stifled, her touch is leprous and pale

Non-glare glass has been invented! I am really, really hoping this gets widely adopted, because it would absolutely revolutionize the electronics industry on a planetary scale.

Also, for anyone having problems with iDevices that play music, that ceased to play music after upgrading to iOS5...well, here's the 'unofficial' official solution. But it sucks if you have a large music library. Even worse, there also seems to be a bug in how the updated music app handles music files with variable bitrate, and...maybe it's just me, but I don't know where on the .mp3 file I'd even find variable bitrate settings!

The other problem is that the upgraded music app seems to be glitching with large album artwork. See, it didn't used to be a problem--whether it was a 100x100 or a 1024x1024 size album graphic, the app would just resize it appropriately and move on. Now? It doesn't. It wants it close to, or the exact size, that it needs the artwork to be, or it just throws up its pixilated hands and flips past the song. Argh!

Somewhat out of nowhere, because I had such trouble tracking down an online seller of this product today, have a recipe for candied winter melon. Also called wax gourd, it's popular in Singapore, but it seems fairly easy (if somewhat time-consuming) to make it yourself. For a short batch that you don't plan to be preserved for long, use the recipe as given. If you want it to be preserved long-term, then after the first batch of sugaring (and heating, and cooling), make successively stronger batches of sugar syrup, until you are left with crystallized, translucent melon sections. Good luck!

In the meantime, news from Octoberville:

[03:55] Peewee Musytari: ooh emily snuck in there....CONGRATS #274 EMILY ORR - YOU ALSO GRADUATED, PLUS ADDED CERTIFICATE FOR STEALTH FINISH hehe :))
[03:56] handyreecechalmer: Yeah. I thought she had called it a night.

I had! But then I got pulled back in for the last achievement for this year's hunt, and...well...

(from the scavenging album)

That number you can barely make out next to my name (which you can also barely make out)? Indeed, that's number 274. Used to be (back when we had wood-burning cats), the Wall of Fame capped at 250 names. This year, they hit 250, and people kept finishing the hunt. So they added another board.

Me, I'm just happy to be finished. That is a hard hunt, and pictures will be forthcoming, but in the meanwhile, I'm going to collapse somewhere. Hopefully not on a baby cobra, a burning marshmallow, or a can of gasoline. And my sincere, humble, and most effulgent thanks to everyone that helped me, which included CreamyGoodness Resident, Handyreecechalmer Resident, Dorrie Fredriksson, dante884 Reanimator, last year's Octoberville Queen, Elise Rodenberger, and this coming year's Octoberville Queen, Peewee Musytari--among others. I can't thank you enough.