Everybody needs a plaid penguin, don’t they? Put this together last night while learning how to do a few new things in Photoshop Elements.

I’ve been wanting to make a hand-bound book forever, and recently I had started getting ideas together about what the contents of said book would be (probably a cookbook). Once I got started on that, I ran across the problem of wanting to be as lazy as possible about printing and trimming pages and signatures but not finding any easy way to get my pages printed in the proper order for making signatures.

Problem may be solved:

CocoaBooklet

This program lets you create a booklet out of a PDF file, which is known as pages imposition. It is a useful tool to reduce the number of pages that has to be printed, which lets you save a lot of paper.

A booklet is book that is bound in the middle. Which means that a booklet has four pages printed on one sheet of paper (two on each sides). If you have for example a PDF file with 8 pages, you booklet will look like this:

First sheet, first side: pages 8 and 1
First sheet, second side: pages 2 and 7
Second sheet, first side: pages 6 and 3
Second sheet, second side: pages 4 and 5

The bottom line is that you simply print your booklet, staple it by the middle, fold it in two and you have a book.

Mac only, I’m afraid, but it is free, which is always a delight. I haven’t tried it out yet, but it’s on the list of things to play with next week. Here’s hoping it works as well as I need it to, because it sure would simplify my book printing issues. I might actually get around to making a hand-bound book this year! I’ve only been talking about it for what, five years now?

We decided to go to Mom’s tomorrow rather than today. It gave us a chance to sleep in a little bit, and Lin has some work he wants to do this afternoon. It’s all good. Well, for us anyway. I think Mom is going to burst before we get her computer back to her. She’s really addicted to her technology. The few times I have been sans computer, sure the first day or two was totally unbearable, but then I got back into doing other non-computer things and only missed it a little. She’s been without a fully functioning computer for almost a month, and she’s about to go totally crazy missing it.

The other day, she saw something on Animal Planet and wanted to look up something about an animal of some sort. She called me to do a Google search for her and read her whatever I found. Instead, I suggested she walk over to the bookcase of various encyclopedias I still have at her house and look it up there. You’d have thought I had suggested she jump through a burning hoop into a vat of acid by suggesting that the Encyclopedia Britannica might be able to tell her in what country a particular animal can be found. Yes, it’s true. Even my mother now thinks that books take too long and aren’t a good resource for information.

The kitties are having an “on” day today, meaning they spent the entire morning running around the house in a destructive manner. I knew I was letting them lay around and sleep too much yesterday! Also, their food consumption has gone WAY up after the day they finally learned what being hungry means. I think tomorrow I am going to measure out how much food they should actually eat in one day, put it all in their bowls, and then see how much is left when we get home from Mom’s. I have the feeling we will come home to find empty bowls and hungry kitties. They aren’t getting fat, but I think I do need to start paying attention to how much they are eating. It’s hard to tell when you just keep the kibble bowl topped-off all the time. I do know I filled their bowls twice yesterday, and that food was gone this morning … and they have HUGE bowls. None of those tiny cat-sized bowls for them. I’m thinking as they get lazier and more adult cat-like in the sleeping all day department (which they tend to do now for a few days at a time) that the amount of food they are eating isn’t going to get burned off and will start producing fat cats. We went through this with Fuzza too, but not until he was about two years old, which was when the vet declared him a little too fat and suggested strict feeding times and amounts. Changing his eating plan was a serious (and literal) pain for everyone. I’d like to get the new babies switched over to regular feeding times earlier than two years so maybe it won’t be so horrifying for everyone when the food bowls no longer overfloweth with kitty kibble.

Some other cat news: Myu’s operation scar has FINALLY really healed over. Oh, it’s healed over a few times since she got fixed, but they are so active and sometimes play so rough with each other that one little spot of it kept getting injured over and over. It never looked infected, and it never seemed to cause her any pain to press on it or anything, so I wasn’t especially worried about her health, but it was something I had to keep checking all the time to make sure it was getting infected or worse in any way. I’d already planned to call the vet when Lin got paid next week if it was still an open sore, hoping maybe an additional stitch would help it heal more quickly, but it looks like that won’t be necessary now. Sort of glad about that. At least I hope so. Trips to the vet are expensive, and we still aren’t entirely back on our feet from Lin getting laid off.

I do have to tell you I did think about putting cones on both the kitties’ little heads to keep them from messing with it, but then I decided that having two wild and crazy beasts in my house with cones on their heads didn’t sound like anything I really wanted to experience if I didn’t have to. Though if it went anything like when I experimented with putting collars on them, which they will one day have to wear no matter if they hate it or not, Myu will lose the ability to move and Ronin will spend all his time fighting with it. So, the cone plan might have worked.

One of these days, I’m going to have to do the collar test again and film it. It was just too funny. Myu went as limp as a bag of rice and couldn’t move at all, and Ronin sat in the same spot for a good 5 minutes pawing at it as though it were killing him, until he got distracted by the bells on it and started playing with them. Ronin will not have any bells on his collar. He’d drive us all insane with them. He loves jingle bells.

I’m getting hungry, so a trip to the kitchen is in order. I started making brunch a few hours ago, but then Lin had to leave for work and said he won’t be back until dinner time, so I better go finish up what I started and eat it myself. It’s going to be a whole lot of hash browns for just little old me, but I refuse to waste the potatoes. Shredded uncooked potatoes just don’t keep well. Good thing I love hash browns!

I had to re-evaluate my feelings about someone today. That doesn’t happen all that often, because I take my dear sweet time developing feelings of friendship, camaraderie, respect (and so on) for people I run across on line. It’s different than with people I meet face-to-face, because I am extremely good at reading people, and my gut instincts have yet to prove wrong. On line though, all I really have to go on are people’s words and any on line actions. So, it takes some time to get a bead on people.

Over the last year or so, maybe a little longer, I had been reading on line commentary written by this person on their web site and various message boards/forums/blogs. I came to think of them as intelligent, educated, level-headed, and someone I could, if not look up to, at least consider a peer … someone with a heart and brain who used them both at the same time (something I try to do myself, though the heart usually wins out more often) and with whom I shared several interests, fields of study, and ethical/moral values. The sort of person who I might have one day eventually attempted to develop an actual meaningful friendship or networking association with once I got over my usual shyness about getting overly friendly with people I only know on line.

But then today, as I was visiting my usual internet haunts, I read some commentary by them which threw off everything I thought I had come to know about this person. In a split second, my feelings about this person went from interest in friendship to never wanting to see their name again anywhere and sort of wishing they didn’t even exist on the planet at all. So I reread the commentary again, just to be sure I hadn’t missed some sarcasm or a well-hidden joke. I hadn’t. It had been written in all seriousness, and so I had to go with my gut instinct ad change my entire view of this person. I am finding that somewhat disturbing. I thought I was a better judge of character than that, even on the internet, and now I am wondering how many other people I know on the internet are people I really wouldn’t give the time of day, if I knew that one little thing about them that I hadn’t seen or which hadn’t been brought forth before.

It’s not that I am judgmental and make snap decisions about people based on limited information, but there are a few things I simply will not tolerate in humans I have contact with, at all in any form. I’m not going to tell you what those things are, even though I could since there are so few of them. 99% of the people who are reading this know me well enough either in real life or from reading my blog to have some idea of the kinds of things I don’t tolerate well, and for everyone else, I really don’t want to tell them how to cover up any huge personal flaws when communicating with me. Trust me, it’s better not to lie to me and just be who you are. If I don’t like you, I will actually be quite upfront about telling you that as soon as I realize it. Or … I will just avoid you altogether if I can. If I can’t avoid you, I will be fairly openly hostile when I have to be in contact with you. That’s just the way it works with me. If you lie to get me to like you, you do not want to know how openly hostile I am capable of becoming. Really. You don’t. I’d rather find out early on that someone has some huge character trait I find offensive and just go our seperate ways than to be led on. But that’s not what this post is about. This person didn’t lie, per se, at least I don’t think they intentionally kept anything from coming out or intentionally twisted the truth of themselves. It’s just that the subject hadn’t come up before, and so they never had to exhibit a reaction before. It was their reaction that brought out the very worst in them, and shocked the hell out of me. Though who knows, maybe they have been actively keeping character flaws hidden on purpose. At the moment, I’m not sure what to believe about them.

Anyway, I’m just sort of shocked that this person who I had thought I had pretty firmly placed in the Good Guys/Gals List is in fact, a secret jerk and asshole. Maybe not so secret, but at least it had never been brought out before until today, and I am really upset that this is true. It’s created something of a feedback loop in my brain. “This person is really smart about things I enjoy, I like hearing what this person has to say, and they seem really cool,” vs. “Who the hell cares how smart this person supposedly is or what they have to say, they have no heart and totally lack empathy!”

I’m going to go be sullen and dyspeptic for a while and mull this over. There isn’t anything much to mull over as far as my feelings are concerned, but I do have to reorganize every thought I have ever had about this person, get it straight in my head, and put them on that other list … the list of people I never want to meet in person no matter what. Good thing we live very far apart.

If you are reading this, it doesn’t apply to you. I have been purposely vague about it all, not because the person in question might read my blog (they might, who knows) but because I know that some people who know both of us do read it. Not that the person in question is likely to give two wits how I feel about them, but I’m not looking to start anything with anybody.

Many hours after waking up, and all I have to show for my existence is a slightly better understanding of what Lin did in the Air Force. So how did I come to waste so much time doing that? First, Piper mentioned Gev in a post, and I remembered that he had done something with missiles in the Air Force and had wanted to friend him at LJ after we met, but promptly forgot to do so, and so I couldn’t ever find who he was again. I guess I could have asked Piper, but you know I have ADD and can’t retain a thought for more than a few minutes, right? Anyway, I pop over to Gev’s journal and look at his user pics, two of which are Air Force patches. Since Lin was working at home, I asked him what squadron he’d been in, and after about 30 minutes of oratory on the greatness of his squadron, I started looking it up on Google. And so hours of time was lost to Google searches, web site reading, and oratory by Lin on the greatness of his squadron (and himself — dude, reel in the ego).

For anyone who might be interested (or maybe later searching for other people who had been in missiles somehow) Lin was in the 3901 Strategic Missile Evaluation Squadron out of Vandenberg AFB starting in the mid-80’s (I think). He also said something about having been in the 4315 Combat Crew Training Squadron as well. When he gets going talking about the Air Force, I can’t keep up with everything flying out of his mouth. A mile a minute, I tell you!

Of course, I am really no better when it comes to babbling about things, but at least the things I tend to babble about don’t require an armed services glossary and an in depth understanding of the inner workings of Strategic Air Command and intercontinental missiles to comprehend.

So yeah, that’s how I spent my morning. Not a complete waste of time, because it was all very interesting, but there are at least a dozen things around the house I probably should have been doing instead. Oh well. It’s not like the dishes in the sink are going to disappear, if I don’t wash them right this minute.

I am such an efficient procrastinator.

Get this: I pour myself a bowl of cereal and try to sit at my computer to eat it, and I am beset upon by small furry food mooches. “Beset upon” might not even be a good description. It’s more like being attacked.

Lin pours himself a bowl of cereal, sits at his computer with it, gets up and leaves the unfinished bowl at his computer while he goes outside, and the cats do nothing more than lay on the floor by his chair.

I don’t get it. They ignore Lin while he is eating, and they crawl all over me trying to get to anything I have in my hand that might possibly be edible. Neither of us have ever given them any human food at all, but maybe they know I am the weak link and that I will be the one to break first and give them a smidgen of whatever it is I am eating. It’s been hard not to. They have cute and adorable begging down to a mastered artform.

Matt Drudge is the bestest journalist on the whole planet! He reports the things the mainstream media won’t touch! Mainstream media is dead! We love Drudge! He’s new media!

OK, that’s not a direct quote, but it’s a good compilation/paraphrase of the Drudge supporting comments in a discussion I was recently involved in on line. Apparently, Matt Drudge is seen by his many, many fans as being the best journalist EVER, and mainstream media is old and outdated … and jealous of his success. So let’s look at Drudge’s journalism this morning as it appears on his web site. Right now he links to the following:

7 Associated Press stories
5 Reuters stories
2 WorldNet Daily stories
2 Smoking Gun stories
… and 1 story at each of the following locations:
Aviation Week - Bloomberg - Review Journal - Time/CNN - CBS Chicago - WYFF News Charlotte - Charlotte Observer - Star Telegram Dallas/Fort Worth - Times Online - Fox News - KETV News Omaha - Politico (blog) - KTUU News Alaska - Accuweather - Science Direct (journal abstract) - NewsNet 5 Omaha - ESPN - Sydney Morning Herald

No original news stories written by Drudge himself. Every last link leads to … another news source and a story written by someone else. So how exactly is he a journalist again? Oh sure, he’s had one or two scoops on stories over the years, but then, so have I, and I am no journalist and my web site is not a news outlet. And occasionally he breaks the White House embargo on releasing speech texts before the speech is given, but it isn’t like the day before a big presidential speech there aren’t talking heads all over the internet, TV and newspapers telling us all exactly what is going to be said. They just don’t post the transcript until after the speech (and they do have it before, how do you think Drudge gets it). So once again? How is he a journalist again?

The Drudge Report is a news aggregator in organic form. He gathers together links to interesting or unusual stories … or stories that are being widely talked about … writes up slanted headlines to use as links, and posts them to a web site with ads on it. If that makes him a journalist, then I guess I am a journalist too, but at least I take the time to tell you my personal thoughts about it as well.

And if mainstream media were to die and suddenly drop off the face of the planet, no Reuters, AP, Fox News, etc., Matt Drudge wouldn’t have anything on his web site … unless he actually got up off his ass and became a journalist and found some news to report on. Hey, I visit that page at least once a day myself, but not to find original news written by Matt Drudge. I go there to see what’s on his radar and compare it to what is on my radar, and to see stories about two-headed cows. Great source for a quick news fix? Yes. Journalist? Hell no.

To counter the claims that he gets soooo many visits every day making him the highest visited news source, let me say that “visits” mean nothing. When he starts posting the statistics for his “unique visitors” (actual individuals making one visit) then I might be impressed. As it is, my measily little web site gets 1.8 million visits a year … but only 50,000 of them are unique visitors, because the same people come back over and over again or refresh the page (also counted as a visit by most stat software). I’ve had The Drudge Report open in a tab since I got up this morning and started this post, and it refreshes every 180 seconds, so how many visits am I personally responsible for in his stats so far today? In comparison, CNN gets about 5 million unique visitors a day and who knows how many visits. You do the math.

So the Great Soap Experiment is over, and I am quite pleased with the results. Lin, who walked in the door a few minutes ago, isn’t quite so happy. In fact, he hates it. Hates the way it smells. Hates the way it looks. He just hates it. Good thing I didn’t make it for him, huh? Though I guess I’ll have to be careful about using it myself since he is sooooo opposed to the smell of grass and dirt.

Scent: Fresh Cut Grass, Dirt, and a touch of Cocoa.
Ingredients: Glycerin soap base, essential oils, cocoa, seaweed, parsley, food coloring

I’m getting really excited about today’s Great Soap Experiment! Talk about a small bath though, I’m only making four bars. Well, I didn’t know if it was going to turn out the way I wanted it to, so I didn’t want to go crazy with the supplies (which are always limited). I have enough of all the components though to make more, maybe another 12 bars. If I end up liking it enough, which I think I will.

Whether or not anyone else is going to like it or not, I can’t say. I’m calling it Summer Day, so naturally I am using Fresh Cut Grass and Dirt as scents. I doubt there’s a huge audience for that. I don’t really care though. My soap is more than soap. It’s more like artsy soap. Consider that I have spent all this time today on four bars, and I am not done yet (waiting for a layer to cool). So the next time you see some fancy handmade soap with layers and inclusions and other artsy features, remember that a lot of care and attention went into making it before you whine about how much more expensive it is compared to Dove. Ok?

I better get back to it. Hopefully the next layer won’t ruin the whole thing. I’m trying something new, and sometimes these things don’t work out. The good news is it always smells nice and it will still get you clean … even if it doesn’t look quite as expected.

Web site may be photo heavy today. Sorry. OK, not really sorry, but you know … sorry.