Almost a linkspam, but not quite

[heidi]

1. Happy birthday to JKR and Harry Potter and various other friends who are celebrating today and through the weekend!

1a. Thank you, Universal Studios, for the fascinating art showing what your Three Broomsticks is supposed to look like, and hurrah for immersion architecture! Cannot *wait* to see it filled with people during Infinitus!

1b. Thank you, JKR, Amazon, Bloomsbury and Scholastic for finally releasing Beedle the Bard! Now that there's new Harry Potter canon coming out, does that mean I should finally read the Epilogue? I've not read it yet because as long as I didn't read it, there was still something out there from the HP books for me to read, but now that there's going to be an actual *something* from the HP-verse to read...

Maybe.

2. Speaking of Harry Potter, the announcement about azkatraz went out on PRWeb today and is starting to make its way around the various sites, etc. I think hotel resos should be going live via phone this weekend and on the website very soon. It's going to be 165/roomnight for up to four people in a room, which is pretty shiny! Now if only I could map out the distance from the hotel to the nearest Lush. Which I cannot do because...

3. My Firefox is being really strange - I can open windows if I click on links from other pages, or things in my Bookmarks, but I can't open a new window, enter a URL and go to the page. WTF? Anyone have any idea what's up or how to fix it?

4. My article on Supernatural at Comic Con is now up at Aced Magazine - when we were doing the interviews before the panel and Sera Gamble said that Dean had "spent some time in The Bad Place," I nearly choked - you can hear me do this weird bark-laugh thing on the audio recording I made. Because yes, I know that The Bad Place is another term for Hell, but the way it's been used in the HP fandom for omg almost ten years (since madlori coined it? Or was it someone else circa 2000?) was what first came to mind, so, yeah. Giggles ahoy!

5. To close the night out, I'm reiterating something you may've seen on other LJs in the last few days. A friend of a friend in the UK who has a rare blood condition called Paroxysmal Nocturnal Haemoglobinuria. She found out recently that, due to the exorbitant cost of the experimental drug, the NHS may not fund the medical trial she is a part of. While some people with milder forms of PNH may not require the drug, she and the other members of her trial have severe enough symptoms that they need this drug to live what we would consider a normal life. Without it, simple things such as walking up a flight of stairs or going to the store are difficult.

She's detailed her experience and what's going on with the trial and the funding here: http://pnhlondon.wordpress.com. Please, please take a few minutes to read about the situation. In her words: I don’t want to stop living my life simply because the system decides my life isn’t cost effective enough. I don’t want to when there is a drug out there that will let me live my life. I don’t want to have to go back to the life that was because medical decisions are now being made by administrators and politicians instead of doctors.

As of now the matter's been referred to Health Minister Dawn Primarolo for a final decision. The patient group is requesting that people contact Primarolo's office to express support for funding the treatment.

Dawn Primarolo MP
PO Box 1002
Bristol
BS99 1WH

or

Dawn Primarolo MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

(email) primarolod@parliament.uk
(tel) 0117 909 0063; 0117 909 0064

While they prefer snail mail and other forms of direct contact, the group has also set up an online petition for UK residents here. Please note that in order to sign the petition, you will have to provide a real name and the first line of your UK address. If you are worried about your fannish name being connected to your real name, please use a non-fannish email address.

Thank you so much, guys. A few moments of your time could make a huge difference in someone's life.

ETA 5. auntie_mame found a photo of John Barrowman signing my bear in someone else's Photobucket. So weirdly random!

Comments

[chaneen.livejournal.com]

3. My Firefox is being really strange - I can open windows if I click on links from other pages, or things in my Bookmarks, but I can't open a new window, enter a URL and go to the page. WTF? Anyone have any idea what's up or how to fix it?

That has happened to me a couple of times, and the only way I've found to fix it is to close firefox and reopen it. I'm pretty sure you can save your session/tabs and it will still fix the problem, though.

[stormwynd.livejournal.com]

IIRC, there's a Lush only a block or two from the Parc 55 hotel. They're definitely both within striking distance of Union Square. Amazing, the way that works out, isn't it?

[epeeblade]

It's happened to me too when I've had like 80 tabs open. If I open a whole new window, I can enter a new url in that window and it goes just fine.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I was not the hotel-chooser! This had nothing to do with it! It's all a coincidence!


Seriously.

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

So far, every time I've had a problem with Firefox, emptying my cache has fixed it. And I've had some bizarre problems that I never would have thought had anything to do with the browser itself, like not being able to "reply" in Yahoo. So, try dumping the cache.

[kindofwhimsical.livejournal.com]

I like how the guy with the headset is staring at Barrowman longingly.

[hllangel]

#5 is very strangely random. And awesome. :D

Speaking of the bears/cards, let me know how that auction/sale goes!