Daily Archives: November 27, 2008

6 London Pubs To Try

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These look like good places to try on our next visit to London.

Clamorous pub patios line the streets of London in summer, luring those who like a side order of sunburn with their al-fresco beer. But the city’s best taverns arguably come into their own in winter, when cozy quaffers hunker over dark ales before crackling fireplaces as tempests whip at the windows outside. With many of the city’s toastiest watering holes hidden just off the beaten path, here’s a six-pack of the best for those planning their next seasonal visit.

Drink in London history by the pintful — chicagotribune.com

XML-RPC LIBXML2 FIX: ABC123 OMG WTF AOK

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Here’s how David fixed the problem I was having posting to WordPress from any source other than my normal edit window. See if you can make any sense of it; all I know is I can post to my blog from my iPhone, Flickr, Scribefire (I’m still using 3.1.3), and probably ecto/Linear again.

Geeky Ramblings » Blog Archive » Temporary LIBXML2 solution

The problem has been narrowed down to a bug in LIBXML2 that causes leading angle brackets “<” to be stripped off of posts when processed through the XMLRPC support in PHP. I logged the issue in the WordPress bug tracker, and the consensus is that the problem started manifesting after an automatic update applied by Fedora 8.

Well, to solve the problem I’ve moved Ginny’s blog to a temporary server
running in a base Fedora 8 install in a VMWare instance. Luckily WordPress stores most of its content in the MySQL database (not the images, unfortunately). A bit of NFS magic to mount the appropriate directory in the virtual system, and it’s working fine. The server itself only has Apache, PHP, MySQL client, SSH, and a few other bits & pieces to keep it running. No automatic updates, GUI, compilers, etc.

Once the bug is fixed (either WordPress, using a different XML processing mechanism, or LIBXML2) I’ll move her server back to the main server.

Okay. Got that? It’s a base Fedora 8 install in a VMWare instance. Natch.

Salt Lake Dance Church:

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Via Mad Priest: Of course, I could be wrong…: we have these in England
– we call them discos

Jill Jeppesen sways and swirls her body in the dim light of the open room, inspiring dozens of other dancers to dance their prayers. With her husband, Michael, she started Dance Church in May and have been hosting dances in Sugar House and Midvale.

Dance church is non-denominational, and welcomes participants from all walks of life to participate in a unique experience. Michael Jeppesen acts as DJ and played a wide variety of music ranging from tribal drums to Nelly, even “Scarborough Fair.” Each song on his play list is rated according to “mojo” and no song is played twice in the same month. He says he spends approximately 20 hours in preparation for two hours of dancing. Each dance is considered a “wave.” It starts out calm to allow participants to ease into the rhythms and melodies, and then continues to grow increasingly more vibrant, reaching a climax, until finally relaxing down.

That sounds rather risque, but then I remembered it’s the Trib, and they’re into the cutesy naively naughty tone for “light” news. Especially when it’s some kind of “Other Church’s” quaint customs.

Remember! It’s not about getting bums in the pews, it’s about getting your ass on the dance floor. For God!

Traditional Thanksgiving OMG WTF We’re Out Of…

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It’s just not a traditional Thanksgiving here unless I have to drop everything in the middle of making a batch of onion dill bread and send David out to get a critical ingredient. 4 years ago, it was yeast:

Phew, had un petit crise earlier today when I started to make the onion dill bread – I had purchased cake yeast (that is, it’s pressed into a cake and has to be refrigerated, not that it’s just for making cakes). And when I opened the wrapper, there were three or four different kinds of fungus on it. At the time, I had already started cooking/melting the first few ingredients, so I had to turn everything off and run around for a while hollering “fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.” Then I got ahold of David, who was off shooting photos of the snowy forest preserve, and he promised to pick up some more yeast and bring it home ASAP.

This year, even though I thought I had enough dill weed and dill seed for more than one loaf, I ran out after putting the first batch of dough in a cozy warming bowl to rise. On a whim, since I had plenty of cottage cheese and eggs, I decided to make a double batch while the first single batch was rising/getting kneaded again/baking. See, we used to have a lot of dill running wild in the garden, and I’d gathered a lot of seeds and dried weed. But I forgot that I hadn’t replenished it and didn’t buy any on Tuesday, when I had a half day off.

So David’s off getting the dills, and I’m waiting for the first batch to double in volume. I wrote out a new recipe card for myself since I couldn’t find the original one; good thing I blogged it. The original will turn up sometime after the holidays.Chu