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Sunday, January 03, 2010
We Forgot the Blogs Fed by Ping.FM
The Famous Grazing blogs were all updated on the turn of the year, but we forgot to include those blogs which cannot use MS's LiveWriter and depend on Ping.fm to feed them.That's the purpose of this short entry. It's important when you run a blog to keep the entries as up-to-date as possible. If you let a month slip, Xanga as an example, the blog appears and for all goods and purposes, is dead.We've added PING.FM to a permanent sticky next to the computer screen to remind us when we post not to neglect Trounce Ally and the Xanga Weblog.-30-
Friday, January 01, 2010
That Was a Quick Ten Years
Image via Wikipedia
As I recall the 1960’s, they took forever. Starting with Eisenhower still President and ending with his VP, Nixon as the same, everything in between seemed so full of moment, as narrated by Walter Cronkite.
A visit to the Newseum in Washington, D.C. last summer brought to focus how we were and now are presented with what is happening in the world. Back then the filter was huge. The networks had only forty or so minutes to tell us about what had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Then we went to the newspapers for details and Time and Life for the color photos.
This morning, before my shower and tea, I knew about a drone attack in Pakistan, bridge curve deaths in San Francisco/Oakland and saw pictures of New Year’s celebration around the world. I heard about the New Years Honours in the UK and New Zealand and the death of a philanthropist phrama heiress.
When I bring up Thunderbird, my email will tell me much more about what the intimate and commercial connections to me think I should know.
And then there is Facebook and Twitter. Before and after midnight last night, I was communicating with friends and acquaintances from Juneau to London, from New Zeeland to Manhattan.
I watched the first day of the year unfold through them from the fireworks on the South Island, to Sydney, New Delhi, Cape Town, Paris, London, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and then went to bed. Midnight is no longer so singular when you watch it happen over and over again.
And now we’re off with the kids to see Avatar. (We already saw Sherlock Holmes and loved it.)
Happy New Year, all!
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LiveJournal Tags: New Year
Sunday, December 20, 2009
17:47 Tomorrow
Image by sgtret via Flickr
It isn’t quite winter yet. That begins tomorrow at 17:47 UTC. (That’s 5:47 PM in London.)
However, it would appear Winter decided to send a calling card prior to arriving. I look out the second story window of my office down onto the driveway where my car should be parked and see a pile of snow with an antennae protruding from it like a sapling freshly broken from the soil.
To avoid going out to clear the two or so feet of snow atop the car, I thought it would be a good time to make a long neglected blog entry.
If you look out of the other side of the house you can see the relatively useless swimming pool. To this day, I do not understand the logic of having a swimming pool in northern New England.&; They cost a fortune to run and are good for three months, max.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
At Eight PM Last Night
In my youth I had an image of where I would be so many decades later, meaning at my age now. I saw myself sitting in a high backed easy chair, by a fire, across from the missus, reading a good book.That vision came to me last night as I sat at my laptop in one room, reading Twitter on Brizzly. The missus was downstairs in her home office reading the New York Times while my son was at his desk, on his Apple reading heaven-knows-what.This is not the image from the past because none of these things, laptops, NYT.com or Apple Computers, existed back then. Okay, way back then.So, young people, as you sit and envision where you’ll be and what you will be doing in forty or fifty years, fahgetaboutit! It doesn’t exist yet.Enjoy the now and the stuff that makes the now, time.
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via Ping.fm
At Eight PM Last Night
Image by sgtret via Flickr
In my youth I had an image of where I would be so many decades later, meaning at my age now. I saw myself sitting in a high backed easy chair, by a fire, across from the missus, reading a good book.
That vision came to me last night as I sat at my laptop in one room, reading Twitter on Brizzly. The missus was downstairs in her home office reading the New York Times while my son was at his desk, on his Apple reading heaven-knows-what.
This is not the image from the past because none of these things, laptops, NYT.com or Apple Computers existed back then. Okay, way back then.
So, young people, as you sit and envision where you’ll be and what you will be doing in forty or fifty years, fahgetaboutit! It doesn’t exist yet.
Enjoy the now and the stuff that makes the now, time.
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LiveJournal Tags: Future
Friday, December 11, 2009
A Burglary Happened
A friend was burgled last night. Everyone is asking what was taken. What was taken was a feeling of security, a feeling that the walls and doors protect you from the wolves and weather.
This happened to me many years ago. They took a cheap desk radio because there really was nothing else of value in the apartment. The radio had no sale value but was taken to justify the break-in. I invested in locks and gates and a steel bar contraption called a "Fox Lock."
Then I did what was really the only solution, I moved. Right after my bike was taken. They left the lock and chain, but must have cut the cross bar on the bike to take it.
To my friend, how soon before you move??
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This happened to me many years ago. They took a cheap desk radio because there really was nothing else of value in the apartment. The radio had no sale value but was taken to justify the break-in. I invested in locks and gates and a steel bar contraption called a "Fox Lock."
Then I did what was really the only solution, I moved. Right after my bike was taken. They left the lock and chain, but must have cut the cross bar on the bike to take it.
To my friend, how soon before you move??
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Sunday, December 06, 2009
ScribeFire has been updated
ScribeFire has been updated to version 3.42 as a fix to a security threat and enhance its interaction with Zemanta
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Saturday, December 05, 2009
I Thought Posting to Posterous Automatically
I may not have is set up correctly, but I thought Posterous automatically sent the information loaded in the email to the other linked locations, such as Twitter and Blogger. It would appear not.
Here in New England there was a report of possible snow tonight into tomorrow morning. I have to give a speech at 1000 tomorrow. I can make it there whatever the weather, but certainly, if the snow does fall, will expect a smaller audience.
Posted via email from grazing's posterous
Bought Back by Neil Gaiman
Neil posted a test message on his regular blog to show he could post to his blog using Posterous.
Leo Laporte recently did something of a similar nature to show a picture of Pomegranates.
Posted via email from grazing's posterous
Friday, November 27, 2009
The Infrared Turkey
We visited the sister's house for Thanksgiving dinner this year.Her husband is quite the scientist when it comes to cooking. The bird on the right was cooked using "infrared."
Honestly, I have no idea of the method, but from the looks of it, blow torches may've been involved. This matters not because this was a most delectable feast.
When I have time, I will google it and see if there something in our kitchen, kiln, back yard or laboratory that can duplicate this process.
For now, on the day after Thanksgiving, it is time to ponder and digest.
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Sunday, November 15, 2009
If you give a homeowner a dumpster
If you are a parent, you probably have read the children's book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
We need to replace a damaged front door, frame and all. For that purpose we rented a dumpster. The door was fixed in a few days but we have the dumpster until Monday.
If you give a homeowner a dumpster, it is amazing how much stuff you suddenly feel needs to be expelled from the house. Stuff you thought you were "storing" for future use.
All the chairs with the broken this and that, the boxes with half used this and that, the pumps that used to work and all of the other stuff that people asked if they could put there, but are no longer around to bring it away.
There is still room in the box and it is only Sunday. Hmmmm.
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Sunday, November 01, 2009
On This Day of the Dead
Image via Wikipedia
This is the day we remember those who have left us over the past year.
We have Memorial Day and Veterans Day and Pearl Harbor Day and September 11 to remember the monumental tragedies of war and terror. Today we remember the people around us, who lived and died living what some call the normal life.
We visited Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts yesterday. There are monuments to that same Pearl Harbor Day, to the Cuban Missile Crisis and to September 11th as well.
What I found most touching were the looped videos being played at each station showing interviews of those who once sat in the same chair when the ships were in harms way.
Whether these people are alive now or dead, these videos serve as their ghosts.
They don’t speak of heroism, but of their daily attempt to to live normal lives while on a ship where over two thousand men slept stacked deck to overhead and side by side with a volume of explosive death whose job it was for them to deliver to other people who too were attempting to maintain their normal lives living on similar vessels or crunched into lava tunnels defending islands they were commanded to steal only a few years earlier.
When we visited the Alamo, as we walked around the quite church surrounded by highways and warehouses; we saw the room where Jim Bowie was bayoneted. I wondered then how a modern war interview with combatants from both sides would have played. Did the Mexicans see this as a pursuit of terrorists from another country? Did the Texicans see this as their struggle to break free from a greater military power determined to crush the spirit of freedom they so recently won from what they saw as another dictatorial foreign invader?
What would videos of the normal people on both sides, thrust into this short usurpation/revolution say? Would they complain of the close quarters, the long walks, the noise of the cannon, the poor cooking skills on both sides?
Then I think of a the forlorn picture of a Pakistani musician in Boston.com’s recent Big Picture spread of the current conflict. When you look at that sad and confused face, was he thinking of lines of battle, strategy for the supremacy of one mode of living over another? Or was he thinking of the seven children that he needs to feed, of the instruments he needed to earn a living left behind, of the gigs he would miss?
While all of this continues, I hope we can still maintain this illusion of living normal lives. It is the only way to survive.
LiveJournal Tags: Day of the Dead
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
FamousGrazing.com Back in the Fold.
We let the famousgrazing.com domain name drift back out into the available name pool for a year or so. When it finally came out of the snarled web of the previous host, we were able to recapture it and settle it down in the tried and true Hurricane Katrina surviving Directnic.com.
We will admit pulling a name or two from them over the years in search of bargains and flashy features, but we learned out lesson. All new names, if there will be any, will be registered through them.
FamousGrazing.com is now pointing toward the latest addition to the Famous Grazing blogs hosted at SquareSpace.com - Aptly named "Famous Grazing."
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Tried Ping in January
Some of the drifting famous grazing blogs were given hope by Ping.fm in January. I posted an entry then in the Xanga blog at http://ping.fm/4frro Still trying...
via Ping.fm
x-Pollinate, Ping.fm and Posterous
We have been trying to get xPollinate to send blog entries to Posterous and Vox. Our last try didn't work. Now we're trying to do the same from withing Ping.fm
via Ping.fm
Rising Early on a Saturday Twixt Seasons
It was almost a year ago when I took this photo in Croton-on-Hudson, NY. The weather was the same, but the country certainly wasn’t.
On that day the ascendant party in power was full of hope and the defeated party was licking the wounds of a sounding defeat.
On this day it feels like 1859 and 1932 combined with the hysterical talking head of the media feeding on the paranoiac or just worrisome feelings of the mob. In both of the years mentioned, journalist did the same touting the people in power were going to bring about the ruin of the nation by not following the policies of the defeated party, the party, when in power, was the real cause of the awful state of things.
It’s like handing a man a half-full bucket of water, pushing him into a burning building and blaming the destruction of the structure on his inability to save it with the water in the bucket.
The prize recently announced in Norway is a reward for despite having been handed that bucket, and that wave of incredibly biased media mumble-jumbo, the man can still smile and say lets build a new, better house on the ruins.
LiveJournal Tags: Norway
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Before We Start Posting in October
The local governing agencies have established new rule regarding the behavior of bloggers.
“No more Wild West” was one of the comments that drew out attention.
We will be reviewing this information. At the time, being not affiliated much with anyone, we need to review our commenting policy to make sure it is with in the guidelines of the the whims of the powers that be.
Stand by.
LiveJournal Tags: FTC
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The New Theme Means a Lot
When I saw the RSS feed from Posterous introducing the new themes, I went right to it and changed the grazing theme to green
.
. It makes sense to me.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
It Still Takes a Few Days
I watched the second plain hit. I remember thinking "what kind of idiot would fly that close to take a look?" I still thought the first strike was an accident.
Growing up in Manhattan in the '50's I was used to stories of planes hitting the sky scrapers, the Empire State Building, the most infamous of them. I thought the second plane was coming around for a look when I saw it make the the turn over the harbor.
It took a moment to set in that this was done on purpose. It wasn't an act I thought possible.
I soon discovered I had lost friends sent to help and workers trapped on the upper floors.
My wife and I dined on a regular basis at Cellar in the Sky. We had even taken most of the staff out for drinks after closing.
What bothered me most this year is I didn't see it coming. When I first wrote the date on an official document, it hit me. It hit me so hard I had to sit.
I thought about 1949, the same amount of time after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Did people write 12/7/49 on official paper and suddenly remember Pearl Harbor? Or then, like now, had so much war and mayhem hit them, that one barbaric act lost some of its horror?
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