Speak friend and enter

My latest romantic experiment - 100 dates

2009-12-07T04:33:22Z

100 dates.
You can read about it on the blog, or follow it on Twitter. (I'm @stokely, and you can also follow the #100dates hashtag).

It's basically a very old fashioned approach to dating - asking my friends and my online network to recommend people they think I might like. Hopefully, given the ease by which people can share information and recommendations online, I'll end up with a cool 'friend of a friend' network happening, and meet people I might not have met otherwise.

So, if you're feeling karmically generous, please check it out and think about whether you have a guy friend I should meet. :)

I've just put it all online today, so I'd also welcome ideas or feedback on how to tweak the project to make it work better.
This entry was originally posted at http://blithespirit.dreamwidth.org/795050.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I'm talking about OpenAustralia in Melb on Monday night

2009-11-07T00:34:49Z

It may be too wonky (or too geeky) for anyone here to be interested but just in case...
I'm giving a brief talk about the eDemocracy website OpenAustralia.org at the OpenGov Melbourne meetup on Monday night - 6pm at the Order of Melbourne on Swanston Street. Details (and RSVP) here. It's going to be a small, informal thing.

Might be nice to have dinner afterwards, if anyone's inclined. :)
This entry was originally posted at http://blithespirit.dreamwidth.org/792369.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

that game

2009-09-07T21:30:30Z

Also, I would just like to say, damn you Beatles. I have no interest in guitar hero or rock band, but I want the Beatles Rock Band.
If you haven't seen the trailer, oooh, worth watching. When it hits 1:25 (moving into the Sgt Peppers era) my mind was blown. Seriously beautiful.

Trailer: The Beatles from BLINDIFORTHEKIDS on Vimeo.

This entry was originally posted at http://blithespirit.dreamwidth.org/785426.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Attn: Mordwen

2009-09-07T21:21:28Z

The home birth rally in Canberra got a whole four paragraphs in the Age. I don't think I've ever *seen* a story that short in the Age. Lame. This entry was originally posted at http://blithespirit.dreamwidth.org/785249.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

to market, to market

2009-09-05T02:52:55Z

Thank you, dalmeny, for posting about the fresh spring produce at the Central Market in Adelaide. You inspired me to get off my bum and get down to the farmers market in St Kilda for the first time in a long time.

I have mentioned to a few of you that I recently read and loved The Omnivore's Dilemma, and it really got me thinking about sustainable, ethical farming and eating. The problem with organic food was underscored for me recently when I tried to buy organic butter at Coles the other day. The only organic butter they had came from Europe. Craziness. Before reading The Omnivore's Dilemma I didn't think too much about the conditions animals live in under large scale free range or organic farming. Now I know a bit more, and the local food movement makes even more sense to me.

Because I've been doing some research into local farms, I recognised a few of the stallholders at the St Kilda markets this time. I bought my veges from Fiona Chambers from Fernleigh Farms, and got to thank her for having a website. It makes it a lot easier to research growers when they're online! I should also mention Michael from Mountain Creek Farm in Canberra, who was kind enough to provide me with some recommendations of local farmers when I emailed him.

If you're even slightly interested in the above, and you haven't read The Omnivore's Dilemma, I can't recommend it enough. A wonderfully written, and eye opening book. The guy managed to make the sex life of corn a fascinating read.

I came away from the market with eggs from Green Eggs, broccoli, some kind of bizarre onion, carrots, dutch cream potatoes and grass fed Warrialda beef. A roast dinner is on the menu I think. :)
This entry was originally posted at http://blithespirit.dreamwidth.org/784660.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Oh LJ :(

2009-08-25T10:02:10Z

Thank you, thorfinn , for pointing this out...

"LJ has quietly broken the comment exporter, which I was using to back up comments. If I can't retain an offsite backup off my journal, I'm not interested in paying for the service."

Ouch. I didn't know about this, and it sucks. I haven't been trying to get people to leave LJ for Dreamwidth, but it's something LJ users should know about.

I have spare codes, if anyone does want one.
This entry was originally posted at http://blithespirit.dreamwidth.org/784588.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

If I had my time again

2009-08-16T08:07:21Z

If I could do my 20s over again, I think I'd like to be Beth Ditto (image is a tad NSFW due to boobies). That girl does her thing, has fun and loves her body. :) This entry was originally posted at http://blithespirit.dreamwidth.org/784064.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Whip it!

2009-07-17T13:12:50Z

OMG OMG OMG Drew Barrymore is directing a move! Starring Ellen Page! And it's about... roller derby? Well, whatever, I'm excited. Thanks to damned_colonial for pointing out the trailer:

This entry was originally posted at http://blithespirit.dreamwidth.org/783124.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

the farm

2009-07-14T01:35:46Z

I got home this morning from a long weekend at my parent's place. I resist calling it the farm, but it really felt like a farm this weekend. My parents have a very small herd of cows (four of 'em in total) and their first calf arrived yesterday. I got to see their friend Dale deliver the baby, who was a gorgeous grey colour. She was up and feeding within the first hour or so. Her face looked like Bambi, so cute. She has a pale grey face and looks a little like she has black eyeliner. (shame she's a meat cow... but I don't think my mother wants to think about that right now...)

It was a really great weekend. The wettest weekend they've had since moving to Tassie two years ago. We stayed indoors, read books, ate food and spoiled my dad (it was his 64th birthday).
This entry was originally posted at http://blithespirit.dreamwidth.org/782515.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

OMG, are you 12?

2009-06-27T07:01:51Z

Finally, a Buffy video I can like.
Nice critique of the stalkerpr0n that is Twilight.

This entry was originally posted at http://blithespirit.dreamwidth.org/781565.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

mythical creatures

2009-06-16T22:22:05Z

Just bought myself a little treat. I haven't been a stamp collector since I was a little girl, but Neil Gaiman was pimping a collection of Dave McKean mythical creatures stamps from the UK and I decided I'd like to frame it and put it up on the wall. So I'm going to! This entry was originally posted at http://blithespirit.dreamwidth.org/781130.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

The war on the Chaser

2009-06-08T20:55:10Z

Is anyone else seeing the cadaverous hand of John Howard in the public outcry against The Chaser? They're satirists. They did satire. I've only seen fragments of the skit in news grabs as I don't watch their show but... I'm a lot less comfortable with the suggestion that we should be yanking stuff off air for offending people. Sigh.

(I fail to see how this fits in with racial vilification, or Footy Show levels of sexism & harrassment.)

This entry was originally posted at http://blithespirit.dreamwidth.org/779939.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

oh noes

2009-05-18T11:59:52Z

tyggerjai is a very bad man. i'm currently resubbing to warcrack so we can go raid scholo and party like it's ~~1999~~ 2004.

zomg scholo with swedenborg. zomg. This entry was originally posted at http://blithespirit.dreamwidth.org/777504.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

[Testing, please ignore] Cross posting via Semagic

2009-05-04T10:52:58Z

Courtesy of this poster.

Bring your own sun

2009-04-04T07:48:50Z

If you read Neil Gaiman's blog you've probably already seen this but I'm currently addicted to it.
Tori Amos - Welcome to England

Bushfire assistance

2009-02-08T23:17:21Z

If you are able, please give blood to help. Call 13 14 95.

The Red Cross website for accepting $$ donations is running very slowly but it is working eventually... you can donate money online or call 1800 811 700.

Wildlife Victoria is also accepting donations to help its volunteers assist the native animals which have been affected.

What a terrible weekend.

taibi invective

2008-09-30T06:29:11Z

Matt Taibi on Sarah Palin.

"The defining moment for me came shortly after Palin and her family stepped down from the stage to uproarious applause, looking happy enough to throw a whole library full of books into a sewer."

"Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power."

crash

2008-09-29T22:53:53Z

Good morning, welcome to the day after a worse Wall Street close than in the week post September 11! o_O

Links I love

2008-09-19T01:38:07Z

International Herald Tribune
3 Quarks Daily
techPresident
Breakfast Politics

Wall:E

2008-09-18T13:02:21Z

I <3 Wall: E.
At the end as the credits rolled I wished wished wished I could run away with the Pixar circus and help them make more beautiful things.
The short film before hand was lovely too. Not sure if I liked it better than the trainee UFO short before Ratatouille, but it was up there.

Sarah Palin

2008-09-14T23:40:39Z

From the International Herald Tribune:
"Sarah Palin of Alaska lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of Alaska's Division of Agriculture, Palin appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as one of her qualifications for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Havemeister was one of at least five high school classmates Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding what they had made in the private sector.

When Palin had to cut the 2007 Alaska state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

Last May, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor's career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to find an assistant to the governor on the line. "You should be ashamed!" Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. "Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now."

It's very, very worth reading the full story.

Bwahahahahaha

2008-09-10T01:23:03Z

A previous message repeated, slightly more forcefully.

"Dear Democrats, Liberals and the like....

No, seriously: What the fuck is wrong with you? The GOP picks a woman VP 24 years after you do, for the same goddamn reason you did (a contentless call to shore up a shrinking base), and you act like you’ve never seen this movie before? I just don’t know what to say to you about that. Also: squirting yourself messy over a vice presidential candidate. Good fucking gravy, how off the fucking script can you possibly get. For God’s sake, she’s scandal-plagued Atwater spawn from a state with the population of Fort Worth, Texas, whose job it will be to work the lights of the Naval Observatory for four years. She’s a walking, taking advertisement for how easily placated religious conservatives are at this moment in history. She doesn’t walk on water, unless it’s frozen and the moose she’s hunting has wandered out on it. So will you please focus."

ahhh

2008-09-02T10:07:06Z

It's a cold Tuesday night. I have Be Kind, Rewind and Once to watch on DVD. The heater is making the lounge room all toasty, and I have my warm fluffy dressing gown to put on. I have popcorn, and apple pie, and, if I'm feeling especially decadent, hot chocolate. Happy blithe.

be kind, rewind

2008-09-01T03:05:18Z

Over the weekend I saw a trailer for Be Kind, Rewind and I need to urgently ask "HOW DID I MISS THAT!?"
And yes, I intend to ignore the middling review that Margaret and David gave it and see it anyway.

everything you need to know about Sarah Palin

2008-09-01T02:05:43Z

Here's a funny video for you: Everything you need to know about Sarah Palin. I have a huge nerd crush on the guy who made this.