I now have sadness. :(

I have to add several new subscriptions to my feed reader now. And why is this? This is for the sad, sad reason that my current favorite blog, the one from which I look forward to updates more than any other, Elastic Waist, is ceasing to be. Today is its very last day, and all of its contributors are posting their goodbyes.

Thankfully, they're also posting their personal blog links, and links to their other projects. And so to help out my fellow stalkers of awesome people, here's a quick list of where these awesome gals can be found from now on.

Weetabix - outspoken champion for positive body image

♥ Personal blog: That's My Bix

♥ Collaborative blogs: Product Anarchy, Dearest Mabel, Big Fat Deal, Forkful of News

Kim - Champion for health and fitness and bringer of the funny

♥ Personal blog: The Kim Challenge

♥ Collaborative blog: Forkful of News

Anne - Sassy champion for loving yourself just as you are, because you are loveable

♥ Personal Blog: Jen Larsn (Dot Net)

♥ Collaborative blogs: Dearest Mabel, Big Fat Deal

As sad as I am to see EW come to an end, I'm also thankful and relieved that these amazing women will still be around, writing with as much honesty and poignancy and hilarity that they brought to EW. They'll probably never read this, but in case they do: Thank you, ladies, for making the last couple of years brighter, and good luck in all your future endeavors.

Updateyness

I got busy last Friday and forgot to blog my new homepage at JMBauhaus.com. Content hasn't changed--it's still just a portal to my schizoid online personalities--but it's got a new design that I made all by myself, from scratch! It took forever to remember how to do some of this stuff, and I had to cheat and peek at other web sites' source code to see how some things were done. Oh, and I didn't design the background image myself; that came from a free blog banners site. So I guess I did have some help. Still, I'm mighty proud of how it turned out. In Firefox, at least. In IE, not so much, but even so: pretty!

My next project: this here blog. I bet you can't wait.

Also, I created a home for The Hero Factor on Livejournal, where I've decided to go ahead and post it in installments as I do the next draft (I still have to finish the first draft, though, so it'll be a little while yet). It'll be subscribers only, so if you don't have a Livejournal account or an Open ID, or don't want to get one, or do and just don't want to "friend" my novel, then you'll just have to wait for the eventual podcast version. I'm sure you're seething with bitter disappointment.

UPDATE: Sometimes it's a good idea to look back at what you posted last week before writing a new post. /UPDATE

Two sentences in this post are sarcasm. Can you guess which two?

In creative news that had absolutely nothing to do with me, my nephew and his wife's latest collaboration arrived safely into the world early this past Saturday morning, and she is a work of beauty. And adorableness.

Oh, and by the by, my little sister has a blog. Go say hi!

My first LOLcat

Starring Miss Sasha.


moar funny pictures

Feeding my style addictions

I've found a new time-wasting addiction: Stylefeeder. It's basically social window shopping. You rate what you like, it compiles recommendations, you can add or reject them, or get linked to the proper site to purchase them... it sounds an awful lot like Amazon as I'm writing this, actually. But it goes further with the Web 2.0 social networking aspect, allowing comments and tagging, burning feeds of your selections and widgets for your blog/myspace/facebook/LJ/whatever (see mine over there on the sidebar). And, the part I'm having the most fun with/trouble tearing myself away from, it matches you to your "style twins", users who have similar tastes to your own whose own personal styles you can plunder and copy to your heart's content.

Of course, my whole list is pretty much a fantasy wish list, what with the fact that I can't even afford to hit up the local thrift shop right now. Which is probably why I'm finding this so entertaining. All the pretty clothes! All the things I would totally wear, or sit on, or read, et cetera, if I could afford them/they came in my size, but in this case it doesn't matter. I can show off my keen fashion sense without spending a dime. It's making me feel girly and fashionable, and I like it.

This & that

It's a sad day for science fiction, y'all: Arthur C. Clarke has died.

I have a raging girlcrush right now on Elastic Waist. Sadly, I'm going to have to unsubscribe from the feed, because I think it's largely responsible for the productivity sinkhole I've fallen into this week.

I just found out there's a Japanese hot pot restaurant right here in Tulsa. We have to go there as soon as possible. Yes, HAVE to.

Speaking of Japanophilia, I've become addicted to Perfume. Thanks, Doug!

I really want a "day of beauty" for my birthday. Well, a day of budget beauty. Which pretty much means getting my hair trimmed into a decent shape, enjoying half an hour in a pedicure chair, and fifty dollars with which to go nuts at DejaVu. Such a day would be lovely. Such a day will probably not happen.

Time vortexes (vorteces?), near-death experiences, and lovely knits

Wow. Where did the day go? I'm not one to complain about work going by quickly, but I haven't actually done any work today, and now I'm about out of time, and it feels like I just got here and what happened? I think I might have fallen through a time portal. Or maybe it was a productivity black hole. Yeah, that last one's more likely.

I can tell you where part of my time went: I spent probably an hour replying to text messages from my nephew and husband, who both decided they had IMPORTANT THINGS to tell me RIGHT NOW OMG, at the same time. Of course, I'm always too polite (read: wuss) to either ignore their texts or tell them that I have work to do. And so I end up having an hour-long schizoid conversation about Myspace and car repairs and Battlestar Galactica and saving receipts. ...I'd make a joke about Nephew's definition of urgent compared to Husband's, but mine tends to line up with the former's, so I really can't say anything there. What's more, he's watching the DVDs for the first time and he's halfway through Season 2 and I really can't blame him for needing to talk about it immediately. Because "Pegasus" is like whoa. So I completely understand.

Speaking of timesucks, I finally caved to pressure and created a Myspace account, but only so I could access Nephew's and Neice-in-law's profiles and read their blogs. I threw my Etsy shop widget up on my blog page over there, but that's about all I plan to do with it for the time being. I reserve the right, of course, to change my mind and go to town on my profile settings in the future.

And speaking of Etsy, while I was at Wal-Mart during lunch waiting for my windshield wiper blades to get replaced (side note: do you know what's scary? Having your windshield wipers crap out on you as you're driving to work pre-dawn in a downpour. That's what's scary), I finally picked up all of the notions I need to finish the purse I whipped up the minute I learned about slip-stitch knitting. Okay, maybe not the minute. But I love that stitch pattern and I want to learn more. As for the purse, I haven't decided yet whether it's going in the shop or on my arm. Maybe both. I'm still rocking the Lucy bag I made last year (I washed it the other day and it shrunk and now it's even cuter), so I think maybe it's time for a change.

And now that I've managed to fall even deeper into the vortex of slack, I'd better start trying to claw my way out of it lest I become trapped and frozen in time. Or something.

Quickly, before I have to race the sleet and snow home

Links of interest on this dreary Monday morning:

This is quite possibly the neatest web design in the history of web designs.

This free online Tales of the Slayer comic by Drew Goddard is pretty funny. Lo, the spider-eating man-bitch returneth.

Elsewhere in the galaxy of Buffy alumni, Amber Benson directed a Common Rotation video.

Giving away books online seems to be all the rage these days: Go and read Neil Gaiman's American Gods for free.



In Which I Rant About This Year's "Best Picture"

We used my Friday off to finally see No Country for Old Men. The consensus between me, Husband, and Husband's friend: Eh? It felt like two different movies mashed together. One was a quiet little introspective film about growing old while the world changes around you and you feel helpless to stop it, and in the middle of this somebody plopped the first two-thirds of a really kick-ass action/thriller. We loved the action/thriller part--and Javier Bardem definitely earned that Oscar. That guy was CREE. PEE.--that got us all worked up and invested in Josh Brolin's character and his plight, only to have it end abruptly, any resolution having happened off-screen and returning to the introspective old man movie, which also ended abruptly, and pretty much left the three of us sitting there going, "What the eff was that?" That said, the acting, cinematography, dialogue, etc. were all excellent. But I have many, many issues with the story structure and pacing, and I feel like the intent was to play around with story structure in unexpected ways for the sake of ART, at the audience's expense, and really, I can't stand that crap. I want a resolution to my story. What's more, I want a resolution to the story I spent almost two hours getting really invested in. I want characters that exist for more than the sake of getting killed in shocking and violent ways. I don't want to be jerked around and left feeling like I just had my lunch money stolen. Boo, Cohen brothers. Boo.

Have you voted yet?

Sponsored post alert!

It's time for the first annual Blogger's Choice Awards! PayPerPost is sponsoring these blog awards, in which bloggers get to vote for the best among them (and nominate themselves to gain a little publicity, while they're at it). Awards will be given out in categories, which include fun titles such as "Hottest Mommy Blogger," "Hottest Daddy Blogger," and "Most Obnoxious Blogger," as well as standards such as "Best Business Blogger," "Best Entertainment Blogger" and "Best Celebrity Blogger," in which it pains me to see that Ross the Intern and Rosie O'Donnell are beating out both Neil Gaiman and Wil Wheaton for the top spot. That's just wrong, people.

Also sorely lacking is some Whedonverse love, which I just corrected by nominating Whedonesque, JaneEspenson.com, and Nathan Fillion's Myspace blog. If you want to tip the scales in their favor, then head on over to sign up and vote. You have to register with the awards site to cast your vote(s), but you do NOT have to be a registered PayPerPost member. Can you think of any blogs that deserve to win? You can also sign up to nominate your favorites. Heck, while you're at it nominate yourself! There's plenty of bloggy love to go around.

Winners will be announced at the first annual PayPerPost PostieCon, June 2nd in Orlando, Florida. You have until midnight on May 22nd to make your nominations and cast your votes.

(And yes, you can vote more than once.)

Big Web Links

This post brought to you by .

Relying on search engines and web directories to promote and drive traffic to your site can be a tricky business. Often you have no control over where your site will rank in the search listing, as even paid listings are either robot generated or subject to variables such as user votes and number of backlinks. Big Web Links is a new directory that takes the guesswork out of ranking your listing by allowing you to bid for placement. You decide how much exposure you're willing to pay for, you place your bid, and listings are ranked according to bid amounts. If you want your site listed on the front page and it gets bumped, simply add more to your bid to bump it back up. Obviously, this requires a monetary investment to promote your site; but if you're running a commercial web site, or a blog that draws in revenue, this is definitely worth checking out.

Be a stand-out start-up

Ad alert!

Promoting an online business can be tricky, especially for work-at-home entrepreneurs and small start-ups. With countless competitors, it's often difficult to make your web site stand out. Even if you manage to come up with a totally original concept, before you know it there will be loads of imitators competing for your traffic. World Market Systems can help by providing the tools and resources you need to create the professional image that will help your web site stand out from the crowd. Their advice is born out of 5 years of market research and experience, following web trends and knowing how to keep up with an ever-changing environment. They have some good articles on promotion and where you should focus to get the most bang for your advertising buck.

He'p me!

I'm no longer satisfied with my blog's current design, and it's about due for a seasonal update anyway. I'm also sick to death of Blogger's pre-packaged templates, so I spent some time this afternoon shopping around for other Blogger-compatible templates elsewhere (man, I remember when I used to be capable of designing this stuff myself, back before Interweb design went and changed without telling me. 'Course, that was also back when I still had a working computer with, like, Photoshop and a good code editor and stuff. Those were the days...), and now I'm torn between this one and this one. Help me choose!

There are, by the by, plenty more awesome free Blogger templates where those came from.

I'm picking up some Quizno's for dinner tonight, as I did last night, Lord help my jeans size. Matt never had any Quizno's before yesterday, when he suddenly decided he could let that situation stand no longer. Now I think he's determined to eat one of every sandwich on their menu before the weekend is over.

I'm about to head out and row my car home (by way of Quizno's, natch) through the storm. Pray for me that a gustnado doesn't jump out of the sky on top of me before I get there.

Happy Friday, everybody. It's the weekend. Enjoy it.

MyGeekSpace

Ad alert!

I just signed up to Sci-Edge, a new social networking site in the vein of MySpace for science, technology, and science fiction geeks. I haven't done anything with my page yet, but if you go sign up there, be sure to friend me. I never did get around to creating a MySpace page, so maybe this will make up for that. This looks like it's more for my kind of people, anyway.

Of course the greedy cash-mongering blogger in me is excited about their paid blogging and affiliate program, wherein they will pay you for blogging about pretty much anything you can tie in to science, technology or science fiction (you can even branch out to fantasy and horror), so long as you can link it back to their products. Having yet another potential writing/blogging income stream at my disposal is peachy-keen by me.

It's a start...

Here's a screen shot of the new site so far. I like it. It's clean and simple.

Digging through Blogger templates to find the right code to change to get the look I want is tedious, tedious work. And the New Blogger doesn't work outside of blogspot, so I have no choice but to do it all the tedious way. And no new Blogger means no handy organizing labels. But even so, I think I'm gonna like my new home.

I was delighted to learn, once I finally signed up and got logged into my ADDR account, that they've upgraded since the last time I was there and have added just the online file editing and uploading thingy that I was shopping around for. So that's definitely going to come in handy if I decide I don't want every single one of my web pages to be blog-based, and I don't.

It'll take a while to get all of the elements in place, but I think I've got a good foundation here.

Stuff & Randomness

I love it when the engineers ask me to show them how to do something instead of just asking me to do it for them. Teaching a man to fish, and all that.

~~~

I'm currently shopping for a web host. I had one all picked out, but after I went through the signup process and was ready to submit my payment, only then did they reveal that instead of billing me the advertized monthly fee in actual monthly installments, they wanted two years' worth of fees in one lump sum up front, which...no.

After looking around at several hosting options and only finding a couple that don't do this, I think I've made up my mind to just go back to my old host. I was always pretty happy with them, and after some comparison shopping I don't think I'm going to find a better deal for a host that both meets my current needs and provides plenty of room for growth. I was hoping to find something with an easy page building interface and/or a web based FTP file manager thingy, since until I have a home office again (which won't happen until I have a home in which to set up such an office), I'm looking at building and maintaining the thing on my lunch hours and downtime, and that prohibits installing any new design tools or FTP programs. But then I remembered that I'm probably just going to keep using Blogger to make all of my pages anyway, so that point is moot for now. My old host it is, then.

~~~

Did I mention that the mandatory lunchtime meeting scheduled for yesterday got postponed? Well, it did, so I went to the gym to work off some hormone- and husband-related stress. I got there and discovered I forgot to pack gym socks, and neither was I wearing any. I was too afraid of getting blisters if I did anything aerobic, so instead, for the first time since the day before my wedding, I did the entire Pilates workout routine, or at least as much as I could remember, from my Crunch! Pick Your Spot Pilates DVD. People, I is sore! I woke up this morning to find that I'm one giant walking shuffling ball of ache. Owch.

~~~

Lastly, here's a link I pilfered from Boing Boing to a video about how far the web has come in pretty much the time that I've been using it. It's pretty neat, and it tells me that I definitely need to go back and get schooled all over again in web design, because all of my self-taught know-how is strictly Web 1.0.