Year: 2012

Welcome

Hi there!  Welcome to my blog*.  I am Liza Olmsted, reader, writer, and renaissance lizard**.

I blog about whatever catches my attention.  Often it’s food, technology, or my own brain as I train myself to be a full time writer.  But it changes a lot, I never know what’s going to come up next.

I write speculative fiction, but I don’t have any samples for you to read yet.  I’m particularly fond of space, historical fiction, fairies that aren’t as nice as they look, and lately ZOMBIES keep catching my attention.  I don’t know why.

I read a bit of everything, but sci fi and fantasy are my first love.  Also, historical fiction*** seems to press that same other-worldly button in my brain that fantasy does, except it’s the real world and there’s no magic.  Go figure.

I’m fascinated by how the world works and how people work.  Astronomy, linguistics, evolution, philosophy, law, whatever, it’s caught my attention.  I double-majored in Computer Science and History, and then discovered it’s easier to earn a living using the CS than the history.

Also, I have freckles.

–-

* With footnotes.

** er … human.

*** Including fiction written in the past, which means they were contemporary at the time, but are now historical fiction.  E.g. Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde.  And the poetry of Catullus.

The Day We Didn’t Flood The House (and, going to see Seal in concert)

Funny thing.  It all started because the toilet was leaking water from the tank into the bowl.  So my boyfriend replaced the flapper*.  That didn’t fix it, and it turned out the thing that puts the water into the tank was having issues, that sometimes it leaked out the top (“Is water supposed to be coming out from there?”  “No, I don’t think so…”), and that no matter how we adjusted the floater, it would always fill with water too high, and then leak over into the tube thingy that keeps the tank from overflowing by sending the water into the bowl.  Since the water-dispenser thing was broken, he needed to be able to turn off the water to the toilet.  But of course the valve was stuck, because we have tons of calcium in our water, so he had to replace THAT.  And you know that in order to replace the shut-off valve, first you have to turn off the water to the house.  But at our house, you also have to turn off the pump, because apparently “off” doesn’t really mean “off” on our water main, it just means “yeah, I’m pretty close to off…”  And to remove the old valve, you have to saw through it, because they’re compression thingies that are designed to be used once.  Because obviously no one EVER makes a mistake with plumbing.  (Seriously?)  But of course, when you’re sawing through the old compression thingy, you’re sawing very close to the pipe coming out of the wall that is only so long and isn’t at all easy to replace, so you’d better not saw into the pipe.  Guess what happened.  So we very nearly had a problem with a leaky pipe right next to the wall**, and while he was at it shouldn’t he just replace the valves on both toilets?***

——

* No, not a woman from the twenties.

** Also, teflon tape was forgotten.  And, as mentioned before, compression thingies aren’t meant to be taken off and replaced so you can add in some teflon tape.  I’m not going to describe the solution, it’s too painful and I’m still worried it’ll end with leaking.

** Cooler heads prevailed.  The second valve will be replaced some other day, preferably once we’ve forgotten what a pain this was.  Speaking of which, how did people repair plumbing before they had cell phones?  Ben was up at the toilet, and I was down at the valve for the water main^ turning it on and off so he could try things.  And, as I mentioned, whenever I turned the water off, I would also turn off the pump.  And sometimes when I turned the water back on, I would turn on the pump, too.  And whenever we turned off the water and the pump, I would then go water some plants to decrease the water pressure, so that the water that wasn’t supposed to be making it into the house wouldn’t have enough pressure to make it into the house.  Yeah, I was confused, too.  Anyway, so we’re on our cell phones talking to each other, so that if something suddenly started spraying water all over everywhere, I would be able to quickly shut off the water again and not ruin the floor or walls or my nice heels on the floor of the closet right next to the toilet.  I’m not very fashion conscious, but I like my pretty shoes to stay pretty^^.  It would’ve been so much more trouble before cell phones.

^ Is it a water main when it comes from a well, or only when it comes from city water?

^^ Speaking of which, though this is a whole other story entirely… we went to see Seal last night at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga.  Fabulous show.  (Bummer that the sound only sounds good in the center section… and bummer that my boyfriend the audio guy has turned me into an audio snob.)  Seal has an amazing voice, and an obvious sense of how to use his seven (SEVEN!) musicians to get the sound he wants, all of whom played at least two instruments (if you count singing), including the one chick who sang, played the trombone, and played piano.  Not at the same time, but sometimes in the same song.  I never did notice how she got from one side of the stage to the other side to stand at the keyboard.  And both keyboardists also played some sort of guitar and sang, and at one point I think there were four different people playing guitar-like instruments at once.  Anyway, beautifully put together.  I thought of this, though, because on the wait out of the concert, going up the brick steps, I scraped the toe of my pretty brown shoe on the step, and now it has a big obvious owee.  They’re not expensive shoes, they were fairly cheap on modcloth, but I’ve only worn them a few times.  And leather shoes don’t heal the way my skin heals!  Now I have to figure out how to make them look like new again.  :(

At least the show was excellent.  :)

Reading Deprivation

Gaaaaaaaaah!

I’m not reading.  Starting about an hour ago, I’m NOT READING.  Anything.  Especially not books or the internet (goodbye facebook :( ), but also not email (as much as I can avoid it) or user manuals or anything.  (Not blogs! :(  Goodbye Robin McKinley, until next week!  Not the awesome book by Tanya Huff that I just started.  :(  How will I survive?)

So far this means that I’ve started writing a presentation I’m giving in a week and a half, which I otherwise might have procrastinated for far longer.  It also means that I found myself scrolling through the MS Word options, just because I wanted to disable spell check!, and technically was reading ALL of the options, looking for ones I might want to change.  Because that was an important use of my time.  *facepalm*

I’m not counting IMing or texting with friends in this “not reading” category, because that’s communicating with real live people who happen to be on the internet instead of a phone or in person.  Also, writing is not reading.  Duh.

In case you’re wondering, I’ve started doing The Artists Way, by Julia Cameron, and I’m up to Week Four, which mandates Reading Deprivation.  Since I haven’t been blogging much, this seems like a good time to resume.  I’m not allowed to read the internet, but I can still talk to it, right?

Fortunately, this only lasts a week.  I can make it.

I’m making a vest

This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series Noro Vest

Ok, so trying to follow a pattern is too hard*.  First, finding the right yarn to end up with the fabric that matches the pattern is difficult.  Texture, color, weight… there’s a ton of variety in yarn, and patterns are written based on one specific combination of texture and weight.  Second, taking a lovely pattern and then identifying all the ways I want to customize it so that it looks the way I want it to look… it’s a lot of preparation**.

What’s plan B?  Find a yarn I like, and then figure out how to make it into an object of clothing I would want to wear.  On a whim I bought three skeins of this Noro Aya yarn during a sale at my LYS.  I didn’t know what to make out of it, but maybe a vest or something.

Noro Aya yarn
Noro Aya yarn

Continue reading I’m making a vest

Getting my Android to sync podcasts like an iPhone does

The situation:

I listen to a lot of podcasts.  I like to keep up with all of the episodes, not just the most recent one, and I like to be in control of exactly what plays and in what order.  (So stitcher is out.)  In my iPhone (and before that, iPod) days, I used iTunes to create Smart Playlists for the different categories of podcast I want to listen to.  E.g. all NPR podcasts go in one playlist, all short story podcasts go in another.  I define them like this:

iTunes Smart Playlist showing MediaKind = Podcast, Plays = 0, and Any of the Following: Album contains NPR, Album contains PRI, Album contains WNYC. Limit to 25 items selected by Least Recently Added, Live updating.
my smart playlist in iTunes

See, it only lists podcasts, that haven’t been played, with certain names.  So if I’m in the mood for NPR, I start at the beginning of my NPR playlist.  As I play each podcast, either in iTunes or an iPod-like device, its play-count is incremented, and it no longer appears in its playlist.  The next time I sync the device with iTunes, it deletes played podcasts and loads on new unplayed ones.

The problem:

I switched from iPhone to an Android (Motorola Droid X), and didn’t want to have to carry several devices in my purse.  I wanted my Android to be a one-stop-shop just like the iPhone was, which meant it needed to sync podcasts.

Continue reading Getting my Android to sync podcasts like an iPhone does

Modifying the query used by The Loop in Thesis, to use Custom Post Types

Let’s say you use WordPress, and Thesis, and you decided you wanted to add a custom post type (new with WP 3.0!), for whatever reason.  Maybe you just wanted a way to differentiate book reviews from other blog posts, with a custom taxonomy called Authors* and no Categories, because they don’t make sense.

You might do a web search and find these helpful links about how to make the Thesis meta boxes appear in the custom post type’s edit page.  That’s awesome!  But really, I want those posts to show up on my home page and in my RSS feed.  I couldn’t find it documented anywhere.  There are lots of examples of how to narrow down query results in order to show only some of the normal post-type posts, but not on how to add posts that aren’t showing up in the default search.  It turns out it’s actually pretty easy.

So, here’s what you do!
Continue reading Modifying the query used by The Loop in Thesis, to use Custom Post Types