zippy laptop

Saturday, 12 July, 2008 at 11:56 pm

Yay! I have a fresh install of XP on my laptop! XD It starts up so fast! But I still have to install all my programs again…

Firefox (2 still, don’t quite like 3) starts up really fast too! :D Still have to import my bookmarks, and work on my preferences (allow or deny cookies for sites as I go around).

I’ve gone from 5.5 gigs hard drive space free to 25 gigs free! Tomorrow I’ll have to move all my files back on here. Hoping I have enough space to upload most of my music. *crosses fingers*

I finished reorganizing my closet today too. (Well, finished installing new shelving and finalized where I put everything.) What a productive day! It just zipped by! Like my laptop! Ohoho!

fun with WordPress

Saturday, 28 June, 2008 at 1:36 am

Well I just spent I don’t know how long uninstalling and re-installing WordPress. Fun times, let me tell you! *dead*

A little backstory: went to bed at 4:30 in the morning (technically yesterday…), was woken up off and on from 9 to 11 by someone working with a chainsaw, didn’t get up until 1:30. I spent the day very very tired.

I don’t know when I messed up, maybe it was 11:30 pm? I accidentally uploaded the WordPress config file to the wp-content folder. I thought, Oh crap, and just deleted it. No biggie, right? Wrong.

(I’m going through my old entries and closing entries I don’t like, recategorizing entries, tagging entries… I do this too often, I know. I’m an organization freak.)

I go to edit an entry and find that there’s no place to edit tags. I thought it was the plug-in Simple Tags, so I kept turning that on and off, but that wasn’t it. I kept turning on and off all my other plug-ins, but that wasn’t the problem. (That created more problems, actually. It’s sort of irritating having to rely on plug-ins for my blog to display correctly…)

I realized that not only were tags missing, but all the Advanced Options weren’t nicely hidden away like they usually are.

I tried re-installing WordPress, just keeping my wp-content folder, but that didn’t change anything, so I moved on to deleting my MySQL database and re-importing the SQL file. That didn’t work either, though. (I got a scary message, “Error in ZIP archive: CRC32 checksum is not equal with the value in header information.” Found out I should try to import from the .sql file, not the .zip file. Luckily Steadfast allows importing of sql files up to roughly 8 mb! [Don’t remember the exact number; don’t sue me.] Yes, my blog .sql file is over 3 mb big now. *meep*)

That didn’t fix my problem, though, so I just scrapped my whole blog and put in a completely fresh install, all new uploaded files, all new MySQL database, and re-imported my .sql file.

The problem seems to be fixed now. Except … I realized while writing this post that the post page I was working on was messed up still. Argh! At least I was able to save it, then through editing the draft I got the regular page back…

Hm, nope. Every Create New Post page comes up with that blank look. >_< ARGH! Why won’t WordPress fix itself?!

edit: Wow, I guess it was just that one tab in Firefox (2) that wouldn’t display the page correctly. I spent over two hours trying to fix this on my site when it was just the browser?! *falls over*

was it hell?

Monday, 23 June, 2008 at 12:42 am

I found out about Jodi Picoult’s The Tenth Circle from one of the Borders e-mails. I was intrigued; a novel with comics in it? And the story seemed interesting, from the preview available online.

I bought it, read it, and was not impressed. The ending was disappointing. I was expecting more of a resolution I suppose, I don’t really remember. (Read it when, summer of last year?) Found out recently that it’s one of the author’s less stellar works, and that I should read some other title that I’m not really interested in looking into.

Also found out that quite a few people didn’t like the comics part of the book. I thought that was the best part! That, and the father character was the most interesting. I didn’t care about the mom or the daughter much. Blah.

After I finished reading it I decided to do what I always do with books I didn’t get much out of: stick it on the shelf and try reading it again sometime later. But now, I don’t think I can read it again. x_x So I’m just giving it away and writing this post about it.

(I really like the comics! :P)

all that jazz?

Tuesday, 17 June, 2008 at 12:56 am

I decided to start a new entry [from the “exactly relative sizes” one], since the last one went longer than I expected. (Why do I always do that?!)

Next up … I can’t remember the order. ._. I’ll just go with Burt’s Bees Beeswax lip balm.

I saw this ad in a Vanity Fair issue (I bought it for a class, but I can’t recall which one) decrying lip balms for using petroleum-based ingredients, and to make sure what you put on your lips is all-natural and not refined rotted dinosaur remains. I don’t remember what product the ad was for. But it definitely hit a mark.

I decided, since I needed more lip balm, to try a natural one, i.e. Burt’s Bees Beeswax. I saw it at Target, right next to Chapstick. The Burt’s was about a quarter more than the Chapstick, so I was questioning the au naturale ideas in my head, especially since there were three Chapsticks in one package, and only one of the Burt’s — pay less for triple the product? Very tempting. But I decided to not be cheap and try the Burt’s at least once.

I have to say I’m disappointed. The Burt’s gives my lips this cold tingly feeling , which I do not want. (Apparently other customers like it though…)

Hmm … it appears that it was a good thing I waited to write this up, because the info on the Skin Deep: Cosmetics Safety Database changed since I last looked at it. Chapstick lip balm now looks more harmful than Burt’s Bees Beeswax lip balm. Huh. (And oh hay look, white petrolatum in the Chapstick!!1)

Well, natural lip balms at places like Lush cost too much for me (and I never like having to touch lip balm to apply it — don’t they advise not touching your face because of the bacteria on your hands?), and Chapstick seems out (unless I can find this Chapstick all natural version), so I don’t know what to go for next. But that won’t be for a while. I can count all the lip balms I’ve had in my life on one hand; most of them were freebies.

Next item, 3Musketeers Mint. I saw commercials for this starting Christmas of last year? 3Musketeers is probably my favorite candy bar. It doesn’t mean I absolutely love it, but most of the time I’d accept eating one, which is better than what I can say about other bars. So when I saw the mint, I wanted to try it.

I found it in the checkout line at Albertson’s here, so of course I grabbed it. When I got home, I realized it’s smaller than the normal 3Musketeers bar, and it’s packaged with two bars, half the size of a regular one. Slight disappointment there, but maybe mint costs more or something, I’d forgive them for that.

When I bit into it though, it wasn’t that great. Maybe my expectations were too high. I think I expected something like a York Peppermint Patty. But the 3Musketeers Mint isn’t as sweet. It’s okay. I probably won’t buy it again. But I’d accept it if someone offered it to me. *grin*

The really rad thing about it though, the main reason why I’m talking about it at all, is the packaging. XD First, 3Musketeers Mint wrapping in normal lighting. It’s got that normal metallic look that the 3Musketeers bar has, right? Then, 3Musketeers Mint wrapping while backlit. Whoa! Transparent wrapper! XD It’s not a good quality photo, because in real life the nutrition facts can be read while backlit. mreh.

Now, I read Wil Wheaton’s post about Scarlett Johansson’s album a while ago … whenever it was first posted. I had no idea what type of music she’d done, but I know generally I don’t share Wil’s taste in music. (I’m more pop and mainstream, although I enjoy rock and a bit of indie music.)

Her album really surprised me though. I thought she’d be doing the normal pop album. I never expected the music that I heard. (I’m no music guru, so I have no idea what style or genre it is or anything.) There are a few songs on there I don’t enjoy, but for the most part, I would buy the album if it cost me $10 or so. (Hm, maybe I should buy the mp3s on Amazon.)

It’s got a nice atmosphere to the music. Not something I’d want to listen to every day like The Cardigans, but in the right mood it would be the best music. Like Lily Chou-Chou! *grins*

So I finished reading Garth Nix’s Across the Wall … a long while ago. I loved it! I read someone’s comment that it’s not as good as the Old Kingdom Trilogy. Well of course. The Old Kingdom spans over three books, you really get to get into the world and into the characters and into the stories.

Across the Wall is a collection of short stories. Short stories are, well short. There’s no time for development and evolution. It’s just a quick event that introduces a new idea and makes you (well, me at least) think about the world differently. I thought Garth Nix was incredibly imaginative with these stories. (I love short stories, by the way. Got introduced to them properly by Neil Gaiman. Read some of Roald Dahl’s adult short stories. I need to own them!)

Garth Nix was so good that I want to read The Once and Future King. I never thought I’d pick that up. Daddy owns a copy (an ooold copy). I never was interested in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. But Garth Nix has piqued my interest … as any good author should do.

Those are my reviews. The first two were written June 6th; I’m finishing this June 17th.

The remark I made earlier about gas … well the Monday before I saw gas was $4.33. I thought of filling up, but meh I was lazy and as I always do when I’m lazy, I thought I’d wait to see if the price would go down. The next day, Tuesday, I drove by the station again and the price was $4.44. I was so gobsmacked that I didn’t even consider buying gas.

I guess I should have though. I ended up buying four gallons on the 13th to make it home to L.A. where gas is guaranteed to be at least five cents cheaper (oh big whoop, five cents…) and had to pay $4.69 per gallon. Augh.

That ends my collection of little reviews and thoughts.

codes

Saturday, 7 June, 2008 at 6:56 pm

I’ve come to find through my life that I like codes.

This thought came to me earlier today when I was reading Broken Days (the book isn’t really important, but meh). I was looking at the chapter titles. (They bug me, because the first letter is so much bigger than the rest of the word. The difference in type size wouldn’t really bug me, except that the ascender of the lowercase H in both Chapter and Thirty don’t reach up as high as the bigger initial letter. Also, the weight of the character looks heavier than the rest of the word, just because it’s bigger. It should all be the same!! [Omigosh, Monk-ism. o_o] But anyway, enough about typography.)

The titles are set in italic, but the typeface’s italic style is subtle, so I was inspecting it to make sure it was italic, and not just oblique.

That made me think about the words italic and italicized. My teacher told us the words are based on the country’s name Italy, where the swooshy letter styles came from. (Versus Germany’s Blackletter, which is angular and straight and strict.)

I’d never, in all my life (from about elementary school, when I learned how to use Word Perfect [I’m so old] and that there was something called italic), thought about the similarities of the words italic and Italy. But I love it! It was like a revealed mystery to me!

And then I thought, it’s like a code! Language is like code, and other languages are like other codes. Sometimes they can translate, sometimes they can’t.

Reminds me of when I was a kid, and loved codes. Like 1 is for A, 2 is for B, and so on. I’d go off of that and make my own codes. They were simple. I’d reverse the numbers (like 26 is for A, and so on), I’d leave out vowels, I’d stick the vowels at the end (like A is 21, E is 22, and so on), other variations. I even came up with my own written language, or code. It’s based on the English alphabet, so it isn’t anything special.

I think it ties together a lot of my interests. Languages (not really the grammar so much though :x), words, coding, binary and hexadecimal. I just find it so fascinating how something can mean something else, how it can be expressed in a different way.