Category: Cooking With Code

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...And Little E Makes 3 Cooking With Code Home Base

Remodeling in more ways than one

Tuesday we get a look at the baby once again via ultrasound…supposedly this’ll be the fancy deal where you can basically see what he’s going to look like when he pops out into the world in a couple of months. Of course you know I’m going to post some pictures from that.

In the meantime, baby room work continues, with one of the heaviest pieces of my furniture – a bookshelf that has traveled with me through every move I’ve ever made – now in the game room.

Bookshelf
Thing is…I’m not sure it’s going to go right there. It’s a case where, now that I’ve got it there and have it loaded down with a couple hundred pounds of bound printed material once more, I’m just not sure it’s going to work there. It creates a little “hallway” coming into the game room, which may just be too narrow (especially with the arcade cabinet creating an extra corner to navigate). And the back of it isn’t exactly photogenic. So…it’s still a work in progress. I’ve just got a lot of progress to make in the next few weeks. Really, the important step is getting it out of the bedroom that’s going to become the nursery.

During cleanup, I have found a few treasures that I had declared missing, from the jewel case with my Tron 2.0 discs in it to a VHS copy of MST3K: The Movie signed by Trace Beaulieu:
MST3K The Movie

By the way, the third and final volume of Amazing Stories soundtracks arrived today, and let me tell you, as pricey as these were, it’s so worth it to have the whole set.

Amazing Stories CDs

I’ve been on the lookout for a new WordPress theme for Scribblings, because the current one (“Fishy”) has started doing weird stuff that I’m not too fond of (try paging down and watching the left margin on the various blog entries). The problem here is that, now that WordPress and themes for it are a big deal, some honest-to-God mediocrity is seeping into the whole thing. Themes that just flat-out don’t work as advertised no matter what browser you use to look at them, themes that rely wholesale on brute-force non-compliant HTML code, and the new bane of my existence, “sponsored links themes”. These usually include a set of links toward the bottom of the page – though I’ve started to notice that some theme authors are working up the stones to drop these links near the top – which link to some really spammy stuff: the usual suspects, drugs, highly suspect search engines, and other forms of link-farm bullcrap. The authors of these just about always include something in their terms of use about how you can’t use their themes if you remove those links. Now, part of me wants to just remove the links and see if the authors ever actually even find out and do anything about it, but I’d rather just find a suitable non-“spamsered” theme and try to keep the internet’s barely-functional honor system intact. But it infuriates me to see how much this is happening. I hope that this isn’t just the tip of an iceberg that might see WordPress targeted in much the same way as phpBB is. I reserve a special hatred for spammers in whatever form they take, and theme authors who integrate that stuff into the fabric of their work are spammers, whether they want to think so or not in their little worlds. (Thank God for Weblog Tools Collection, which carefully notes which themes are spamsered; that’s a criterion that themes.wordpress.net desperately needs to add to its search tool.)

Off to bed. I’ve got a date with a baby in the morning.… Read more

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Cooking With Code ToyBox

Bust open that blister bubble

(Wow, that sounds nasty, now that I look at it. I mean the blister bubbles that seal action figures to their cards. Ick. What were you thinking!?)

Work on the WordPress conversion of the site’s Toybox section is finally complete, and it’s ready for your browsing pleasure. That’s the third major section of the site this year to be completely converted into its new database format this year, which certainly makes me happy. Consider this my Father’s Day present to all the dads and dads-to-be out there around my age who grew up with this stuff. You might also notice the “random fictional toy store photo of the moment” – which I discussed taking something like a year ago. Yeesh. That didn’t take much time, did it? 😆 All of the video segments from the old Toybox section have made the transition, and, of course, the beautiful thing about WP is that I’ve already got new stuff written and photographed that’ll post itself at the appointed hour, right on cue, between now and the end of the year. I can also safely predict that last year’s Christmas tree went over so well that it’ll be back this year…with a lot more toys under it. (And perhaps a more attractive star for the top of the tree…)

Enjoy the new section. And hey, let’s be careful out there.… Read more

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Cooking With Code Gaming ToyBox

Random notes of infintesimal importance

Sorry about my radio silence this week. I’ve been spending more time than is conducive to sanity policing the Digital Press forums, which seem to explode with crazies that scream out for a ban (sometimes quite literally) this time every year. All I can figure is that school’s out – and judging by this year’s material so far, I’m going to say between the fourth and tenth grades – and these kids have nothing to do. You’d think if they were going to DP, maybe they’d spend some of their summer hours, oh, I don’t know, PLAYING VIDEO GAMES. Sheesh. Send the little gits my way, they can mow my lawn, and I’ll stay inside and play video games, how’s that? Oy vey. Some people’s kids.

Hopefully everyone digs the redesigned music review section. For an encore, I’m doing my level best to revamp the entire toy section by Flag Day! It’s madness, I tell you, madness! I’ve been dragging out copious quantities of action figures and re-photographing them lately, pulling each one out of their individual Star Cases (we’re talking the little mini ones that are big enough to accomodate one loose figure), taking a couple of pictures and then putting them back away, consciously aware in the back of my mind that this may be the last time these things come out to play before there’s a little boy running around the house. I’d say it’s like one last quick jog through my childhood, except that the stuff I’m taking new pictures of is all stuff that I’ve collected long since I passed the age where one’s expected to get rid of all one’s action figures. The toy section also has a finite number of articles to port over into the database from the old HTML pages; nothing on the order of hundreds and hundreds of music reviews. So I see it as a Feasible Task.

Speaking of staying inside and playing video games, I just got my copy of Stella Gets A New Brain, so maybe I can squeeze some 2600/Supercharger lovin’ into my near future.

I’ll alert the media the moment I have anything of substance to say here. 🙂 … Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Cooking With Code Funny Stuff Home Base Television & Movies

Road tripped

Tomorrow we’re headed to Little Rock to have Those Other Tests done since we had some alarming markers show up on the baby blood work. It’s funny how one of our local hospitals builds a whole extra wing supposedly devoted to the best pre-natal and natal care in this part of the state…and yet, still, you can’t do jack without heading out to Little Rock or Tulsa. Thanks to everyone for their well-wishes and advice on the tests – believe me when I say that your experiences and stories are pure gold at this point. Tonight we have to take Jan’s vehicle – or, as I’ve always called it, Happy Wagon Of Death 2K3 – to leave it with the dealership in Rogers to fix tomorrow so she can be back to delivering the mail out of it Wednesday. I swear to God, everytime she turns the wheel even slightly, it sounds like an angry, asthmatic Wookiee is screaming out his rage from below the vehicle; the dealership is hopefully going to make whatever fixes or remove whatever Wookiees are applicable. Happy freakin’ life day. On the way, we’re going to try to stop in Fayetteville so I can snap some pictures of the R2-D2 mailbox that’s up there. I can’t believe there’s actually one in Arkansas.

No haircut yet; I may just have to tie it back and tuck it under tomorrow. I’ve really gotten out of that habit when my hair gets long. Adrian Paul, I ain’t. Instead, my wife and I spent Sunday night preparing prodigious quantities of food and then wolfing 90% of it down. I did the steaks and she did…well…all the stuff that actually tasted good. She even did the brownies, though at one point she cracked an egg open…right over the drain at the sink. In it went. We both stopped and looked at each other like “WTF?” She’s said that both her mother and her sister have warned her that expectant mothers apparently start donating brain cells to baby in large quantities during pregnancy, and I guess I really didn’t grok what that meant until I watched that perfectly good egg go from the shell straight into the garbage disposal. Just between you and me, I’m gonna milk that moment of comedy gold for months to come.

Hopefully everyone likes the latest main menu illustration for the site; as time consuming as these things are (that one was a 3:00am special), I’ve been trying to look for ways to tie everything together conceptually, even if I have to just flat-out invent the connection. 😆 (On the other hand, the process I was using to treat the pictures made Evangeline Lilly look positively hideous, which is something that takes quite a bit of effort, so my apologies there.)

And speaking of Lost…spoilage ahead if you haven’t seen it: … Read more

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Cooking With Code Television & Movies

Nebula Nominees

Okay…let’s see. This year’s Nebula noms (news item here) are Batman Begins, Howl’s Moving Castle, the boxing episode of Galactica, and the Madame de Pompadour episode of Doctor Who.

Ooooooookay. I have a feeling the Who episode that was nominated may have gotten in the door on the newfound name recognition of its writer, whose Doctor Who two-parter from the first season won the Hugo. But this was hardly a typical episode of Who, nor necessarily the strongest (hello, did anyone watch The Idiot’s Lantern?), and I’d certainly argue that the Galactica episode in question wasn’t its finest hour – or, at the very least, not the example I’d hold up from 2006 of a good SF concept in service of a story. Ah well. Maybe Miyazaki can finally win something for Howl’s this year.

By the way, in case I hadn’t mentioned it or you hadn’t noticed, there are download links in the Episode Guides section now, which will, for a nominal fee, chuck episodes of several series (and even some movies) onto your hard drive and/or iPod. File this one under “all proceeds keep the site online,” but I just thought it was kinda cool on its own merits. The most recent Stargate episodes are already available through this service, though of course some stuff (i.e. Galactica) is still iTunes-only. Give it a shot if you’re so inclined.… Read more

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Cooking With Code

A random logbook thought

I’ve been meaning to ask this question to the Livejournal readers out there for a while, but keep forgetting to ask.
I’ve been thinking about setting things up so that theLogBook.com’s “front page” is posted to my LJ blog automagically, sorta like Scribblings is currently. I look at it as a way of extending the site’s reach just a bit, and maybe showing off some of the cool stuff we have here every week. This would just be the front page menu, not every single review or episode guide listing from each week’s update.
On the other hand, I don’t want to be spammy. I don’t want anyone to feel like I’m spamming their LJ friend pages.
What do you think? Feel free to be brutally honest.… Read more

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Cooking With Code

Scribblings v4.0

After maybe a grand total of two and a half hours’ work, I’m pleased to introduce the new version of Scribblings, based on a WordPress theme called Fishy 1.0. As a certain Corellian smuggler captain once said, I’ve made a few modifications here and there. 😆
If anything doesn’t work, let me know. The thinking behind this latest template swap – seems like this is the third one in as many years – was to get the categories to show up correctly, and to escape some of the odd booboos that were creeping in with the WuCoco theme (though I quite liked that one). I’m not done with all of my souping-up just yet, but I kinda like the new skin. (Then again, I remember saying that before… 😉 )
Tuesday was a much-needed day of rest for me, so not much to report. I’m really thrilled about Wednesday’s 70% chance of sleet, ice and snow. 😯 Really thrilled.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Cooking With Code

Scary stuff

So I’ve only been home for about an hour now, having gone from work straight to the hospital to meet my wife, who has barely been able to keep food, water, or even so much as a pill down all day. After a stupidly long wait in the ER (the nurses helpfully crossed her name off on the sign-in sheet, believe they’d already seen her, which increased our wait by something like half an hour), she was finally seen by a doctor, who decided that it’s most likely a stomach virus of some kind. She was given something to help her with the nausea (something which also pretty much knocks her out, and supposedly won’t have any harmful side-effects for her or the baby), and after taking that was finally able to keep a little food down. She and Olivia have gone to bed for the night; normally Oberon sleeps with them too but I’m keeping him with me for tonight. Woohoo! Boys’ night out!
This was really our first “emergency” so far, and I approached it with a polite but firm “get out of my way or I’ll get you out of my way” manner. I was a bit miffed by the goof-up with the sign-in sheet, but I think it was an honest mistake.
I saw Henry (from the station) and his son there too. Good Lord. I remember when that kid was a newborn, and haven’t seen him since. Now he’s inquisitive, wisecracking, and seems to be just dangerously smart. I’ll count myself lucky to have a kid like Skyler. They were there to see another family member, and I got to catch up on some station gossip. Remember folks, sweeps starts one week from tonight! 😆
As fond as I am of the current Scribblings WordPress theme, I came to the realization recently that, for all the word I’ve put into things like random header graphics, I’m gonna have to change it all up again. Stuff like “Spamatazoa” and “Baby Makes Three” are supposed to be subcategories, but they’re not showing up that way. Ah well. More changes on the way. I may just say “to hell with it” and use the same theme that’s in use for most of the other sections, but I kinda like that it’s apart from those – it’s allowed to be a bit more bloggy.
Anyway, back to point A…it’s amazing how a little critter made out of my DNA and probably about the size of a gumdrop is able to scare the hell outta me like this. It kinda makes me reel a bit to think what it’s going to be like when said critter is more baby-shaped than gumdrop-shaped.… Read more

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Cooking With Code

Compliance appliance

Mark Holtz sent me this link after submitting thelogbook.com to this site for a checkup; basically, it puts your URL of choice into a queue to grab screenshots of your site in several browsers to check for web standards compliance. The fact that the site’s main page now shows almost no variance from browser to browser, despite the fact that it’s one of the most tricked-out new portions of the site (what with its drop-down side menus, the new top menu, random header images, lined-up-by-almost-careful-planning-and-the-grace-of-God graphical menus and whatnot), makes me a very happy puppy.
You know, for it being two days after the end of sweeps, I’m still waiting for it to feel like sweeps is over.… Read more