| SPX '11 |
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| 12:04am 13/09/2011 |
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The Small Press Expo was this weekend, and right in my area! It was immense fun, even if my feet did feel like they were going to physically detach from my body by the end of things.
Highlights:- I found the perfect use for my Really Useful Book (a MirrorMask tie-in journal which comes with an invisible ink pen/UV light): invisible sketches! That is to say, most of the sketches were mostly visible with an invisible component, though a few were entirely invisible. The cartoonists loved it and rose to the challenge and I collected some great stuff... which, unfortunately, is not exactly scannable (unless the scanner produces some weird reaction I'm not yet aware of).
- I made three shrinky-dink Psychonauts insignia pins Saturday night/Sunday morning (I didn't even glue them 'til I arrived at the expo). One I bartered to the lovely Jess Fink, creator of fine Victorian robot porn, for a pair of (non-smutty) earrings. The other two I gave to Scott Campbell, who is to pass one on to Tim Schafer!! I am still flailing.
Next weekend is Intervention, only one Metro stop away from where SPX was! The weekend after that, I'm going to the Renaissance Festival. I am going to have no money. None. |
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| 05:56pm 26/06/2011 |
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Today's wildlife sightings:- A pair of red-winged blackbirds (male and female) yelled at my mom and me for being on their turf.
- A hummingbird just visible buzzing around above the treetops.
- A melanistic squirrel with a bright red tail.
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| 07:57pm 10/06/2011 |
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Fascinating nature sight of the day: two mockingbirds (I'm pretty sure) dive-bombing a crow under their tree. Even after it vacated their turf, they pursued it clear across the highway before returning home. Mockingbirds take no guff from anyone, man. |
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| 07:45pm 06/06/2011 |
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Shortly after getting on the first bus of my two-bus, hour-long-if-I'm-lucky commute home from work, I spotted on my rolly laptop case a tiny, brown-and-greenish baby mantis, less than a centimetre in the body. I managed to get it all the way home (mostly persuading it to crawl from hand to hand when it was restless) and onto my ornamental pepper plants! Their leaves have plenty of bug-holes, so hopefully it'll do okay.
Mantis! |
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| 07:55am 02/05/2011 |
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Oh, yeah! Please vote for me here (unless you're in the running yourself)! You have to log in, but you can do that through Facebook; I forget if there are other means besides signing up fresh. Then click the Vote tab, search for "VaCKo", and proceed accordingly! You can vote once per day! |
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| 11:37pm 01/05/2011 |
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I have received* what may be the most irredeemably awful cookie fortune ever written.
Q. What is H20? A. Caring. 2 parts Hug, and 1 part Open-mind. I cannot even think of anything else to say about this.
*All six other people at lunch declined their cookies, so in fact I received a number of fortunes. |
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| a rather belated announcement |
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| 11:51pm 03/02/2011 |
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Yeah, so I probably should have mentioned this a while back, but, sadness, they won't be using my captions on the ReBoot DVDs after all. Rainmaker found them what I presume were the captions used on TV. On the one hand, I would have loved so much to be involved, but on the other, my captioning was entirely self-taught and I'm sure I got plenty wrong (technique, not content). So it's probably just as well. (Of course, now I'm learning proper captioning for work. Timing, thbppppt.)
Shout! Factory said they would still send me a free set "for all my help," but since my contact didn't reply to any of the last few e-mails I sent, I have no idea if he's actually received my mailing address. I hope I can figure this out, because the DVDs are being released on my birthday, and if I'm not already getting a copy then this has obviously got to be a present from someone (or a birthday self-indulgence, which counts).
I'm still planning to finish my captions (or, rather, subtitles) for the sake of those who have video files, so they can be translated into other languages, and so I can do the different characters' lines in pretty colours. I will probably use the DVD captions to check mine against (or copy the DVD captions and fix any errors they made, it amounts to more or less the same thing). |
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| *scratches head* |
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| 03:15pm 03/01/2011 |
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A table in a document I am fixing up at work contains a categorical row header Marital Status and the subheaders Married, Widowed, Divorced or Separated, and New Jersey. |
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| addendum to news |
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| 10:46pm 28/11/2010 |
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mood:  hat!
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November 26: I receive in the mail several old and rare ReBoot cereal toys and an even rarer official ReBoot beret. My emotional equilibrium is instantly restored.
In related news, my mom and I have agreed that I look quite good in a beret. We have also agreed that I need a haircut, because at the moment it makes me look a little too much like Che. |
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| extremely mixed news |
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| 07:56pm 24/11/2010 |
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mood:  emotionally drained
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November 18: Rainmaker Entertainment has my ReBoot episodes on YouTube flagged as copyright infringement. I have been expecting this (though I was kind of hoping for a note first), and I duly remove the lot. As no such complaint was made of any of my non-episode videos, I leave those.
November 19: I am awarded with a cameo in David Malki !'s bonus Machine of Death story, for having alerted him to a formatting problem in the Kindle version of the book.
November 23: I re-e-mail Shout! Factory to ask if they would like to use my ReBoot closed captions on the DVD set. They would indeed! I will be in the credits and receive a complimentary DVD set!
November 24: Rainmaker Entertainment flags "Fast Forward: The Making of ReBoot" as copyright infringement. This causes my YouTube account to be terminated.
STOP GIVING ME MIXED MESSAGES, WORLD, THANK YOU. |
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| 11:26am 07/08/2010 |
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At last, my sister-in-law has uploaded some videos of the musical performances—including yours truly—at her and my brother's wedding back in February! |
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| Pi Day Peculiarity! |
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| 10:06pm 14/03/2010 |
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So, having shamefully forgotten about Pi Day until evening, my mom and I decided to try something I'd wanted to for a while, and make a chai custard pie. We went with the recipe from her old Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk cookbook, making the requisite hot water into very strong chai first. Since we didn't have a premade pie crust, and this was unpremeditated baking, we decided to make a graham cracker crumb crust, as both the easiest and (in my opinion) most tasty option.
The custard is completely liquid before baking, and I was afraid it might soak into or even disintegrate the crust, but we decided it'd probably be all right.
What happened is that the crust mixed with the custard and floated to the top. Seriously. There is no crust at the bottom (fortunately, it's a solid egg custard). The entire top half is this thick, sort of spongy mass. It's an upside-down pie.
It is also very yummy.
So there you go. Custard upside-down pie.
ETA: Bread pudding! That's what the "crust" is like! |
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| 03:25pm 25/02/2010 |
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mood:  siiiiigh
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Well, I just quit my day job. I don't intend to go into why in great detail, but neither the job nor the boss were right for me, nor I for them. If I've been there for two years and still do not properly comprehend what I'm doing, and am actively seeking distraction because I dislike my primary task that much, and my primary reason for staying is that my employer has ferrets, I'm probably better off out of it.
So, on the down side, I now need new employment, preferably in my chosen field, that much more urgently. On the up side, I now have more time and motivation to seek and pursue projects in my chosen field.
So... does anyone need, or know anyone who needs, a web designer? Samples here, here, and here, and a facelift-in-progress here. |
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| 07:23pm 08/02/2010 |
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mood:  cold
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Yeeeeeup. We just got home from NYC to find the lawn two feet deep in snow.
Now they're predicting 10-20 more inches for tomorrow.
It's unlikely I'd be able to get home from work even if I could get there in the first place. I shall probably spend the time tunnelling instead. |
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| OMG wedding! |
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| 12:44am 07/02/2010 |
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mood:  dude!
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Dude! My brother is totally married!
In related news, I have survived an entire evening of party, and getting my hair done beforehand. I feel very accomplished.
Seriously, the party was excellent. Since Russ and Elisa are Russ and Elisa, a bunch of Russ' friends and cohorts made up the band, and assorted friends and relatives on both sides sang, and sang wonderfully. I myself performed "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel, with parental and other familial backup, and I have it on good authority that I kicked butt. (YouTube forthcoming.)
Other highlights of the evening (ETA more things as they occur to me):- For the reception favours, Russ and Elisa baked about 150 little sweet potato spice cakes. In jars.
- There were lots of candles in jars, as well. SO MANY JARS.
- The groom's party wore aloe boutonnières.
- I neutralized most of the pre-wedding disaster karma by bleeding all over myself. (Many thanks to Elisa for dressing us bridesmaids in black, it totally hides the bloodstains!)
- Katie Lopez, four-and-a-half-year-old daughter of one of the writers of Avenue Q, was the Ring Fairy. She wore fairy wings and silver shoes with bells on, and was utterly adorable. (It wasn't a theme wedding, you understand. They just had a ring fairy.)
- When the officiant asked "Who has the rings?" one ring was dropped (by the best man, not the ring fairy) with perfect comic timing.
- The glass refused to break when stepped on, the first few times.
- During the concert, Katie (yes, the four-year-old) delivered a ridiculously good rendition of "Ring of Fire".
- Not one person asked me when it would be "my turn."
- Best. Cannoli. Ever.
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Meeeeeeme! thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) crazyfurries |
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| 03:30pm 12/01/2010 |
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Were I a summonable creature, what kind of ritual would you craft to summon me? |
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| Programming and Poetry |
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| 08:52pm 14/11/2009 |
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mood:  touched
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Yesterday was the TechLEAP graduation luncheon! Everyone agreed that it was better than a proper ceremony, because the speeches were shorter and there was yummy Thai food.
I got two certificates, because apparently I took more courses than most, to the point where I qualified as both Web Developer and Programmer. So that was awesome. Gifts were also had: Grandma gave me $100, and my parents gave me Martin Gardner's new book, When You Were a Tadpole and I Was a Fish, which made me squee because I am a dork. After that, we dropped by the comic book store, so I am now caught up on PS238. It was a productive lunchtime all 'round.
The Gardner book is titled for one of the articles in it, which was about [what little is known about] Langdon Smith, turn-of-the-prior-century journalist and author of (as far as anyone knows) just one incredibly lovely poem, which I shall present herewith because all the other websites have errors. :-P
( Evolution, by Langdon Smith ) |
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| 06:09pm 04/11/2009 |
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So, yesterday I was in the mall bookstore, which is right by Hot Topic, which means altogether too high a concentration of Twilight merchandise. And I was thinking antisocial thoughts about using Twilight fandom as a marker for culling the population. And then I realized...
The Twilight vamps' surname is Cullen!
It's been a conspiracy all along! |
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| 07:27pm 19/09/2009 |
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mood:  piratical
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My glasses frames have broken.
Like last time, they broke waaaay over to the far right of the bridge, so they cannot be taped back together because there's nothing on the right half for the tape to connect to, and only the lens that's still connected to the bridge will stay balanced on my face.
Like last time, to keep myself from getting dizzy with only one lens, I am wearing a makeshift eyepatch.
My life has extraordinary timing. |
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surprised