The Shining Count of Monte Cristo

Thursday, 16 November, 2006 at 11:53 pm

Hmmm … today was rather humdrum. Lecture, art lab, printing lab. Not much special there.

Little tidbits: I stood in line mindlessly waiting for a chicken sandwich during lunch. I went to the library three separate times today. Half the lights in the second floor are turned off, probably for money energy conservation, but there are also quite a few lights that have just plain died.

The Shining is getting interesting. I didn’t know there was a backstory to Tony! Then again, I’ve only ever seen the parts of the movie where the scary stuff is seen. Wooow, great plot device there.

The Count of Monte Cristo is a lot more convoluted than I remember. I still like the movie with Guy Pierce. I just consider them two different stories in two different mediums (of course, one gets a bit Hollywood-ized at the end, but what do you expect?). They’re both just so much fun! hee.

rise in the morning, sleep in the dark

Wednesday, 15 November, 2006 at 12:22 am

I think I’m giving up mentally. But that could just be today.

This morning I woke up at 6:45 so I could sign up for next quarter’s classes (yes I have a really late registration date *kills rhyme*). I had enough time to walk around my room to wake myself up (and prove to myself I wasn’t going to fall over) and pull on a sweatshirt and take out my retainers and make a cup of ocha. Woo, 15 minutes go by fast when you’re not awake!

After that it was fun. Somehow it zoomed from 7 to 7:30 (giving Livejournal layout help in that time wasn’t a good idea, I suppose) and I had just enough time to make eggohan and get my stuff (including undrunken ocha) and get to my car, where I spilled a little of my ocha and had to run back up to get a rag to wipe off the back window so I could see.

Then when I got back here, I tried to take a nap, or at least rest my eyes for a few minutes, but I couldn’t settle down, I kept getting up. Having a cup of ocha then half a Dr. Pepper at lunch was probably the cause. Even now I’m still moving. O_o Or that may just be some weird … sleep-deprived, half-awake thing…? I don’t know.

Then from 5-ish to 5:35 I put up my new layout and tried fixing things (still don’t know how to make the date show up for every entry). Then ate dinner for 10 minutes before I left for lecture.

Came back, watched Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars. Odd, but I’m thinking of the VM episode more than I am of the GG one. (I just started watching VM this season; it’s right after Gilmore Girls, and I don’t feel like going to bed or getting on the computer. This is pretty much the one night of television that I have. Other than random Mythbusters viewings on Wednesdays, but I usually don’t because Tuesdays and Thursdays are my heaviest days.)

So. Layout. Um. It’s Natalie Portman. I was just looking through the galleries at NP.com and thought these were layout-able images. I had a lyric or something to go with it, but I couldn’t remember it, so no text other than flimsysilence-dot-net. I think I randomly picked the colors from the colors that were saved in my Photoshop from whatever project I’d worked on last. *laughs* I do that a lot.

laptop

Sunday, 12 November, 2006 at 10:25 pm

I’m all sad now. Ironic, considering the last post.

Going from my desktop to my laptop I noticed that my laptop screen is darker. Maybe it’s just because the desktop’s settings are higher (hope hope!), but my laptop is going on its fifth year now…

I looked up LCD screen lifespans, and it’s on average five years. Same goes for laptops, roughly. You know, other than the cheaply made laptops or the laptops that are so old they just keep going because they’re made with good parts.

:( Do I have to plan to move over to my desktop completely next summer? Or use my (imaginary) Mac funds for a new laptop?

One would think I could kill two birds with one stone: buy a MacBook! But no, I don’t want a MacBook. I want a G5 (omigosh so spoiled!) and the big pretty monitor. I also want a laptop. I’ve found that I definitely like coding on laptops. The touchpad is right below the keyboard, so when I move my hand there to move the cursor then move my hand back, I can find home row very easily. As opposed to a mouse & keyboard desktop setup, I find it hard to move my whole right arm from the keyboard to the mouse and back again. I’m left-handed (but right-handed when using a mouse), and my right elbow tends to hurt after too much computer use, which I have to look out for (and not overstrain my right arm).

Regardless, I like my laptop. It’s a Dell Inspiron 2650. Other than the video card having a spazzy period (needing updating), and the wireless drive (or whatever the internal thing is called that connects me to networks) needing to be updated after I got a new wireless adapter thing, and needing a new battery (but that’s expected of lithium batteries; they stop recharging after a while), my laptop’s been really good to me. ^^; I even dropped it once and the battery bounced out of it!

I don’t suppose it would go any time soon. How do you know when a computer’s going to die? O_o I sure hope I get some hints. I have stuff backed up on my desktop, but I haven’t moved over any updated files yet. Then again, it hasn’t even been a month since I did the backup.

The only hints of anything not being as good as the first day I used it is, as mentioned before, the darker screen (I really don’t know if it’s darker relative to what it was before though; I never thought to come up with a gauge for this moment O_o) and this one pixel on my screen where the green light is always on. It’s kind of annoying. But I can live with it. Once it goes to maybe 3 or 4 dying pixels, I’m tossing in the towel. *grin*

*hugs lappy* Don’t leave meeee!!!

Jim Henson & co.

Sunday, 12 November, 2006 at 2:14 pm

I’ve been trying to get my new layout up here since Friday, but I keep doing other stuff, haha! (I’ve actually coded the layout on my comp; I just need to upload it and tweak it through WordPress. But I’m trying to reorganize stuff a bit.)

So Something Positive (a totally PG-13 rated comic) introduced me to Tom Smith’s song, “A Boy and His Frog.” It’s actually pretty high up on my Last.fm Top Tracks list, tied for second. *laugh* Right after all the KROQ-y songs.

When I first heard it, it really didn’t have much of an effect on me. Kermit sings about not having Jim Henson anymore. Okay.

Bit of background here. I watched Sesame Street some (I’ll have to ask my mom exactly how much, because I really don’t remember watching it, but I can remember quite a bit of stuff from it); I watched Muppet Babies lots (and realized when I was older that the characters were based on the Muppets, which came before *snrk*); and for some reason we owned (still own?) The Muppet Movie tape (in what I consider the “Disney tape box”). I also remember watching Fraggle Rock, although I don’t think it was that big with my brothers and me. My brothers liked to watch The Muppet Show when it re-ran (on what? according to Wikipedia it wasn’t on Nick at Nite, but…), but I guess I’m not a fan of variety shows. I liked the parts with the Muppets, mostly the behind-the-scenes stuff, but was bored by the rest of it.

I never realized until I was older (maybe when we got The Muppet Movie tape) that they were all tied in together by this one guy, Jim Henson. That would explain the “Jim Henson’s” part of Muppet Babies. *grin*

All this happened after 1990 of course, the year that Jim Henson died. So I never experienced the “loss of my childhood” or anything like that. Therefore, I can’t really rely on past feelings when I hear about anything related with Jim Henson. It was all just some fun stuff to watch.

I think the song means something to me now. I don’t know why. Nothing really changed. But it’s a touching song, and I guess I can understand the feeling behind it.

Well today I read Randy’s (the writer of Something Positive) latest S*P strip about Carroll Spinney (voice of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch; ya learn something new every day) getting old and eventually dying. I absolutely found the strip funny, possibly because I’m used to my childhood dying by now? I don’t know. Also I’m not that attached to Big Bird or Oscar the Grouch (see above regarding Sesame Street) even though I still enjoy them. But that’s not why I mention it.

Randy also posted a link to the clip where Big Bird finds out what it means when Mr. Hooper is dead. That aired the year before I was born, so it again doesn’t affect me. It’s sad yes, I feel for everyone yes, but do I feel a personal sense of loss? No. Although I found out about the character Mr. Hooper. ahaha. *shifty eyes*

I don’t really know what the point of this post is. I’ve said, this doesn’t really touch me, and why, and yet I don’t want to be perceived as cold. (Does anyone want to know what I was into as a kid? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! And Home Alone. I’ve always felt for McCauley Culkin. And Power Rangers. The first two or so seasons. And Rugrats. I was a Nickelodeon kid. Oddly, all my childhood faves ended badly. Or are ending badly. So I guess I still can’t really feel a sense of loss!)

I spend too much time writing in here. (One hour, woo!)

browsers

Saturday, 11 November, 2006 at 1:36 pm

I am back! :o I think I’m getting back into blogging too much.

I downloaded Firefox 2.0 the other day. I got an alert through the browser that 1.5.0.8 was available. Since the updater used to take a loooong time to update, I always got the new version through the website myself.

Well this time I could only find the download links for 2.0. I was kind of confused. Didn’t they say I should update to 1.5.0.8? Why didn’t I see it? I thought 2.0 was still in beta, and I don’t download betas (exceptions: middle_man and Firefox 0.8, because AIM and IE were just that annoying). But since that’s all there was I just downloaded it.

Yesterday, I think it was, I was “forced” by Windows Update to upgrade to Internet Explorer 7. I’d seen links on Yahoo before (“Yahoo! recommends you upgrade to IE7” Well I recommend that Yahoo! mind its own business.) but I didn’t bother to get it, since I’d fixed my settings to practically not let IE 6 do anything but show me text and images. XD; But since Windows Update was doing it for me, why not? I was too lazy to custom install and disallow IE7. Besides, Windows Update claims I can switch back if I prefer.

(This is on my desktop by the way, I think Norton Antivirus disabled Windows Security Center on my laptop and I’m not sure if it’s getting the Windows Updates itself. Maybe I should force it turned on anyway.) (… Dude! I can’t view windowsupdate.microsoft.com! What the heck?! Now how do I check if Antivirus is keeping me up to date? edit: I found update.microsoft.com and apparently the only update I need is IE7. Despite my last update being from October 14. How ironic is it that for the Microsoft Update page I had to practically allow all ActiveX options in order to use the site? I have things set to prompt, but apparently the site didn’t like just that, it wanted more…)

I’m probably biased, but I definitely prefer the Firefox update to the IE update. The only thing I really dislike about FF 2.0 (other than the default theme; I downloaded the old 1.5 theme XD;;) is that the Xs to close each tab is now on each tab. I suppose I have to just get used to it, but for every other program I know of (except graphics programs) the X to close documents(/tabs/whatever) is always in one specific spot. I suppose maybe this is more helpful for not-so-savvy computer users, more clear which tab you’d be closing. But I’m always afraid I’m going to hit the X instead of just switch to the tab. ._. Again, I guess I just have to get used to it.

The second thing I have to get used to in FF 2.0 is links opening in new tabs instead of new windows. I know there’s an option to switch it (I have it set back to new windows on my desktop), I’m just not used to it. When links open in new windows, there’s this very visual hint that it’s a new window (it’s kind of as if the whole browser has done a refresh, and reloads and redisplays the bars at the top) and that I won’t be able to use the back button and I’ll have to close the window eventually. But if it’s a new tab, I don’t notice that there’s a new tab on top until I go to hit the back button and notice it’s greyed out.

Also, sometimes I prefer more than one browser window open, because each window is a different task. For example, I could have e-mails open in one window, my websites open in another, and … I usually don’t have more than two windows open unless links open new ones.

Then on my Livejournal friends page, I have links open in new windows (because I have so many comics images on the page; I suppose images would reload from my cache, but just in case, I don’t want to keep using up people’s bandwidth [and my precious hundredths of seconds having to reload the page *snerk*]; also I assume that people don’t look at my friends page), and I’m just not used to having so many tabs open in one window (maybe half a dozen), or using Ctrl+Tab so often. Alt+Tab is just more comfortable. (Thumb & middle finger vs. pinky & middle finger.) But I shouldn’t really complain I guess.

All those complaints, and I like FF 2.0 over IE7? Yeah. *grin*

First complaint: I see no option to not display tabs if only one is open. I find the tab function very handy, but I also think it’s not attractive. Especially on IE with this over the top gradient design. X_x Another complaint about the way the tabs bar looks is that little box. I know it opens a new tab (I always wished Firefox had something like that. Maybe something on the bookmarks toolbar? If I don’t display the single tab I have then there’s no way to right-click on the bar and click “New Tab” and if I’m feeling lazy and not using the keyboard, I don’t like going all the way up to the File menu to get a new tab.). I guess it just goes with the I think the tabs bar is ugly thing. It’s something else on that ugly thing adding more ugly.

Hm, since this is the first time I’ve had more than one tab open in IE, I just noticed that you can close tabs only if it’s the active tab. I guess that would fix my problem in Firefox of accidentally closing a tab, but I think it just hampers me in IE. How hard am I to please?! *laughs*

Second complaint: Where’s the Menu Bar?! *hyperventilates* Oh, I can choose to display it through the Tools menu (menu? what do I call that thing?) What?! It shows up below the navigation bar (? is that what it’s called?). How totally against my expectations of any basic program do you want to go? Plus it’s in the way! I have to move the cursor that much farther up to use the nav bar! And it goes against my expectations of programs and is ugly and is in the way!

Third complaint: How do I customize all the bars?! I don’t want to use my browser this way! Give me flexibility, dangit! I want to move the buttons around differently from the way you want me to see them! I want the Links folder to display on the bottom right of the toolbars again! I don’t want those buttons in the bottom right! I’d rather use the Menu Bar like I do with practically any other program! I might not want to display the search bar because I don’t use IE so why would I ever search through it!

(Haha! That Quicktabs thing is such a ripoff of that option in Macs to display all windows that are open! [Sorry, I don’t remember the command to call that option.] But much less cool.)

Fourth complaint: I notice that the Refresh and Stop buttons are moved to the right of the url box, whatever it’s called. Um, way to go against people’s expectactions of a browser? Or even if people didn’t have that expectation of back/forward/refresh/stop buttons being all together to the left of the url box, at least let me switch to what I prefer!

Fifth complaint: This ClearType thing just makes the text blurry, in my opinion (in my eyes? XD; ). I’m using an LCD monitor, but it just looks blurry to me, and gives me a bit of a headache. (I’m somewhat sensitive to monitors even in the best of circumstances; they have to be a certain distance from my eyes, be a certain size, on and on, otherwise I get sick.) That’s one thing I don’t like about Safari on Macs. It’s not as noticeable for me on the Safari though, for some reason. Maybe because of the high definition, high resolution, large dimension monitors that Macs have (and which I drool over XD), as opposed to the regular monitors that PCs have.

(Sidetracking, I was thinking of buying a bigger Dell monitor for my desktop so I can see when I work in Illustrator or InDesign [I’ve mostly used those programs lately on Macs with their beautiful, big monitors, so I’m spoiled] but the lady I asked at the Dell kiosk said they don’t sell high def monitors. boo. So I don’t really see the point of spending $600+ for something subpar, and I’ll just save up for a Mac. :D)

Despite all my complaints about this ClearType, I’m sure that lots of people would like it so I don’t consider the ClearType itself to be a bad thing. No, what I’m complaining about is the fact that I can’t find anywhere in the Options to turn it off! What the heck? I knew I wasn’t blind when I looked over the whole advanced options menu three or four times. … Now what am I supposed to do? Not use IE. XD I just use it for a separate set of cookies anyway. (Yahoo I have old accounts that I check, and Livejournal I have two extra accounts, and don’t feel like signing out of my main account on Firefox.) Also to check out how layouts look in IE. But then again I use my laptop to code my websites, so I guess I really don’t have a problem there. (I haven’t been “forced” to install IE7 here yet, and I don’t want to bother to install it myself.)

Last complaint: There’s only one um, arrow for the back/forward buttons. Does that thing have a name? O_o This isn’t much of a complaint, I just think it’s kind of weird. I’d have to adjust myself to looking for the bolded/checked/highlighted page to orient myself as to where I am. Then again, I am just using it on the desktop, not the laptop, so with the laptop (i.e. the touchpad) I might be more annoyed than with the desktop (i.e. the mouse). *snicker*

Overall, I think that IE (or, you know, Microsoft, whoever makes IE) is just trying to be completely new and innovative and junk to make up for letting the last version get so outdated. Try to bring back their lost-to-other-browsers userbase. But they just end up overstepping the boundaries of what a browser should be like and should do. Whereas Firefox just updated the browser and added things that their users have asked for! omigosh, imagine that! :o

One new thing I like about Firefox 2.0. When you close a tab, you go back to the last tab you had active, not just the tab previous to the one you’ve closed. That’s new, right? I always thought the old way was a bit aggravating. :D

Ah! XD I just went to Customize Toolbars in Firefox and I found a button for new tabs. Omigosh, imagine all the stuff you get when you actually look for it! har har.

And that ends my somewhat ranty post. haha, such a long entry. *shifty eyes* Took me an hour and forty minutes to type.