P.O. Stench

I am not sure if you heard about the post office that had to be closed yesterday because there was an horrendous smell in it. This is true; I do not remember where they said it was but they showed the reason on the night time news here. They held up the dead skunk in front of the cameras. It seems someone mailed the skunk to a taxidermist!

What Is Art

Following is a great YouTube video about what art is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDo_vs3Aip4

Absolutely great!

Ice Here

We do not have the ice nearly as bad as some other areas, but we do have ice. We still have electricity, too. Typical of Virginia, we are supposed to have thunder this afternoon!

Snow?

I am not sure you can call what we have in the yard snow. It is sort of pitiful.I hope this is not it for the year. We are having cinnamon rolls anyway; and a fire in the fireplace!

How to Hack WordPress

I disocovered a great website as follows: Happy hascking into WordPress blogs!

Google Blogsearch Tips (And a Little Wordpress Hack)
7 Jan
Google blogsearch offers some of the default google search operators and other less-known operators. Here they are, with some tips and a wordpress hack. Oh, as always, google is a little nervous when using advanced search strings, so sometimes it returns a 404 not found… it’s just trying to display the well-known 403 because it finds the search a bit suspicious… but the page is missing…window.google_render_ad();link:
this is a standard google operator, but in blogsearch it really works, while in standard google it displays a small percentage of the known inbound links. Finally a way to discover inbound links without using yahoo or technorati!
inpostauthor:
search for the given string in post author.Tip: This is a good reason to use your full name while posting, since google blogsearch indexes your name! If you want to gain visibility you should really avoid using a nickname! (well, I discovered this recently, so my posts can still be found searching for inpostauthor:”fra” … but this is going to change… this post should be found under inpostauthor:”francesco mapelli”)Tip #2:The default wordpress rss-comments module does not use the tag to describe the autor of the comments, so searching for inpostauthor:yourname returns just the blog posts… but if you hack wp-commensrss2.php adding

to the comments loop, for example before the tag, blogsearch will find also your comments.If you want to test it, just write a comment in this post, wait for google blogsearch to read the rss (it’s very fast, something like ten minutes should be enough) an check with blogsearch!.I think I’ll wirte a wordpress plugin for this.
update: since wordpress 2.1, the author is included by default in comments rss… there’s no need for this hack anymore :)
inblogtitle:
search for the given string in blog title: inblogtitle:mapelli
inposttitle:
search for the given string in post title: inposttitle:google search guide
blogurl:
search for blogs with the given url: blogurl:http://www.mapelli.info/or for blogs under the given domaindoughnuts blogurl:wordpress.com searches for blogs talknig about doughnuts on wordpress.com

Gray or Grey

No matter how you spell it, it has been grey here....very grey. Grey skies day after day. Everything looks grey; so we are having daily fires in the fireplace to improve the ambiance.

Usually, Virginia is sunny all winter long. In fact, when I moved from Chicago to the Richmond area more than twenty years ago, I noticed that even when it snows here, the sun appears right away! Gorgeous -- all sparkly world magic stuff. Hmmmm....wish it would snow instead of greyness.

Fans

Everyone in this house is a HUGE Star Trek fan. So for all of the fans, here is a cool photo of the Space Shuttle "Enterprise".

Great Photos

Take a look at this wensite: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/01/earth_observed.html It has gorgeous and fascinating photos, a few of which are here.

Brrrr.

It is COLD here. So we are having cinnamon rolls with bacon for breakfast; and a fire in the fireplace!

We had a gorgeous sunset two nights ago!!!

Missing Ocracoke

I think all three of us are missing Ocracoke although it is also good to be home. Here are some final photos we took from the roof of the house and the ferry docks.

UVA Third Year

Gravity was doing the FAFSA for this year and had to call UVA about what grade Esh was in. The answer was a surprise. Esh will be automatically classified as a third year (aka "Junior") next year. This will allow him to go through the ring ceremony, etc. that Third Years usually experience. After this semester he will have 51 credits at UVA with a total of 112 total college credits. this means that he it would be possible for him to graduate next year (and apply to graduate school if he wants to. Wow. It is all going by so quickly!

UVA Declared Best Value

Yes, UVA has been ranked number 1 as far as best value in colleges!!!!!! We agree!!!!

Beautiful Sunrise

We have begun to pack to return home. This has been a great stay. we are all going in the pool tonight for one last dip and to stare at the stars. They seem so much closer here!

Here are some more photos of the beautiful rise the other morning. we were all up at 6:00 in order to see it.

Springer's Point Nature Trail

Some years ago, one of the residents left a large tract of land by the ocean to the city of Ocracoke along with an endowment fund to be used to establish and maintain a nature trail. Ocracoke also has National Park Service land which includes a nature trail but the Ocracoke trail is much more natural. It has fences made of twisted wood strapped together by multi-c0lored twine, a small grave yard, and numerous bird houses.

Heated Pool

The heated pool is a terrific place to get exercise. The air temperatures have ranged from below freezing to 60+. It is located behind the house, in the middle of a small marsh. Very private and very relaxing for all of us.

Ocracoke Views

The views from the house of the harbor are beautiful. The first night there was a rainbow sunset. Another day it was rainy and a family (or maybe two familis) of ducks went by. The house has two top decks -- one facing the harbor and one facing the ocean.

Ocracoke Island 2

The kitchen is wonderful which is importsnt this time of year as there are only two restaurants open this time of year. [I don't think I mentioned that Ocraoke is accessible only by ferry-- a true get away.]

Here Gravity and Esh are playing Halo on the XBox 360 in the upstairs living room and playing Wii Golf donwstairs.

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Ocracoke Island

Here we are once again for R&R. The house we stayed in before is under renovation so we are trying a new house (not just new to us but newly built). It is beautiful and we all three like it better than the one last year. It is more private and it has a heated pool which is absolutely great! below are some photos from here.

This is the house from the parking area. Following are the three bedrooms, each with its own TV.

Esh has his own living area on the bottom floor with bedroom, his own bath, a half-bath, living room with couch and 42 inch plasma TV and kitchen.