The Substantially Similar Weblog

My most successful Green Lemonade to date:

Green Lemonade

Approximate recipe:

• Five or six leaves of kale
• A bunch of fresh parsley
• One-third of a medium-sized cucumber
• A thick inch of fresh ginger (peeled)
• A whole lemon (include seeds, peel, etc.)
• A whole lime (likewise)
• Two fuji apples (cored)

Juice and consume.

I have heard from green-juice skeptics before. It may be hopeless for some poor souls. But don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

Still Falling

[Tags]Snow, Blizzard, Boston[/Tags]

Past seasons…

[Tags]Leaves, Autumn, Fall, Kids[/Tags]

I’ve been on the road a lot lately with no time to blog (or sleep).  Following are a couple items to keep this space from going completely dead.

A wild turkey stopped by our backyard (in Boston):

I called city animal control, and they said these guys are everywhere. Apparently there is no more wild left for the wildlife.

In other news, Gears is finally available for Firefox 3! For me, at least, this is a big deal, since I frequently depend on offline mode for Google Reader and have otherwise fully migrated to FF 3 for the speed benefits. Since RC2, it’s mostly stopped crashing as well.

[Tags]Wild Turkey, Wildlife, Gears, Boston, Firefox[/Tags]

This, from my alma mater, is a good idea:

Group to explore creation of ‘bridge year’ program
Princeton President Shirley M. Tilghman has appointed a working group to explore the creation of a “bridge year” program that would allow newly admitted undergraduates to spend a year of public service abroad before beginning their freshman year. The program would enable students to pursue a tuition-free, pre-collegiate enrichment year outside their home country with support from the University.

I finished my high school requirements early and spent a year abroad before college in Liège, Belgium. It was an excellent decision. There would have been practically no benefit to starting college early, and having living abroad without my parents for a year was as important to my university experience as most of what I learned in high school.

I propose that some sort of “bridge year” become something like a default option before higher education. This is much more common outside the United States. Indeed, depending on whom you believe, only seven to twenty-five percent of Americans own passports. My completely unscientific survey of Australians, by contrast, suggests that every last one of them travels abroad as young adults. (I have to admit that this survey is not only unscientific but fatally biased, inasmuch as I’ve only met Australians traveling abroad, not having been there myself).

While I’m praising Princeton, this, too, is good news:

Aggressive goals set for sustainability initiatives
Princeton has committed to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 as part of a comprehensive Sustainability Plan that sets ambitious goals in the areas of greenhouse gas emissions reduction, resource conservation, and research, education and civic engagement.

I’ve a big fan of Shirley Tilghman, Princeton’s first non-male non-alum president. She has been working to fix a lot of what was wrong when I was student, despite some stiff resistance from the old guard.

[Tags]Princeton, Bridge Year, Sustainability, Shirley Tilghman[/Tags]

Mostly of interest to friends and family: our renovation has started. I stopped by today to find our kitchen and family room were gone. Alas.

Before (on a snowy day):

Now (follow the link for more photos): 7336

[Tags]Renovation, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy[/Tags]

…so that you will eventually know the indescribable joy of finding all of them sound asleep at a reasonably early point in the evening.

We were hit pretty hard in Boston. My office was shut down and deserted by mid-afternoon, but I decided to stay until late afternoon — big mistake. You might think the trains wouldn’t be as affected by the snow. And they weren’t — it only took me twice as long to get home, while it took my brother over six hours to drive from Somerville to Roslindale.

Still, it was a pretty extraordinary scene at South Station around 4:30pm. It was packed inside and out. A few trains arrived, and no one got on or off. I was wondering if they were ghost trains until finally things started moving.

The odd color balance in this photo set is because these were all taken in the dark with very long exposure times. But the apocalyptic cast may actually be appropriate.

Earlier: Proof of Fall 2007, Blizzard 2007, Blizzard 2005, First Snow 2004, Winter Sunset 2005.

[Tags]Boston, Roslindale, Snow, Blizzard[/Tags]

Success as a parent is when your two year old recognizes and demands, at various times, Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney (particular tracks), They Might Be Giants, and the White Stripes. And when she knows how to operate her own portable CD player and navigate your cell phone photo library.

These are skills that the Class of 2026 is going to need.

I’ve been playing around with Gallery and wpg2. I’m still a bit puzzled attempting to integrate Gallery and WordPress. I’ve resolved most issues; the main remaining issue is to display images in the Ajaxian theme without running over the borders in the Ajax/slideshow views. Also, the embedded image apparently doesn’t render in the RSS feed. Update: I’ve given up on the G2 tinymce plugin and the WPG2 tag for now and just hardcoded the image and album URL. Update 2: now the embedded image is working again for no good reason. Suggestions on the entire configuration are welcome.

In any case, I took some pretty photos today in our back yard (use left and right arrow keys to scroll through images after clicking on the one below — I still can’t get the navigation icons to appear):

Before: Proof of Spring 2007.

[Tags]Autumn, Foliage, Trees, WordPress, WPG2, Gallery[/Tags]