A peekaboo view of the Amazing Machine which is being wrestled across the side yard right now:

It is a trench digger, which is essentially a giant chainsaw for the dirt, mounted on treads.

As you can see from the tiny glimpse of the man wielding it, it is approximately five feet tall. Did I mention that it’s mounted on treads? It looks really fun.

Tags: I wanna play!

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I made a little perch for the chicken tractor, and the chickens like it quite a lot.

Chicken owners, a question: do chickens always look so terribly pleased with themselves?

Here’s a group puppy shot, taken on their first day.

It’s not easy to wrangle puppies. Oh no, he’s getting away!

I’m still plinking away on the Celtic Cabled Scarf.

I did some math yesterday: the scarf is 15 inches long, and I started it 55 days ago. This works out to .27 inches per day. Proceeding at this rate, it will take an additional 211 days to knit a full six feet.

Tags: Celtic Cabled Scarf, MOAR PUPPIEZ, My Peeps

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I recently went looking for a way to create a page in WordPress with a list of all the posts by a specific tag. (For example, every post tagged with “FO” or “Sims Sunday“.) I wasn’t able to find the answer online. I did finally find it in the WordPress documentation, albeit worded in a very roundabout way.

Here’s how to do this:

1. Use the query_posts tag, with ‘tag=whatever’ as a variable:

<?php query_posts(‘tag=sims-sunday’.'&posts_per_page=-1′); ?>

To get the specific syntax for the tag, find a post with that tag, and click on the tag. You will go to a URL such as:

http://redshirtknitting.com/?tag=sims-sunday

Snip off everything after the question mark and drop it in as your first query_posts argument.

“posts_per_page=-1″ means “list all of the posts with this tag on one big page.” If you want to list 50 posts per page (with a link for “older” so that people can page through) the syntax would be “posts_per_page=50″. And so forth.

2. Put this before (i.e. outside) The Loop.

To create a page which just has the post titles (as opposed to a page with the actual content of each post, one after the other) strip out all of the content-related tags except for the_permalink and the_title.

3. Save this and upload it as a template file to your theme’s directory.

For an example of how the template file will look, you can check out my template file for the Sims Sunday page. (Feel free to crib from this file as freely as you like.) You may want to compare it with my Main Index template.

4. Create a new Page (not a Post – a Page). Set the new template file as the page’s Template.

Note that if you want to say anything on this page (beyond listing the posts), you will need to write it in the template file itself. (Consult the Sims Sunday template file above to see where I put my preamble.)

Tags: Tags, Wordpress

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Some puppy video from the first night, featuring Giant Mama Dog Nose.

I can tell you how long the labor lasted: two and a half dishcloths.

This is a super-easy pattern. CO 2 stitches and knit in garter stitch. KFB the first stitch of every row for 40 rows (20 garter stitch ridges). Then K2TOG the first two stitches of every row until only 2 stitches are left. Cast off and admire!

I feel sorry for people who wash their dishes with sponges and scrubby brushes. Garter stitch dishcloths made from cheap cotton dishcloth yarn are so much better. They hold the soap, and the garter stitch gives them that great scrubbiness, and they’re machine washable.

It’s probably getting time to retire some of my older dishcloths. They get pretty grotty after a few years.

ETA I just finished my first swing through the local and national newspaper sites in almost a week. To my surprise, I have discovered that the entire rest of the world is gripped in flu hysteria.

Before everyone starts stockpiling canned goods while humming “Baby Can You Dig Your Man,” let’s remember that according to the CDC approximately 80,000 people die every year worldwide from flu and flu-followed-by-pneumonia.

150 people dead in Mexico City, which has a population of 8 million people, is just not that significant. I would be willing to bet that at least 150 people die of the flu in Mexico City anyway. I don’t care what the WHO says, and I sure as hell don’t care that the Seattle Times is hitting the big red panic button.

Flu is bad, and you should all get flu shots every year. But 28 kids in NYC who caught the flu while on vacation in Cancun, and who have since recovered, does not necessarily signify the End of Days. Whether or not they’re having odd dreams about a little old black lady shucking peas in Nebraska.

Tags: FO, MOAR PUPPIEZ

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Like I mentioned last week, it’s easy to make money in The Sims 2. For a while I tried to bleed off excess cash by giving ridiculously expensive gifts to passing strangers.

“Hello! I know this gift box looks small, but it’s an eight foot-tall statue.” “Why aren’t you wearing pants?”

I gave up and made a new rule: for each generation, I’ll add a new 12×6 wing to the house. Each wing can be posh, but everything has to fit inside (i.e. no expensive chess sets out on the lawn).

This will also help focus my attention on each room. In Sims 2, just like in real life, my interior decoration tends to be skimpy at best.

I celebrated by adding on a new wing for Garamond.

It took a little while to get it furnished, because I had told Frank to quit his job. For several days the entire family slept barracks style against the unfinished drywall.

Frank has a Lifetime Want to max out the Dance career. While I waited for a job in Dance to roll up in the job listings, I had him earn some extra money by giving financial advice online.

Would you drop $250 on thirty minutes of financial advice via AIM? Because if so, that sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

Garamond grew into a teen with strange fashion sense. (Or is that redundant?)

The default outfits that ship with the game are terrible. But I can’t bring myself to buy a fashion expansion pack, not with Sims 3 coming out in five weeks.

One day while everyone was outside making snowmen, Death finally came for Ernesto. I have to admit, I was a little sad to see him go. He had been such an ugly baby, and such an awful adult, but he was very sweet as an old man. He did a surprisingly good job with baby Garamond, if not with his son Frank. And he made Makoto happy.

If you lead a happy and fulfilled life, Death whisks you away luau-style.

On the up side, Ernesto’s heirs really cashed in with Ernesto’s life insurance policy. I scored them a sweet kitchen!

Nothing takes the edge off mourning a dead relative like a full set of brushed stainless steel kitchen appliances, and new kitchen counters to match.

Tags: Sims Sunday

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