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“We extrapolate from the information we have in adults,” said a member of the panel, Dr. Nicolas Stettler, an assistant professor of pediatric epidemiology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “We know that in adults, decreasing cholesterol and giving some of those drugs decreases risk of heart disease or death. So there’s really no reason to think that would be any different in children.”

Giving statins to children? We can extrapolate from adult studies and have no reason to think it would be different in children?

Whatwhat WHAT? You can snatch every cold remedy off the shelves because it's been proven that adult medicines don't act similarly in children... but STATINS are OKAY?

Yeah, sure. Keep 'em locked up in schools for longer hours with more tests and vending machines full of junk food. Promote every corn syrup laden convenience "snack pack" and "lunchable" and "juice" box you can think of. Don't walk don't run don't jump don't dance -- hey, be careful on that play equipment! AND THEN GIVE THEM STATINS SO THE LIFESTYLE WON'T KILL THEM SO QUICKLY.

Grand. Just grand.

• 08:41 Convertible revocation day! #
• 09:38 Having expressed anxiety about our absence by yarfing, the cats are expressing excitement about our return by ... yarfing. Thanks, cats. #
• 12:41 Unable to get up for lunch because it would disturb the clingy cat. #
• 15:35 Petting a nervous cat who was startled out of sleep by a chirping Twitter client. #
• 15:43 Rollover minutes on our family cell plan: 9,211. Somehow I don't think we need to worry about running out any time soon. #
• 17:37 Spotted on Burnet: I believe in Harvey Dent bumper sticker. #
• 00:20 Thinking about going to bed and being foiled by the bagpipes. Obviously I need to shut iTunes off now. #

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• 08:56 yay car is ready.

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So, a series of odd nutritional decisions, brash questions and unusual sartorial purchases turned me into a lizard-man today. A reptoid. I won't explain more because I don't want you to make the same mistakes I did.

The rest of them all under the Earth, in the kingdom of the Hollow Center. (Them? Us?)

The reptoids say that power makes you blind to justice. They say that maybe I'm of some value to their hundred thousand year dynasty. They offered me a minor administrative position in their cthonic judicial system if I can answer two conundrums:

First, what does justice-flavored ice cream taste like?

Second, how do we know for sure that Soylent Green is really people? The movie could have been lying. They're hungry for human flesh, but skeptical.

They didn't say anything about a lifeline so I assume it's okay. I'd love a little help, guys.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army: Sunday, July 13, 4:40 PM, Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar

and

Batman: The Dark Knight: Friday, July 18, 10:35 PM, Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar

Comment if you're going to either one.

I'm trying to keep my hands off Chapter 20 as my beta looks at the last bit.  Both calmingeffects and stark_black tagged me.

Those that I'm tagging don't have to do this.  Not really.  I want to make the clear as I hate non-con with a passion.  laughter

♥ People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blogs & replace any question that they dislike with a new question formulated by themselves.

♥ Tag 8 people to do this quiz & those who are tagged cannot refuse. These people must state who they were tagged by & cannot tag the person whom they were tagged by. Continue this game by sending it to other people.

Tagging bloodthirstylt, r0ck3tsci3ntist, ginnyvos, ai_ici_lover, shadowgirl1605, ross_teneyck, crimini, nikita_cheri111 with the caveat that you do NOT HAVE to do it. You can refuse. *grin*

( Cut for the answers. )

More gaming goodness!

( The Fiona Affair )

( Riddles in the Woods )

( Amber/Harry Potter crossover )

( Quotes! )

All-in-all, a great con. Next year I plan to make up for what an enormous slacker I was this year by running at least one game, possibly two (the next chapter of "Nine Rednecks", plus a tween-to-teen-friendly game if it looks like we'll have interested players).

ETA: Also, new icon! *Felice rolls her eyes*

Hey,

So, I got asked some questions about the rubber duck regatta.

1. Does it have a web page? Sure!
http://www.corprew.org/content/rubberduckregatta/

2. Is it a benefit or fundraiser? no, it just seemed like a fun
time. Aside from the usual collection of spangers in the park, no
one will attempt to collect money from you.

3. Why? burning ball in sky demands sacrifice and fun.

Why doesn't Deepest Sender just store my account information in an encrypted module, and then just have each new release access that module via the same API?

Why does everything in my life have to be so hard?

It's hard. It's hard.

Anyway, I'm back in Honolulu and I'm back at work. I got As in both of my English classes, but I still haven't gotten my French grades back yet. It's ridiculous, really. As time goes on, I worry more and more about it, even though there's nothing I can do about it at this point.

Assuming that everything works out French-wise, it looks like this will be my final year of school. I know, right? And only nine years late!

According to my calculations, I should be able to graduate in the spring with a BA in English. Not exactly the most employable degree, but meh. It's definitely better than the nothing I've had.

So now that I'm this close to finishing my bachelor's, I'm of course looking past what I need to focus on and thinking about grad school. Specifically, law school.

It's well known that I'm a whiz at standardized tests, so I'm not too worried about the LSAT. Given proper preparation, there's no reason why I shouldn't have an awesome score.

What I'm really thinking about are law schools. I really really really don't want to move someplace where they have winter. Black people would be nice too. So there's Emory in Atlanta, and there's Florida State too.

Really, though, it's way too early to spend too much time contemplating any of this. I've got another nine months of full-time school + full-time work to grind through, and then I can start raising my expectations to insane heights before they're unceremoniously crushed by reality.

...

Did you know that Tony La Russa went to law school at Florida State? That's pretty cool.

Anyone want a TSA shirt? (It's clean, even..) A TSA employee is staying in my hotel. Their freshly laundered shirt was delivered to their room and left hanging on the OUTSIDE of their door. Anyone want a TSA shirt?

Image # CF10 View in Gallery.

Series description: Interface -- the boundary between air and water.

Water can be a mirror, and it can be as transparent as glass. When wind disturbs its surface, the reflections of what is above and refractions of what is beneath come together to create constantly changing patterns.

I've recorded some of these patterns, found at local lakes and ponds during different atmospheric conditions and times of day, and by enhancing contrast, careful cropping and occasionally rotating the image 90 degrees found meaning in the chaos.

Apparently the universe owed me a favor: I came home from work early (i.e. right at 5 pm) to mow, because I'd been out of town all weekend, and when upon getting home yesterday evening I peeked into the backyard to see how bad it was I discovered that the neighbors had left a car parked on their half of the yard. That seemed like a good enough reason to procrastinate mowing, but the lawn was tall enough that I really HAD to do it today. And there are thunderstorms forecast to start kind of any minute now, so... here I am.

Except... it's already mowed. Neighbor apparently decided to do it this afternoon. And now I have an unexpectedly free evening, wheee! That means it's time for...

...THE TBR REPORT.

( Slot 1: The exciting conclusion of the Swan series )

( Swan quotes! )

( Slot 2: Night in the Lonesome October )

...and now I need food. Report continues a bit later....

Image_JpegMarkerReader and Image_JpegXmpReader are out. These are PHP packages relating to JPEG images. Image_JpegXmpReader, which you may find useful, extracts the metadata (title, description, photographer credit, etc.) found in JPEGs produced by Photoshop and compatible programs (*). This is accomplished quickly and painlessly, without the need to load extensions written in C.

At P'unk Ave, we needed these capabilities to quickly and painlessly import photos into GPTMC Pressroom, a site we built for the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation. The GPTMC has zillions of photos; their staff knows Photoshop. We could make them reenter all that metadata. But we don't, because we rock.

The Image_JpegMarkerReader package, which you are less likely to use directly, provides support for fetching individual "markers" from a JPEG file. A JPEG file is made up of two things: "markers," which contain descriptive information like XMP (among other things), and the actual image data. Most people won't need to deal with this package much, but perhaps you want to fetch something else from a JPEG marker, something Image_JpegXmpReader doesn't cover. In that case, Image_JpegMarkerReader is for you. You can subclass it just as I did or use it directly.

Soon you'll be able to install these packages with a single pear command, which will follow the dependencies and install both:

pear install Image_JpegXmpReader

For now, though, you'll get warnings that the package is in beta, an error message, and an explanation that you can manually install them like this:

pear install channel://pear.php.net/Image_JpegMarkerReader-0.5.0
pear install channel://pear.php.net/Image_JpegXmpReader-0.5.0

This is all it takes to do what 99% of programmers will ever want from Image_JpegXmpReader. If the image has no XMP marker or just doesn't contain these particular fields, these methods return false. Yes, there are fancier methods provided for fancier cases.

require 'Image/JpegXmpReader.php';
try {
  $xmp = new Image_JpegXmpReader($file);
  // Photographer credit
  $creator = $xmp->getCreator();
  // Long description
  $description = $xmp->getDescription();
  // Caption
  $title = $xmp->getTitle();
/ // Returns an array of tags (like "shopping" or "education") that
  // have been assigned to this image
  $tags = $xmp->getSubjects();
} catch (Exception $e) {
  echo("Exception thrown while parsing $file, it's probably not a JPEG\n");
}

And that's pretty much all there is to it. Hope you find it useful!

You can find a somewhat fancier test program here.

(Note: both packages require PHP 5. If you are still running PHP 4, I'll start feeling sorry for you whenever I get through laughing at you. Unless it's at your employer's insistence, in which case I'll skip straight to feeling sorry for you.)

(*) Photoshop used to save this stuff in EXIF format, which PHP can handle "out of the box," but Adobe decided to move to XMP instead. For flexibility and XML-ness, I suppose.

From bishopjoey:
1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List 5 songs you like that start with that letter. (Bonus: say a few words about the song!)
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

Joe gave me "K".

1. "Kerosene", Big Black. Some unbelievable guitar tones, incessant drum machine pulse, explosive chorus, disturbing lyrics. Set me on fire!
2. "K-Y Re:Amin", Rx. Thumpy industrial zombie hip-hop. The smell remains the same.
3. "Kinda I Want To", Nine Inch Nails. I know it's not the good thing, and I know it's not the right thing, but sometimes I grab Squamous and Eldritch and make them perform a music video to go with this song.
4. "Kick In The Eye 2", Bauhaus. Gothfunky dance track.
5. "King Mob", The Damage Manual. I've never been good at writing poetry or song lyrics - I'm way too literal-minded - which is maybe why I'm so fascinated with the evocative power of Chris Connelly's songwriting. King Mob is a fine example of his work, pulling me straight into a place and time I've never been, familiar as a dream.

THIS!

Tickets will be astronomical. The venue looks like some sort of weird metal cinnamon roll. Still, I haven't seen The Eagles ever, and they are one of those bands where I know every frakkin song and most also have strong imprints.

And I mentioned it to the friend I just lunched with and she saw them on Hell Freezes Over but was all over going to this together. We discussed her daughter and my son babysitting everyone else while we olduns go sing "Hotel California."

It'll be geriatric. But it also sounds like a complete blast.

Yeah.