Category: Meta

Letters to Esther, Meta

New Letters to Esther

Shelly

February 6, 1921 from Orlie Penwitt

February 15, 1921 from Luella

February 17, 1921 from Clark

February 21, 1921 from Luella

February 26, 1921 from Luella

February 27, 1921 from Clark

I finally had some time to scan and transcribe a few more letters. This batch is from the period when Esther’s family was still under quarantine for scarlet fever, so there are no letters from her mother or sister, Ruth. Luella, whose family lived near the Munros, sent Esther news about her family.

I also installed a Google search box on the main page for the Letters to Esther website. There are enough letters now that it might be helpful to be able to search for specific events or names. It’s ad supported (oh, how I hate ads), but they’re text only, so they shouldn’t be too intrusive. And, you’ll only see them on the results page, so if you don’t do any searching, yo\’ll never know they’re there.

Crankypantsing, Meta

508

Shelly

I’ve got 508 posts to go.

I had planned to paint today, but I got sidetracked by other things: washing the dog, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the studio, and straightening up my coffee table mess. And then, I spent some time fixing bad links, until I got so tired that I literally fell asleep in front of the computer. At that point, I decided it was time to go take a nap. When I woke up, The Amazing Race was on, and now it’s bed time. Where the hell did my day go?

The litterbox is clean, though, and the dog smells like Garnier Nutrisse, so I guess it wasn’t all wasted time.

Crankypantsing, Meta

Rain and Links

Shelly

It’s been raining all day. I’ve been on the computer for most of it, fixing broken links. This is the only room you can really hear the rain from, because the downspouts are right outside the window. Over the past couple of hours it’s gradually been raining harder and harder.

I keep hearing sirens, too. They’re distant, but close enough to be distracting. It must be pretty crappy weather to be out driving in. In fact, I just heard an enormous crash, like a dumpster being dropped or two trains connecting. I haven’t a clue what it was, but yikes!

Fixing all those broken links is a tedious and thankless task. I’ve been working on it for a couple of hours, and I think I’ve got about 100 entries done. Going backwards, I’m at 682, which means nearly 700 entries to go. So, to repeat, if you are looking at older posts, and you try to click on an image, to embiggen it, you will likely be taken to a random image. I’m working on it, but it’s going sloooooowly. In the meantime, everything is working properly within the gallery, so you can easily access images from there.

Crankypantsing, Meta, Photography

Comments

Shelly

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I’ve been a bad blogger lately. Most of my free time has been taken up with genealogy crap. I’ve also been inundated with a spectacular amount of blog spam. I’ve installed several filters on the back side, but a large volume of spam is still getting through. Not to the blog itself, but I get e-mail notifications for all the ones that the back-end filters miss. That number has gone up to hundreds each day, which means I’ve had to filter my e-mail, too. Some of the notifications for legit comments have gotten lost in that mess. Not the comments themselves, just the notifications.

That’s all by way of explaining why I did not realize there were comments. Oops!

And now, another random pee-chur from last Sunday. This one without pretty cyan skies. I don’t know why I’m fascinated with electric poles and pylons, but I am. It’s hard to believe that something so primitive could have such a huge impact on our everyday lives.

Art, Crankypantsing, Journals, Meta, Paintings

Blue d’Anjou Pears

Shelly

Blue D'Anjou
Blue d’Anjou Pears (detail left & right)
acrylic on 90lb Stonehenge paper
9 1/4 x 11 5/8 inches

This spread was done with just acrylic on paper, with the addition of a little bit of acrylic medium in a few spots. Mostly, I worked with the paint without diluting it, because I tend to prefer a bit of texture (you can see it in the detail views).

Non sequitur alert!

What do you say when a coworker walks past your desk and helps himself to a handful of Kleenexes? Seriously! I was at a total loss for words, and that just doesn’t ever happen to me! I have an evil temptation to buy him a box of tissues and leave it on his desk, anonymously. It would be worth it, except that I have a feeling that anyone who is that oblivious to what is and what is not socially acceptable would be unlikely to get the point.

Grrr.

And with that, I believe I have fulfilled my NoMoPoblano (or whatever the hell it’s called) commitment, and without having to resort to fluffy padding, either. Alas, I didn’t quite finish NaNoWriMo, but I gave it a good try. Getting sick didn’t help, nor did having my image database crash and having to rebuild it[1]. I also didn’t manage to do a pear a day, but I’m still working on it, and I’m not worried about completing the project. That, I can do.

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1. On that front, things are going well. I have everything (I think) uploaded and sorted, and about 90% of it is cataloged. Whew! That was a long, tedious, and thankless job.

It’s also a good lesson in why it’s important to do regular back-ups. Or, back-ups at all. I r st00pit. I am religious about making multiple back-ups of my files, but not my databases. Oops!

Meta, Pets, Photography

Studio Cat

Shelly

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Pan was asleep on my drafting table, surrounded by journals and sketchbooks. I’d pulled them out, because I didn’t do a good job of including information for older images at Flickr. When recreating my Coppermine database, I had to go back to the original source for things like media and dimensions. So, there are stacks of books everywhere. I haven’t pulled out the canvasses yet, but I expect that’ll be even messier. I also expect that Pandora will insert herself right in the middle of everything, because that’s what she does.

Crankypantsing, Meta

Good News

Shelly

I was able to get replacement code for the Linkpendium via the Wayback Machine. Yay! They archived it in March 2007, so it’s not the most current version, but who cares? Besides, it needed some serious weeding, anyway.

I’ve also pretty much finished re-loading all of my images into Coppermine[1]. There are about 600 (out of 2000+) that are still unsorted and unidentified, but I should have that finished in the next couple of days. If I don’t go cross-eyed, first. And if my hands don’t fall off.

Today I did all the digital photographs, and boy, was that ever a surreal experience. They spanned the last 4-5 years, and because they were sorted in file name order, they were chronological. Do you remember those filmstrips from grade school–the ones with the accompanying tape that beeped when you were supposed to forward to the next frame? It was kind of like watching a filmstrip of my life, only without the cheesy narration.

In other news, I had hoped to have a drawing for today, and I did start one, but it got kind of complicated, and there’s no way I’m going to get it finished before bedtime.

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1. Speaking of which, there will be much bozocity relating to the clicking of images in order to biggify them. Instead of the links being broken, they will now take you to pages with completely unrelated images and metadata. For example, if there is a photo of Harriet, and you click on it to view the large version, it may take you to a lovely sunset, or a mangled Barbie doll, or a pile of old tires. How fun!

This, um, “feature” will persist until I manually update the code in each and every blessed blog post that has an image that points to my Coppermine gallery. If I emerge from this process with my sanity intact, it will be a miracle.

This only is a problem with older images. Any images I post from here on out will–God willing–be fine.

Meta, Pets, Photography

Sunday Cat Blogging

Shelly

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Pandora Rolling Around on the Studio Floor

Pan is not only the Queen of High Perches, but Empress of the Low Lying Lands, as well. Her motto: It’s all mine.

(Edit: And this is a good example of why it’s worth messing around with re-loading all those old images. The above picture is 23KB, but the same photo uploaded to Flickr is 113KB. That’s a significant difference, and with a blog that’s heavy on imagery, it’s a big deal.)

Meta, Photography

Rust

Shelly

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I found a sack of huge, rusty nuts, bolts, and washers at the bottom of a closet in one of the houses I used to live in. I’ve been dragging them around, with the intention of using them in an art project.

This is a test run of the new database. I’ve still got some aesthetic tweaks to make, but the basic structure is in place, and everything seems to be working.