Ok! Let’s see to it my week is started with Cheerios and not frickin’ Drama flakes this time, eh? (Hm… Last time I mentioned drama flakes was on 8/8/01, the same day as my gamer rant, One-in-every-crowd, playing with CSS filters, link to the language machines, Wally caught for fraud & embezzlement, What dino lived in your backyard?)

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I downloaded Bad Taste. Peter Jackson’s directorial skills have improved a great deal over 13 years…Bad Taste is like something I’d have made with friends in Junior high. The movie is downright gross and goofy. (The Frighteners was a lot better.) I’m even more impressed that they gave this guy LotR at all, and how good a job was done with it. (Rachel showed me Meet the Feebles ages ago, too. That was something different.)

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Dentsu Advertising Museum

The Edo Era (1603-1867), during which a full-fledged feudal system was established by the Tokugawa shogunate, was also an era in which the culture of townspeople flourished. That Japan had already developed distinctive advertising techniques of its own as early as the Edo Era might come as a surprise to you. But ample evidence of these remain for us today to follow a historical trail, in the form of nishiki-e (a multicolored woodblock print), hikifuda (handbills) and signboards. A witness of the times, as well as a chronicle of advertising creative work in Japan, these relics represent a valuable record of both the evolution of corporations and the history of common people’s lives.

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Belgium’s most famous reporter TinTin is 75 years old. Congratulations and happy birthday to Snowy too. The intrepid reporter first appeared in print on January 10, 1929, in a comic supplement to the Brussels newspaper Le Vingtieme Siecle.

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More Florida Sky – HiddenCity’s South Beach

I like how the clouds give a sense of perspective… I forget that they’re so huge sometimes, because they’re so far up. I have the same feeling about the Moon and Sun… I know in my brain that they’re gigantic, but my caveman heart tells me that they’re not very big at all.

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New Semagic Client (v1.3.9.8)…

Version 1.3.9.8 < <1.3.9.7 · Authorization with IE cookies (you have to be permanently logged in via IE and have URLMon enabled.) · Find, Replace, Redo for richedit 2.0 · Changed synchronization for auto login. · Draft auto save no longer saves unmodified entries (before it was saving all the time what might be a reason of random crashes). If you get "Invalid password" with auth via IE cookies that means that authorization with cookies (for clients) is not live yet on the main server. Version 1.3.9.7<<1.3.9.6 · Friend selection menu at format toolbar. · Shift-tab support. · Fixed autoupdate for custom moods, makelink and replace with newlines. Version 1.3.9.6<<1.3.9.1 · Custom mood list and tab order (loaded from manually edited .ini files. Read comments in those files.). · More secure challenge/response authorization. · Some small fixes (misaligned controls, typos etc.). · Option to replace two spaces with    and remove ?mode=reply (enable in Options/View) · Symbols count (after pressing Preview, only for main text). · CP_UTF8 option (see help in Options/General, for 2000/XP, activate if you get decoding errors. Please report if this helped or not). · Autorun parameter in Options (now you may remove shortcut from Startup group). · Installer with higher compression ratio (thanks to the latest NSIS) · Enabled RichEdit 2.0 (with clickable URL links) Version 1.3.9.1<<1.3.8.9 · Help contents. · Fixed uninstall script. · Suspended and deleted accounts in friends are marked separately. · Mouse right click in tray menu (acts like left). · Fixed editing of past entries with only mood id defined. · Fixed save with ? /<>*| chars in subject.
· Fixed error handling and display of messages with urlmon.
· Removed “No Updates” message with silent checked.

· Fixed crash on pasting to subject from context menu.

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Woman’s Skin Falls Off, Miraculously Lives

SAN DIEGO — A young Ocean Beach woman survived a severe allergic reaction that had University of California, San Diego Regional Burn Center staff scrambling to save her life, 10News reported.

Three weeks ago, the skin on Yeargain’s body began sloughing off.

Dr. Daniel Lozano, from the UCSD Regional Burn Center, said, “She lost skin in her entire body. It’s rather dramatic to really see this coming off in sheets.”

Even the membrane covering her internal organs — her eyes, mouth, and throat — began peeling away.

“Once the skin starts to slough, there’s no stopping it,” Lozano said.

Yeargain said she did not know what was going on with her body.

“The cause was a rare reaction to this drug, Bactrim. It is a common antibiotic used by millions of people,” Lozano explained. “What she has is a condition called TENS — toxic epidermal necrosis — which is an autoimmune reaction to a whole host of drugs.”

Yeargain had just finished the 10-day course of Bactrim for a sinus infection when the allergic reaction began.

“I started to get some minor swelling and discoloration in my face and it progressed into blistering on lips and swelling on my eyes. It then progressed into blisters all over my face and chest and arms,” Yeargain said.

Within two days, the skin on her entire body was peeling off. Doctors told Yeargain’s mother, Katherine Yeargain, there was little hope for her.

“Generally with 100-percent sloughing there is a 100-percent mortality and he was optimistic. We just prayed,” said Katherine Yeargain.

It was a race to save Yeargain.

Doctors covered Yeargain’s entire body with an artificial skin called transcyte and gave her medications to stop the internal bleeding.

“We were able, over a 48-hour period, to cover her whole body with an artificial skin replacement that allowed this to start healing rapidly. Within about a week her skin was back,” Lozano said.

“Everybody prayed and here she is,” Katherine Yeargain said.

“I wasn’t ready to be finished,” Yeargain said.

Some, like veteran burn unit nurse Meredith Frank, called Yeargain’s recovery a miracle.

“I think with the magnitude of the skin loss she had that there was a divine hand in her recovery,” Frank said.

After good medicine and perhaps a miracle, Yeargain is prepared again for life.

“I’m ready to start healing and get back to it,” Yeargain said.

Yeargain is home from the hospital, but she isn’t about to forget the doctors and nurses who helped her survive impossible odds. She said she hopes her story will encourage people to donate money to the UCSD Burn Center.

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when alt tags go horribly wrong (via blort)

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Ok, phones are switched over.. It’s time to go out and enjoy some fresh, cool air. Until later, dear journal.