and do the chic~

well, maybe not. what i do know is this: i need a very old PCMCIA USB card. this only having a floppy drive thing is obnoxious as hell. i’m trying to install the drivers for my newest piece of heaven (pictured left) but the driver is bigger than will fit on a floppy disc… so i split the file up… except the thing keeps throwing me errors. i could just get the files off the network except oh no, wait, i can’t! because i have to install the drivers for the modem to work! faceplant.

… and now it won’t copy the split files from the floppies. ARG! why couldn’t the damn modem that came with the thing have had it’s adaptor? …time to spend quality time with my old friend MS-DOS i guess… i need a backpack CDrom… let’s everybody pray i make beaucoup bucks at the craft fair tomorrow.

(the inevitable) speaking of which… tomorrow! i’m finally getting excited. it’s kind of nice to be excited about something. i’ve been … pissed off and depressive? yes. since the technical writer episode, and — holy f! something worked! now to install some drivers!!! — anyhow, yes, i’ve been unmotivated and pissed off at the world, plus broke, which is never a good state for me, but i’m kind of looking forward to the show tomorrow. i have to be up ungodly early – setup starts from 6 am, but carolyn and i’ll probably show up about 7 – but still, i’m eager to see what kind of other vendors they got, what kind of customers they’ll attract, and of course, i’m eager to sell some stuff. (^_^) it’s their first ever, so i’m curious to see how it will go. of course, i’d my very first, too, so either it’s going to go just fine, or something going to blow up. yay! i pretty much couldn’t get to sleep last night because i kept thinking of stuff we need to do. course, i am a little ahead of carolyn, at least. she doesn’t even have her displays finished…

… ok, have you seen that that doctor who episode with the weeping angels? there is one of those exact statues in the garden in the house across the street from us. *shutter*

so everyone come to the unity christian church on maize road in columbus ohio and buy some handmade goods!

Labels: craft, facts, tech

makes everything better, don’t you think? (^_^)

to the left, you will see the collection of books i made for the show on saturday. it’s certainly not the hundred i was hoping for, but with a few others that i hadn’t finished by press time, i’ve got 42 of them. … ironical. mom and i went down to church to borrow a table, but we forgot/didn’t know that the armenians had a gathering in the basement this afternoon, so they were using all the tables. carolyn and i are going to run a test setup this week, to make sure that we have a setup that works and to see how long it’ll take us to set up. the church is going to be open at six am, but i’m doubting we’ll need that long to set up. every moment of sleep is precious, trust me.

in other news, i’ve managed to obtain an ethernet modem that works for my baby zenith. it should be here in a few days. thank the gods for eBay, that’s my mantra. (^_^) also, i think i’ve found a solution for upgrading the poor baby to win 98. first wonderful piece of info – the hard drive has a perfectly normal PATA pin out! i’ve got a USB adaptor for laptop drives (obtained for backup purposes) so i can use that to hook it up to my fancy desktop or my newer laptop, and use the CDROMs associated therewith to upgrade! yays! this may work out after all! … given my history, however, i’m quite likely to end up with a moderately expensive door stop…

speaking of dumbassery… i found a bug on my pants in the car this afternoon and managed to grab the thing before it jumped away, but i clipped all my fingernails off last night, and so i couldn’t squish it. mom suggested flinging it out the window, so i quickly rolled down the window – well, hit the button, she’s got automatic windows – and flug the bug out the window. however, and here’s the dumbassery part, in an effort to prevent the bug from jumping back on me, i started to roll the window back up – WITHOUT TAKING MY ARM BACK IN FIRST. yeah. so now i have nice matching bruises on my right hand from my own stupidity. good to know the universe rewards in kind.

Labels: books, craft, facts, stupid, tech

is it possible for me to get any nerdier? i’m thinking… no. in fact, i’m not even sure why anyone would want to…

anyhow. my newest baby is the following:

a 1995 model group 2 Zenith Data Systems Z-Star EX. it shipped probably some time early 1995 and its stats are as follows:

Win 95
Intel 80486DX2 @ 50mhz
20.0 MB ram
340 MB hard drive
2x type II pcmcia slots/1x type III slot
NiHM battery
9.4″ DSTN color screen
3.5″ floppy drive
1x serial port
1x parallel/printer port
1x com port

and a whole lot of other stats i discovered that no one but a NERd would give a rat’s ass about. it had a fax/modem and an ethernet/modem in the pc card slots, but the ethernet card didn’t have its little dongle/adapter thing, so i can’t use it until i find one. the other thing i’m really missing is a cdrom drive. apparently, they make things called “backpack” drives that hook up to the parallel port, which is very very sexy, but i’m currently overdrawn in every way possible, so i can only hope that i will blow away every single person at the craft show and make a bazillion dollars.

in other news, i’ve switched the URL to my YOUkun blog, so if anyone’s having a hard time finding robot clones, it’s here now. please update any bookmarks you may/not have.

Labels: facts, tech, translation

as is so often the case, i found something i wanted and decided to make it myself instead. and as is also often the case, i had no idea how to do it. (^^;)

after a lengthy discussion amongst still-shiny-new Bookbinding Etsy Street Team (acronymed BEST for a reason) i still had not much of a clue. i did however, have a volume of keith smith’s binding books to go through and the courage to try. and possibly to fail quite badly. i busted out my watercolor paper, grabbed a random scrap (which turned out to be from possibly the sexiest book i have ever made. more on that later.) and ripped some random length of thread from its cozy home in my CONSTRUCTION box (a longish cell box that originally housed a fancy japanese cell phone strap). what i ended up with is what you see above. aside from the fact that i couldn’t be bothered to properly center the strip of paper, it’s not horrible. the binding at On Paper used probably sinew or some other thick thread-like substance, which helped seperate the Xs and accentuate the weave, but i think the technique is basically correct. i glued the extra spine bits to the first pages, so there’s techincally no cover. i kind of like it. not really suitable for sale, but cute. definitely cause to attempt what i was really practicing for – a full size ivory suede covered sketch book for the craft fair. my mother gave me a half yard of delightful ivory ultrasuede the other day just for such a purpose.

speaking of which (hells i should really retitle this blog “speaking of…”) i should really take a shot of the books i’ve been making for the fair. they’re turning out really awesome! … uh, i mean, i think so anyway. (^^;) what’s really sad is that i’ve been making all these relatively awesome books, but i haven’t had any time to make anything for etsy, so i haven’t listed anything new on there in like two months. it’s a wonder i’ve made any sales at all, but indeed i sold 7 items thursday. i’m pretty sure that’s my new record. i about fainted. i really need to take better care of my etsy shop. also of The Frame Station. i made a sale there in august. only $8, but a sale just the same. and of course (やっぱり for those of you in the nihongo know) i haven’t even talked to them in like two months. i think i’m going to take them some new stuff tomorrow. … i wonder what i’ll be able to bear parting with… (^_^)

oh yeah, also! the sexy book mentioned above. pictures abound!

the emblem on the front is a rub-on thing from a rock star package. i think this is definitely a rock star book. it’s 5 x 7 inchs and has 200 pages in it, 70 lb sketch paper. half — well, most — of me wants to keep it, but my wallet says i must sell it. i’d list it on etsy, except i kind of want to MEET the person who’s going to scribble joyfully all over these pages. i’d like to shake their hand and suggest a fancy pen to them. (^_^)

Labels: books, etsy, facts

of books, that is. my first show is the 13er of october, so i have precisely three weeks from today to make all the books i need and get myself priced and organized. this is in addition to all the other things i have to do, not the least of which is find gainful employment. oh, i didn’t tell you? i got fired. (T_T) what happened? well, her expectations and mine were… shall we say “not in line” ? yeah. basically what i expected from the job and what she expected were two completely different things, and since there was no real formal hiring procedure, there was no chance to spell out exactly what would and would not be happening for either party, so in the end, it just fell apart. on the one hand, crap, i’m unemployed again, but on the other hand, i have a crap-ton of books to make. i’d like to have 100 books for the show, partly in the blind hope that i’ll actually sell that many and partly because my second show is only three weeks after that, the three weeks leading up to NaNo, so i’d much rather be planning my novel than making a bazillion books in a hurried frenzy of panic. (^^;)

speaking of NaNo, i’ve been struggling to find some fancy linux software to replace RoughDraft, which i’ve been using for bloody everything since i found it. i have found JDarkRoom, which makes me happy, and GJots, which also makes me happy, but frankly, OpenOffice.org tends to get on my nerves, and i’m too stupid for LaTex (at least so far – i downloaded a book on the subject and intend to learn the heck out of that thing this fall!) but i really need at least simple formating, like bold and italic, and i wouldn’t mind spell check either. misspelled words, even words that i merely suspect of being incorrectly spelled, even words that have multiple correct spellings, they tend to just sit there on the page and distract me. for instance, spelled. spelt. whatever. ARG!

speaking of those Brits, did anyone see Doctor Who last night!? derek jacobi is possibly the most awesome person evarz. (^_^) did you know he has my birthday? yup. pretty cool, ne?

anyhow, the point of this post was that i will be making three books a day every day until october 13. that’s right, EVERY DAY. even sundays. and that’s in addition to pricing all these books, my etsy shop, translating yuu-kun’s nikki, and any other sundry things i may find cropping up on my to do list, not to even mention the above-mentioned (eheheh) job search. seriously. faint.

Labels: books, craft, facts, linux, software, tech, work, writing

i greet ye in the manner of pirates, for today be international talk like a pirate day! be sure to get yer pirate speak ON, me hearties!

… okay, i don’t really have anything else to say. i’m fired, i’m broke again, but i’ve got a craft show in about three weeks. … wait, three weeks! zomg! i’ve only got 30 books! schnibblers!

oh yea, also? Madison 51190. just in case you need a real lawyer.

Labels: facts

actually, the weather outside is delightful. it’s like 60 outside. i’m wearing a sweater. i’m pretty much in love. the only bad thing about it is that our pool chemicals have been a little wacky, so of course they’re ony clearing up when the weather turns cold. (>_<) on the other hand, storm in heaven, the translation group i volunteer for, a) just completely redid their site to be all extra cool and sexy, and b) have at last released warawanai, the first manga i translated for them! yaaay! we decided to release the whole thing at once, since it was all ready, so if you’d like to catch a glimpse, head on over. the site’s available in english and italiano, although the manga’s english-only. enjoy~

speaking of enjoying, i’m loving my linux more every day. the Extract Here menu option? essential. i just tried to unzip something on my windows machine, and i was like, crap i miss the Extract Here option. also, ironically, i’m finding a lot of awesome games. for instance, Beneath a Steel Sky? seriously old school, but seriously awesome. there turn out to be a lot of old school games that have been ported to linux, especially old school sierra adventure games, which, as we all know, were the best. at the moment, however, i’m embroiled in a game called Battle for Wesnoth, which is a turn-based fantasy strategy game. it’s very awesome. the storylines could be a little deeper, i guess, but, as a writer, i am perfectly suited to fixing that problem. you can make your own campaigns and upload them for others to play. i’ve been casting about for a Plot since i downloaded the thing. the only thing i’m not liking about linux, and unforuntely something that isn’t likely to change any time soon, is the difficulty involved in trying to install things. i’ve been trying to install the latest development version of Wesnoth, but it keeps giving me errors. it probably has something to do with SCIM, as it seems that many programs to not get along with linux’s IME, but since i have to have japanese input, i’m stuck. at least the most recent stable public release works beautifully. the other game i was trying was called HCraft Championship. my graphics card isn’t fancy enough to sustain that many polygons at once, but as long as i’m the only hovercraft on the screen, it looks gorgeous! (^_^)

anyway, i don’t really have anything important to say, i’m a little edgy about things, but i won’t be talking about them until they’re solved, so that might have to wait a while.

if you’d like something uplifting, go check out yuu-kun’s blog post(s) about climbing mt fuji. yaaay yuu!

Labels: facts, tech, translation, weather

that’s right, i’ve joined the linux revolution. (^_^) specifically, the ubuntu feisty fawn linux revolution. i am currently in love with it. at the moment, i’m browsing around GNOME art, looking for the perfect theme~ not that Human isn’t good, it is, just that i’m all about the customization, to the point where i can’t really help myself. (^^;) i’ve downloaded about six of them now. it is, of course, impossible to use them all at once, but I JUST CAN’T HELP MYSELF!

*ahem*

so sorry. the only thing i don’t like about linux is the way sometimes you have to compile your own source code. the first couple times i had to do that, in fact even now that i’ve done it more than a couple times, it’s confusing. i’m not a programmer, i’m a software junkie. i should not have to compile code. i much prefer .deb installers. of course, most of the programs i use either a) came with ubuntu or b) are installed via automatix, which itself has a lovely .deb installer, so it’s not as big of a problem as one might first think, but still, i think it’s one of the only areas in which windows outstrips linux, especially for the average (read: not that tech savvy) user.

speaking of tech savvy, my brother, who used to write reviews for the wildly popular rpgamer, hooked up with some of his friends and decided to start their own site! actually, it happened a couple weeks ago, but i’m just now getting around to telling you about it. check out their site. it’s still a little rough around the edges, but the reviews are top notch, trust me. Random NPC

speaking of things that are a) wildly popular, and b) still a little rough around the edges, my sister and i are gearing up for some craft shows this fall! the first one is at the Unity Christian Church in columbus, so if you’ve been waiting for that once in a lifetime opportunity to begin your stalking career, now’s the time. it’s on the 13er of october, and i’ll be hocking my book wares alongside my sister, who will be hocking her jewelry wares. then we’ve got one on the 3er of november, hosted by the clintonville women’s club. basically, we’ll both be crafting full-time to get enough stock. well, carolyn’s doing alright, i guess, but she’s letting stuff that expires from her etsy shop stay expired, and that’s what she’ll take, along with other new items. i, on the other hand, am hoping to have an entirely new batch of stock to take with me to the shows so that i don’t have to mess with etsy. which means i need to make two books every single day between now and october 13er, just to have enough for the first show, never even mind if i get lucky and sell a bunch at that show and end up having to make a bunch for my second show. add in the fact that i need to be planning for NaNo, and the fact that i’m still on the steep end of the learning curve at work, and you can see that i’ll be a busy busy girl these next few months. frankly, i’m happy. i needed to get up off my ass and get to work, but since i’m too lazy to do it under my own power, i need something external like this to motivate me.

–oh noes! my cookies have disappeared!!

edit: i haven’t been able to get rainlendar2 to work. whenever i try to install the thing or run it at all, i get “segementation fault (core dumped)”. as it turns out, the problem is that i’ve got SCIM installed. something in rainlendar conflicts with rainlendar 2 in such a way that you’ve gotta choose one or the other. it’s pretty much no good. i’ve gotta have my japanese input, so i guess i’m finding an alternative to rainy for now. (T_T)

Labels: books, cookies, craft, facts, linux, tech

but i guess that’s why they hired me, isn’t it. i got a care package from my new boss-lady the other day. actually, it contained some software that i’m learning for the job, but there was fun stuff, too. some popcorn, since i’ll be watching and editing all their tutorial videos, a lovely welcome card on which my name has been correctly spelt (YAYS!), and a frog, labeled “coworker.” apparently, it can be shot off of my finger as a last-ditch means of self-defense, but taking it out of its little package would destroy its label, so it shall be left alone in its plastic home.

in other news, did you know there was a full lunar eclipse the other day? i didn’t really realize it until i was driving home from dick blicks monday night and saw the moon. my cell phone didn’t really capture it that well, but the moon was a nice scary red shade and looked super close in that creepy way the moon has. then i got home and read yuu’s post on how sad he was that the cloud cover that night prevented him from seeing the eclipse, and i realized that must be the cause of the red moon.

speaking of yuu’s posts, do you realize i’ve had over 10,000 people look at that site? (O_O)! and to think, i haven’t had any time to study my japanese in like weeks. this new job! (^_^) actually, i’m liking it pretty much. i need a seperate work space so i don’t have so many distractions, but i was pretty much born to edit, so it’s working out quite nicely. i just need to start waking up a little earlier so i can have enough time to do the work stuff AND the fun stuff.

speaking of fun stuff, i bought Sierra’s Phantasmagoria off of eBay the other day. it got here today, but i haven’t had a chance to play it yet. i didn’t work that much yesterday, since my normal work time was taken up with a paid taste test for wendy’s (tasty, but not mind-altering) so i’ve been trying to make up the time today. my boss would be pleased to hear of my commitment, i suppose, but Sheol, my designated old-school computer, is crying, i just know it.

speaking of crying (lord, i’m all about the linking this evening, ne?) i watched kagen no tsuki ~Last Quarter~ the other night. it was actually pretty good, considering a rock star got top billing. not that i don’t love HYDE. after all, why do you think i rented the movie in the first place? … well, okay, i rented it because i loved the manga, but i’ve also seen Moon Child, so if that doesn’t prove i’m a Fan, then nothing will. … well, okay, i rented that movie because of Gackt and yuu, but WHATEVER! (^^’) Last Quarter wasn’t bad, and the theme song has been stuck in my head ever since. i’d really like 80s rock version that they had in the music video in the movie, but the versions on the movie’s OST are the piano and guitar versions. not bad, but still. i understand that the rock version is on HYDE’s first solo album, Roentgen? i can’t find anywhere to download it, so i may have to save up and buy the thing. (T_T) it’s like $40 on amazon, though.

speaking of HYDE, have you heard SEVENTH HEAVEN? watch it on YouTube, you’ll be stuck singing it for weeks, i promise. plus, the video’s odd. like, Odd.

well then, i’m off to play Phantasmagoria. incidentally, did you know Nobuo Uematsu released a solo album in 2002 by the same name? i must have it!

Labels: astronomy, facts, movies, work