Pointy
I know it’s convenient for the dental tools to have pointy scraper things on both ends, but it sucks when they’re cleaning your teeth and the other end in right in front of your face reminding you what’s going on in your mouth right now.
2 Weekends Ago
That last post reminded me, I’ve been meaning to put up photos from the manicure/pedicure for 2 weeks now. Gawd I’m slow. Anyways, I went with Julie to Fusion Nails & Spa. Going with Julie was nice cos she knows whatall is going on, so she helped me pick my colors (red for my toes — I’ve gotten lots of compliments on the color and I’ve NEVER gotten compliments on my feet ever cos even I think my feet are pretty yucks, and a pale pink, almost clear, for my fingers, thanks Julie!) and recommended the special treatment with the soaking and massaging and peppermint masque and sea salt scrub and lotioning and whatnot since it was my first time. It was all lovely — dude, I totally see why people go regularly. Well, ok the part where the lady was trying to pumice my feet made me laugh and squirm, so I think that part was kind of abbreviated, but it was just as well. Also, I took photos until they started working on my fingers so I think they realized I was totally noob. Whatevs!
This is the part where I was laughing uncontrollably, which made Julie crack up. You can’t tell from this picture, so why I’m telling you, I don’t know. :p Also, I don’t know if you can tell, but my feet are pretty red from the hot soaking in the water with the jets.
Anyways, it’s been 2 weeks now and my toes still look perfect. It’s like my toenails don’t grow or something. My fingernails have grown like a millimeter or something (based on how the polish looks) and I dunno, I guess I’m harder on them. So yeah, happy. Now if the weather would just go back to that nice sunniness from just a week ago so I can wear flips everyday again, that’d be awesome. Sadly this past week has been all rainy coldness instead. But it’s winter, so I really can’t complain too much about rain after a two week reprieve.
Neglectful
It’s not like I mean to neglect this blog, it’s just that lately I go home, I eat, I hop in bed. I know, sounds healthy doesn’t it? I think I’ve been doing that a lot since winter, especially when I’m cold. Although last night I read Sorcery & Cecelia by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer (ok I read Sorcery and Cecelia previously, but I read the sequels The Grand Tour and The Mislaid Magician last night, and there’s no point talking about the sequels if I don’t mention the first book) which is a perfectly lovely book and series. I don’t think you have to read them in order, but I like to. It’s marketed for Teens or something, so it’s an easy read but lots of fun, like Jane Austen Regency period style but with magic. Anyways, I’ve gone off on a tangent.:p
Okay, and it’s not even that I don’t have anything to talk about — well I mean, I mostly blather about nothing so in a sense I don’t have anything to talk about, but that doesn’t really mean that I can’t blog if you see what I mean — sometimes, I do intend to blog about something, but I just don’t get around to it (see above, re: go home, eat, hop in bed). I just thought I’d post this explanation cos I’m caving into pressure from K (not that it took much). Btw, dude, K, did you read about Hello Kitty Online (via little. yellow. different.)? I totally signed up for the invitation beta. :p
Also, I got a new phone, the AT&T Tilt (it’s a re-branded HTC 8925 I think); you know how I feel about gadgets (puffy pink heart lurve, in case you don’t know). It’s my first smartphone I think, so the novelty with the email and the web surfing and the calendaring and whatnot hasn’t quite worn off yet. But dude, it is so convenient! There are so many sites that have mobile versions, photos can get sent to flickr, texting is easier, etc etc. The only bad things about the phone are its size (rather large) and the fact that AT&T seems to have removed Terminal Services Client (it’s running Windows Mobile 6 so I think the remote desktopping program should be built in) which is ridiculous. Of the two, I think size is probably the bigger problem, but I really hate how phone companies think that removing capabilities from phones is a great idea. Or ok, those are the bad points that I can think of right now — maybe someone with more smartphone knowledge would have more to say. Anyways, it’s actually a contributor to the whole hang out in pjs in bed thing. Cos I don’t even have to get up to read blogs and check email anymore. I can just lie in bed watching tv, eating ice cream, and web surfing even easier than ever before! Oooh yes! (Or oh no, I’m not quite sure, really.)
It’s a Rat Year!
Happy New Year! Usually today, I try to eat oranges (sounds like luck I think?), fish (sounds like surplus or plenty), noodles (long for longevity), pot stickers or dumplings (shaped like old fashioned money ingots) or some combination thereof. This year, I have class tonight, so it’s a good thing we have some tangerines. :)
Super Bowl — Wow
Football’s another one of those sports that I really half watch just the championship. I mean, let’s admit it, it’s a snoozefest a lot of the time, and the whole “at least the commercials are good” is less and less true. There were a couple of good-ish ads (I dunno why myspace, sheesh). I liked the Bridgestone ad with the animals the best I think, but it’s not a big deal like it was before. But this year, wow, the game was exciting — especially the last quarter, when the lead changed a bunch of times. Also, it’s nice if the team you’re rooting for (Giants for this game:p) wins in a close game, 17-14. Even though I picked the Giants basically cos they were the underdogs cos it’s funner that way. (Well maybe also cos I somehow don’t like Belichick, the Pats coach.) Yeah anyways, regardless of the reason you pick a team to root for, if you’re going to watch a sports game, pick an arbitrary (or not so arbitrary) team/person to root for cos it makes it a lot more interesting. Also, it really helps if you have a DS. Yut and I sat side by side playing Puzzle Quest, which is a game that you can look up from anytime cos it’s sorta like Bejeweled but with RPG-ish elements, so it’s better, the whole afternoon. And now there’s a brand new episode of House. Awesome. :D
Cooking with Mama
Ever since misa lent us Cooking Mama: Cook Off for the Wii, Yut and I haven’t been able to cook without saying, “just like mama!” every time we do something right and “good not mine!” every time we drop something. Except we don’t really do her accent right; I dunno what that accent is, but it’s funny.
I don’t know if Cook Off is worth the full price cos there aren’t that many recipes and you can finish the game pretty fast, but if you can find it used, it’s awesome, really fun. I guess it’s pretty worth it if you want a minigame type game. It’s better than the first DS version of Cooking Mama (haven’t tried the second), cos it’s fun to do things with the wiimote. Also, the Wii version seems like it’s trying to show you how the actual cooking is done, although sometimes, chopping garlic is a step all by itself, which seems a bit silly. The DS version has a lot of weird parts during cooking, like blowing on the pot while I’m boiling pasta, stuff that’s there just to give you something to do.The DS version has way more recipes though, and it’s pretty fun too, good for a few recipes before bed. :)
Spammy Goodness
I don’t really check my junk mail box as much as I should, I mean, just in case some personal email got misidentified as junk. But I did today, and DUDE I was missing out!
“Teach your woman obediency!”
“Satisfy her!”
“When Love Comes Knocking”
“Become a real man…”
“Forget about the problem with your male device”
I should get a couple of them spamshirted for Yut in big block letters across his chest.
Basic Basic Digital Photography For Now
After the crazy English course during the summer (5 5-page papers in 5 or 6 weeks!!!) and Calculus last semester, I thought I’d take Digital Photography this semester cos it’d be fun. So far it has been surprisingly (cos I don’t know much about photography really) way too easy, but from the looks of the syllabus, we’re definitely going to get into stuff I don’t know pretty soon (basically everything else), like shutter speed and aperture and correcting distortion to pick three things at random. In case anyone’s interested, I thought I’d post up some of the more practical stuff we go over in class. :)
For the first class he talked about the half click/recompose technique. The basic idea is that when you half click (hold your shutter button down half way) you set your focus and exposure. So if you know that it’s a difficult situation for your camera (say you’re waiting to capture the moment when someone blows out their birthday candles) if you half click and hold it while everyone’s singing, then the camera’s done all the hard stuff that takes a long time so when the moment is right, you can just click it the rest of the way and the photo will actually take and you probably won’t miss the shot. The recompose bit comes into play when you want the focus or exposure to be somewhere besides the middle (the usual focus spot I guess). So for example if you’re taking a photo of two people, well it sucks if the background in between them is in focus instead of the people. So you center one of the people, half click, then frame your photo the way you actually want it and take the photo. The focus stays on the plane that you originally half clicked on, so it’s all good.
Suppose I wanted a photo of my lotion, but I don’t want it in the middle of the picture. Here it’s all focused on the bottom of the speakers.
If I point my camera at the lotion first, then half click, then repoint my camera at the speakers, the lotion stays in focus.
See? :)
Today, amongst other things, we talked about Image Size and Resolution, specifically how to change image size and resolution in Photoshop CS3 (open a photo, go to Image>Image Size, change the numbers). But every program does it differently, and I dunno this isn’t too complicated except for finding where the option is in the program you’re using to edit your photos. Oh and don’t resize it smaller for the web and then save over your original cos you’ll lose too much data. Oh and if you want to print your photo, 240 pixels/inch is a good resolution for your photos.
Class is Thursdays from 7pm to 10pm with practice time on the computers. :p
A New Computress
Yut’s old computer was getting on in years — 5 to be exact, which in computer years is definitely time for retirement. We thought about just buying one, but building mine was pretty alright fun, so we decided to look into parts instead. Although honestly, I think I saw a Dell ad for a $299 computer, which after some RAM (no more than $50 nowadays) would’ve been fine for most people. It’s crazy. Anyways, Yut’s not too into picking parts so I picked all of his parts. The research and ordering and shipping &c have taken up like 3 weeks! And finally everything came so we spent 3 hours tonight putting it together, and now we’re installing Windows.
So here it is, all the parts for the new computress, all set and ready to go:
I meant to take a bunch of photos, but part way through when things got more complicated I forgot.
Specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB, 4 MB L2 Cache
4 GB (2x2GB) Mushkin RAM (32 bit Windows systems can only recognize a little over 3 GB but it was a good price)
750 GB Western Digital hard drive — I’ve heard really good things about the Samsung Spinpoint series also, but pricewise, this was better
XFX GeForce 8600GT 256 MB GDDR3 OC video card
Corsair HX 520 power supply (same as mine, we love modular power supplies)
Antec P182 case (gigantic!)
MSI P35 Neo2-FR motherboard
Zerotherm BTF-90 heatsink/fan (pretty)
etcetc, total: almost $900 after rebates. It was as little trouble to put together as any computer we’ve ever tried. :)
Ode on an Ice Cream Carton
Today the weather was really nice, 60s! Perfect for ice cream!
Actually I’m a total liar, we got that carton like a week ago, when the weather was bad. Maeda-en is my fave brand of azuki ice cream (to date, I’m willing to try others!) and it’s quite quite delicious. I know it says “Party Size” but it’s just me — Yut doesn’t like the azuki flavor (foolish fool with foolishly foolish taste buds!). Oh yes! More for me! :D
