When I have to fly somewhere, usually the first place that I check for flights is Expedia. I’m not sure why, perhaps because it was the first travel site out there. But I usually end up buying from Travelocity, but the site is more annoying to use, as it doesn’t give you full details about the flight from the beginning. Today it was particularly annoying as I found two good itineraries I was ready to buy – and both changed price (by several hundreds of dollars) while I was booking them.
So the moral of the story is that you have to check all three sites (and perhaps others?) before buying plane tickets.
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A couple of days ago, Mika finished her first sewing project, a coin purse from the Alex Happily Ever Crafter Kit. She/we sewed it in a couple of sessions while waiting for Camila to get out of swimming class.
I have to say that she enjoyed it quite a bit. I did help her by threading the impossible needles (and dividing the thread into several strings so that they could be threaded in the first place) and tying knots. And I did sew one of the sides for her (after we did come to the conclusion that, despite the instructions, the sides had to be sewn if you wanted to put any coins inside) – but she did pretty much everything else herself, including sewing the buttons. Her stitches are still a bit big and not too straight, but so are mine 🙂
Anyway, this is her creation:
The NYT reports today that Radical Islamic theorist Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi is being dissed by younger jihadists who accuse him of being soft. His solution? Invoking the publications of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which name him as a dangerous and influential jihadi theorist.
Apparently, invoking the reports of western terrorist experts is a common way to get some street cred among the jihadist crowd. al-Maqdisi, however, complains that his western critics understand him better than his supposed followers.
“I am surprised at the low level of their thinking,” Mr. Maqdisi wrote of his critics, “and how the enemies of religion read and understand us better than they do.”
But seriously speaking, al-Maqdisi’s complaint is easy to understand. It’s easier for an academic or theorist to understand the implications of what another theorist is saying than for the “common man” – i.e. someone who joins a group or an ideology, most often out of instinct and without thinking about it. Indeed, I can sympathize with al-Maqdisi’s frustrations. Most people who support torture, for example, or a lack of protection to minority rights, have not thought out how such practices impact upon a democratic system of government, corrupting it and making it less stable. And chances are they won’t think about it either – it takes work to think.
Anyway, read the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/world/middleeast/30jihad.html
If you look at the column next to this text, scrolling down a couple of screens, you will find a section called “In my other blogs” with links to the latest entries on my Food Blog and my Human Rights Blog. The feed is there thanks to Rss Include. It’s the same service I’ve been using for a while, but now they have a new and improved version which is easier to use and more sleek. Now, they also offer a paid version (~$37 a year) that allows you to 1) combine all your blog postings into one entry and 2) don’t have the “RSS integration by RSSrssinclude” disclaimer after each feed (which I found very annoying, as I often have several feeds per page). So I happily paid the money (and did not tell Mike 🙂
One of my first challenges was to incorporate the feed for my status on Facebook. I’ve had it for a while, but I wanted to change it to the new system, so that I could get rid of the “RSS integration by RSSrssinclude” phrase under it. Well, let me tell you, that it did not prove easy to do – and I’m still not satisfied with the hack I used. But, in case you are looking to do the same, here are the three choices I found:
-If you want an rss feed to all your notifications, all you have to do is go to
Inbox -> Notifications , look for Subscribe to Notifications and then copy the link that says “Your Notifications”. That’s the url of your notifications feed. You then go to a service like RSS Include, and use it to create a script that you can copy and paste to the page where you want to have your Facebook feed.
The problem with this, is that it includes your notifications rather than your status – and why would you want a feed to that?
-Your next option is to go to http://apps.new.facebook.com/newsfeedrss/ and create a feed there. It’s fairly easy to make, BUT, it will show on your feed not just what you are doing, but also what your friends are doing. And not only I have no interest in broadcasting what they are doing, but it seems like quite the invasion of privacy.
-The workaround that I found is to have a friend (or another account) create a Friends List that includes only you (go to Friends, chose “make a new list”, make it, click on edit and then add your name). Once your friend has done that, have him select the name of the mailing list, then click on “Status Updates” and then copy the link at “Friend’s Status Feed”. Then you go to rss-include.
The one thing I don’t like about this solution is that it includes my whole name – I rather it just include what I type. But until there is a better solution, that’s what I’m using.
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