Geeky Cat Miusings

If you are going to a party and don’t know what to talk about, try some of last night’s topics: alcoholism (apparently one is a novice if one has 3 drinks per day); using matches to cover up smelly farts and creating blue angels; the advent of the beltless pad; the rise and fall and the rise again of the menstrual rag; the rise and fall of smoking chic on a global scale; the superiority of the Italian lifestyle (based on wine consumption); how parents are clueless as to what is really going on in boarding school; relationships and what makes people right for one another and what makes some run away screaming; and how to write BOOBLESS on your calculator (it doesn’t work so well on my Windows calculator).

I think there were more interesting topics but I need a calming cup of catnip right now. We’ll chat later >^..^<

I recently had to deal with a multitude of new passwords: to my hosting service, for ftping to my host, to my database, to my blog, to my photo gallery, to some forums, etc. Keeping track of all these passwords is problematic and vexing. Wordpress provides a system generated password for the administrator when installed, one that is not easy to remember but also difficult for a hacker to guess. I could not remember the password so I wrote it down but I thought it would be better if I created a new, more personal password, but still following a set of rules for creating a good password: mixing upper and lower alphabets with numbers and special characters, and not using dictionary words. I don’t like to have one password for everything because I think that is a security risk; for one thing not all sites use encryption. Also, work policy requires users to change their password every 45 days. So later I try to login to my blog and could not because of invalid password. I tried all my passwords, none worked. I tried the reset password link. It did not work. Obviously I was able to correct the situation. How? I logged in to the database and entered a sql statement to reset the password. It worked.

And so I continue with my sleepless nights, reciting passwords to comit them to memory.

Managing passwords: number of furballs - 2

New Mexico is getting innovative in its efforts to keep drunks from getting behind the wheel. They are putting devices in the urinals that detect when someone is in front of it the talking urinal-deodorizer cakes says in a flirty voice “Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks? Think you had one too many? Then it’s time to call a cab or call a sobre friend for a ride home.” Drunk people don’t seem think they had one too many so I don’t know if they would listen. But maybe the flirty voice can also say, “please wash your hands big boy and you might get lucky”, since few wash their hands, and by not scrubbing down those paws, are spreading their germs to innocent victims.

I am not brave enough to go out into the bitter cold - maybe I will pitch a tent at work and stay here until spring comes. Kitty does not like the cold. If you care about kitty, please send some care packages♥

Today I found another example of the usefulness of blog searches and the role they play. I found a blog written by a science librarian at the Steacie Science & Engineering Library, York University, about the Web 2.0, eLearning, and Open Source held at Seneca College. The writer asked if anyone knew who the third presenter was, to please send along the information (which I did) since the agenda only indicated 2 presenters. The blogger now knows who the speaker is and the presenter is receiving proper acknowledgement. We can fill in each other’s gaps in information with the use of these tools.

I can see FSOSS is planned for October 25-26th 2007 here is the site http://fsoss.senecac.on.ca/2007/

Resolving why bullets don’t display in IE for a blog entry made in a WordPress was quite easy - it boils down to the stylesheet on a Kubrick themed site. I decided to make the unordered bullets circle. Download the stylesheet found within your blog folder/wp-content/themes/default/style.css and edit the list-style: none entry. Replace none with circle or whatever style you want your unordered list to be such as:

html>body .entry ul {
margin-left: 0px;
padding: 0 0 0 30px;
list-style: circle;
padding-left: 10px;
text-indent: -10px;
}

Delete the following lines which uses a special character for the bullet

.entry ul li:before, #sidebar ul ul li:before {
content: “\00BB \0020″;
}

Save and upload the stylesheet to the same folder, and purrr contentedly away.

Some of my blog readers told me that they don’t know how to search for blogs and this is the purr-fect time for me to inform my dear readers. There are many search services out there and you may want to select one according to your needs because there is not any one service that has all features, and I don’t understand why not. Please don’t tell me to make my own blog search tool (you know who you are). They all have search by keywords (or else what is the point) but some are strangely lacking in the ability to search by boolean expression, a feature I think that is essential for any search on the net. Here are two of my favourite blog search tools and some of their features:

Google Blog Search

• search by boolean expression
• search by words in title
• restricts to author (I haven’t been able to figure out how to add my author name to my blog)
• restricts to date range
• sorts results by date

Technorati

• searches by category and tags
• searches who links to URL, so you can see what people are saying about a website (nobody is talking about my website yet)
• searches by boolean expression
• searches by words in title
• restricts to date range
• sorts results by date
• adult content filter

Some other blog search services are worth looking at, such as IceRocket and Sphere. Some, like Feedster, have advanced search features but not in a handy form page that guides you - instead you need to know the search syntax which can be daunting and time consuming. The choice is yours, research a few and see what you can find out. It was interesting for me to blog search for “Food for the Mood” since it lead me to the blog of another girl who attended the same event, on the same night, at the ROM. I read her notes and got to know her impression of the night. While our physical paths came close but did not quite cross that night, our virtual paths have intertwined. Cool.

I don’t know why my bullets are not showing up in IE, any ideas?

Just when I start to feel like my big and heavy winter clothes are weighing me down so that my knuckles are scraping the icy pavement, I am informed that stormy weather will dump 20cm of snow on us tomorrow. I think Wiarton Willy owes me more than a pair of shoes.

During the dreary winter months when it is cold and grey outside, the body and mind needs a lift. Many of us crave carbohydrates as a subconscious attempt to raise serotonin levels, a brain chemical that is responsible for our mood. I consider pasta a comfort food and love to add a hand full of pasta to my soups. I like to use a chunkier style pasta, such as elbow shells, to satisfy my carbohydrate craving since it gives me something to dig my teeth into. I often substitute the star pasta with a chunky pasta in my favourite recipe, Moroccan Chickpea and Stars soup (see below), a soup that lifts my spirit, warms and nourishes my body, and can be quickly made in 30 minutes.

It would take too long to describe all the health benefits of this wonderful soup so I will include just a few here to stimulate your interest. The beans and lentils in the soup contain vitamin b5, vitamin c, folic acid and zinc which are essential for the brain to make serotonin. The ginger has many health benefits including increasing circulation, particularly in the hands and feet, and thereby warming the body, it also increases metabolic rate, and it can aid in digestion. Onions fight infections, breathing problems, aid the cardiovascular system, and prevent cancer. Tomatoes also help fight cancer, heart disease, and cataracts. All the ingredients in this soup are healthy and they come together to make the dish very tasty so I hope you will try this recipe from Fresh at Home, a collection of popular recipes from a wonderful group of restaurants in Toronto called Fresh.

Moroccan Chickpea and Stars soup

2 tbsp olive oil

2 onions, diced

3 tbsp minced fresh ginger

2 cloves garlic, minced

Pinch ground cinnamon

Pinch allspice

Pinch ground coriander

Pinch ground cardamom

Pinch turmeric

Pinch cayenne pepper

1 tomato, chopped

1/2 cup red lentils

8 cups vegetable stock or water

1 cup cooked or canned chickpeas

1 cup white kidney beans, cooked or canned

1/2 cup pasta shapes

1 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

1 tbsp lemon juice

1. Heat oil in a pot over medium heat.
2. Stir in onions, ginger and garlic. Cook for 5 minutes or until onions are softened.
3. Add cinnamon, allspice, coriander, cardamom, turmeric and cayenne pepper; cook for 2 minutes.
4. Stir in tomato, lentils and stock. Cook for 15 minutes or until lentils are softened.
5. Add chickpeas, beans and pasta. Cook until pasta is done, about 5 minutes.
6. Remove from heat. Stir in salt, black pepper and lemon juice. Serve.

Serves 4 to 6

The discussion about chocolate at the ROM yesterday was very engaging and interesting, thanks to the excellent speakers. I learned that the melting point of chocolate is 36°C which is just below human body temperature and therefore it melts in the mouth. If you let it melt slowly in your mouth you can notice the cool feeling on your tongue - since chocolate that is melting is using heat from your body to melt. I have always thought that chocolate has miraculous properties and apparently other people agree with me since they have named the chocolate plant Theobramba cacao, which means “Food of the Gods.”

If you are trying to kick a chocolate addiction, this may help: I have heard reports that the average chocolate bar has 8 insect legs in it. If you are happy about your chocolate consumption, as I am, you can just discard that fact and remember that the phenyethylene and anandamide contained in chocolate have anti-depressant properties. High levels of phenylethylamine, a neurotrasmitter, help create feelings of attraction, excitement, and giddiness. Eating chocolate also stimulates the release of endorphins, hormones that generate a feeling of pleasure and well-being. Chocolate also contains tryptophan, a chemical that the brain uses to make serotonin. High levels of serotonin produces feeling of elation. From what I understand, the levels of tryptophan in chocolate are a lot lower than other foods.

So if you see me looking happy, like a cat who just caught a mouse, you may know what my secret is.