http://lyspeth.com/blog the heroine of a mostly-unwritten story Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:04:44 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I hate them. Why does everyone talking about them on the internet seem to love them, except one guy who twittered that he hates them? Oh, and someone who thinks the “older version” solves it. No it doesn’t; the older version doesn’t have chat! Dear Google, Please give me back my old Gmail ... http://lyspeth.com/blog/2008/11/20/why-does-everyone-love-gmail-themes/ One of my favorite things about not having a car is that it reminds me to think of my journeys as part of the fun of my trips. Journeys take more of my time than they do of most people’s, so if I don’t enjoy them and look for ways ... http://lyspeth.com/blog/2008/11/17/the-journey-is-part-of-the-fun/ I was introduced to Pandora the other day. It’s pretty cool. I’m not great at discovering music, so I like that aspect. And it’s fascinating to see how the classification performs. I started it with Eddie from Ohio, of course. After a while, it worked its way around to Carbon ... http://lyspeth.com/blog/2008/11/15/late-night-thoughts-musical-mostly/ I seem to have been overcome by winter lethargy lately. Not severely so, but enough that I’ve noticed my demotivation. It’s funny because I am not a fan of the concept that winter is not ‘cycling season’, but I really just don’t feel like riding in the cold and rain ... http://lyspeth.com/blog/2008/11/11/winter-lethargy/ Language Log likes to talk about snowclones. In fact, they popularized the term “snowclone” (though they did not coin it, as you can see by the entry). Here’s one I don’t think they’ve looked at, even though they have used it, which has an intriguing distribution: You are in a maze of ... http://lyspeth.com/blog/2008/11/06/snowclone-a-maze-of-twisty-little-x-all-alike/ This is my personal blog, not a topical blog, but I find myself unable to say anything terribly original or interesting about the election per se. Like many Californians, I am thrilled by Obama’s election, and terribly disappointed that it looks like Prop 8 may pass. However! They have not ... http://lyspeth.com/blog/2008/11/05/election-2008-two-linguistic-moments/ It was raining like crazy all day yesterday. I had agreed to go to a party in the evening, so I decided, in the spirit of adventure, to find out whether my bike raingear was up to the task of keeping me relatively dry and comfortable on a 9.6 mile ... http://lyspeth.com/blog/2008/11/02/wet-ride/ I learned just now that Tony Hillerman, New Mexico mystery author and a former neighbor of my family, died on Sunday at 83. (We moved — I think the Hillerman family still lives in the house that we used to live next door to.) My parents really like his books. I ... http://lyspeth.com/blog/2008/10/27/tony-hillerman/ Test post from my phone. My phone also plays my music now. I feel so 21st century. Added later: Regrettably, it looks like it’s much harder to add pictures to the blog directly from the phone. One needs a plugin, and I have had very little success adding plugins to my WP ... http://lyspeth.com/blog/2008/10/25/test-post-from-my-phone/ Today was my first recreational ride since Waves to Wine. It ended up well, but I had a really hard time finding my legs for the first 10-12 miles. I finally found them somewhere on Cañada, when I noticed I was chatting and pedaling on auto-pilot, and felt better than ... http://lyspeth.com/blog/2008/10/19/back-on-bike-crystal-springs-caada-portola/