I'm Biggie: avid cook, speedy lunch packer, mom & former expat fluent in Japanese. 
Archive for the 'admin' Category
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Shopping and conference odds and ends
A few updates today on online bento shopping, bento gear in Europe, conferences I’ll be attending, and something that annoyed me this week.
* Ichiban Kan: Online poll and delay in restocking bento gear
The Ichiban Kan blog is running an online poll to help them decide whether to stock thermal bento sets like this one that I use regularly. The poll closes at 3:00 pm Pacific Time today (Wednesday, April 30, 2008), so click over there if you’d like to weigh in, or leave a comment at their blog post about the thermal bento sets if you’re too late for the poll. (Sorry about the late notice!) Ichiban Kan is a Japanese-style discount store with branches in the SF Bay Area and a new online store with cheap bento gear. See my full review of their online store, or get info on their local stores in my San Francisco Bay Area shopping guide for bento gear.
Speaking of Ichiban Kan, they’re evidently experiencing a delay in restocking their bento inventory as their big shipping container from Japan has been delayed by U.S. Customs. The delay may last for another three weeks or so; stay up to date via their blog or online store. Their blog now offers the ability to receive e-mail updates via Feedburner; fill out the info in the upper right corner of their blog to get their latest in your e-mail box. (You can do the same here, by the way — click to get Feedburner e-mails with the latest Lunch in a Box posts.) (Read on for European bento shopping update, conferences I’ll be attending at, and something that irritated me.)
Published by Biggie on April 30th, 2008 tagged admin, shopping | 28 Comments »
Lunch in a Box comes out of the closet
In my e-mail yesterday I found a note from reader Bear Naff, with a link to a hilarious Lunch in a Box song parody that one of his readers wrote in response to his challenge. This reminded me of an earlier song parody about Lunch in a Box by the The Original What’s For Lunch blog.
My confession is that I did have the Saturday Night Live spoof song “D**k in a Box” in mind when deciding what to name this speed bento blog. My friends and I were brainstorming names, and once we started singing and riffing on “Lunch in a Box” I knew that was it. If you’re not familiar with the song, go to Hulu.com for the Justin Timberlake/Andy Samberg music video spoof, which actually won a Grammy Award last year.
My husband surprised me with a Lunch in a Box shirt for Valentine’s Day, so after reading cassandrasimplx’s song parody below I changed shirts, went downstairs and took some photos in response. If you have a warped sense of humor and feel like slapping together a Lunch in a Box song parody of your own, leave it in comments or e-mail it to me at lunchinabox (AT) gmail (DOT) com by Wednesday, April 30th. I’ll send the author of my favorite song parody a shirt, mug or bag of their choosing from the Lunch in a Box store on CafePress, where my husband got the shirt. (Click on any photo for a larger view.)
Without further ado, I present the twisted lyrics that cassandrasimplx came up with yesterday (reprinted with the author’s permission). I love it! (Read on for the song parody.)
Published by Biggie on April 16th, 2008 tagged admin, shopping | 26 Comments »
Hacked!
Last week evidently this site and many other WordPress blogs were hacked in a subtle way, with hundreds of invisible links added to the site without my knowledge (more info on the attack here). This resulted in Lunch in a Box being deindexed from Google, Yahoo and other search databases, and explains why Google Ads for unrelated topics like bad credit fixes and Viagra started appearing on the site as of last week. I’ve cleaned up the code and am plugging the security holes, but wanted to let readers know that I may need to take the site down temporarily over the next day or two as I work to ensure that this won’t happen again. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience this causes!
I’d also encourage any of you with WordPress blogs to view your page source code, and do a quick search on “credit” and “viagra” to ensure that you haven’t been hit as well. More info is in the link above.
UPDATE: Evidently upgrading to WordPress version 2.5 will close the security hole that let this happen. Unfortunately, I needed to restore the site from backups during the process, so have lost some comments that readers left over the weekend. D’oh!
Published by Admin on April 7th, 2008 tagged admin | 10 Comments »
Lunch Gear Organization Event: The Round-up
Here’s the round-up for my first Organize Your Lunch Gear event, with the entries in the order that I received them (except the contest winner). First off, I’d like to thank everyone for participating! There were a lot of excellent organization ideas to help us stay sane in the kitchen, using everything from craft boxes, cubbies from Target, Indian spice boxes, and bookshelves with bins. My hope is that we can get ideas from each other to tame our otherwise unruly lunch-packing gear!
Of all the clever entries, I was most taken with Rhiannon’s ingenuity. She not only crafted an entire bento center out of an old bookshelf and cool organizers, but also made her own YouTube video to show it off. Don’t miss her full blog entry that also shows accessory-filled magnetic spice tins stuck to her metal organizing bins, and cute plastic Easter eggs that she’s filled with baby washcloths to make her own oshibori damp hand towels (see my oshibori how-to here). So many creative ideas in one place inspired me to do a similar reorganization this weekend — here’s my new reorganization post to complement my original accessory Organization Madness post. Rhiannon will be receiving my review copy of Face Food: The Visual Creativity of Japanese Bento Boxes (full book review here). Well done! (Read on for the full recap with all of the entries…)
- Rhiannon’s cool bookshelf with bins and neato YouTube video (Winner)
Published by Biggie on March 17th, 2008 tagged admin | 23 Comments »
Organization event: Last day for entries
Just a quick reminder that today is the last day for entries in the Lunch in a Box lunch gear organization event. How do you keep everything accessible and at hand without lunch gear taking over your kitchen? The author of the most ingenious solution will receive my review copy of the new book Face Food: The Visual Creativity of Japanese Bento Boxes (see my full review here).
Published by Biggie on March 14th, 2008 tagged admin | 5 Comments »
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