Author: Kelly

Kelly is a web developer and crafter based in Philadelphia, PA
New Construction Townhome

OMG HURRICANE

Kelly

There’s a lot of spazzing about hurricane Irene in the mid-atlantic and New England. And while a hurricane is something to take seriously, they’re also highly unpredictable. Yes, you should prepare yourself, and yes the worst week of my life was going without power for a week after a hurricane, but where I am (just outside of Washington, DC) it’s not even raining yet. So chill out. No, you do not need to cancel your entire weekend plans yet.

Here’s what you should do:

  • Locate a working flashlight and some fresh batteries. Put them somewhere you can find them in the dark.
  • Grab a few extra boxes of crackers/jerkey/other foods that don’t require refridgeration. If the power goes out for a few hours, you’ll want to leave your fridge and freezer closed to keep the cold in.
  • If it looks like things are getting serious, turn your fridge/freezer down to pre-chill things in case of power outage.
  • Charge your phone, laptop, and anything else that can be charged
  • Do your laundry
  • Locate some pots/pans/buckets you can use if you spring a leak
  • Locate some old towels you can use to clean up said leaks
  • If your basement tends to flood, move the stuff you care about away from the walls if it starts raning. Prop up your couch with things you don’t care about. I hear webOS devices are cheap now.
  • If you require beer, get it now.
  • Find a battery operated radio (hint: many iPods fit this bill) and figure out what station weather reports come in on.

Also remember that land-lines generally continue to work without power, but the cordless phones won’t. Go to the thrift store and get an old school phone if you don’t have one. If the hurricane is a no-show, you can use the parts for hacking later.

Other emergency-preparedness tasks, such as the following, can generally wait until later. Say, when there is actually a hurricane within 12-24 hours of you:

  • Fill the bathtub with water (to flush the toilet, wash your hands, etc)
  • Cancelling any and all plans that don’t involve getting the hell away from a hurricane
  • Buying up a month’s worth of toilet paper (why do people do this?)
  • Compulsively refreshing The Weather Channel home page

Personally, I prefer NOAA to The Weather Channel. It’s a lot less sensationalist, but considerably lower-fi. Their graphics are bringing you the latest in 1999 technology.

Keep your heads on, folks.

Wedding

Kellbot’s Guide to Wedding Planning

Kelly

There’s a point in everyone’s life where all of a sudden, everyone you know is getting married. It happens at different ages depending on who you hang out with, but for me it was this year. Not only did I get married, but nearly every weekend since March someone I know has gotten married. I’m told that this marriage flood lasts a few years until it gives way to a flood of babies.

 

Having survived the wedding process, I have some tips to pass along to my recently engaged friends:

Avoid [most] wedding websites at all costs

I’m not even going to mention them by name, because you might be tempted to visit them. Wedding websites are these monstrosities of consumerism created by the wedding industry. They exist soely to get you to buy more stuff for your wedding. Also, the people on them tend to be just awful.

“But wait!” you say, “I need them for a checklist. How else will I know when to mail my save the dates? How will I make sure I’ve done everything I need to?”

Bridal magazines. Every bridal magazine I have ever seen contains a checklist/schedule with guidelines for when to do the big stuff (mailing invitations, dress fittings). Buy one, or better yet take one from a recently married friend. I saw a look of genuine joy on my father-in-law’s face when he handed over the stack of bridal magazines they’d accumulated during his daughter’s engagement.

There is one notable exception, I really like offbeat bride. It’s basically a wedding porn site, full of fun photos of weddings that range from unusual to downright silly.

The only thing you have to do is get married.

The wedding industry has amassed an amazing list of things you’re supposed to do at or before a wedding/reception. Engagement photos, bridal showers, special bridesmaid’s dresses,veils, bouquets, receiving lines, first dances, drunken toasts, the list goes on. It turns out, all of these things are entirely optional. Skip any of the parts you aren’t into, though you should keep in any of your family’s wacky traditions in the interest of keeping the peace.

Guest lists are hard. When in doubt, invite.

At first I wanted our wedding to be on the smaller side, because I tend to have anxiety in big groups, but by the time we added our close friends to our Irish Catholic families we were already a medium-sized wedding.  There were a handful of friends  who weren’t quite “close” friends, but still people we talk to regularly, who we ended up not inviting largely because I was still holding onto this idea that we were having a “small” wedding. This was despite the guest list being twice as long as originally planned. In retrospect, an extra table of friends wouldn’t have been any more stressful, and I wish I’d invited them.

Also, making a wedding guest list is stressful no matter what. Even if your wedding is huge, at some point you have to draw lines across your group of friends and it sucks.

Spend your wedding budget on the things you actually care about

For most couples, the wedding itself is pretty inexpensive. The reception on the other hand can get expensive fast, even if you’re doing things DIY. You can absolutely get away with spending less on the stuff you don’t care about to free up cash for the things you do.

We addressed the invitations ourselves, despite warnings from wedding websites that this would be a horrible process (it wasn’t), I bought my dress online for $100, and I wore a felt flower in my hair instead of a veil.

Not dropping thousands of dollars on a dress I don’t care about freed up cash for an awesome venue, and the money we saved on the calligrapher went straight into an all-you-can-eat ice cream bar. Because if there’s one thing a wedding needs, it’s ice cream.

I’m sure it’s fine.

I did a lot of stressing about little details. Whether the caterer would get everyone’s meal order right. What if it rains. What if it snows. What if I trip and fall during the ceremony. About a week before the wedding I was crying to my friend about how the seams of my dress wouldn’t lay flat and it was too late to fix. All of these things turned out fine.

Things did go wrong: I forgot how to do the sign of the cross (despite coming from a Catholic family I was raised Episcopalian), and thus just flailed my hands in front of me during the ceremony. Chris and I forgot to kiss at the end. One of our groomsmen was missing entirely (due to illness), leaving one lucky guy to lead two ladies down the aisle. None of these things bothered our friends/family, because they were there to celebrate with us, not critique us.

During the reception, one thing did go very wrong: the projector for Rock Band broke. There was a loud pop, and then the distinct smell of burning plastic, and that was that. And just as my Bridal Panic set in, some of our friends hopped in their car, drove to Staples, and picked up a new projector. Everything worked out fine.

So try to enjoy the wedding planning process; it’s actually pretty fun if you can manage not to freak out (I couldn’t). At the end of the day, you’re celebrating your marriage with people who care about you, and you’ll probably have a good time no matter what.

Wedding

Kellbot’s Guide to Wedding Planning

Kelly

There’s a point in everyone’s life where all of a sudden, everyone you know is getting married. It happens at different ages depending on who you hang out with, but for me it was this year. Not only did I get married, but nearly every weekend since March someone I know has gotten married. I’m told that this marriage flood lasts a few years until it gives way to a flood of babies.

Having survived the wedding process, I have some tips to pass along to my recently engaged friends:

Avoid [most] wedding websites at all costs

I’m not even going to mention them by name, because you might be tempted to visit them. Wedding websites are these monstrosities of consumerism created by the wedding industry. They exist soely to get you to buy more stuff for your wedding. Also, the people on them tend to be just awful.

“But wait!” you say, “I need them for a checklist. How else will I know when to mail my save the dates? How will I make sure I’ve done everything I need to?”

Bridal magazines. Every bridal magazine I have ever seen contains a checklist/schedule with guidelines for when to do the big stuff (mailing invitations, dress fittings). Buy one, or better yet take one from a recently married friend. I saw a look of genuine joy on my father-in-law’s face when he handed over the stack of bridal magazines they’d accumulated during his daughter’s engagement.

There is one notable exception, I really like offbeat bride. It’s basically a wedding porn site, full of fun photos of weddings that range from unusual to downright silly.

The only thing you have to do is get married.

The wedding industry has amassed an amazing list of things you’re supposed to do at or before a wedding/reception. Engagement photos, bridal showers, special bridesmaid’s dresses,veils, bouquets, receiving lines, first dances, drunken toasts, the list goes on. It turns out, all of these things are entirely optional. Skip any of the parts you aren’t into, though you should keep in any of your family’s wacky traditions in the interest of keeping the peace.

Guest lists are hard. When in doubt, invite.

At first I wanted our wedding to be on the smaller side, because I tend to have anxiety in big groups, but by the time we added our close friends to our Irish Catholic families we were already a medium-sized wedding. There were a handful of friends who weren’t quite “close” friends, but still people we talk to regularly, who we ended up not inviting largely because I was still holding onto this idea that we were having a “small” wedding. This was despite the guest list being twice as long as originally planned. In retrospect, an extra table of friends wouldn’t have been any more stressful, and I wish I’d invited them.

Also, making a wedding guest list is stressful no matter what. Even if your wedding is huge, at some point you have to draw lines across your group of friends and it sucks.

Spend your wedding budget on the things you actually care about

For most couples, the wedding itself is pretty inexpensive. The reception on the other hand can get expensive fast, even if you’re doing things DIY. You can absolutely get away with spending less on the stuff you don’t care about to free up cash for the things you do.

We addressed the invitations ourselves, despite warnings from wedding websites that this would be a horrible process (it wasn’t), I bought my dress online for $100, and I wore a felt flower in my hair instead of a veil.

Not dropping thousands of dollars on a dress I don’t care about freed up cash for an awesome venue, and the money we saved on the calligrapher went straight into an all-you-can-eat ice cream bar. Because if there’s one thing a wedding needs, it’s ice cream.

I’m sure it’s fine.

I did a lot of stressing about little details. Whether the caterer would get everyone’s meal order right. What if it rains. What if it snows. What if I trip and fall during the ceremony. About a week before the wedding I was crying to my friend about how the seams of my dress wouldn’t lay flat and it was too late to fix. All of these things turned out fine.

Things did go wrong: I forgot how to do the sign of the cross (despite coming from a Catholic family I was raised Episcopalian), and thus just flailed my hands in front of me during the ceremony. Chris and I forgot to kiss at the end. One of our groomsmen was missing entirely (due to illness), leaving one lucky guy to lead two ladies down the aisle. None of these things bothered our friends/family, because they were there to celebrate with us, not critique us.

During the reception, one thing did go very wrong: the projector for Rock Band broke. There was a loud pop, and then the distinct smell of burning plastic, and that was that. And just as my Bridal Panic set in, some of our friends hopped in their car, drove to Staples, and picked up a new projector. Everything worked out fine.

So try to enjoy the wedding planning process; it’s actually pretty fun if you can manage not to freak out (I couldn’t). At the end of the day, you’re celebrating your marriage with people who care about you, and you’ll probably have a good time no matter what.

Gaming

Writing Reviews Isn't All Fun and Games

Kelly

Actually, it is all games, but it’s not all fun. I’ve been playing and reviewing games for Sparkle Gamer for about a week and a half now. There are 5 full reviews up now, and I’ve even been lucky enough to have a publisher send me some promo copies of new games. If there’s one thing I’ve gained working on this project it’s a new respect for professional reviewers.

Being a professional video game reviewer sounds like a pretty great job, you get paid to play games and write about them. And I still think it’s a great job. But for every review copy you get of a game like Child of Eden, you get a Bratz: Forever Diamondz. I’m playing through Rabbids Travel in Time now, which is pretty good, but after the Petz Fantasy 3D review I needed a palate cleanser. If you play too many similar games they all start running together. If you play too many bad games, you start to feel your standards slipping. And suddenly you understand why so many horrible, horrible games have so many positive reviews on Amazon: because it can get so much worse.

I’ve been playing a lot more Starcraft II since I started order levitra Sparkle Gamer, as well as Box Life on the DS. Because all of the titles I’ve reviewed so far have been DS games, I’ve been able to play them while commuting to/from the office. I judge a title by how much slower or faster it makes my commute go.

You’re supposed to play each game all the way through, which I do when I can tolerate it. The worst thing about most of the girl game titles is that they’re incredibly repetitive; most of them have nothing new to offer after the first hour or so of playing. And I do mean nothing: many of them don’t even bother ratcheting up the difficulty level of the minigames.

So I have a new respect for people who do this for a living.  Sure, it beats a lot of other things, but it’s still hard work.

Hacking

Livescribe Gives Developers Huge F-You

Kelly

I got an email today from Livescribe announcing the closing of their developer program:

As of July 29th, Livescribe will close its third-party developer program.

With cloud technology and mobile information access becoming increasingly important to our customers, Livescribe is realigning its focus and resources on cloud access, storage and services. Our recent introduction of Livescribe Connect, which enables customers to easily send notes and audio, as a pencast PDF, to people or destinations of their choice like Google Docs, Evernote, email, and Facebook, is an important step in this direction.

Applications in our online store will remain available for download and purchase pending compatibility with future Livescribe software updates.

We will continue to accept applications submitted for publishing in our online store, as well as pattern credit requests through July 22nd. At this time, the SDKs and developer website will no longer be available.

Effective immediately, their forums are read-only and will be taken offline completely in a little over a week. They’re removing the ability for developers to create custom applications and taking away the SDK. Particularly disappointing is the loss of the custom paper penlets, which allow developers to create and print their own custom printed paper and forms.

It’s upsetting to see a technology company close its doors to creative developers. It’s insulting to see them to do so overnight, not only shuttering the program but silencing the forums immediately. It’s clear the company doesn’t value its developer community at all, and that’s a damned shame.

As a consumer and developer, I feel duped. Part of why I purchased the Livescribe was specifically because of the ability to extend it. Developer communities bring niche functionality to products – they add features that are too esoteric for the company to bother with. Killing off your developer community sends a clear message that your product is for mainstream users and mainstream users only: everyone else can go home.

So, well done Livescribe. In the span of just a few hours you’ve turned me from one of the biggest evangelizers of Livescribe to someone who wishes  she still had the receipt and packaging for her Echo so she could return it.

Gaming

Sparkle Gamer: Reviewing Games for Girls

Kelly

I need another project like I need a hole in the head, but this one was just too ridiculous to pass up.

I’ve started a review site for games for girls. Specifically I mean games marketed towards girls.

It’s a little tough to explain why I’m doing this. It kills me a little that there even are “games for girls,” because I believe a good game is for everybody. You can get the full spiel at “Why Review Games for Girls”, but it came up in a conversation with Chris the other day that most of the games marketed to young girls aren’t reviewed by the major review sites, if anyone at all.

Parents who buy these games, most of which are junk, don’t really have anything to go on but the Amazon reviews. Unfortunately the Amazon reviews skew heavily towards “my daughter liked this because she loves [insert character here].” So for the discerning parent who’s concerned about the quality and content of the games their daughter plays, there aren’t a lot of resources.

Personally I’d love it if parents would drop the pink-is-for-girls thing and just buy games that were good, regardless of gender marketing. But some girls get the princess bug despite the protests of their parents.
I hope to arm parents with information so they can buy high quality games for their kids, navigating the murky world of games for girls and highlighting some gender neutral games which might appeal to even the biggest Disney princess fan.

Check out Sparkle Gamer, and if you’d like to review some games, let me know!

Business, Hacking

Where are the women in tech?

Kelly

Where are the women in tech? Oh, apparently we’re all out shoe shopping.

Google sent out invites to Gilt Groupe*’s early bird sale of Chromebook laptops. I found it difficult to get excited about a $500 laptop boasting nearly the same specs as a netbook I bought for the same price 2 years ago, but I’m also not the target market for a “fashion laptop.”

What is curious though is Gilt Groupe’s decision on how to categorize the laptop, which I only noticed when copy/pasting the URL to a friend:
http://www.gilt.com/sale/men/google-chromebook

Oh, right, it’s a men’s item. Never mind the fact that they have a perfectly serviceable Home category, for items which are presumably neither worn nor gendered.

This is, on the scale of sexist things I’ve witnessed, pretty trivial. Minor. Unimportant. But come on people. Is this really where we are still? Girls like shoes and boys like computers?

Come on folks, we can do better than this.

* Don’t even get me started on the superfluous E

Personal

Once Again a Crazy Cat Lady

Kelly

Naptime

I am a part-time cat lady. Most of the year, I am too busy to be willing to deal with a pet. But during kitten season the local shelter posts photos of homeless kittens on their Facebook page, and I am powerless to resist.

This time, I went in to pick up what I thought was a family of a mom and 3 kittens who were about six weeks old. I left with a box with a mother and 5 kittens, whose eyes were still closed. At this size, they’re almost too little to be cute. Almost.

As many of you know, I have terrible luck with foster cats. There is always some sort of medical emergency. I am assured that this is because all stray kittens are horribly broken, and at least at home they can get better care, but still. Why I thought this litter would be different is beyond me.

But before I tell the story of Yet Another Cat Emergency, here’s a video of the kittens this morning. They are looking cuter and fuzzier today, and their ears are starting to look like ears.

Ok, so cat drama. After eating some and drinking some, I noticed Mother Goose, the mom cat, sitting off to the side of the crate, away from her babies. Then when one kitten started crying, she stood up… and I could see she was sitting in a pool of blood. COMMENCE FREAKOUT.

After a panicked call to the vet, I learned two things: the kittens were less than 48 hours old, and it’s “not uncommon” for queens to bleed for a few days after giving birth. I was given a checklist of a few signs to look for that would indicate problems (Mother Goose had none), where to buy levitra and then proceeded to clean up the omg eww cat blood.

Chris then informed me that a similar thing happens to humans after giving birth! Oh, great! So much to look forward to!

Cats

Personal

Camping!

Kelly

This past weekend we went camping in upstate New York. We stayed at North-South Lake Campground in the Catskills. Originally we’d planned to have a group of 10, but with a 30% chance of storms many of our indoor-cat friends bailed. Their loss, because the weather was absolutely beautiful.

creek

Since there was rain in the forecast, we put tarps up above the tents (and I put one under ours for extra protection). Unfortunately none of us knew any fancy knots (please don’t tell my scout leader) so tying them in the trees was a bit of an adventure. But we figured it out.

campsite_bcampsite_a

Then, in a display of manliness, two of our friends decided they should swim to a nearby island. The air temperature was in the 60s, and the water was much, much colder.

swim_there_nick

It wasn’t quite as doomy as this photo makes it look, but it was indeed overcast.

swim_island

The plan was to then pick them up in a canoe. However, when we got over the canoe rental we discovered we needed a drivers license to rent one, which we did not have. So we told the guys they would have to swim back. They were, as you might imagine, a bit disappointed by this.

swim_back_nick

There were only a few very light showers during the day, I don’t think any of them lasted more than 5 minutes. The showers did however give us a DOUBLE RAINBOW ALL THE WAY. Oh, is that meme over?

rainbow_girls

We grilled lots of meats, and it was delicious. We also made banana boats, where you take a banana and slit it down one side, then fill it with marshmallows and chocolate. Wrap it in tinfoil and set it on the coals for a while. You then eat the resulting banana goo with a spoon.

It did rain all night, but thanks to the tarps only the front two corners of our tent got any rain on them at all. We stayed nice and dry inside.

In the morning, we took oranges, sliced them in half, ate the orange, and then put cinnamon roll dough (the kind that comes in a can) inside. As with the bananas, wrap in tinfoil and put on the fire. You end up with a slightly orangy cinnamon roll. It is amazing.

Cinnamon bun cooked in an orange

We finished the trip with a half mile hike to a huge waterfall, and then a trip to Cracker Barrel.

Much bigger waterfall

Startup Life

City Of Epic Kickstarter Campaign!

Kelly

My friend Katherine and I have been working like crazy on a game project for the last few months, and we’re thrilled with what we’ve accomplished so far. Now, we’re trying to bring it to an open beta while making it as fantastic as possible. We’ve started a Kickstarter campaign to get us there.

City of Epic is an RPG based around real-world where can i buy clomid exercise. Rather than get all TL;DR, I’ll let this “high quality” video explain it:

If you like some combination of gaming, fitness, and awesomeness, please consider donating!