Flash Fiction-ating

As I don't really like posting entire compositions here, I'll try something new and just give you the first few lines:

I ran down the corridor, breathing heavily. I had lost her. My chest heaved, and a sob cracked its way through my chest and up my throat. I thought furiously through the desperation that threatened to consume me. There was no way to regain her. She was too far away, they would know exactly where I went, and I would lose her again, whatever I did. They knew me too well.

... and then give you the link to the rest: My Life - Gone, With One Click.

Wrote it in a flash of inspiration based on a six-word story I wrote, now serving as the title, on projectsidewalk.com. You should go look at that, too.

XKCD

This stuff always manages to make me laugh. I'm a nerd like that.

http://xkcd.com/

Research and Development

Basically I really want one of these amazing action figures. And normally I'm not one for toys, but this one takes the cake for best action figure. It's really a work of art. It's just freaking amazing.


See?

In other news, you can apparently make a fairly adequate solar power generator for less than $300. Something to think about.

Another One Bites the Dust

Click to read:


I utterly agree. Shotgun entrances even manage to completely beat out grenade entrances, if you can believe that.

In other news, I have now discovered the Firefox Facebook toolbar add-on, which is completely convenient, as well as Firefox's NASA Night Launch theme, which finally works for Firefox 3.0. This makes me very happy.

In addition to these, Mozilla is apparently working in tandem with Adaptive Path (the designers of MySpace's revamp/relaunch) in order to develop Aurora, a very interesting web browsing application. You should go see the concept videos, episodes one and two (more are on their way).

Radiohead's Remix

First:


Then:

Big Ideas (don't get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

Found on The Ridiculant, here.

The Language of Colors

It's really interesting to read about how the human race distinguishes colors, and fascinating to find out how we learn them.

New knowledge is FUN!

ALSO. I've desired (like so many) to fly for quite a few years now. Thanks to this guy here, I finally can.

Technological Advancement

I have new laptop! Bweee, go me!

I am now the proud owner of a Gateway M-6309. While apparently not a very popular notebook, it is actually very nice quality. Good resolution, lightweight, thin, a gig of ram, and some great media capability. Wifi, of course. I'm really enjoying having a laptop of my own... now all I have to do is remember that I don't own it, and it's not really mine, and I'll be fine. *sigh*

(Image will go here when I take a picture of it, as there are no images to be found online! Jeez...)

In other news, I had a singing lesson today. Recently, I've felt really frustrated in my singing. There are some places where I know I need to get better, but I don't know how to fix it, or even if I'm really hearing it right in the first place. And it's especially hard to hear some advanced people on all sides of me with wonderful volume and better pitch than I've got, and here I am feeling totally inadequate in an advanced singing class. Not good.

I didn't realize the intensity of emotion I felt about this until I started crying about it in front of the teacher. It really was hard to try and contain the emotion and listen to what he was telling me. Once he saw the source of my frustration he assured me that the advanced skills I have are totally usable, the places where I'm failing completely fixable, and my quieter singing voice utterly understandable.

So apparently, I have some pretty advanced techniques as a singer, especially considering my young age. But because I don't have some of the more basic skills, I am incapable of using the advances ones effectively. Thus all the frustration I've been feeling about my singing. So now I've established with my teacher that I need to work on a) correct breathing (which is a helluva lot harder than it sounds), b) pitch finding on the keyboard, and c) relative pitches (the distance between pitches).

It's a really good thing I've a passion for singing, and that I'm stubborn. Otherwise I'd be dropping out.

Currently reading: The Lair of the White Worm.

Exploration

While I'm not sure I agree with (or even, dammit, understand) everything that was explained in this video, it sure does represent some dang fascinating theory. And yay for me, I recognized some stuff from A Wrinkle In Time. Hooray for L'Engle's awesome bending-string explanation!

Also, this looks like a pretty kitty.

More Repose

I'm just kicking back at the beachouse now. Bought some books, watching TV, witnessed and photographed another awesome sunset (I'll post pics later). Right now I want to watch a movie online; the only problem is that we're piggybacked off of a neighbor's WiFi, and the bandwidth isn't nearly what I'm used to.

Ah, I suffer immensely for my entertainment. Insert self-rebuking snicker here. :D

Browsing Through Papers

This guy is amazing. I love his tastes in simplicity, and his thorough understanding of his craft. He's really got some skill.



The sickness that I have has no right to be as powerful as it has been for such a long period of time. For that reason my dad thinks I might have some sort of pneumonia, though if so it is a milder version. I didn't know anything about pneumonia except that people used to die of it, but antibiotics have apparently fixed that now. I just have an aversion to antibiotics is all. And if I happen to have viral pneumonia, which is what I strongly suspect, then antibiotics won't help me anyway.

On a side note: terminal velocity is reached after the object in question falls for 12 seconds. Also, I adore the guys who thought up these.

The War Raging Within

OoOoooooHhh.... I'm a sickie.

Mighty sinus cold headache thing all day yesterday, which woke me up yesterday morning at the ungodly hour of seven thirty. Seven thirty isn't usually an ungodly hour, this is true, but Saturdays measure time slightly differently. Either way I used my sickishness as an excuse to watch movies all day. I saw Robin Hood: Men In Tights, Disturbing Behaviour (yes, I know, I spell like a Brit, shaddup), Paycheck, The Longest Yard, and lots of other movies that my sick skull won't allow me to recall. Damn the thing.

Today I'm moderately better, as the balloon pressurizing my skull has deflated to the point of a lack of pain but not to the point of nonexistence. Unfortunately that means that my headcold has migrated to my chest, and now I'm coughing rather than holding my head and groaning. My ears have retained their painful infliction on the sides of my head, though. No hard rock right now, please God no.

Fun fun for me. Moving on.

On a completely unrelated note, the notion of the MacBook Air has been plaguing me since seeing the guided tour showing it off. The fact that you can preorder it online for a min. price of $1800, free shipping, is nice. The problem is that when I last looked, it was $1400... must be supply/demand crap. Now I'm sorry I missed out, but if I had the money, I would snatch it up in a heartbeat. As it is I'll have to find a job. Hopefully it'll be the one at the YMCA that I've been going to send in the application for and haven't yet.

Estoy perezoso, yo sabe. Anyway. Going to go take some decongestant and bombard my sluggish brain with more media. Later.

Free Technology

Two of the best words used together in the history of technology.

My mother received this $140 MP3 player from a friend of hers. Who apparently couldn't get it to work, got a replacement, and just gave the first one away to a friend "with smart daughters".



It's only a REALLY COOL PLAYER. Slick, great controls, simple and easy to access once you get the hang of the menu layout... it's Shuffle-like in its comparative simplicity, only this MP3 player has a screen. The only complaint I have so far with the player is with the lack of "Delete This Song" option. Other than that it's pretty much wicked sweet.

The software that you have to use with the player, however? Extremely detrimental to the deal. Sony's program developers are SERIOUSLY slacking off. Convoluted and somewhat ambiguous UI, with bad visual design and horrible error reporting methods (read: popups. Not only that, but redundant popups). And even the error reports the program has are flawed: the program reported errors with the file transfer process that never happened. And the transfer time for downloading to the player is only okay if you're looking for the equivalent of a commercial break on your comp in order to go grab a snack.

Also, the Import Music option for the program's library (crucial if you have a remote connection) doesn't actually allow you to access outside your network. Only your local drives are allowed. In order to access an outside resource, you have to manually find the folder through the "Import Song" setting. Even if you use Ctrl+A to highlight and import all the songs in the folder, it takes FOR-EV-ER to import them to the library. I'm talking 20 min to import only about a hundred songs.

As if that wasn't bad enough, you have to register your MP3 player with the online store before you can even use anything. That's really annoying if you just want to load a couple of songs on the thing just to test out the player. GRARG.

This was all found in 10 min of using the dumb program.

In conclusion, I resented the fact that you had to download an entirely new program to load your music in the first place, let alone get an amateurish program out of the bargain. I am not impressed.

I still like the player though.

Hm. Been Awhile

New things: Mom's and sister's birthdays; Thanksgiving goings-on; saw Beowolf in 3D.

Birthdays weren't very exciting, but pleasant enough. Thanksgiving didn't end up in its usual location at my grandmother's due to her feeling ill, so the holiday was held at my parents' place this year. My cousins and I played lots of Live Halo 3, and that also was good.

As to Beowolf: If I hadn't already seen Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean 2, and Lord of the Rings' Gollum, I would have been extremely impressed by the animation alone. But as I had seen all of those, it wasn't that big a deal. As a matter of fact, in not having real-life actors, I think the movie lost a bit of realism and depth. The three-dimensional aspect was the only thing that made the movie worth seeing, but even then there were some points were the dimension wasn't at all convincing. It was rather like having paper cutouts with rounded edges, an animation without anything deeper than what the audience was seeing on the surface. It was nice, but I think the animators were trying to pull something off in terms of realism which wasn't quite within their grasp.

I give the movie three-point-five of five stars, for good effort and the talent of Neil Gaiman, whose literary portrayers should stick to graphic novels.

As for the cell phone thing, we're still trying to work out the shipment of a new phone with the online sellers. We've already received two cell phones, the first of which had a bent shell, and the second of which had flawed programming. So far we haven't heard back about the shipment of a third. I'm of the opinion that they should give it to us for half price, but maybe that's just me.

I Feel Violated

My cell phone was stolen today.

I was riding the bus at the time. The guy sitting in the seat behind me stole it. He had asked me a couple of questions about my wireless headset, after which I continued to listen to my tunes, during which I really paid no attention at all. I watched him leave the bus without marking it as significant. I only really began to notice things when my headphones' reception began to break up. I reached for my phone to see what was the matter, only to press my hand to empty space.

I didn't realize how attached I was to the device until it was taken from underneath me. It was like an aficionado's favorite car - he may have set a couple of dents in his precious car, but they're his dents, and he knows each one by heart, because he put them there. His car has become far more than just a method of transportation. In the same way, my cell phone wasn't just my emergency telephone. It was my music library, my picture album, and a contacts list full of all the people in my life. It was completely customized to me: I had bought the clear plastic case protecting it (which I loved) as well as having completely tailored every setting and display. My 1-gig SD card the phone was equipped with was dear to me as well - I had just loaded my new favorite tunes on it the previous morning. When that man stole my cell phone he stole away my Linus' Blanket, my Prometheus Stone, my precious blue Mustang, a hank of my hair while I wasn't looking.

I didn't cry when our family's dog died. I cried when my cell phone was stolen. I wanted to choke the guy who had taken it, but I settled for annihilating Flood in Halo 3 instead. Just a way to run away from reality, really, but it was better than re-experiencing the same pain so many times over.

My mother, who had the same model of phone that I had had, offered hers as a temporary use for tomorrow. It almost makes me nauseous to even touch the thing, necessary though the evil is. I can't help thinking, "Why must I? It's a pathetic mimicry of my own precious, a copy which can never measure up, because that one was special."

My wireless headphones seem absolutely superfluous in their existence now. It seems rather ironic, for I praised them and valued them so highly before; they are nothing without the cell itself.

Simplicity In Technology

This is my entire Humanities presentation. Beautiful, no?

New Toys

We switched our cell phones from Verizon to Cingular. So I went from my Samsung SCH-A950 to a Samsung SGH-A707, which is "much more better" (in the words of our favorite captain).
Also, while I was there, I bought this wireless headset, which I find practically indispensable. It is absolutely beautiful, and the fact that it's Bluetooth means it was made for Freedom. ;)