Esther and Bud are Walt’s wonderful parents. :) The ambigram above was composed November/December 2008 as part of their Christmas gift.

I signed up for the Ping.fm service, which is specifically designed to allow you to update your status on multiple social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.) all at once. With the Ping.fm WordPress plugin, I can easily keep my blog synched with my Facebook status… I just update my status using one of the Ping.fm methods, and everything else is automagic.

Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.

Read more at: What is reCAPTCHA?

It seems that Facebook doesn’t want its users to be able to do such a thing, since (a) they do not easily make available a link to get your own status RSS feed, and (b) they continually disable the workarounds that clever users have developed to obtain their status RSS.

My question: WHY don’t they want to allow us such a thing?

Are they worried about advertising exposure and revenue? They shouldn’t be. My argument is: Giving me this ability won’t stop my Facebook visits… on the contrary, I’m more likely to visit so that I can make sure my status is kept up-to-date.

There has to be a way to do it. Back to the search.

Update: Thanks to these excellent instructions from a user named Otto on the wptavern.com forums, I now have what I want. Though it did require implementing the Facebook developer API on this site. (I think the phrase “Using a sledgehammer to kill a fly” might be more than appropriate here…)

Update #2: Ugh. Apparently, it only works if the viewer is currently logged into Facebook. Guess I need to either go back to the drawing board, or hack something together prompting the person to log in. It’s been removed until I have more time to work on it. :(

Update #3: I found a workaround!

We moved into the new apartment the first week of September. It doesn’t feel like it’s been over a month already, but it has! I think we finally got the last of the boxes out of the living room / dining room area last weekend, but there are still some lingering in the front “office”.

I’ve been on a kick of “fixing the place up” — shopping for new furniture & fixtures. For example, we now have a sunroom, and I really want to get a long, low shelf of some sort to place below the window to hold plants. We also have a breakfast bar, and we need barstools. (And so on… you get the idea.)

I took photos during the move to try to track the progress, but haven’t really photographed the place since then — I still don’t feel like it’s what I’d consider “presentable”. But here are some nice photos of my sunroom:

Fall semester is halfway over already (!) with some pretty tough classes: Physical Chemistry, Quantitative Analysis, and Biochemistry. In addition, I’m also assisting with the Organic chemistry lab class and also with the lower-level Physics lab class. I’m also tutoring Physics and working on scholarship applications.

I’ve also started trying to research graduate programs. The problem with that is, I’m still not 100% sure on either (a) where I want to go, or (b) what field I want to study.

A while ago I signed up for this online service called Evernote that assists you with keeping virtual “notebooks”. I haven’t really used it to its full potential yet, but I’ve started using it this weekend to try to collect information on different grad schools. I think I may try to see how I can integrate it with this blog… not sure if such a thing is possible, but I’m going to try to remember to do some research on it.

Does it ever seem like there just aren’t enough hours in the day?

I know what my problem is — too much time spent on Facebook / watching TV / surfing the web, and not enough time spent doing productive, useful stuff. I’m just not sure how to change that… I guess I’m an addict. :(

*drumroll please*

… I have a new theme! A big thank-you to my sweetie Walt, who took the time to create a beautiful design for this blog, after I lost my motivation to.

*big hugs for Walt — I love you honey!*

At least the semester’s almost over.

I would like to share with you all the prayer that is heard all around campus during finals week:

“The Student’s Prayer”

Now I lay me down to study
I pray the Lord I don’t go nutty
If I should fail to learn this junk
I pray the Lord I do not flunk
But if I do, don’t pity me at all
Just lay me down in the study hall
Tell my teachers I did my best
And pile my books upon my chest.
Now I lay me down to rest
I pray the Lord I pass my test
If I should die before I wake
Well, that’s one less test I’ll have to take!

It all started with Walter drawing a smiley face on an egg that had been dyed yellow. He then remarked that the eyes he drew sort of resembled those of one of the Mario characters, maybe Toad or somebody.

Of course, that was all it took for me to try to turn an egg into a Super Mario character.

I started with using a rubber band around the egg to mark the “dividing line” between red and white. Then I dripped candle wax on the shell to create the “spots” on the mushroom. The egg was then half-dunked in red dye until the desired color was obtained. Once dry, the wax was scraped off and the face was drawn on.

After doing three more eggs of various characters, we cheated a bit and “touched up” the white areas with Wite-Out before their photo session.

Back to the (digital) drawing board.

Going to update Updated! the Valentine’s post below with the cheesecake-brownie recipe (by popular request!)

And with Valentine’s chocolate and Valentine’s cheesecake-brownies comes… the post-Valentine’s diet. (Sigh.) I’ve been trying to track my daily calories using NutritionData.com‘s free service, but remembering / finding time to do that proved to be even more challenging than remembering / finding time to update this blog. (And you can see how well that’s been going…)

In other news, the Hyv has added RSS feed reading to its list of features. I might have to see if Walt could adapt the code for this site… then I could more easily find articles of interest and link ‘em here. :) (Actually, there’s possibly already a WordPress plugin for such things. Time to go on the hunt!)

Spring break is next week (woohoo!)  Walter & I will be in North Carolina for a few days to attend my mom’s wedding.

I have quite a few new recipes that I’ve had some success with that I ought to post soon: biscuits… homemade salsa… pretty good vegetarian chili… barbecue sauce (ketchup + honey + spices)… oh, and a REALLY delicious Mushroom-Barley Soup last night!

I also have some photos that need uploading, but I’m at school and my camera is at home, so that will have to wait.

More details possibly to come as I think of them. :)