Did you know that black cats are more likely to cause allergies than white cats? I sure didn’t.

Another good article from The Age on fan fiction. I knew that “slash” referred to character pairings like “P/D” (Pacey/Dawson, of course) but I didn’t realize it came from the original über-couple “K/S” (Kirk/Spock). I also like the bit about how fanfic infuriates Anne Rice. Heh.

Fascinating article on albinism over at The Age. I didn’t know half that stuff before. I’m confused about the reference to the albino character in Attack of the Clones though… Who in the heck are they talking about? The Kaminoans?

Update: I looked through Biana Knowlton’s website (the girl featured in the article above) and there’s no mention of Star Wars in there. I’m still mystified.

Hmmm… I just noticed that Craigslist has Sydney listed but not linked. I hope that means there’s a site for us coming soon!

I was a crafty scavenger last week. I stepped outside our front door to discover a pile of little wooden veneer samples in the gutter. There were probably a hundred of them lying there. I think they’re for cabinet and countertop samples, because they range from faux wood to crazy fake marble. Of course, I did what any self-respecting crafty girl would do… I gathered up the lot and posted about it on Glitter! The Glitterati have had some good ideas for what to do with them. Can any of you think of anything good? I had another brainstorm today and realized I could make them into custom dog tags for my little sock doggies!

YCDTOTV.com – Dedicated to one of the best kids’ shows of all time, You Can’t Do That on Television. Apparently you can even download episodes (though I haven’t been able to check that at work).

An iPod Experiment
A couple people have asked me recently whether I’ve had any trouble with my iPod battery. In short, nope. My iPod is one of the original 5GB ones and was purchased in a California Apple story in January 2002. I wouldn’t say I’ve been a heavy user over the past two years, but I’m fairly certain I’m in the fat part of the “normal usage” bell curve. I listen to it on-and-off at work and on my commute, and a full charge generally lasts me two days (but runs out on the third). I tend to leave it set on “song shuffle” and fast-forward through songs when necessary. I don’t do anything special to prolong the battery and in fact I do things you’re not supposed to (i.e. leave it plugged into the computer for extended periods of time, let it run down completely). I’ve even dropped it a couple times.

So what’s my actual play time from a full charge? I have no idea. I’d guess probably around eight hours but it’s hard to tell. Therefore today I’m running an experiment to ascertain this once and for all. I started it up at 8:00 this morning and it’s been running ever since. I’ve got it set to play random songs but I haven’t been using the fast-forwarding at all. No backlight or sounds or anything like that. The first of the four “power bars” disappeared at the three hour mark. I’m now up to five and a half hours and the remaining three bars are still visible. (For the record, I don’t think they’re necessarily a very accurate guage of battery life, but it’d be nice to have proof.) More updates as the day progresses…

How to Make Modeling Clay out of Dryer Lint. That’s the coolest, grossest, gosh darn craftiest idea I’ve heard in a long time!

Happy Bloggiversary to Me!
The milestones just creep up on you, don’t they? Today is web-goddess’s third birthday. There are now earlier posts in the archive from my first attempts at a blog, but the inaugural w-g post was made on January 4, 2001. As I did last year, I’ve compiled some statistics for 2003

Number of posts: 868
Number of comments: 3279
Most commented posts: Sydney Peace Rally, Celebrity Identification Quiz, Mensa “24 H in a D” Quiz, Advice on Getting a Cat, Apple Discussion
Unique commenters: 287 (of course, a lot of those are people like Ferret who never use the same name twice, so the real number’s probably like 200)
Frequent commenters: see here
Number of posts mentioning “Snook”: 212 (that’s nearly 25%!)
Number of posts mentioning “Apple”: 27
Number of polls: 15
Number of poll votes: 484
Most popular polls: What did you do on your 21st birthday?, Can you lick your own elbow?
Site designs: two (I’m averaging just one per year!)
Sock animals created: 10
Harry Potter Scarves knitted: 6 (that’s nearly forty feet of knitting!)
Hits Per Day: Ranged from 3000-6500 throughout the year (though it’s already over 9600 for January thanks to the Sock Monkey tutorial)

Congratulations to Tracey (who organizes all those cool photo projects) as she’s getting married today! I seem to remember her saying it was being held in the Sydney Royal Botanical Gardens. Judging by the sun streaming in my window, she’s going to be have some beautiful weather.