3' UTR

Has there been a book that has changed your life?

Mmm, good question. I don't remember what it was, but the first book I was ever read (even before I could read myself) certainly counts, because it got me hooked on stories, and on reading.   And I do mean hooked.  I'm a classic reading junkie: if there's nothing else around I'll read trashy magazines, Sweet Valley High -- hell, I'll find myself sitting there reading cereal boxes (one more reason for me to love the internets).

I credit Dr Suess with my love of verse; it was books like Fox in Socks and The Lorax that taught me the mouth-feel of words, the bounce and bop of meter and the just-so pleasure of rhyme. I was a budding biologist before I could read, but Gerald Durrell's books -- the first one I read was probably A Zoo In My Luggage, though I've read them all -- appreciably deepened my fascination with the living world and my concerns over the state of the environment.  Hermann Hesse's Narziss und Goldmund (I read it in English, I'm afraid) changed the way I thought about art, and in fact started me really thinking about art.  Steinbeck's Cannery Row changed the way I thought about prose, and W Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence changed it back a little.  But I'm not an artist or a writer, so those are small personal changes at best.

The most dramatic example is the most recent: Peter Singer's Practical Ethics. Finding that I could not fault his argument that eating meat is immoral, I quit doing so -- that was about three years ago now.

I have two standard invites to give away.  First come first served, sennomaATfastmailDOTfm.

Damn, that was quick.  I actually had two more requests than I had invites to give -- I've kept the addresses and will give those folks first refusal on my next invites.

What song was the number one song on the charts the day you were born? How about the day you turned 21?

When I was born, number one in the US was "Get Back" by the Beatles (with Billy Preston). I wasn't born in the US, but number one in Australia at the time was the same bloody song. I detest the Beatles: whiny Liverpool accents, twee lyrics and mostly twee tunes. Blech.

Things don't get better for my twenty-first: the horrible howling of Heart's angsty ode to unsafe sex "All I Wanna Do (Is Make Love To You)" in Australia (yes, Ba'al help me, I remember it), and the excruciating "Hold On" by the appalling Wilson Phillips in the US. 

If I fudge the "week ending" nature of the chart records, I get Madonna's "Vogue", a crap song but at least an artist I respect, in both countries on my 21st.  Doing the same for the day I was born does nothing, those bowlcut bastard refugees from speech therapy were on top of every damn thing back then.

If the spousal unit can make a horrible pun in naming her voxblog, so can I.  In a typical mRNA (the molecule that transfers information from DNA to protein), the open reading frame is followed by the 3' UTR, or "three-prime untranslated region".  (That's oversimplified; if anyone cares, I can explain more.)

(Following Matt Baldwin's nomenclature, this post, being the explication of a joke, is an aftermirth.  You can groan now.)

^Anything, just don't call me late for breakfast.^  Actually that's about right -- I don't much care, apart from the intent behind the words.  I was "Egghead" in highschool, not so much for being brainy but because -- well, look at the profile pic.  Online I've been "sennoma" until pretty recently. (It means "anonymous" in Esperanto; I thought I was being cute.  You'll have to forgive me, it was, like, 1994.)  My preferences are "Bill" and "senn" -- that's how I think of myself.

1. tag management
2. no auto-adding tags ("free money", "shopping spree", what the fucking fuck?) Thank you, SA!
3. ability to make my own template (although I like the cherry blossom one and will probably just keep it, I'd still like to be able to tweak it)
4. pay option to get rid of adverts; o how I hate advertising!
5. html in profile bio
6. put the "comments" button at the BOTTOM of each entry.  argh.
7. a "recent activity" unit for the sidebar, since I'll mostly use vox to chat with friends
8. the anchor/href tag should work when I'm editing a post -- I shouldn't *have* to use the ajax/whatever link button
9. I'd like to be able to keep this post at the top, either by specifying that or by altering the post date

Happy_everything

Titles and stuff go here, I guess.

This interface sure makes things easy.  I like. 

I don't know that I'll post much here, maybe some more personal (read: only my friends will be interested) stuff that doesn't really belong on the blog.  I'll mostly lurk around my friends' voxblogs.