rather not have a different name over there.

Thanks in advance.

Cabin pix

on facebook.

Communication: Waves

(note: crossposting)

This looks promising:

http://wave.google.com/
(There's currently an 80 minute demo there, just so you know - I watched it in bits over a day)

I'm not interested in it for all the bells and whistles, or even for the largely open code and the hope that everyone and their grandmother will write cool programs that interface with it. Although I'm sure all that will provide an endless amount of amusement, as well as some large bucket-loads of functionality that I can't even imagine. I don't have any idea if it will completely change the way we communicate, as they seem to hope/imply.

What I'm most interested in is just the ability to have conversations that aren't owned by one person. Someone starts a particular 'wave', sure. But anyone jumps in anywhere, and it seems to thread and branch pretty well. I'm not sure how easy it will be to keep track of a 500-post conversation, and I didn't see anything specific about "mark as read" or a similar way of keeping track where you've been and where you haven't been (but I have asked them to look into it). It looks plausible.

Anyone with more knowledge of these things have comments?

Feeds and reading pages

Is there a way to split my reading page into two reading pages? I guess I could open a second account, or something, but if I had just one account and could sort stuff into two locations, that would be cool. I've got all the stuff I post and my friends post. And I've got all the feeds I'm subscribed to. The latter sorta get in the way, and I'd love to put them somewhere else. Anybody have a good solution?