Savoring

These days I'm feeling incredibly helpless and frustrated while a good friend out there is going through challenges about which she was given no choice. She was recently given a pamphlet by her doctor; apparently doctors are required to give it to all patients who've been given a diagnosis of breast cancer (in Beckett's case, precancerous cells have been found). Inside near the back was this quote from the National Cancer Institute: "Cancer might rob you of the blissful belief that tomorrow stretches into forever. In exchange, you are granted the vision to see each day as precious, a gift to be used wisely and richly. No one can take that away."

I know the flyer was meant well, but I found it incredibly insensitive and somewhat patronizing, given the context. What's ironic is that Beckett enjoys life more fully than almost anyone I know, already savoring each day to the fullest.

But I have to stop now.

Time for some silliness...

Skimper experiment update: Two days after posting, my page is now #3 out of 22,700 results in a Google search for 'skimper', behind Skimper.com and Skippy The Bush Kangaroo. Don't know if I'll get ahead of Skimper.com, but Skippy is going to relinquish his #2 spot! What the heck is that furry little guy DOING in the search results for "skimper", anyway? The word is nowhere on his site.

Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, you're in for a fall...

(Update: after posting this, Google's robot checked Blatherings again and discovered that my Skimper post was no longer on the main page. Confusingly, one of the follow-up pages has been ranked #8, with no sign of the original Skimper page. Aha, a true challenge! Skippy, you're not out of the woods yet.)

Nov/2005 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments

Skimper, Filk FAQ, choosing a guitar

Skimper experiment update: nothing so far. Not surprising, since it can take the Google robot/spider anywhere from several days to half a year to pick up a new site or page.

To those who were kind enough to post advice on how to choose a guitar (feel free to add) in response to the West Point cadet, he responds:

"Debbie - I just want to thank you for posting my question on your journal space. I got a lot of really good information that assisted me with my project. I hope you're having a good holiday, and if you can, please tell everyone that responded I said thanks so much."

I've added people's advice to the Dandelion Report Filk FAQ under the topic: Advice on choosing a new guitar.

I had suspended open comments posting on the Dandelion Report Filk FAQ because of Movable Type spammers, but I'm going to try experimenting with using Livejournal for comments instead as well as possibly only opening comments for a limited time.

To those not familiar with Filking.net (The Dandelion Report), I create the site with the help of the filk community as a resource for new filkers and those curious about filking. Thanks SO MUCH to those of you who have taken the time to help contribute to this non-profit endeavour.

To avoid driving my non-filk friends and readers crazy, I'm going to restrict most future Filk FAQ discussion to my Dandelion Report LJ. If you're on Livejournal and are willing to occasionally contribute opinions and content to the Filk FAQ to help out new filkers (or even if you're just interested in what's going on), please do add dandelionreport to your friends list!

Nov/2005 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments

Skimper

Why is this Blathering called "skimper"? Skimper really isn't a word, as far as I know, though I suppose some people think of "skimper" as an action that is halfway between a jump and a skip. My niece came up with the term on her own as well. Googling for the term turns up 21,400 results even though the word isn't in the dictionary. More on why I'm talking about skimper later in this Blathering.

Had fun with Jodi last night. We both enjoyed Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. If you're a fan of the other W&G films, you won't be disappointed by this one.

So I did some Googling for mention of Magic Tails today out of curiosity and happily found mentions on the Penguin Group (USA) page and The Best Reviews as well as other sites. I was somewhat surprised to find my own Blathering entry on the topic in the first page of results since I only wrote about the short story recently.

I've been told by several people that my Blatherings have a lot "Google juice," that pages from my online journal tend to come up early in search results. I've always been intrigued by search engine rankings.

As an experiment, I Googled for some terms or words that I've written about in the past few months. When listing the ranking number, I only include primary results, not the sub-results (indented). Here are the results as of Friday, Nov. 4th, when you enter the following terms in quotes:

"wo ist der bahnhof": I get the #1 ranking out of 942

"filk FAQ": #3 ranking out of 15,000 (comes out as #1 if you enter the term without quotes)

"filking": #1 ranking out of 41,700

"Vulcan, AB": #4 ranking out of 12,800

"Filkcontinental": #3 ranking (my Flickr photoset) out of 11,800, #4 (Blathering report)

"useful foreign phrases": #2 ranking out of 517

"Killarney canoe trip": #1 ranking out of 528

"german CDs": #3 ranking out of 16,100

What's interesting is that I didn't really put any special effort into getting the above pages ranked highly on search engines. And I can't really see enough people linking to my Blathering on "useful foreign phrases" to affect Google rankings. So what gives?

And this brings me back to the word "skimper." I'm going to see if I can make this page the #1 result for the term in Google, out of 21,400 results. I've called this entry "Skimper" as well as using the term in the page text, given "skimper" as alt text for the image at the top.

Now let's see what happens.

By the way, I'm replacing the Blatherings search engine in the sidebar to the Google site search box below. Feel free to try it out!

Nov/2005 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments

colourlust

The leaves on the Japanese maple beside our house have turned a brilliant red. I find myself stopping by the windows near the front of the house; I can't help but stare, soaking in the pure colour.

I'm very much a primary colour person, drawn to splashes of brilliant hues against an otherwise humdrum background. Our kitchen windowsill is chocolate brown, and a few days ago I bought some apples to line up along the sill simply because I enjoy the contrast of the red against the dark brown. Occasionally I will let myself eat one. :-)



One reason I love my office is because I'm filling it with colour, from the tree I painted in the corner to the wonderful scarlet silk scarf that Andrea sent me. There are still white spaces on the wall, but I'll remedy that soon enough. :-) Nothing matches; my office will never be featured in one of those home interior magazines. Jeff hung up my office spider a couple days ago...a wonderfully garish purple thing with blue and yellow and red spots, a completely frivolous purchase at a craft show years ago. I love it.

Now that things are settling down and I'm happily sequestered in my home office all day, I find I look forward to time spent with friends more than usual. Back at the condo, I interacted with people on a daily basis...smalltalk with people in the elevator, chatting with the front desk security guard (to ask if there was any mail), for instance. Although it's nice NOT to have to talk to people when I don't feel like it and I tend to ignore the phone during the day when I'm writing, I do find I get conversation-starved sometimes by the end of an intense work day, and crave talk about silly things.

I'm hanging out with Jodi tonight, yay! Poor Allison's sick :-(. Jodi and I are seeing Wallace and Gromit's Curse of the Were-Rabbit. As a kid, I think the animation would have creeped me out a bit (esp. the Evil Penguin in one of the episodes) but as an adult, I love Nick Park's stuff.



Something else I like doing at the end of the day: play my harp. It's SO good to be able to play again. Because of my tendinitis, I wasn't playing many instruments for a long while. Now that we no longer have a piano, I'm turning to my harp for pleasure playing. I do still play guitar and flute but for me, these aren't as fun to play on my own (fingerpicking on guitar is still too much for my poor tendons since it focuses entirely on my right hand) as the harp.

With my harp, I can lose myself in my music the same way I used to do when I play piano, and occasionally on flute. So far I like Kim Robertson's arrangements the best (see my harp music collection below) because she tends to lean toward more interesting chord choices and progressions.

Writing's going well, I'm pleased to report. And my comic strip contract with Offpanel Productions is being finetuned. Their terms are extremely reasonable, especially the fact that I keep all rights to my work. Now that the administrative stuff is mostly complete, I'm working on getting the first six strips ready.

Nov/2005 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments

Illustration Friday: Broken

The doodle above is for Illustration Friday. This week's topic: "Broken."

I created it in Corel Painter 8 and used the Croquil Pen and Fine Round Gouache brushes. First I did the drawing in black with the Croquil, created another layer in Painter, chose "Multiply" in the new Layer so that I don't wipe out the drawing when I colour, then added colour using Gouache.

I've never used gouache paint in real life so I have no idea how closely the virtual Gouache brush mimics the real thing, but I do know that I would never be able to play around with all these different types of media so easily if it wasn't for Corel Painter...the expense of the materials, the smell (in my basement enclosed office) and the mess would keep me from experimenting.

Here's one from the archives, that I did for Illustration Friday at the beginning of the year when the topic was "Sorrow":

Nov/2005 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments