Whoa! How are the Biggest Loser producers going to deal with this? One of the eliminated contestants has been charged with child porn, so they had to completely edit the couple out of all episodes. The pace of the first episode was frenetic, with lots of close-ups and voiceovers. (Obviously since all of the group shots were ruined.) But how are they going to deal with the second elimination without showing it?

More Outback Photos
Cool! Eileen pointed me to this amazing blog post with photos from our Outback adventure. The blog belongs to Andreas, an Austrian guy who came on the trip with his girlfriend. I knew he liked taking photographs (he was never without his camera for the three days), but I didn’t realise how gifted he was at it. Seriously, go look. He really captured all the best parts of our trip. I especially like this one of us all sleeping on the bus (me and Snookums are in the back seat) and this one of our swags set up around the campfire (Snookums and I are on the right). The rest of Andreas’s photo blog is equally good. I’ll be visiting from now on!

Opera in the Domain 2010
Three cheers for Snookums, bringer of hot pizza and cold beer! It’s
been a long day of sitting in the sun and knitting with friends. Now
for “Candide”!

I found today’s xkcd quite melancholy. I was hoping for the Moon or WALL-E ending, and instead we got… reality. You did a good job, little Spirit.

Wollemi Pine
I just sent an email to Gardens R Us about our little Wollemi Pine tree. He’s looking very droopy lately, and I’m worried.

Hello, We bought a Wollemi Pine from the Kingsford store back in September. I was very excited to help in the conservation of these wonderful plants! The instructions we got indicated that the tree would be happy in a pot and out of direct sun, so we put him in a large pot near our front door. Here’s what it looked like then.

The location is sheltered and it gets only indirect sun. We read that overwatering can be a problem, so we’ve tried to limit watering to times when the pot soil feels dry. (No more than once every week or two.)

We had an initial period of lots of growth, but now our little tree is looking very droopy. Here’s what he looks like as of today.

You can see all the new growth along his branches, but they’re *very* droopy. Some of the lower branches are slightly brown and dry looking.

I’ve been searching the Internet but all the advice I read is conflicting. Should we move the pot into the sun? Is it the hot humid weather we’ve been having? Are we over or underwatering? Could the potting soil we used (just normal potting soil with some compost) be inhospitable to the species? Could the pot itself be leeching something into the soil that is hurting the tree? (It’s just a normal pot that we picked up secondhand.) Or is this actually just normal growth, and the branches are drooping because of the additional length?

I’d really appreciate any advice you can give us!

Have any of you ever seen this before? Have I actually managed to kill a tree species that survived untouched for hundreds of millions of years?

Keep Calm and Carry Yarn. Nice.

Superhuman Tape Measure Skills. We ladies do love guys with skills.

On iPads and ebook readers
So… the iPad. I was half-hoping it didn’t exist, just because the rampant speculation of the past few weeks was driving me nuts. I wanted Steve to come out, do a big preso on iPhone OS 4.0, then turn to the audience and say: “Oh, and one more thing. SUCKS TO BE YOU!” Exit, stage right. But he didn’t, and now I’ve spent 24 hours reading crap like “HEEHEE, HE SAID IPAD. OMG WHO WOULD WANT TO USE SOMETHING THAT SOUNDS LIKE IT GOES IN/NEAR A VAGINA EWWW! HA HA! #iTampon” (I think the iPad-period meme has worn out even quicker than the previous speed record holder, the Kanye “Imma let you finish” joke.)

Anyhoo, the big surprise for me was the price of the thing. When was the last time Apple released a project that cost 50% less than everybody predicted? How about NEVER. Also, they’re going into a nascent market with a device that has 140,000 third party apps at launch. (If I were Amazon or Sony, I’d be crying into my cornflakes.) That’s just crazy. Still, I don’t really see where I need one of these in my life. Sure, it’d be nice to have in the kitchen (seeing as how I cook a lot from my iPhone or laptop these days). And I’d love to be able to subscribe to comic books and magazines. Those aren’t huge, compelling, drool-worthy reasons though. Then I read Stephen Fry’s review. Okay, I’m a little more interested now. Fry knows his gadgets, and when he says something feels magical, I believe him. I like stuff that feels like it’s from the future, but is actually usable and relevant today. (Like GPS. Snookums has commented more than once before that Google Maps on iPone feels like magic to him.)

As for reading books on the thing, I dunno. This morning, I noticed a girl two seats ahead of me on the bus reading from a Sony Pocket Reader. It was red and looked pretty nice. The text – at least from my view – didn’t look very clear though. The black-and-white display reminded me of a 1st-gen Gameboy. I’ve heard that E-Ink displays are good stuff though, so maybe up close it was better. I tried reading books on my iPhone with Stanza, but I found that I just don’t absorb digital text the way that I do printed text. It took me a lot longer to finish, and I didn’t retain the story like I usually do. I do like the idea of carrying around a whole library though. I also really hope that the iPad will be the catalyst for the ebook market to really take off.

Why do Koreans like cute things? Bwahahaha! I’ve never heard of “Teenie Weenie” before. It looks like Ralph Lauren crossed with teddy bears. I WANT TO GO TO THERE.