A Ghost of Daisies

While I’m a fan of this little book by Strunk and White, this writer harps on about how this book has damaged the writing of generations of Americans.

So I won’t be spending the month of April toasting 50 years of the overopinionated and underinformed little book that put so many people in this unhappy state of grammatical angst. I’ve spent too much of my scholarly life studying English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don’t-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can’t even tell when they’ve broken their own misbegotten rules.

I have half a shelf of grammar and writing books (I know, I know. I should be reading them!) and The Elements of Style is amongst my reference books. I enjoyed reading it in the car. My favorite grammar book though is Sin and Syntax.

Today’s post is just some future reference stuff for me that you might also find useful.

Online Programming for All Libraries
Web Services in Understaffed & Underfunded Libraries
Finding a Mentor
Why should users carry about their library’s social media?

These ears differ a little from the instructions within the lesson plan…

This lesson plan has been prepared for potential publication in School Library Monthly on how to put on a fairy tale play. The objectives of this lesson is for kindergarten students to be reinforced in learning their ordinal numbers, colors, and days of the week through an oral presentation through the medium of a play.

In the css, if you add the following code:


li.current_page_item{
/* Change the background color below to control how the navigation/menu section you're in changes color. */
background:#3c78a7;
color:#777;
}


the background will change colors. :-D

Correction:

That hack only works if you’re in the TOP LEVEL menu pages. As soon as you go one level deep, it quits working. Argh.

A great article by R. David Lankes discussing what e-readers should be like.

As for myself, I’ve never had the opportunity to personally handle one—and time is too short right now to do much free grazing reading as I try to force nonfiction works into my grad school life—but I think they’re a fascinating concept. Actually, before I bought my netbook, I was evaluating the idea of purchasing an e-reader instead. However, what I wanted out of an e-reader fell short of my needs, so I went with the netbook instead. I’m glad I did. So here is my list of what I would want out of an e-reader:
Read more…
What are your list of must-haves before you would buy an e-reader?

Warning: Back up your database and your entire WordPress website before proceeding. I am no way to be held accountable for you breaking your website.

This is the trick I used with my 1and1 hosted WordPress hosted website. I found this method mentioned with no detail after spending forty minutes looking for a way to delete a misspelled Custom Field.

1. Go to your database’s phpmyadmin.
2. In the left column look for “wp_postmeta”
3. Click on Browse at the top of the page.
4. Find the Sort by key: drop-down menu and choose “option_name (ascending)” or “option_name (descending)”
5. Under the “option_name” column, look for the name of the Custom Field that you want want to delete.
6. Click the red X in that row to delete the Custom Field. Repeat for each instance of that particular Custom Field you wish to get rid of.
7. In WordPress, open up a new post and scroll down to Custom Fields. Look in the drop down menu to make sure that Custom Field is now gone.

My Opera browser crashed on me today, causing much moodiness and stress since I have weeks worth of tabs opened for work. However, thanks to this wonderful gentleman, I am up and running again! The session is 3 days out of date, but that’s close enough! :D

Today’s adventure at work involved me completely breaking my Drupal installation. My workbook told me to go ahead and download and install the CCK module. There’s just one little problem: it completely broke my website.

My steps were as follows:

I uploaded the CCK module to my Drupal install and enabled all the options listed under CCK. When I clicked Submit/Save, I got an error 500. So I hit the back button and deselected all the CCK items. Now nearly ALL my administrative tools are gone. I can’t even find the link to put my site back online! This also took out my ability to make new content pages, add/delete modules (there is no longer a link!). I even deleted CCK from my server but still nothing.

Over on the Drupal forums, someone suggested that I “empty the cache tables.” My boyfriend worked with me on this part and in the end the website broke even further. So tomorrow I’m going to delete the whole website and start over again. I’m pretty aggravated.

All photos by Thomas Kozak.

My favorite parts of these unfrosted Oreo cupcakes is the fine texture that is a result of the cocoa powder. The second is that there is a whole Oreo cookie in the bottom of each cupcake.

I was in a hurry to go to a potluck, so I didn’t have time to make the first batch of cupcakes, take them out, and then reuse the pan. So instead I squashed about 8 Oreos in a sandwich bag with my rolling pin, then put them in this glass pie pan. I then poured the remaining cupcake batter on top to make this delicious dessert!

Made from this recipe.