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carla and lily on Street-painting festival this weekend, and a look at the world's best 3-D street artists steve knudde on George Carlin splits; The train that never slows; Motorized suitcase Sheila Lennon on Summer begins with chicken salad, cherry chocolate ice cream recipes John Gall on Summer begins with chicken salad, cherry chocolate ice cream recipes At Home Redesigns on Summer begins with chicken salad, cherry chocolate ice cream recipes Beth on Boz Scaggs last weekend at the Newport Yachting Center Kevin on Boz Scaggs last weekend at the Newport Yachting Center BSMC on Boz Scaggs last weekend at the Newport Yachting Center Sheila on First look: Firefox 3, and a hunt for compatible extensions Paul Roub on First look: Firefox 3, and a hunt for compatible extensions To comment on any posting, click on the word 'Comments' at the end of the item. |
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Main page June 20, 2008Summer begins with chicken salad, cherry chocolate ice cream recipesSummer begins at 7:59 p.m., just about the time we'll be dining on our back porch. The skunks who live under our shed -- five babies this year -- will be just beginning their nightly foraging lessons, trailing mom along the perimeter of the yard while the cats watch placidly from the porch steps (Our Russian-born neighbor came by last night to tell us there are no skunks in Russia, and the babies had just come into his house, terrifying his wife.) The birds will be noisily squawking in different keys, whizzing from tree to tree and perching inches away from us, feeling safe from the humans in the screened cage. Hotter days and nights are ahead, when we'll be wanting summer dishes like these:
The important thing to remember is that you need to "cook" the curry powder in the olive oil before adding it to the rest of the salad ingredients. Heat releases the flavor of the curry. And what's not to like about homemade Cherry Garcia? Earlier, also inspired by Elise: Fresh strawberry frozen yogurt -- and how to make ice cream without a machine. I'm still looking at that machine, but I'm afraid we'd use it way too much. Posted by Sheila Lennon Discovery of ice on Mars announced first on TwitterWhoohoo! Was keeping my eye on some chunks of bright stuff & they disappeared! Sublimated! So it can't be salt, it's ice: http://is.gd/lFa about 3 hours ago from web
NASA (Bright Chunks at Phoenix Lander's Mars Site Must Have Been Ice) explains that it was found at the bottom of a trench informally called "Dodo-Goldilocks" when Phoenix's Robotic Arm enlarged that trench on June 15, during the 20th Martian day, or sol, since landing. Several were gone when Phoenix looked at the trench early today, on Sol 24.
Posted by Sheila Lennon June 19, 2008Video: Documentary about Providence teacher's aid to school in Ghana premieres tonightYou may recall that in February 2007 we followed Shawn Rubin, a teacher at Providence's CVS Highlander School and cofounder of Providence nonprofit Longitude, when he went to Akeba, Ghana during school-vacation week. (Providence teacher bringing school aid to Ghana this week blogs it.) The documentary about the trip is finally finished and will be shown tonight. Big World, Small World premiers at 7 p.m. at the The MET Black Box Theater, 325 Public Street between Eddy St. and Prairie Ave (directions). Here's a clip:
Shawn Rubin, a Providence kindergarten teacher and founder of the non-profit organization, Longitude and filmmakers John Lavall and Jessica Jennings teamed up to produce a documentary film about a school based in Abeka, Ghana that provides young adults secretarial skills. The film documents the work that Longitude supports in Ghana, and profiles the Professional Secretarial Academy of Ghana (PROFESA) and it's founder Meshach Bondzie. The film is titled "Big World, Small World" and is the story of one man making a difference in his community and his country by educating students who would otherwise have no chance to escape the perpetual cycle of abject poverty that impacts so many Ghanaian families. Posted by Sheila Lennon 25 years into his sculpture garden... Crop circle depicts pi to 10 places
South American-born sculptor Bruno Torfs has spent 25 years stocking Bruno's Art & Sculpture Garden in Marysville, Victoria in Southeastern Australia. Well over 100 of his works are on display in the rain forest. There's a Flash slideshow there, or, for a different view, a visitor has assembled a Flickr set with thumbnails. I admire people with a lifework that builds incrementally -- they end up with so much to show for it.
Most complex crop circle ever discovered in British fields. Telegraph UK. The formation, measuring 150ft in diameter, is apparently a coded image representing the first 10 digits, 3.141592654, of pi. Further elucidation follows. The symbol was identified eventually by ...Reed, a retired astrophysicist who contacted Lucy Pringle, a crop circle photographer and expert, with an explanation. I love the whole idea of this, no matter who or what makes them, for whatever purpose. As conceptual art goes, they're elegant surprises without equal. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 18, 2008Free mp3s: Bob Dylan 1963; Live air-traffic control audio; Baking bloggers' breakfast breads
Nine tracks that didn't make the official Live at Carnegie Hall album. ...earlier in June 2008, Hollow Horn released Unravelled Tales, a two-CD set of the complete Carnegie Hall show. Probably sourced from a soundboard, the sound is excellent In that cover photo, Dylan looks young and nerdy.
Use your browser's "find in page" at this link to get to KPVD, from Green Airport, where you can listen to the intermittent chatter as an m3u stream with your mp3 player. You can identify where the identified flights are heading here.
It is my pleasure to present to you the fine collection of Breakfast Breads baked up for this month’s BBD challenge. We had 55 submissions from 16 different countries - quite a variety of breakfast goodies! The photo is Cheese Kuchen from Madam Chow's Kitchen. Madam Chow has recently made cheese scallion scones, guacamole and pizza; nothing but the logo seems Oriental. While some bloggers whipped out a favorite breakfast bread, others tried a recipe for the first time, with mixed success, then reported on it. That's not how your average cookbook works, and you might have an idea of what might improve the result. Since the recipes come from many countries, you may need the gram conversion calculator or some of the other tools in the Conversion Index at Gourmet Sleuth. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 17, 2008Boz Scaggs last weekend at the Newport Yachting CenterMy colleague Beth Heaney, a projo.com designer, saw Boz Scaggs at the Newport Yachting Center last weekend, and sent me this note: I wasn't planning to go to see Boz Scaggs Saturday night, but my husband acquired a couple of tickets, so we headed out late. She shot a bit of video with her digital camera and put it on YouTube -- enough to get the gist of the gig. Posted by Sheila Lennon First look: Firefox 3, and a hunt for compatible extensionsUpdate: Mozilla.com is reachable again for Firefox 3 downloads.
During installation, it checked each extension for compatibility, which took a few minutes. Not compatible, from among those loaded on my system:
I'm hunting down updates, and necessarily publishing as I find each one -- I have to restart to be sure each has loaded properly, and I'd lose earlier changes to this post if I didn't save. The updates are usually available at the developers' sites, and are sometimes considered beta because FF3 hadn't officially released. Session Manager doesn't seem to be built into FF3. This is critical to me, so I downloaded the Session Manager add-on.
Just in these few minutes of pulling this together, I can feel it's much faster fetching pages, opening links, and loading them. Later I'll test how robust it is with my usual 85 or more tabs open. (That used to finally halt FF2.)
More later. I wanted to get that working download link out to those of you tired of banging on the servers at mozilla.com. Lifehacker is all over this: Power User's Guide to Firefox 3 and more at their full Firefox 3 coverage here. PC Magazine: Firefox 3: This new version of Firefox brings it to the head of the class in security, speed (except for startup speed), standards compatibility, and thrifty memory usage. In addition, its powerful new location bar enormously facilitates browsing. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 16, 2008'Mosquito' device that adults can't hear is banned in UK countyCouncil bans 'anti-teen' gadget. BBC: A 2006 item about the device with the tone audible only to young people (Teens share ringtone grownups can't hear) was one of the most-read posts on this blog, ever. Now comes news that "Kent County Council in south east England has become one of the first in the UK to ban the 'Mosquito' gadgets from its buildings." Some shopkeepers had been using it to discourage teens from hanging out in front of their stores. No word on whether the ringtone version -- which lets teens call each other without the ring being audible to teachers -- will fall, too. You can still try to hear the Teen Buzz ringtone, and download it. Posted by Sheila Lennon Firefox 3 arrives at 1 p.m. Tuesday: Awesome or not?I mentioned last month that the "pledge to download Firefox 3" campaign strikes me as silly. Even if their marketing geniuses have decided to try to set a record for most downloads in 24 hours tomorrow when Firefox 3 is released (beginning at 1 p.m EDT), what does pledging have to do with it? "Remind me" would have been enough. So while you're reading A Field Guide to Firefox 3 to get up to speed on what's coming, you might also want to view a skeptic's take: What have I got against Firefox 3? is a catalogue of blogger and tester Peng's disappointment with some of the "improvements": It’s a known issue that I’m not thrilled with Firefox 3. There are some nice improvements to it, but after seeing the progress of development through the betas and seeing where Firefox 3 was headed I decided it had been time to try out other browsers. Unfortunately I’m so spoiled by Firefox’s extensions that no other browser could make me happy. But I thought with Firefox 3 in the third (and probably last) release candidate I would sit down and try to express exactly what it is about Firefox 3 that makes me wish I could be working with Firefox 2.5 rather than Firefox 3... He's not alone in his objections -- there's a new and highly touted extension, for instance, that lets you skip the new "awesome bar" pictured below (officially, the Smart Location Bar), which mixes your bookmarks and browser history as you type. You can revert to the look of the Firefox 2 location bar with the "oldbar" extension.
As one oldbar user wrote, Oh boy! I thought that I need to uninstall the new FF, as I was annoyed by that "smart" suggestion on the searching bar. Now, me happy!! Yuppyyy! Nice version of FF and that's because it reacts three times faster! I think that was the only thing that was missing from this browser. Only to be faster. I had to look for the tips that will put the close button on every tab and still looking for the classic appearance. Again, I think the old FF was excellent and the only change was needed in fast reaction. I think that's all I want, too -- and better memory handling so I can zip around the 85 tabs I usually have open without crashing -- but I'm open to test-driving it all before I strip it down. If you're a true believer who wants to be fully part of the FF3 hoopla, Air Mozilla, the Internet multimedia presence of Mozilla, will be covering the release as though it were a space-shuttle launch. Links: Posted by Sheila Lennon June 15, 2008Scott Hamilton and the Blue Flames last night
Providence-born jazz saxophonist Scott Hamilton returned from his home in Europe for a reunion of the Hamilton-Bates Blue Flames Saturday night at Local 121. Original bassist Preston Hubbard was in St. Louis and booked for another gig, so he couldn't make it, but his parents did. From left, Dave Zinno on bass, drummer Chuck Riggs, Hamilton on sax, and Fred Bates on guitar. Here's about 12 seconds of ambient sound as they played, just a taste. (mp3) (My camera card was full of photos of my garden. After I recorded this -- as video too dark to see, so I just ripped the audio track -- I noticed I only had room for just one more photo. Not wanting to be a jerk, I hadn't used a flash, and I could see there just wasn't enough light in what I'd shot. On the last chance, I used a flash, just once. That's the result above.) Great to hear the sages bring it together and take us with them. Working it out and easy moments, always subtle and genuinely transporting at times, especially on their touchstone tune from the old days, Honky Tonk. Local 121 owner Josh Miller introduced them as a band he first hired 32 years ago, to play at the old Met Cafe (which he owned with Tom Bates), where I first saw the Blue Flames. My husband knew them from gigs at the Black Elks Club off Broad Street, which served up fine music and sandwiches of ribs or a whole chicken breast, with bones, between two slices of white bread. Different times. The intimate basement in the old Dreyfus could be Providence's version of the RegattaBar at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, holding five dozen or so at tables and standing at the bar. It's a nice room for sublime sounds. The $20 cover was worth it, but $9.50 for a glass of dry house-red wine puts it more in conventioneers' range than mine. But this night was special, so we aren't counting. Posted by Sheila Lennon |
Breads rise to challenge: 
I have to admit, I remembered liking Scaggs many years ago, but I couldn't remember many song titles. It didn't take long for it all to come back, though, in fact, I started thinking of the ones I hoped he'd play as he moved through a number of his big hits. Some he didn't go for, but others he did. Harbor Lights, Lido Shuffle, Lowdown, Loan Me a Dime, and Georgia were all on his list, though and were well-received by the crowd. 
my passport photo blogging since 2002 garden blogs archived headlines  Sheila Lennon is features & interactive producer of projo.com, the Web site of The Providence (R.I.) Journal Rhode Island |
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