Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:55 PM

My eyeglass frames have a two-tone color scheme: black on the bottom and garnet on the top.

Slightly over a month ago, I got my hair cut and colored, minking the tips of my hair in a coordinating shade.

Unfortunately, the red was nowhere near as vibrant as I'd hoped. In fact, the color faded very quickly, leaving my ends looking only slightly lighter than the rest of my hair.

So, I bought some over-the-counter dye that approximated the shade I wanted (L'Oreal Colour Rays), and worked up the nerve to re-color my hair myself. Since I'm only dyeing the tips, worst case scenario means getting a slightly shorter haircut to remove the unsightly or damaged ends.

But, it turned out perfectly!

Almost exactly what I wanted in the first place:

What do you think?

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:24 AM

Coming next week to a computer near you:

Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris in:

Joss Whedon reveals his Master Plan:

ONE WEEK ONLY! AN INTERNET MINISERIES EVENT!

"Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" will be streamed, LIVE (that part's not true), FREE (sadly, that part is) right on Drhorrible.com, in mid-July. Specifically:

ACT ONE (Wheee!) will go up Tuesday July 15th.

ACT TWO (OMG!) will go up Thursday July 17th.

ACT THREE (Denouement!) will go up Saturday July 19th.

All acts will stay up until midnight Sunday July 20th. Then they will vanish into the night, like a phantom (but not THE Phantom - that's still playing. Like, everywhere.)

If you don't manage to catch Dr. Horrible by that date, it will be available for sale.

The only tricky part about all this is the timing. We're flying down to New Orleans on Tuesday evening and flying back Sunday night.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:00 PM

It looks like the conference organizers have changed the program since I posted my reformatted schedule for Tales of the Cocktail.

So, I have added an updated table with the new schedule to the page.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:15 AM

And those are the final images I've designed (so far).

I hope you've enjoyed this series as much as I did in creating them.

To see all the Lol!Sox in one place, just go to I Can Has Fenway Franks at Osmond-Riba.org/Lis/LolSox.htm.

That page includes an index by player and theme.

Feel free to spread the word (and link) to others who might enjoy them.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:35 PM

I've been viewing teaser video clips from the forthcoming Mamma Mia! movie.

Disturbingly catchy.

I never really thought of Meryl Strep as a singer before...

Makes me want to see the film. [I've never seen the stage show.]

I've always felt somewhat disdainful towards Mamma Mia! and other modern musicals which try to graft a story onto pre-existing pop hits, such as the Billy Joel-based Movin' Out. As much as I enjoy Queen, I still look dubiously upon We Will Rock You!

But then I realized that's the origin of Singin' In the Rain, so maybe I need to reconsider the genre...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:45 PM

Via Boing Boing, a Rube Goldberg cocktail maker:

This Rube Goldberg machine makes sheer delight out of the process of mixing a Falling Water ( 30mls (1Oz) 42BELOW Feijoa Vodka, lemonade, long slice of seedless cucumber, ice)

Now, how could we design something along those lines which automatically resets itself to starting conditions, so it can be used repeatedly...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:55 PM

Sorry for not writing more often.

I've been busy, mostly with matters I'm not at liberty to write about.

Adding to the chaos, this time next week, I'll be in New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail, so I've been helping Ian polish up his resume and such.

Hopefully, with all that taken care of, I can catch up on my backlog and will try to post a bit more regularly.

What do you want to hear about?

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:58 AM

With a name like that, you'd think there would be muppets involved...

From The Guardian via Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:48 AM

This is the Pixar short that's shown prior to Wall-E

I couldn't help noticing the credits for Associate Producer Jay Ward.

Since Jay Ward (responsible for Rocky and Bullwinkle, George of the Jungle and Dudley Do-Right, Super Chicken and Cap'n Crunch) died nearly two decades ago, who is Pixar's Jay Ward, and is he any relation?