Pioneering

Sometimes M&I are a little a head of the curve. Getting rid of cable and watching TV on-line is one of those instances. Hardware was pretty easy. A Mac mini running Windows XP so we can watch Netflix “Watch Instantly” movies. A mini wireless keyboard with touch pad is on the way for easier navigating. An LCD computer monitor as a placeholder for a flat screen TV we have been thinking about for a while. Now that we have committed to getting rid of cable, I have noticed how many shows are available on-line and how many programs are available to catch these shows and make watching easier. Unfortunately there is no one program or site that catches them all. In order to keep up with most of the shows we watch, we have a Hulu account. NBC, USA, Comedy Central, Fox… most stations. But not CBS or ABC… so for CBS we have Adobe Media Player, ABC has its own player through their site. Sigh. Both Hulu and AMP offer extras that I wasn’t expected. For instance, I was a late comer to Arrested Development. Fabulous show and now I can watch the whole series on Hulu. If you didn’t run out and buy Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog like me, you can watch in HD on Hulu for free. If you would really love to watch Ghostbusters again, no problem. AMP has a Stephen King series called N. It is basically a graphic novel read for us with stills, broken into 2 min increments. There are still a few shows that don’t seem to be available easily. Does it sound a little weird that we are going through all this trouble? My crystal ball tells me this is going to get easier as time goes on. Summer was a good time to get things in place and Fall should help get the system streamlined. Major, major plus, no more time spend holding or waiting for Time Warner to fix problems.

Knitting Season

I don’t knit in the summer. It is just feels wrong to me to have a huge pile of yarn in my lap when it is 80 degrees and the humidity it through the roof. Today is an especially crisp lovely late summer/early fall day here in NY and I have started to think it might be time to break out my needles again. These patterns for fruit cosies might be just the think I need to get back into the swing of things. via

Soothing Sounds of the City

When we go upstate, since there are no livable building on the property, we camp. M LOVES camping. He loves the sounds, the smells, the whole camping experience. I on the other hand am not a big fan of camping. The sounds are not soothing, they are unfamiliar and they make it really hard to sleep. I end up feeling like I was awake all night.  People say how quiet it is in the great outdoors. Tell that to the bugs, the birds and the rain. Well now I can feel right at home with an app for my iTouch called Ambiance. I can be lulled to sleep by the soothing sounds of the subway, or cars, or people arguing on the street outside my window. Ok, I made that last one up, but the first two are for real. If I am feeling like I could use a little more nature in my life there are also the sounds of a stream, waves and a haunted wind. What could be more relaxing?

FFFFOUND!?

Are there any FFFFOUND! members out there who wouldn’t mind sending an invite my way?

Through The Viewfinder

I love these images from ScarletBeautiful2! They are wonderfully gritty and beautiful and have such personality. She uses one camera to take pictures through the viewfinder of another camera. I miss the old days in school back when we still used film and you could use your holga to get this same type of unpredictable results. It just so happens that I have several dozen old cameras on the property (did I mention the previous owner was a bit of a pack rat) and I can’t wait to give this a try. In the meantime I think I am going to put in  an order. via

Knitting Jam

If you happen to be in NY tomorrow night and love knitting and music and wonder how you can mix them you may want to check out Knitting Jam at the Chelsea Art Museum.

THURSDAY AUGUST 28, 2008, 6:30PM FREECHELSEA ART MUSEUM

556 West 22nd Street,
New York, NY 10011

Knitting Jam at the Chelsea Art Museum.

Laure Drogoul invites one and all to participate in an evening of musical knitting.

You are cordially invited to knit and become a part of a knitting orchestra. Knitters and non-knitters alike are invited to play/knit on a souped-up, amplified knitting instrument. The Apparatus for Orchestral Knitting amplifies the sound of the knitting, is mixed and played back live. All materials supplied.

Program presented by the

Chelsea Art Museum & Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center

This event is free and open to the public.
Directions: http://chelseaartmuseum.org/information/

If you want to come to participate in the knitting, please email Laure Drougoul with your RSVP at lahostess@hotmail.com.

via

Baby Steps

Hey kids, check me out! I finally found someone to help me with the more technical part of blogging (thanks J!) and now if you go to iamlizbeth.com, you get to my wordpress blog. Yeah! There is no need to make a change, for the moment I am just redirecting.  Thanks for your patience.

Mac in a PC World

I work in an architecture firm, which means they use CAD which means they all work on PCs. I am lucky enough to not have to work on a PC, which is great in most scenarios. Except when an architect asks, “Can you send me the path to that?” I guess… They think it is so easy because they have an address bar at the top and they just copy and paste. I was typing in the path by hand. Crazy, I know. Today I decided I was mad as hell and I wasn’t going to take it anymore. Actually I was thinking that there had to be a better way. There are a few better ways. Some of them include buying a plug in, and I wasn’t down with that. Some included scripts… huh? But this one I found in the comments of an OSX Hints post was just right! It is the little things in life.

JondorZ says:

Sat May 10 08:34:59 PDT 2008

Re: Copy paths from Finder selections

I got one new easy method:

Go to System Preferences>Keyboard & Mouse

under the tab ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’, click the plus sign at the bottom left.

Set the application to: ‘Finder’

Menu Title: ‘New Window Containing Selection’ (CASE SENSITIVE)

Set the keyboard shortcut to: ‘Command-G’ (If you dun like this key, u may change it to your preference)

Then in finder you just need to press the new keyboard shortcut key, in my case i press Command-G. A textedit with the file path will be opened and there u are! Viola!

NO dragging, NO multiple key strokes, NO right clicking and of course NO 3rd party plug-in!!!

Well Well Well

M&I found out some really great property news today. It seems that what we thought was a hand dug well is actually most likely a very deep recoverable well. What does this mean? For what we are hoping isn’t a lot of money we will be able to have water on the property. We already have plans for an outdoor shower with an on demand (tank-less) water heater. The news came from Mike, the gentleman who is putting in our foundation for a our sleeping shed. He wanted to know if we minded that he was poking around. Heck no we don’t mind! If you are in the Hudson Valley and need some work done, check out Arcady Tractor Works and Arborculture. 

Nivea Lip Product Update

So you may remember that when I went to NZ I stumbled onto the fact that Labello is now Nivea, a little too late and I was kicking myself for not buying more lip balm while I had the chance. Today via Not Martha I learned that Nivea Lip Care products will be available soon (no date as to when) at a bunch of retailers, many of them will be convienient. Yeah! My lips are so happy! Thanks Megan!