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At about this time right now, Philip Schapker is giving a speech ahead of President Scott Cowen’s Arbor Day Speech at Tulane University. Philip Schapker is the President of the Benevolent Society for the Propagation of Assorted Tom Foolery and Other Sorts of Peculiar and Otherwise Absurd and Baffling Nonsense (also known by our most premier acronym, THE TULANE JUGGLING CLUB). He is expected to speak for about two minutes (as is President Cowen, the head of Tulane University), but in those two minutes, Phil the Elder, as he is often called (to distinguish him from Tall Phill) will speak about his vision for Tulane University.

It will be glorious.

This all started years ago when the Benevolent Society was first started. A few likely lads, Phil included, decided a juggling club was called for on Tulane campus, and they set about putting it together. They were all, to be succinct, very weird fellows. They have plots, visions, and plans. Amongst those is a student-run community garden behind the Wall dormitory, on Willow St.—something that began as a joke about creating a renewable resource for spherical objects to juggle. Using modest funds from the student government and a small grant from the Clinton Global Initiative, they put together a $10,000 garden that would be all the things they expected—local vegetables and fruit trees, a shed where they could store their bike and garden tools, a space to run their biweekly Bike Help Desk (where they fix bikes for free [or cost and tips] and teach others how to do the same), and so on. It was nothing fancy, but definitely something to be proud of, and hopefully, something to last. They spoke happily of leaving a legacy at Tulane of a simple, open garden.

Let’s be clear about this: this was about making a garden. This was about getting people involved—students and the community in general. They had plans to invite local elementary school students to work on it and teach them about gardens and plants and such. The idea of leaving their names on it was abhorrent to them. It was always the Willow St. Garden, if it had a name at all. This will be important later.

So they made the plans. They went through the bureaucratic rigamarole needed, the hoop-jumping necessities, and they got their raised beds in. They had plans drawn up, after much tribulation with the university architects, to get their shed built. They mapped it out.

Time passed, as it’s wont to do, and obstacles cropped up, occasional delays in the bureaucracy, trouble organizing transportation of manure, that sort of thing. Minor delays, but as they do, they stacked up. Then, this past summer, perhaps a year or two after the initial inception of the garden, after waiting forever for the university architects to get off their asses and approve the shed and help them get it started, the university architects sent an email to Phil saying they were taking over the program.

At first, it seemed like they were merely just going to build the shed, but quickly, things got out of hand. What was once a $10,000 garden became a $130,000 garden, and funding came from a donor from the Glazier family (look them up). Fruit trees became decorative trees, including a beech tree designated to be shading a small bench—and the garden beds. A bocce ball court was planned for the garden. Student-control was usurped. The club was offered a plaque. (See, I told you it was going to be important above—Phil declined the plaque.) Heavy machinery was called in for the tree planting. Check that: for a ceremony touting Tulane’s “green sustainability,” they were bringing in heavy machinery to plant trees. Needless to say, the Juggling Club was furious.

Phil, being a bit of a rash child, began making plans to protest. Where the Arbor Day event was once going to have 30 some odd volunteers from the juggling club planting trees, it suddenly was going to have a few hundred locking bikes to the garden gates and throwing water balloons. Phil went before the student government and told them his tale (which is far more detailed and sordid than the one I am presenting) and got a surprising amount of support from them. A higher up in the Tulane administration heard tell of the threatened protest… and called Phil in to talk with her. His friend and Minister of Minstrelsy Andy Menking, the Beermeister of the KATHLEEN O’DWYER FAN CLUB, and all around bad ass, gave the story this time, much less emotionally and with a more formal presentation. Phil gave his vision of Tulane University. A compromise began to take shape.

The university administrator he met with was impressed—his mad visions are fairly creative, and she was so impressed by this, she offered him control of the upcoming 9-11 memorial being built on campus. As far as I can tell, no one knows why there’s going to be one on a New Orleans campus, but if the Benevolent Society takes it over, it will be insane.

After a meeting with the architects last week, it appears the “compromise” is met. The fruit trees are going in. No beech trees will shade the garden beds. It will remain student run. There will be no heavy machinery. And so on. Other than Tulane getting to have their window dressing ceremony, it is more or less a success for the juggling club. They have their garden back.

And Phil still gets to tell of his vision for Tulane University. A glimpse of it, if you will:

Instead of air polluting lawn mowers, he suggests the university let goats roam free on the grounds. Chickens, too, though merely for a more cosmetic reason (and really, I’m not sure he’s thought about how the significant feral cat population would react to that). He is a strong supporter of a topiary maze, and student control of the garden will be shifted between the Juggling Club and the Chess Club each year as they have a human chess match on the academic quad every year, or so the idea goes. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I have already insisted that if the human chess game happens, I get to be a queen.

How President Cowen will react to this is anyone’s guess, but it will be entertaining to hear this tale told. I’ll keep you updated.

Hello, world!

When I start Outlook 2007 it shows the window:

And Outlook closes.

But the file exists and accessible.

How can I solve the issue, please?

(I don't want to clean it all and create a new outlook profile and download all messages for 4 years.)

I can't believe it is November already. Who stole my year? I want it back. Or a refund at least. Even some store credit would do.

I'm not managing to update here very often - one liners on facebook I can manage, but actually sitting down and writing more than two sentances requires time and being awake. And preferably the use of both hands at once. And not being distracted by farmville. Ooops.

We have had a lovely (if incredably busy) few weeks.

Last weekend I went to a halloween party with Izzy, went to a wedding reception with Richard, went swimming with both of them AND had Becky round for tea too. The party was at Charmel and Summers house - there were 6 babies, and it was surprisingly not as insane as I expected it would be. We are going to Summers 1st birthday in a few weeks, and I expect by then one or two more of them will have worked out how to walk, and it will be a bit more crazy. Definitely the following year it will be necessary to either take painkillers or a bottle of wine and some taxi money ;)

Claire and Pauls wedding reception was lovely. We got to catch up with Patrick, which is always good, saw Claire and Paul for the first time in about a million years, and Holley and Grim for the first time in even longer, and baby Oscar for the first time ever! Claire (and Paul of course, but everyone knows the bride comes first in these things ;) ) looked fab and very happy. And it was the first time I had danced since before I was pregnant too :) Oh. And we must have a special mention for the (everso yummy) pink cake!

This week has been busy at work, and we had a fun day yesterday. We didn't get tto do our normal activities in the daytime, but we were intived to tea at nursery for a bonfire night party! We had tomato soup and baked potatoes with cjeese and the bigger children had tofee apples they had made themselves! Then after tea we had a go with sparklers in the garden. By the time we left Richard was back in winchester and in the pub, and seeing as we were half way there anyway, we decided to join him, so we had an hour or so of being sociable with Dan and lucy too :) Oh and with cheesy chips. Which are far easier to eat than jacket potatoes if you are a baby!

Today is washing/cleaning the loo/going to the supermarket day. No where near as exciting, but it all needs doing!

The empire strikes back

In recent weeks, we've taken huge steps towards blocking spam accounts on LiveJournal. In fact, we've suspended as many as 30,000 accounts in a single day! We've implemented several pre-emptive measures to prevent the creation of spam accounts, and we've honed our detection of suspicious content. Spam bots are a crafty lot, so we'll continue to refine our tactics and keep up the good fight to keep you safe from spam attacks on LiveJournal.

RSS feeds again

If you're addicted to xkcd_rss, icanhaschzbrgr, or other syndicated feeds, we're pleased to report that we've resolved the update error that was mucking up your RSS feeds. While content was being pulled correctly, it wasn't being posted to the feeds themselves. Late last week, we finally nailed down what we hope was the root problem, so content should post properly. We thank you for your patience.

Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

c_s_i

If you're a gamer who loves CSI, have Wii got news for you! c_s_i is sponsoring killer contests. Simply post a question to a member of the CSI crew. The winner will get a free copy of CSI: Deadly Intent for Nintendo Wii (with a retail value of $39.99) and get their question answered by a member of the CSI writing team! There's also a fantastic monthly contest. To enter, join c_s_i, play the online version of CSI: Deadly Intent, and respond to a two-part query for a chance to win a Wii! Entries will be judged on composition and originality. Sorry, but you must be a U.S. resident and over 18 years old to participate. Check out the rules here.

Enveloped in postcards

Last week, we asked you to send in postcards to help us decorate our drab concrete walls. Here's a photo of the results so far! Thank you so much and please keep them coming! You can mail them to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be giving ten random users paid account credits.

Photos of the week

If you haven't visited our new LiveJournal photo community, you're in for an amazing visual trip. LiveJournal users from around the world will take you on a scenic journey to everywhere. Post your own pictures or kick back and enjoy at lj_photophile. You can view some of this week's awesome photos after the jump. Please start tagging with geographic location, since we'd like to track all the places around the world represented in this community. Keep on commenting too!
( Read more... )

Spotted on Amazon on some new hardcover book listing:

This Book Is Bound with "Deckle Edge" Paper. You may have noticed that some of our books are identified as "deckle edge" in the title. Deckle edge is when the pages of a book are made to resemble handmade paper by applying a frayed texture to the edges. Deckle edge is an ornamental feature designed to set certain titles apart from books with machine-cut pages.

...They do that on purpose? And here I thought such books were just cheaply made and sloppily left unsmoothed. Give me machine-cut any day if deckle-edge is your idea of ornamental.

And actually I prefer paperbacks to hardcovers anyway. So there.

Question/Problem: Yesterday, I was stupidly eating cereal while checking email and... surprise, I spilled milk. Not a ton... but I spilled it on the computer. I immediatelly unplugged and turned it upside down, ut I forgot to remove the battery (which is apparently important.)

Last night, I couldn't get it to start and was getting a flashing green light on my power cord. I tried a mix of taking out the battery and unplugging and holding down the power button and then plugging everything back in. Finally, I got a solid green light and it booted up and I could use it, but it wasn't recognizing the battery. When I unplugged it (to take it downstairs) I couldn't get it to start again (just kept getting the flashing green light.) If I put the battery in, I get a faint solid green light, with the battery out, I get a flashing bright green.

I plugged it in to a friends power cord to see if that was a problem and had the same results.

I made an appointment at the Genius Bar for Monday, but does anyone know how I can fix this? Or if it's fixable or broken forever?

I know it's my stupid fault for eating near it, but it's a major bummer.

Operating System, Version and Service Pack: 13 Inch Macbook OS 10

Your level of experience (we simplify or explain instructions based on how you answer): I'm pretty beginner as far as computer knowledge, but I usually am good at troubleshooting.

When did the problem start? Has it been going on constantly since then? Milk spilled yesterday morning. Today I'm getting nothing.

Someone please help. I do have Applecare, but I assume they'll be able to tell this is spilled milk and not a hardware problem. I would be very sad if this has bit the dust, it's not yet a year old and I have a lot left to pay on it. :(

edit Heh, I took it to the Genius bar and they sent it in for service. So, I guess I'll find out if they see the milk or not...

Is it possible to have two or more windows of Internet Explorer 8 open (Each opened by double clicking IE icon on desktop or icon in Quick Launch) and have it so that if you were to log into a site or something secure in one of them but not be logged into in the other IE windows>?

So, in viewing entries on your journals this morning, I saw these two entries a few pixels apart:

singingnettle would like to remind you to please, please make sure that you have made sure that someone is fully and legally authorized to make legal/medical decisions for you when you are unable to do so yourself

dancingwriter would like to point out why gay marriage matters, as illustrated by the case of a woman who died alone while her wife and children were denied admittance to see her.

I leave the rest as an exercise to the readers. This is a not a day that humanity is doing too well in my books.

As a random side note to start you off, despite the fact that looking good in hats is one of my three talents in life, I do not own a proper hat, a my hat kind of hat. This morning, after reading An interview with Terry Pratchett that wordweaverlynn linked to, I am looking at the shop where Terry Pratchett buys his hats and I am now having hat lust.

Also, I am amused by the category "Occasional Headwear". Habidashery for your occasional head. So what is it on its days off? I think that's where some of these posts come from, to be honest.

(I am slightly disappointed with how gendered the selections are- the men's section shows just the hats, while the women's shows them on a pretty, posing model. Also, most of the women's hats looks like she's being shagged by an extremely rare parrot.)

***

Last night was chanty sing at the Royal Mile, the first I'd been to in several months. Getting there was a difficulty, as Connecticut was backed up so badly it took me seven minutes to make it through one intersection without a light (the fact that I was timing it by this point should be taken as an indication of how bored I was), but it was worth getting to for all of that.

I met up with Liz and Phil and their new housemate, who is a lovely young woman whose name I have utterly forgotten.

The sing was good. Well, the sing was a very good night for community, as it seems that harmonies were in short supply and an awful lot of the attempts to hit the right note ought to have resulted in aggravated assault charges from some of the innocent bystander notes, but still, I got hugged by a bunch of the regulars, so I'm not complaining.

Best part of the evening for me was when someone got up to lead Barrett's Privateers and Phil and I decided that the only way to survive the song was to do every verse in a different weird vocal style. We did bad fake French, pompous 30's operatic, hayseed hick - until Liz started threatening to poke us with forks if we didn't quit it. Still, it was amusing to us.

For my part I did The Farewell Chanty for the first round (crashed it on the first verse, when my nerves sent my voice up too high and I squeaked on the second line so badly that someone in the crowd yelled out "Modulation! Modulation!", but did better after that) and when the second round went to the 2-verse rule, I got up to sing Ma Bonny Lad and nailed it, perfectly. Yay!

It was a fun night, overall. Folks pulled out a few songs I'd never heard before, and on at least a few, the harmonies were working around the room, so Mist Covered Mountains came out wonderfully (even at only 2 verses) and it was great fun to see the Housemate laughing when she caught the words to All for Me Grog, Putrid and Disgusting, and a few of the others with humorous lyrics.

It looks like Red Veg in Soho has closed down - it's been compulsorily purchased as Crossrail is demolishing the building to build their ticket hall under Dean Street.

http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/59154/pages/13837

I will miss it! Does anyone know if there are any plans to open on new premises?

I was expecting to have lunch yesterday with a very old friend, who had to ask for a rain cheque - on account of his wife had to go to see a surgeon for the results of a CT scan.

He just rang, and chatted to Mary for about 15 minutes, because she's got advanced colorectal cancer with secondaries not only in the liver, but the lungs as well.

The problem is that he can't tell anybody, because she's the figurehead of a public company which would collapse if her condition were known to their customers. So he's got to go into the office and be Casual and Reassuring for the workers there about where she will be over the next three months and then he's got to go home and be Strong and Positive for the kids and then he's got to go to his wife and be Supportive and Optimistic for her.

And really, he just needs to sit in a corner and cry -  so he's doing that on the drive to work and back.

I've been very lucky. I have so many good friends (and Friends!) who have been able to just sit and listen and offer sympathy... and have kept in touch, without histrionics. And most of my business acquaintances know about it, thanks to Wavey Davey's decision to go public in cix:hacks ! and of course this blog; no I don't think it's fooling anybody at all. But that's not the point; the point is that if you google for me by name, this won't come up, and so only people who know it's me will plug in. I don't want to be a celebrity cancer patient like my old friend John Diamond became. I don't know how Terry is coping with his Alz but I'm betting it's hard having to do it in the public eye.

In local news, the effects of the flu jab seems to be much less pronounced, and although I'm still getting "uncomfortable" around 7 pm and having trouble eating supper, and then having to spend an uncomfy couple of hours getting the food settled in, the sense of dread and panic caused by a perpetual gut tangle all last week is now mostly history. Hope it doesn't come back!

Chemo restarts 14th, or thereabouts. Have installed bucket by side of bed... sense of humour will be stored somewhere nearby, in case of breakage. But it was given a big, big boost by the arrival - entirely unexpected! of Amy and Lily and their mother, Lucy, Monday. Has shagged my productivity to heck, of course! but it was great fun, and cheered me up tremendously. "Come on, Grandad, hide under this curtain with me!" and then "I need a story, Grandad, actually, I need five stories, here you are..." and then "I'm going to sit next to Grandad for lunch" followed by a game of "buried treasure" where the bits of sausage were concealed in holes in the mash and then "discovered" and disinterred and consumed with gusto...

Now, all I need is a working airgun so that I can stop that wretched squirrel from pillaging all the bird-seed from our garden bird-table... and the week will be moving in the right direction.

But not for my old friend. I hope I can help a bit.

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В последнюю пятницу месяца удалось выбраться в Точку, где прошел SAMHAIN-2009. Скрывать не буду, шел туда в основном из-за друзей из OSIMIRA, и был весьма рад и счастлив их видеть:-) Но получил удовольствие и от остальных участников, которые оттянулись на славу:-) Жаль, не взял с собой вспышку, ибо пришедшие зрители, их костюмы, могли пополнсить коллекцию хороших и необычных фотографий:-) Так что вам достанутся лишь фрагменты выступлений некоторых групп:-)

Под катом ( +24 фотографии ), а кто хочет, может нажать для просмотра полной версии.

One of the great things about fall is that the osage oranges are in season. I picked one up last week, when I was out with uilos, and have had it at my desk at work since. My minions stop by to ask me questions and have become use to the site of me fiddling with my monkey brain.

Today, one of them asked me what it was, so I sent her the link above, and reread the article for my own edification. I found the following:

Ecological aspects

The fruit has a pleasant and mild odor, but is inedible for the most part. Although not strongly poisonous, eating it may cause vomiting. The fruit is sometimes torn apart by squirrels to get at the seeds, but few other native animals make use of it as a food source. This is unusual, as most large fleshy fruit serves the function of seed dispersal, accomplished by its consumption by large animals. One recent hypothesis is that the Osage-orange fruit was eaten by a giant ground sloth that became extinct shortly after the first human settlement of North America. Other extinct Pleistocene megafauna, such as the mammoth, mastodon and gomphothere, may have fed on the fruit and aided in seed dispersal.[4] An equine species that went extinct at the same time also has been suggested as the plant's original dispersal agent because modern horses and other livestock will sometimes eat the fruit.[5]

(emphasis mine)

This is the coolest fact ever (okay, speculation) about the osage orange. I already knew it turned neat colors as it dried. I already knew it made a deadly projectile weapon. I already knew the tree was great for hedges and fences.

But this stuff used to feed giant ground sloths! I am picturing a big, happy sloth sitting by an osage orange tree, munching its way through a huge pile of big, green pebble balls. That means I'm playing with sloth kibble.

Sloth. Kibble. Purina brand Sloth Chow™ pellets. Dear god, this means that giant sloths ate brains. Giant zombie sloths.

(I suspect I am pushing my brain to hard for NaNoWriMo and some of its efforts at preservative distraction are swerving it right over the cliff.)

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The Chinese version of ONTD, AIYA is a dynamic international community that welcomes users who share a love of contemporary Chinese pop culture. Dedicated to celebrity gossip and entertainment news, you'll enjoy gorgeous photos and breaking stories featuring the glitterati of mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

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Designed to rescue fashion victims everywhere, this Brit-based community reads like a rag-ezine. Published once or twice weekly, you'll view bizarre highlights of the global fashion scene through captivating photos and delightfully snarky editorial. Sit tight for a virtual fashion tour from the runways of New York to Milan to Paris and back home again to London in homage to the adage: you can't buy good taste.

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We are going to a wedding in Birmingham on Saturday and are spending friday night at the Travelodge on Broadway plaza. Can anyone recommend anywhere relatively close by where I (and the family!) will be able to get a nice vegan meal (ie not just baked potato and salad!)

Alternatively which big chains do a vegan friendly option - or will do if asked nicely?

Thanks

Here's a nice version of Tam Lin, done by the Tricky Pixies:



Enjoy (even if it's a little late and one of my few posts on this topic in an age). Also, I've been doing a lot of trimming of the friendslist, trying to get it back to a level where I can read without filters. No hard feelings.

Okay, since I'm always following a few steps behind mclemens and olivander when it comes to pimping my typers (see my latest post, for instance, which was a pathetic imitation of clemens' own customization), I'm deciding to be proactive.

I got this idea from (here I go with the following again) strikethru - and most especially her post about Ace Typewriter and their awesome new tee-shirt graphic - and also from Deek and his 'typeclack' blog (which blog, by the way, I've attempted to post comments on, numerous times, to no avail).

But so, here's the idea: why not customize my typers (and especially the big, Royal desktop seen in my userpic) in the same way USAAF pilots customized their planes in WWII? Not necessarily with pin-up girls (I'm not really that kind of guy). I had something more like this in mind:

And but so then what I could do would be to have Mrs. Moon paint on not only the USAAF-inspired image, but in keeping with the spirit of the USAAF, could also paint, like, I dunno, a tiny book on the hull, one for each NaNoWriMo success?

I'm suffering from loss of sleep, aren't I? I'll be better in December, honest.

But still, good idea, right? Right?!