Messing around in Photoshop

Sometimes I love what you can create accidentally. This is the desaturated, contrasted, selectively cutted snowy twig from winter in Wigan in 2006.

Reasons a slime mold will likely not kill me.

Single-celled slime molds demonstrate the ability to memorize and anticipate repeated events, a team of Japanese researchers reported in January. The study [pdf] clearly shows “a primitive version of brain function” in an organism with no brain at all.

Slime Molds Show Surprising Degree of Intelligence

Just think about that for a minute. And then reflect on our assumptions about how humans manipulate and control our environment. And then think back to the fact that SLIME MOLDS CAN LEARN. Due to my ever increasing anxiety about well, everything, my coworkers bullied me in to creating a rating scale. A threat assessment, if you will, of every day objects and their likelihood of killing me if they had the opportunity.

Slime molds, in their relationship to everything else on the list, had a fairly low threat assessment. For a slime mold to be able to kill me I'd have to be:

1. Close to a slime mold
2. Virtually incapacitated or the slime mold would have to be very large
3. In an environment where the learning ones were learning things that humans wanted them to learn.

So while the initial shock of discovering a brainless organism has the capacity to learn and adapt its behavior, it's a very slim possibility it will jump out and destroy me. Thank goodness. Just remind me to stay the hell out of the Olympic national forest.

Bone eating snot flowers are a different story.

Ways I'm unlikely to die

The old horror movie cliche, woman brushes teeth/takes pills/puts on deoderant/grabs moisturizer and opens the medicine cabinet. When she looks up the ghost/serial killer/stalker/slasher/monster is standing behind her ready to pounce. And since this was embedded in my brain as a potential way to be killed, I've feared medicine cabinets.

But that was before I tested the probability of seeing a sinister face behind me after I finished moisturizing. I got curious, and with the help of my husband, my fears were tested.

First, here are our schematics. It's important to note that the probability of being killed by a murdersome creature in your bathroom is directly related to the room's size. In short, the larger the bathroom, the more likely the serial killer will have somewhere to hide. It's better to have a smaller bathroom to prevent medicine cabinet appearing murder.




First test: Brushing teeth and sneaking in from the hallway
Sometimes the killer approaches from the outside and comes in during a break in bathroom activities. Usually the victim's eyes are closed, or she's looking down or otherwise unaware of her environment. He sneaks in behind, she looks up and there he is ready to pounce. We discovered a couple things wrong with this scenario.

1. You're unlikely to look down for long enough to allow a human or otherwise corporeal monster to get in unnoticed. Looking down while spitting, closing eyes for eyeshadow or looking down to wash hands all take 30 seconds or less. The killer would have to cross the room and without the victim running in to them or otherwise noticing.

2. Noise. Tiled bathrooms in particular are great for acoustics. To sneak across a room in 30 seconds without the victim knowing would require an intimate knowledge of the surroundings. I couldn't manage to avoid creaking floor boards in the house I grew up in. A killer new to the surroundings would alert the victim.



Conclusion: Human or bi-pedal alien will screw this up. Ghosts and demons are still a threat. However, close the door when you're doing anything in the bathroom.

Second Test: From the shower

There's really only one place to hide in our bathroom that a killing machine would be interested in. And that's the shower. Home invasion by homicidal maniacs did not occur to me when we purchased our shower curtain, so it's an obfuscate friendly black. During this test I used a little bit of mouthwash, rinsed and then saw my husband trying to strangle me when I closed the cabinet. And I didn't notice There are problems, this is unlikely to work if the bathtub is wet and you don't have one of those little traction mats. You're safest if you've just showered and the killer is not waiting in the bathroom as you get out. I recommend leaving the shower curtain open when you're done cleaning up.

Conclusion: If the serial killer is thinking about logistics, this way works much better. It is dependant on the proximity of shower to sink and whether the shower has a door or a curtain. It might be time for us to remodel. It doesn't matter that we're renting.



Since performing these tests, I am less afraid of my medicine cabinet. So there we have success. I do really dislike my shower curtain. A special note, ghosts can get around all of these limitations.

That's So Raven: Pin Pals Recap

That's so Raven: Pin Pals (2006.)

Raven has a vision about saving Donna Kabonna's designs at a showing in San Francisco the same night as a bowling tournament she's obligated to attend. Because Donna Kabonna is so cool that she doesn't exhibit at Paris or London fashion week, she shows her designs with "Eqyptian" stuff in what appears to be a Mariott conference room. Raven, being Raven, decides her friends suck and fashion is more important and has to relearn lessons of friendship. Which she does pretty much every week. Raven successfully infiltrates the party by dressing herself up in toilet paper as a mummy to join up with the performers. Has anyone tried this? Does this ever work outside of television? All is broken wide open when it's shown that Raven cannot dance. And not just because she's covered in conference hotel 1 ply.

After hijinks ensue and it turns out Donna Kar--- I mean Donna Kabonna has the worst security ever, the day is saved when her friends turn up to flaunt their bowling trophies at Raven. The fashion crowd hated the Egyptian themed thing, but like the bowling shirts Raven designed so all is saved. No doubt because of irony. Egypt is too old to be ironic, but bowling shirts are being revived? I don't know. Bowling shirts were ironic when I was 20.

It could be Raven's need for attention from an older female is directly related to her mother running off to do an International Law degree in England, leaving her with just Rondell Sheridan as a parent figure. The college is never mentioned so it might be UMIST. I don't know.

This is one of the not great episodes. Down to Saved By the Bell levels of complete fantasy for how the world works. Legions of children grew up thinking you could crash fashion shows with some toilet paper and nerdy friends thanks to Pin Pals. When in reality you need to weigh 96 pounds, have a Blackberry and be unable to walk in your shoes. And even then you'll probably stand outside and have your view blocked by some fashion blogger's hat.

And then there's this problem:

Would you let this man parent your children? I don't think so.



I feel kind of bad for him. I remember when he was a legitimate stand up comedian.

Disappearing folder in Windows XP64 bit

It's been weird Microsoft problems week. We're in the process of migrating data from a 2003 file server to 2008. Then we discovered some problems, but only users with XP 64bit. Folders were vanishing! And no one was deleting them. They'd try to re-copy them, only to discover that the folders were still there. And this was not happening to their colleagues using Windows XP or Windows 7.

After some testing it's worth mentioning we had some corruption on the previous file server. A power outage prompted checkdisk to run and we let it. But when checkdisk completed we found a lot of files and folders were missing permission and file ownership data. We replaced these manually but the deeper the folder structure, the less likely inheritance had been applied all through the subdirectories.

Our theory is 2008 and XP 64 read the file and folder data differently than 2003 and XP 32 and these rather large directories exhibiting the symptoms all have some missing or corrupt low level file records.

But, here's the fix:

1. Copy the files and folders to another location.

2. Create the directory structure with different folder names. This prevents explorer from caching views for known directory structures. (You can see this in play when you rename the folders after step 4. Explorer will revert to whatever folder view the user had set when they could see the files and folders after the rename.)
3. Copy the contents of the directory to the new folders. For example:

Users want \\fileserver\Users\FolderA\FolderB. Folder B keeps disappearing in Explorer. FolderA has file1, file2, file3. Create a new folder called FolderC and copy file1, file2, file3. Create a folder under FolderA called FolderD. Copy the contents of FolderB to FolderD.

4. Delete FolderA. Rename Folder C and Folder D to A and B. You're done.

Doing this fixed the issue on all of our 64bit clients. And if anyone has an explanation, I'd be more than happy to hear it!

Things I like link round up

1. Every UK #1 single since 1952 reviewed
From the Housemartins, Caravan of Love

To do this, the band make one small but important change to the song – instead of “the world in which we were born” they sing “the place in which we were born, so neglected and torn apart”. And that, of course, means England, and in the context of 1986 it turns the line into an attack not on sin but on Thatcherism. And that in turn puts a different spin on “Caravan”’s calls for unity and fraternity.

2. Jezebel's coverage of Alexander McQueen

There was often an element of danger in McQueen's garments — a dark, Gothic quality that could sometimes go over the top. But I would often visit the McQueen store on 14th street, and always found that up close, these were clothes that were expertly designed, impeccably tailored, with hidden details — skull buttons, interesting linings — demonstrating that he committed to his vision, down to the very last thread.

3. GaGa being GaGa

Microsoft Licensing Woes

Like many organizations, my current employer uses the eOpen Microsoft site to manage, download and administer our software solutions. And again like many others, including our reseller, we've been completely mystified by missing licenses and weird counts that don't appear to make any sense.

A quick call to the Volume Licensing Center helpline told us why. Previously Microsoft would send you an e-mail and instruct you on associating a Live ID with your purchased licenses. This Windows Live ID could be different than the business e-mail address associated with the license purchase.

For example: user1@company.com purchases a license for Entourage. They follow the link in the Volume Licensing Center e-mail and associate companycontact@company.com as the license administrator.

That's no longer the case. Now if you are listed as the business e-mail address, you are also the license administrator. This is also retroactive.

Now instead of being able to associate a different Live ID under the eOpen license center, it's automatically added under your e-mail address.

For example: user1@company.com purchases a SQL 2008 Developer license. Regardless of whether that user has a Windows Live ID, or if that ID is associated with a eOpen account, user1@company.com is the license administrator forever. And the license that user1@company.com purchased and associated with companycontact@companycontact.com is now associated with user1@company.com.

Clear as mud right?

So if you're in the situation that we are, where there are several license administrators associated with different licenses and you want companycontact@company.com to manage them all, you must add them as a user on the Microsoft Volume Licensing site.

Now is a good time to post this link, I think.

Manchester's Cold Case

Manchester, to look at it now, is a thriving city of shopping centers and industry. The 1996 bomb site is now a clean and hospitable shopping center with all the big high street names. You can sit in Exchange Square during the day with little fear of being pick pocketed or attacked.

The Manchester of the 19th century was a different place. One that inspired Marx and Engles to write about economic equality for all. The people of the city lived in squalor, in dingy crowded little rooms. Disease ran rampant through them, killing them slowly and spreading to the next. And like their lives, invisible to the mill and factory owners that overworked them, they were invisible in their deaths.

Until now. The new Coop headquarters building is unearthing Angel Meadow, or Hell on Earth:

Working in the shadow of the Co-operative's CIS Tower, his team is slowly piecing together the lives of Manchester's Victorian poor from household artifacts they have found such as glass bottles, broken crockery, rosary beads and a doll's head.

Importantly, they've revealed some of the dingy 10ft by 10ft cellars which, in the 1840s and 1850s, would probably have housed an entire family of three generations as well as a lodger. A yard with a pig which fed on rotting vegetables and human waste was a common addition.

BBC Manchester

And in addition to verifying claims of poverty and investigating how Manchester's poor lived, there's a murder to solve.

A murder inquiry is under way after a woman's skeleton was found wrapped in carpet on a building site in Manchester city centre.

The bones were unearthed after a skull was spotted by workmen at a site on Miller Street, near the CIS Tower.

It was treated as non suspicious until post-mortem tests found the woman had a fractured neck, collarbone and jaw.

Police are unsure how long the body has been there and are now looking through missing persons files.

BBC Manchester

Who says archaeology is boring?

(Thanks to Maddie!)

GaGa, the soundtrack to the liberals

(From here)

Spend a few hours F5ing in a ontd_political debate live post and you'll see her. GaGa screengrabs will pop up on every page. From her being surrounded by diamonds in the Bad Romance video when Al Franken says something great, to her explosive performance at the Grammys when someone points out the Harry Potter novels were longer than the health care bill, to her looking disgusted when any Republican politician speaks about anything. At the recent counter protest to Westboro Baptist in San Francisco they played Lady GaGa and Rick Astley songs. Her own appearance and at gay rights rallies and support in general for the queer community aligns her with one of this century's great causes. Lady GaGa, whether or not she likes it, is a political icon. One that represents expression, freedom, feminism and talent.

Like Madonna before her, she's controversial. Her sexuality and gender have been sources of scurrilous gossip. She's thin and obsessed with crippling concept designs from the world's big names. Her songs are about sex, bad relationships, the usual stuff passing through the airwaves but with a little bit more oomph. And as much as she's a slave to the designs of others, she designs herself and with her friends. Her alien headdress at the Golden Globes, her charred face at her Grammy performance shows she's not afraid to be ugly.

She's so outrageous, in fact, that Westboro Baptist hates her. And on a lesser note, apparently so do some Calvinists.You don't see that kind of attention for Rhianna or Taylor Swift. And what is it? Is it her sense of self expression? Her support for queer causes, or working on the Viva Glam Mac campaign? Is it just that a lot of her outfits seem not to have pants? Or that she has the audacity not to be strangled by an industry full of men? And a world that would much rather see her in crippling high heels looking "sexy?"

And they can keep on hating. It makes me happy how threatening she is. As a liberal, I'll say we'll take her. And when Orrin Hatch gets up with his droopy dog jowls and complains about abortion and them womens, I'll post GaGa with a charred skeleton next to her. If they buy you from sex traffickers, or disrespect you at all, then light them on fire. From the book of GaGa.

Saturday Morning Feminism

It's been a season of colds, my respitatory system is a habitat for all bacteria and microbes that pass through. So I've neglected my getting out on Saturdays goals in favor of hanging around the house playing Farmville until it's time to go out at night. We don't have cable, which leaves my viewing choices rather limited. But ABC does a good run of safe children's TV for most of the morning before giving way to paid programming beauty and juicing advice.

And that's how I've grown to love Raven Simone. Before Hannah Montana and The Suite Life is a sitcom that checks a lot of boxes that most adult shows don't. It's a show almost exclusively about People of Color. Most of the main characters are PoC, save one flakey white hippie. The family is successful and the younger brother is a whiz with money, but not with hip-hop. The show loosely follows the star's resolved-in-30-minutes hijinks, with a twist of psychic visions. Mostly she's a typical TV girl. She likes clothes, she likes boys, but she also values her friends and family. She's responsible, applies for college and combats racism when she finds it.

And most importantly to me, she's healthy. And That's So Raven never attempts to hide it. Her character likes fashion and designs her own clothes, without weight or color being an issue. In a fight with Hannah Montana, Raven Simone would kick her Tenesee ass with flair and send her back to Billy Ray.

Let's hear it for Raven. Body positive, color positive and damned fierce.

Bitch Fail

Bitch used to be a mandatory addition to my reading material on trips home. I'd go around Powell's, pick up some books and head straight for the magazine rack. I'd pick up a year's worth, sometimes more and bundle them into my carry on, burning through most of them on the long flight from Chicago to Manchester. Then, around 2006, something happened and the little part of me that screamed "yes, YES" with every article started to shrug. Nothing was new, or insightful or inspiring for me anymore. It felt like re-hash of everything I'd read before, Feminism 101 for the newbies. No more amazing dissections of Jane or insight on female record collectors.

Yet, despite my sadness, I still watch the blog. I guess, these days, because I really like being outraged by things. But now it's all the wrong stuff, it's outrage at the writers and the fall of what I felt was a valuable publication into mediocrity. Constant, desperate pleas for money and cynical partnerships with people more out for their own ends than furthering the cause. Even worse, it's feminism for feminism's sake where Jezebel, a publication with writers that say they've never been raped because they're not stupid, overtook and left them in the dust long ago.

Today's post in the painfully named "Reproductive Writes" section was a new low, an insult to the reader's intelligence and a disservice to what Bitch used to be.

The Baby Makers starts with an obvious premise. It's beneficial to the fertility industry to scare the crap out of women with various fertility harms. Seems obvious, they want money, you want a baby, making you think that conception is unlikely means money for them. Except the thems, the whos, the whys, the whats, the wheres are all missing. Or in other words, all elements of good journalism.

Holly Grigg-Spall starts her post saying that she believes new research discussing the impact of polybrominated diphenyl ethers and fiber on fertility are "anxiety-inducing marketing ploy to feed the billion-dollar fertility industry." Sure, except if you check the Scientific American article she actually cites. It goes on to discuss that this was a preliminary study by the University of California at Berkeley. The research was conducted on low income Hispanic migrant families to analyze the health impacts of their environments. The article goes on to discuss how this took 10 years and further research to study the fertility implications is needed.

So, out of this relatively banal observation that chemicals are bad for you, is it the Scientific American who is out to exploit the fertility fears of women? Are they the cabal that tell women "not wait to have a child, start in your twenties, stay home and let your husband have a career?" Because the dangers of PBDEs are more commonplace in the home than in the workplace. I believe most of the women studied were stay at home mothers. So is it instead a encouragement not to be around things with these chemicals? Like rugs, or pillows, or curtains, food? Things typically advertised to women?

Her second piece of evidence for the huge advertising through "journalism" theory is from the Mail. And this is the laziest part of the post, which is saying a lot. The Mail quotes a study, presumably this one quoting findings that fiber could decrease fertility in women. The Mail, being the Mail, has a bad case of [Citation Needed] though. In this study, researchers at Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development found that while increased fiber consumption can decrease breast cancer risk that the resultant lowering of circulating estrogen concentrations may cause anovulation. Their findings pointed to more sources needed. The Mail, naturally, took this to their own conclusions in typical tabloid style.

So, Holly Grigg-Spall found two articles by two different research groups on things that impact fertility. And like your best 9/11 conspiracy theorist connected dots where there weren't any. Scientific American's audience is far from the Daily Mail. Hell, the countries aren't even the same. And on that token, as we all know from our health care debates, we have very different ways of going about getting fertility treatment. Here it's a matter of private insurance, if you have it. There the NHS will give you a couple gos for nothing. And if there is a vast conspiracy to get both Blue Cross and the NHS to fund more later in life fertility treatments, or even that both research groups (headed by women....) are trying to convince us to stay home and have babies, then it's pretty broad reaching.

What's more likely is Scientific American and the Daily Mail are publishing studies that will draw in readers. The Daily Mail published a study from October as woman hating filler. Because fertility is a big deal. The angle, or the tone is up for debate but both articles promote the kind of body literacy that Grigg-Spall wants. Know how fiber, or chemicals could impact your chances of reproducing. Know what sub-fertility is so you don't freak out and spend thousands on IVF. She argues we need to be more informed. Well thanks to those articles and the studies, I certainly am.

Frankly, if this is the quality of what Bitch is publishing now, they need their authority card revoked and fast. What the world needs less of is haphazard critiques of important discussions. What it needs more of is what Bitch used to be.