Okay, not my only hope, but certainly the most readily available. ;-)

Can anyone who uses Joomla and/or has more up-to-date web coding skills than I do (not difficult) tell me why, when I install this template, it won't show the sidebar modules? (In the case of my website, that would be the main menu and the events calendar.)

It's got me tearing my hair out, because this layout (with the substitution of my own background and header graphics) is exactly what I want. Or would be if it, y'know, worked. It shows up beautifully with the front-page-published articles, but that doesn't do much good if there's no menu to take people to other pages. *headdesk*

I don't even know enough about stylesheets to know where to look in the code to see if maybe it's trying to refer to directories in not quite the right way or something. (I spent about 45 minutes banging my head the other night before remembering that my site had been migrated to a new server a few months back and fixing a couple global configuration settings accordingly.)

I also just updated to the new version of Joomla, and am about to try reverting to the old to see if it works, but I'm not really expecting it to.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. I will send you virtual cookies. (You don't want me to try to bake you real ones.)

OMGYESPLEASE!

I don't even care if it turns out to be rubbish. Most of these people were pretty thoroughly batshit IRL anyway. At the very least, it would be difficult to make them any more soaperrific than they actually were. (Though I make no promises not to mock them if Lizzie is as humorless as in certain past small-screen portrayals.) Plus, bonus Zoe Tapper! (As Effie Ruskin, yet.)

Waaaaaaaaaaaant! *grabbyhands*

Gakked from thefannishwaldo, and I must be insane for posting it at this particular point in time, but what the heck:

Inspired by Doctor Who's "Turn Left:" Pick one of my stories and tell me a point in the tale that you'd change. Something tiny (e.g. "and then Fay chose silver glitter instead of gold") or big (e.g. "and then Rose was arrested instead of Jack") and I'll tell you how that one difference would have altered the course of the entire story.

My fic may be found here.

Given what the next several weeks look like on my calendar, I can't guarantee anything resembling a prompt response, but I just couldn't resist. There is also the ulterior motive of spreading it to more of you guys. ;-)

A bit fuzzy because the screen on my little video/still camera is deceptive, and keeps making me think I don't need to turn on the flash when I do. (I need to just turn it on automatic, I know.)

( Horsechicks at Leona's )

Almost exactly twenty years ago, I was visiting vaznetti in San Francisco, and we bought a sack of Avigal henna on a semi-whim. vaznetti, being a dark brunette, emerged from the experiment somewhat disappointed until she saw her awesome auburn highlights in the sunshine. She is easily in the top two or three on the list of Friends I Would Consider Murdering For Their Hair If It Worked That Way And I Were Sufficiently Sociopathic, but that's beside the point.

I emerged with a color that I instantly fell in love with, and promptly failed to ever quite recreate again. ( Come on, you KNEW this story was going to get long. )

I'm off to Chicago for dinner with buds (We has a butterflykiki, yay!), and there will probably be photographic evidence of that. I'll try to get pictures over the next couple days, as it continues reacting for two or three. But it DEFINITELY worked this time, and I'm already more pleased with it than I have been with any conventional hair dye ever. \o/

On a completely unrelated note, in deference to the holiday, please note that John Philip Sousa + Muppets = LOLARIOUS PATRIOTIC CRACK. Full splorfle warnings apply.

LJ doesn't seem to like the nifty little widget, so I'll just have to give you a plain old text link to the IndieGoGo page for One Night, the project I start shooting next week as Sheila the waitress.

Check out the project (and, if you're able, please consider becoming a backer -- it doesn't have to be a lot!), and then explore this nifty site giving independent filmmakers a new space to promote and generate grass-roots support for their projects.

Cute (and spoilery through 1.11 "Splash") interview with Cameron Richardson (Chloe) and Adam Campbell (Cal) of Harper's Island here.

Who do you think is the killer?

Cameron: Madison.

Adam: It's gotta be Madison. She is so creepy.

Cameron: She is actually a 45-year-old little person.

Adam: Who is exceptionally strong and violent.

...

Was Cassandra Sawtell, the actress playing Madison, that creepy?

Adam: Absolutely not. She is possibly the most lovely child actress I've ever met.

Cameron: We were reading the Twilight novels together. I would run to her room and say, "What is going on with Jacob??" She talked me through it.

Adam: You were reading Twilight together? I was reading Twilight too, but no one talked me through anything.

Translation: Two weeks in a row, we've watched True Blood before In Plain Sight. Though I think the latter is still my actual favorite current show. I suspect the TB cliffhangers are a factor. I found them annoyingly gimmicky at the start, but I've gotten used to them as part of the slightly overheated verging-on-camp tone of the show.

This week, they managed to shock the hell out of me by ( spoilers for 2.03 'Scratches' )

That would be Demons. Done by the same guys as Hex, but half-hour format and for a younger target audience. (SJA to Hex's DW, if you will. Though given where Hex went sometimes, I'm not sure I'd want to see their Torchwood.)

havocthecat? If you haven't got round to watching this yet, make sure you get to episode 4. You'll see why. Not just 'cause it's the obligatory vampire ep.

:: a bit more plot goes by :: Oooh, not what I thought. But you should still see it.

Tangentially, I covet Zoe Tapper's hair liek woah.

I haven't mentioned the reference because it seemed sorta superfluous to do so, but I haven't seen it brought up in the (admittedly limited number of) Dollhouse discussions I've read.

So, just in case anyone has a nagging feeling that they should recognize the name Rossum (for reasons not named Emmy), or doesn't recognize it at all, I'm pointing you here.

Which would have been even more delayed, but Office of Doom's intranet was down all morning.

( Dollhouse - Spoilers for all of Season 1 )

Happy Fathers' Day to the wonderful man who taught me to fix stuff in the process of teaching himself, opened doorways of books and TV and movies to worlds of amazing imagination (and delightful cheese), answered questions with "look it up," and laughed and loved and always believed in me.

For him and all the dads out there, have a fantastic day!!

Via icepixie:

( Buffy vs. Edward (Twilight Remixed) )

If your browser hates embedding, click here instead.

There's really nothing to be done about lighting or wardrobe/hair/makeup, but the matching of angles and motion? Genius.

On a related note, cleolinda brings us the news that yes, it took Mattel to go there with the literal sparkling. Between this and Pipecleaner Uhura, they're doing a great job of NOT tempting me out of my doll-buying moratorium. (N.B. This does not indicate that I would consider buying Twilight tie-in dolls under any circumstances. I'll stick with reading the lolarious adventures of cleolinda's, TYVM. But it will help keep me out of the Barbie aisle entirely!)

( The Trouble With Turnout )

(If your browser doesn't play well with embedded objects, you can go here.)

Brain is all fuzzy today. Not sure why; hopefully just random biochemical weirdness and/or Chicago Monsoon Season. (Seriously, Mother Nature, WTF?) Sometimes this happens when I'm coming down with some ick or other and not yet otherwise symptomatic. Slept fine, though I did wake up about 20 minutes before my alarm from a very creepy dream about a time-traveling stalker!fan.

The signal-to-noise ratio in the Craigslist talent gigs section seems to be deteriorating. I expect to have to ignore obviously ill-conceived and amateurish projects, and of course the ubiquitous scams. But dude, it's not rocket science to advertise for wait staff or salespeople or someone to make you a frelling skirt out of a rainbow flag in the APPROPRIATE SECTION. (And don't get me started on the $*(&# headshot photographers and one extremely persistent alleged publicist. You are offering services, not work. GO POST IN SERVICES ALREADY.) I used to flag maybe one or two postings a day as "miscategorized," but lately it's more like eight or ten. Which is irritating because it's still a great resource. You have to go in with more caveat actor than in the gatekeepered industry arenas like Actors Access, but 2/3 of the cool stuff I've done in the past year or so has been from Craigslist. And they're getting buried by scammers and idiots. Humph.

When I think about it, I'm kind of stunned by the accumulation of TV shows from the past five years or so that look interesting but that I haven't actually watched. And it's amusing to think about why any given show didn't make the "I can cram one or two new shows into my week" cut when they started. Sometimes there isn't a specific reason except "I never got around to actually recording it." Occasionally I deliberately decide to give it a pass unless I start hearing people saying things about it that make me think I'm missing something. I think this didn't actually happen with Supernatural until about the middle of second season, at which point it just seemed like too much trouble to try to catch up. I do, however, remember announcing aloud to the CW promos that "That isn't a title. It's a genre." I don't know what else they should have called it, but if that hadn't been it, chances are decent that I would have watched it from the beginning. As it is, I think I've seen three five-minute snatches of it at various times (most recently to blink at recognizing the LeVeque Tower in downtown Columbus). There is no particular point to this paragraph.

I knew I was really, truly glad to see this show back when ( spoiler for 2x01 'Nothing But the Blood' )

Every once in a while they teeter precariously on the precipice of not-taking-themselves-too-seriously and avoid plunging into rampant silliness by the most desperate clinging of toenails. But more often, they hit it just right.

After the third cable tech visit in two weeks, we appear to have stable internets. Touch wood. Really don't want it to come to shopping for a new provider. :-/

In the meantime, we've been down basically all weekend, so no WAY am I going to catch up on the flist. If there's been anything earthshattering I should know about, holler.

Link via havocthecat: My LJ, in LOLcat form.

(The "Harper's Island observation" one looks like Diablo, and sleeps like him too. *snif* But does not appear to be terribly observant just at the moment.)

I can has LOLTwitter too.

Home, safe, lunched, catching up on TV. Very happy with Discount Tire. Not thinking about what the inbox will look like tomorrow.

Checking in from an absurdly large hotel room at a Ramada with an indoor waterpark (closed, alas) in southwest Michigan, a few miles from where my tire blew out. I've seen people leave emergency spares on for approximately ever, but given that I started my weekend by leaving my cellphone at home, I determined that driving 150 miles on a donut would probably constitute pushing my luck.

My adventures also included about half a dozen blocks of Bloor being torn up for construction, which, combined with the fact that I really only know the major streets in downtown Toronto and ALL of them had temporary signs prohibiting turns onto Bloor, resulted in many expeditions down streets that end abruptly or suddenly wind off in a different direction before I actually made it to the hotel about an hour after I hit the neighborhood. Luckily, when I'd realized at my aunt's house the night before that I'd forgotten my phone, I had emailed the people expecting me to call upon arrival, so they knew I wouldn't be able to call them to say I was delayed.

We will not discuss the construction on Jarvis shutting off the on-ramp to the Gardiner with no warning until you're actually at the ramp. *headdesk* Apparently, the city didn't want me to arrive and park where I'd planned, but once I was there, it didn't want me to leave either!

Fortunately, I had a marvelous afternoon gabbing with friends old and new, munching on fruit generously provided by the proprietors of one of the friendliest bookstores I've ever visited, and got to walk around a city I love on a gloriously beautiful day. And sleep in a very charming (and reasonably priced) hotel built into and onto an 1882 mansion, with the sitting room fireplace still in the front room and everything.

And now I'm in an absurdly large hotel room with a shiny new book. Life could be infinitely worse. :-)