byebye, FontExplorer X

Sunday, 25 January, 2009 at 4:25 pm

I installed FontExplorer X (herein referred to as “FEX” ’cause I don’t wanna type it out) almost two years ago.

I did like the program while I was using it. FEX just doesn’t fit into my current computer environment right now.

Pros: I guess programs opened up a microsecond faster than usual. I don’t have many fonts, just a few hundred, nowhere near the thousands that professional designers have.

It sure made looking for fonts in my system much easier. Even though it would slow down when I wanted to view font sizes in 300 pt (don’t ask). I could see the whole alphabet (upper case or lower case) in one go while scrolling through all of them. (Even though my typography teacher would be horrified to hear that sometimes that’s how I choose my typefaces.)

Cons: First and foremost, at the moment I hate having to open up an additional program to get access to typefaces. If I were working in a design environment, which I was last year, I absolutely would not mind. But now I open Adobe design programs only once in a while, and when I do I don’t like having to remember to open another program to use, say, PetitaMedium (something I use in my resume).

Secondly, I’m working on a Windows-based computer. There is currently no version of FEX outside of beta for Windows. That’s not too terrible, but for some reason something in FEX makes Windows snitty about opening system programs like Volume Control or Spider Solitaire or Calculator. In other words, very important programs! *snicker*

Last year I was okay with it and would just do all of that on my laptop, calculations, listen to music, or take a Spider Solitaire break. But right now I’m not settling in for long stretches to design things. I’m just opening a file here or there to edit while I’m on the computer. So I don’t turn my laptop on since I’m planning to not be here long or I plan to watch Youtube vidoes.

(Yes, my laptop, my slow baby, is gradually becoming only a mobile entertainment center. Sad times, let me tell you. But wow, going from 384 MB RAM to 2 gigs … it’s a miracle!!)

A third reason that FEX is not so helpful is the fact that there are no tags in the program. I think I’ve become spoiled by Windows Media Player and online journals. I’m used to finding things through tags.

I know there are groups or sets or whatever in FEX, but I have to manually add fonts to each one. Every time I install a new font, I have to remember to categorize it, or else I’ll probably never remember to use it again. Since I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet (I did it on my laptop but I uninstalled FEX to make it run faster), I am forever scrolling through 400+ fonts trying to find all the serif typefaces and trying to figure out which one I’d like to use.

If I were working on a Mac, I would definitely pay for and install the newest version of FEX. (Mostly because I hate the Mac’s way of scrolling so slowly through the list of typefaces on Adobe programs.)

But since I am running Windows, I’ve decided that FEX has run its course on my computer and really must go. I’m saving the install file though just in case.

my historical day

Thursday, 22 January, 2009 at 1:00 am

Ahh, January 20, 2009. Two great things occured on that day: one was the design day of International Print Week at Cal Poly, and the other was Barack Obama’s inauguration!

The speakers at Print Week that day were a guy from Adobe who demonstrated Adobe CS4’s shiny new functions (and made me covet. and drool a little, yes), a woman from Williams-Sonoma talking about a product line design relaunch, and a guy (CEO?) from a flexo printer.

I didn’t win the raffle for CS4. Not that I expected to, but how fun would that have been, huh? The guy showed … I don’t really remember. He covered Reader and Acrobat, Bridge, Photoshop, a little bit of InDesign, and Fireworks. He also showed us easter eggs in Photoshop. Man, I had no idea Adobe people were geeks like that. Or that programs had easter eggs! Basically, he made me want CS4 (Design Premium package) more than before, and got me interested in playing with Fireworks. Now where to come up with the money…

The product redesign presentation was interesting. I had no idea all that work goes into it, or that it takes that long. (13 months?!) Also further cemented the idea that I don’t want to be a project manager.

The flexo guy went off the cuff, no Powerpoint/Keynote presentation. He covered different things like going green, saving money, going green and saving money, what he’s looking for in interviewees, web 2.0 and technology, lots of stuff. (Interesting point he brought up: to encourage companies to go green, tell them it will save money in the long run. *grin*)

Okay now, in between the speakers, from 9–9:45 am, a live broadcast of the inauguration ceremony was piped in and we got to watch Barack Obama become the next president! Yeah! So cool. It was so much fun to watch it in a room of 50 people or so. There was clapping, there were tears, much elation. I felt like jumping up and cheering while dancing. But of course I didn’t. *snerk*

All in all, much better than if I had watched it here on my tiny tv all alone. Eee!

the Real Ender Wiggin

Saturday, 10 January, 2009 at 8:46 pm

I started reading Ender’s Game a while ago. Haven’t read Ender since 2005 (almost three years!) so I’ve got most of my mind clear and am now ready to meet the real Ender Wiggin.

Background: I first read Ender’s Shadow (for an English class) then read Ender’s Game. So yes, I have Ender completely backwards in my mind. Or as a reviewer on Amazon said, “Bean is smart, clever and clearheaded ‘always’ whereas Ender looks hesitant and overwrought…”

I don’t remember my original thoughts when I went from Shadow to Game and am too lazy to search through my journal archives, but generally I think I would have agreed with that reviewer’s sentiments. I was probably confused as to why people liked Ender so much.

Reading Orson Scott Card’s introduction to Game though, I picked up on this: “These readers found that Ender’s Game was not merely a ‘mythic’ story, dealing with general truths, but something much more personal…. They didn’t love Ender, or pity Ender (a frequent adult response); they were Ender, all of them.”

That explained a lot to me. I read Ender’s Game first when I was about 18, past the stage of outcast child. I pitied Ender. It explained why my feelings about Ender were different from my friends’. I was reading it from an adult’s perspective.

I was also reading from a perspective of someone who never felt like an outcast because of my intelligence. (No, I felt different because I’m a little weird. :P) There were lots of classmates smarter than I was. In fact, I felt stupid in elementary school and middle school … and high school … because those classmates excelled much more than I did. Sure, I didn’t struggle too much in school (except with writing), but that didn’t set me apart.

Knowing that, and not remembering Bean’s side of things, I can read the story with a clean slate. :3

One thing I’d like to comment on in that review; “Where does Bean get the experience to become Enders [sic] ‘supervisor?’ I don’t know but he is deemed fit enough with a couple months as a team leader to be fleet commander.”

Again, I don’t remember the specifics (and I’ve got horrible dizzying headache pressure and can’t think straight), but Bean was really smart, a super brain. He knew and understood a lot of things, practically everything. But he doesn’t have the “human” side to him that Ender does, which Bean knew. Wasn’t that also the reason why Bean knew Ender had to lead? Bean was more of a backup to Ender; if Ender failed, Bean would be there as one last chance to beat the Buggers.

But that thought doesn’t lead anywhere in this entry.

(Also, funny additional comment by the reviewer about Inda. XD)

Continue reading “the Real Ender Wiggin”

new year, new entry

Saturday, 3 January, 2009 at 11:55 pm

I didn’t write about Christmas, so I’ll do it now, along with New Year’s. (I also didn’t write about the Bush letter before the year ended, which I was hoping to do, but I won’t write about it now.)

Christmas was at Auntie G’s this year. Christmas breakfast, my cousins and aunts prepared. We watched a little bit of A Christmas Story, a little bit of the Mythbusters marathon, a little bit of horrible infomercial-ish commercials (BUT WAIT!), before the sports fanatics grabbed the TV.

Opened presents around two. I got … Muppets CDs, Muppet Movie, Sherwood Smith books, a book on Japanese bookbinding, and a Linny the Wonder Pet guinea pig beanie doll! hee! Linny was a big hit with SM00. :P

Afterwards, Hidek and Tadash and my cousin’s husband played Texas Hold’em for $5 each with me as dealer (10% cut which became $5! woot!) and Mickey watched. G (cousin’s husband) won.

Auntie G showed us this game with chips and three dice, and the dice read “L,” “R,” “C,” or nothing. We had to pass our chips around or put them in the center until one person was left with one, the winner. Interesting game.

Then we drove out to my cousin’s house to get Trivial Pursuit. Saw two accidents on the way there! Auntie J, G, Tadash, Hidek, Mickey, and I played. (With Uncle G replacing Tadash when he and his family left.) G would have won, but we kept giving him the sports questions, which he’s horrible at. XD

New Year’s we celebrated today, so that everyone could do whatever they wanted on the first. (Sleep in, visit the other side of the family, go out with friends, or like us, watch the Rose Parade. muahaha!)

Ozoni for breakfast, yum yum! (Forgot to bring my camera to photograph, will have to remember to do that next year.) Tadash played Wario Ware on the Wii some during breakfast, spent 20 minutes trying to get to the beginning of some video game (Okami?). Then the boys and G went off to play Axis & Allies, which I skipped ’cause I didn’t feel up to it. Ended up napping for a while to get rid of some dizziness and a tiny headache.

Most of the females were involved in food preparation for dinner, except for the three youngest. :3 We’re still kids! We can’t cook dinner! haha. But SM00 and I helped with making wonton, and Noellium went to India for a seat was helping with dishes. Also, there probably wouldn’t have been room for us in the kitchen if we had wanted to help. *shrug*

When I wasn’t napping or making wonton, I spent my time on my laptop, catching up on my Livejournal friendslist. I read through over a week’s worth of entries, woohoo!

Dinner was the usual Japanese American fare (although I noticed the lack of small fishies…nothing to bug my other cousin’s husband with *grin*) with the new addition of fried tempura tofu (iffy for me, I don’t know … maybe I would have liked it better with shoyu/soy sauce, not plum sauce). I couldn’t eat everything on my plate, again (for some reason this holiday season I’ve been really bad at judging how much I can eat, argh) so I had to leave good food behind.

After dinner I joined the boys to play Trival Pursuit, 90s edition. I don’t know if it was easier or harder than the other game, the Genus II (not Genius) edition. This time we played teams ’cause there were only four game pieces in the set. Teams: me and Hidek on one team, Mickey and Tadash on another, and G and second-oldest cousin who pretty much grew up in the 80s, so they knew lots more than we did, and they won.

Then we played Apples to Apples, which is really fun! That was the first time I’ve played it, and now I want to buy it. XD Not that I have many opportunities to play with a bunch of people at home. murrr.

I was thinking on the way home…all I’ve got are Monopoly games (about four different versions) and Scrabble. The rest of my family has other versions of Monopoly (can you tell which game we usually end up playing?), a Trivial Pursuit game (one or two editions, can’t remember which), some really old games from the 80s or so (Mastermind, anyone?) … I think we still have the Allowance Game. And Payday. But we got rid of Eat at Ralph’s. ahaha. We might have an I Love Lucy game, or we might have given it away.

Mostly we have video games. Which is all right if you’ve got only four people max for playing…

Well, since New Year’s has just passed, it’s my favorite holiday for the next few months. *grin* But I just realized, except for Easter, there’s a whole long dry spell of holidays where all my relatives get together. That’s no fun! Sometimes we celebrate Independence Day, but we haven’t done that for a few years. Mum says everyone doesn’t really want to bother, because they usually have work the day after.

So I think it’s my mission to create a pseudo-holiday for the family during the summer for us to get together. XD But I’ll only do it if I’m rich, because I don’t really want to cook so I’ll just end up buying food from some place…

Continue reading “new year, new entry”

a new, shiny Christmas

Wednesday, 24 December, 2008 at 11:58 pm

Today wasn’t much different from other Christmas Eves. Mum made cookies and brownies with some help from me and Daddy, Mum wrapped presents and I wrapped some, and we watched our Christmas videos.

One big difference though is that the videos were much sharper and clearer (or the flaws were more noticeable). Yes, we have a new Sony Bravia XBR something or other, 52″. High definition, widescreen flat panel, with 120 hertz or 120 frames per second. Mr. Magoo never looked so good!

What did we watch? Mickey’s Christmas Carol (with some Goofy and Donald shorts beforehand; this was taped on CBS sometime in the 80s or early 90s), Care Bears Nutcracker (DVD bought last year), Rugrats Hanukah special, Hey Arnold! Christmas, New Doug Christmas, Edith Ann Christmas, and Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol (DVD bought last year).

Watching the old tape we have of Rugrats, Hey Arnold, Doug, and Edith Ann specials made me wonder if any of this was on DVD because hey, VHS won’t last forever. Or even the next ten years. (Ooh, some of Hey Arnold! is on DVD[-R]! *adds to must-buy list*)

So I looked up Edith Ann and there really isn’t much out there on the special. It’s mostly about Lily Tomlin. Nothing against her (really, she’s great), but … boo. The Edith Ann special is one of my favorites! It’s … different. But still oddly heart-warming, in its way. *grin*

I want it on DVD! But no one’s done it. Blah. I’ll have to record from the tape and burn to DVD. Snitty quality, but it’s better than nothing. I just have to get my butt in gear and figure out how to make a DVD from a VHS tape. Then I’ll have Edith Ann on DVD for however long DVD-Rs last!

(Should I save the commercials as well? ’96 ads, hmm.)