The Scrolls

Archive for June, 2007

Technology

I suspect – I’m not sure but I strongly suspect - that this may ring true with others. I am more comfortable with technology, like computers, than my mother. She tries her best, but we often have conversations like this.

Me: Mom, did you get my e-mail I send you?
Her: Yes, and I replied.
Me: Are you sure? That was like 2 weeks ago. Did you hit the right button? Do you know the right address?
Mom: Yes I replied I sent it to [email address which doesn't even exist]
Me: -sigh- Well, I didn’t get it. I’m going to e-mail you again, make sure to reply. I never get them.

I have no good theory for this. There may be electrical gremlins somewhere along the line between her internet and mine. Rian may have it out for her and delete every email she sends before I get it – I don’t know. Perhaps, every time she e-mails me, Thunderbird has a hiccup.

But it certainly isn’t her fault.

This ‘n’ That

Holy spam, Batman. For some reason, recently, my domain inbox has been full of spam. 60 messages a day and even with the ones that Thunderbird does catch, a whole shitload still end up in my inbox and just the process of Thunderbird weeding out junk mail slows down the program – sometimes causing momentary lag. Bleh.

On another note, it’s hot. It’s not insanely hot outside, but the inside doesn’t know that. In an effort to stay cool, I’ve fans on and windows open – except that we really don’t have windows but crappy patio doors which, when open, allow bugs to come in. And Japanese bugs are gross. Really gross.

My little sister is adorable. A-freaking-dorable. And dorky. On the phone the other day she informed me of several things:

Samantha: Cole, I’m going to sell your cat.
Me: What?!
Samantha: Just kidding. Hahaha… I’m going to hammer him with a hammer.
Me: You’re going to hammer him?!
Samantha: No, I love him.

And, later, when she thought I was hanging up on her (which she always thinks but I never do):

Samantha: Cole, are you playing tricks on me? Stop playing tricks on me.
Me: I’m not.
Samantha: Cause, if you are, I’m going to kill you.
Me: You’re going to kill me?!

Ah, out of the mouth of babes.

Top Ten

The Top 10 Reasons YouTube* Sucks:

10. Enforced regulations – Remember Metallica vs Napster? Remember how you could still find Metallica songs afterward, if you used a little creativity? No deal here. Videos get pulled like fucking crazy so half the links to Youtube (which is god damned all the links on the internet) are broken.

9. Sloow motion – Remember when everyone was on dial up? 56k ruled the world. Oh wait, you don’t need to remember, the internet is that slow again! Every motherfucker with a blog or Myspace thinks he’s so cool if he posts a fucking Youtube video on his page! Oh by the way, if you don’t have an unlimited amount of bandwidth in your ISP service plan, you’re fucked!

8. Worldwide idiocy – Instead of just being a moron in his own backyard, every moron with a cam can broadcast his stupidity into the homes of the rest of the world, causing the rest of us to lose brain function. Lovely!

7. Video Blogs – Need I say more?

6. Video Flame Wars – If “vlogs” aren’t bad enough, we have to listen to your pathetic little insults and watch your disgusting face instead of simply reading your futile attempts at sounding witty. And then, we get to hear the other side. Shut the fuck up, already.

5. Fan videos – Certainly not a new invention but catapulted to the forefront with video portal popularity. I don’t want to see another god damned poorly spliced together Neon Genesis Evan-whatever-the-fuck-ever clip laid over Linkin Park.

4. Copycats – Every single Youtube video is basically (if not exactly) a copy of another Youtube video and/or a video game, movie, book, or website. Why the hell would anyone want to spend so much time searching for something that they’ve already seen one thousand fucking times in some other incarnation?

3. Shitty searches – The search engine fucking sucks, mostly because every dumbass with a video to upload can add his own fucking description and keywords – which are usually DEAD FUCKING WRONG – so if you actually want to watch a god damned video, it will take you hours to find it, if it’s even fucking on there! Add in the copies previously mentioned, and you have 800 search results which are exactly the same but NOT what you want!

1. Poor quality – If you actually find the motherfucking video you want, you won’t want to watch it because the aforementioned moron with his shitty ass cam can upload his video to Youtube in it’s piss-poor quality, the rest of the world thinks it somehow can, too. And every single fucking video – from amateur to professional – winds up being so shitty that you can’t even tell what the hell it’s supposed to be. After you’ve waded through all the crap – and there is a lot of it: vlogs, flame wars, anime videos, copy upon copy of incorrect searches, and shitty home-made videos – the one fucking video you do want to watch isn’t in decent enough shape to even do that. Of course, you only find this out after letting the motherfucker load!

And the number one reason why Youtube sucks balls… [insert drum roll here]

Spam! If it weren’t bad enough that my email, my comments, my guestbook, my myspace, my chat, my forums, my post office box, my door handle, my door mat, my front porch and my voice mail are all full of fucking bullshit, Youtube has to come along and invent a new avenue for idiots and bots to litter my screen. Not only that but the fuckers sitting behind the desks drinking coffee in their monogrammed Youtube cups won’t do a fucking thing about it because it’s all spam for other fucking Youtube videos.

And, because I ran out of freaking room ranting about this God awful invention here’s a special mention for you.

Special Mention: Invalid HTML – I know you don’t care, but I do. The code that you copy and paste from Youtube to display videos isn’t valid – in laymen’s terms: if fucks up the ‘net. No fucking wonder Blogger or LJ blocks that shit.

And also, an honourary mention.

Watching the shit your friends/family/neighbour/co-worker finds funny – Personally, I don’t fucking like the persistent yelling of “Cole! You gotta see this; it’s so fucking funny!” across the house on a daily basis. Maybe you do. Whatever.

* Or Myspace Video, Google Video et cetera

Phew! That was Close!

I’ve got most of the content section up – save for the fonts and card games sections. the former I will need to complete redo as I’ve lost all files (including images and zip files) and the latter can be retrieved with some difficulty.

In the process, I added a few articles and links in the antiwar articles section.

I swear, I will make back ups from now on! As soon as I finish getting everything back into place, that’s my goal!

If it weren’t for the Internet Archive, MSN search and the script which I use for searches(Fluid Dynamics Search Engine), I would be out a lot of content. I definitely do not want to go through this again. Perhaps it’s time to take Rian’s advice and add back the delete confirmation option in Filezilla.

I did update the poll not too long ago – not sure if I let you all know. Go check it out. Rian says it’s very boring and I agree. Suggestions are welcome.

Harajuku Girls

On Tuesday, I thought the alarm on the phone was set but it didn’t ring so we slept in until 10 or so. We showered, dressed, claimed everything we needed and headed down to eat breakfast in the family restaurant on the first floor of the hotel. The food was yummy and the prices were awesome!

We bothered the desk clerks some more for some maps and such of the subway and headed to the Hiro subway station where we bothered the attendant there with all sorts of questions of “How does this work” And “Is this ticket right?”

Scaredy cat Wendy made me go first through the electronic ticket readers, even though we didn’t know how. Of course, I looked silly when I didn’t put my ticket in and the “gate” closed on me. Oh well – practice makes perfect, right? So, once we figured out how to get into the station, we went to the right platform and waited.

We were both nervous. This was my first subway experience and hers, too, I think; however, it was awesome! It was quick and I could see someone with a sensitive stomach becoming sick but it was very convenient and pretty cheap. Frequent, too. I definitely see why many Japanese people don’t have cars or use them often. (That, and walking and biking are both much more common than in the States. Some say because there’s simply no parkign space.)

We found our stop easily. It was the next one, as someone had instructed us and there were electronic marquees above all the subway doors as well as an overhead announcement. We departed and got to go on the fun journey of figuring out how to get out of the station, now, and find the train station to get to Harajuku.

We finally figured that out, but mistakenly purchased tickets for the subway again. I figured we could use them for the trip home, and we did. So we got to the train station which was slightly more confusing but a nice man helped us out, we purchased tickets and found our platform. A short wait later, we were on a train which was significantly more packed than the subway. And shortly after that, we arrived at Harajuku.

According the the map the hotel gave us (this map exactly), the train station (JR Harajuku) was right near one of the main streets of Harajuku, which it was. So we crossed the street and were in the shopping district.

So we headed straight and covered about 7 blocks of Gothic, Lolita, lingerie, book and shoe stores. Wendy bought a lot. I did not. It was hot and the stores were small and cramped, even without the hundreds of people we passed by. And, after a point many of the stores started to look exactly a like.

We took a break to have some crepes which were great. I’ve had crepes in Japan before and while I’m not sure why a French dessert is so popular here, I’m not complaining.

Unfortunately, clothes shopping for me in Japan is virtually impossible. I did actually stop into a bunch of lingerie stores but nothing would fit. Their band sizes don’t even go up to what I wear, which is pretty common and although their cup sizes are supposed to be the same, they’re not. I was falling out of a cup size bigger than what I normally wear. -l-

A lot of the stores have knick knacks and trinkets of the store you might find at a garage sale, specialty store or comic shop in the USA. Much of it was used, and you could tell. In the back of the name brand clothing store, it wouldn’t be surprising to find Disney characters or Star Wars toys; it was quite bizarre.

I did particularly like Pin Cross and the Mad label which many of the EGL stores carried. I’d link but neither store nor label seems to have an official site. Pin Cross was where Wendy bought her Creepers, which was one of the requirements of things to do in Harajuku.

At the end of that street, we turned left and headed to Book Off which was one of the few things Wendy wanted to see. We hit Book-off and H Naoto, both places Wendy was dying to shop. About this time, I was becoming tired and cranky so we browsed around the building H Naoto was in, including a J-rock CD store – the first of which we found, btw; J-rock seems to be rather underground here, even in Tokyo – and headed back the way we came.

It took 5 or so hours for us to go less than a mile with the number of shops and people. I was definitely all shopped out and, by that time, we didn’t have time to see anything touristry. I would have loved to go sightseeing and see something like a temple. -sigh- Alas, I’m here for more than a year, still.

We wrapped up the trip by stopping by a shop we’d passed on the way down and I purchased some Gizmo slippers I had my eye on! They were super cute and just another example of the niche that American cult-classics seem to have in Japan.

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We headed back via the train to Ebisu where we transferred to the subway to Hiro station where we departed and headed back to our hotel. Unfortunately, I was a little disoriented and mistakenly assume we were on the wrong side of the street and headed the wrong direction. >_> We figured it out after a couple blocks and reversed route back to the hotel, stopping at Mcdonald’s on the way.

We ate at the hotel, stopped downstairs at the bar and each had a Strawberry margarita. IT was a bit exciting because it was my first bar drink. -laughs- We hung out in the hotel room until we decided to order room service because, dammit, we were in a hotel and we could! We finished out the night quietly but it was fun.

Wednesday, we rose early to board the bus and head back. It was mostly uneventful, no octopus tentacles this time. We arrived back on base earlier than expected, again, and the girl across from us drove us back to our apartment which was nice of her. I felt bad because I’d never caught her name. Oh well.

Disney Chronicles!

Monday morning, at the hotel, we woke up around 6 to get ready to board the bus to Disneyland at 7:30 – at least I did. I believe Wendy had trouble sleeping and had actually been up for several hours.

Eventually, we made it down to the lobby, after having to run back upstairs twice be -cough- I forgot both my sunglasses and my camera. >_>. We boarded the bus shortly after 7:30 and waited while the rest of the people took their time showing up. The first bus left quite a bit before us because right around 8 o’clock, the last, lone passenger showed up. Coincidentally it was the girl across the aisle from us.

Then we were on our way driving through Tokyo which was pretty neat. I was still amazed at how big everything is. Just huge. I took some pictures of the giant ferris wheel, which other people have heard about were all amazed at just how many people were there. I think we got there before it opened and there were still a good several thousand. It was crazy for a Monday and I’m sure the weekends would be terrifying. Everyone was really decked out in Disneyland and Mickey Mouse stuff. They also loved Stitch; he was everywhere! Hats, ears, headbands, dresses – It seemed like these people go there every day.

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Then we were in (to the ‘lobby’ at least)! We passed a huge line waiting to get pictures and signatures from Mickey and that was the last I saw of any character. There weren’t any in the park itself. Nada. None. So we headed into the World Bazaar/Park Entrance, after taking some more pictures of course.

We browsed through many shops – I actually didn’t buy anything and slowly made our way to adventureland which featured POCT stuff. The buildings were all so great. I was impressed at just how much detail was put into the park. Nothing was forgotten. At certain times and places, it really felt like you were in your favourite Disney flick.

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Unfortunately, most of that was not yet open. We eventually made our way to the Jungle Cruise ride and jumped in line for that. We waited 20 minutes or so until we got on and I took a lot of cool shots. It was a bit sucky that we didn’t speak Japanese cause the boat driver/guide did a great job of pretending to be real. The animals were all fake but I thought they did a great job.

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We spent a few more hours wandering around and looking. We eventually had lunch at the Queen of Hearts (from Alice in Wonderland) Ballroom which was really cool. It was buffet style and I think we both had roasted chicken which came with vegetables and potatoes as well as a little plate of dessert.

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Next, we headed next door to the Haunted Mansion ride (also in Fantasyland) and, as we were waiting a parade based on Lilo and Stitch went by. I snapped a couple pictures of that but we weren’t in a very good vantage point and had to keep moving because we were still in line.

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We were shortly in the Haunted Mansion ride. Let me mention that I loved this movie. It was dorky but cute and I thought all the effects, costuming and props were done very well. Someone, behind the scenes, had a Gothy touch. -w-

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After that, we wandered around some. Soon, I would realize that my lack of sun screen had left me looking like a lobster and my arms were burning. Of course, with such a crowd, it was nearly impossible to steer clear of others so there were a lot of painful moments when I brushed against someone or something else.

It was about that time when I decided I wanted to partake in some food in the shape of Mickey mouse. Afterall, this was Disneyland. Even though I wasn’t particularly hungry, I decided on a hamburger. They had Mickey shaped pizza but, by then, I wasn’t feeling particularly ambitious and we were much closer to the hamburger place so off we went.

The place was the Tomorrowland Terrace which sounds much cooler than it really is. Essentially, it was a giant fast food restaurant with Mickey shaped burgers, which also happened to be extremely popular and packed to the max. I made Wendy wait with me for probably 20 minutes as the throng of people we were in only moved a few millimeters as a time. Several times either one of us suggested just giving up, but I toughed it out.

How was the burger? Gross. I had to pick off all the vegetable crap and there was this weird sauce on it. Totally not worth it. To top it off, there were no tables so we ate outside on the steps, with many other people.

After some wandering around and acquiring some drinks, we decided to join the masses who had clustered on either side of main street for the giant parade, and I’m glad we did. Originally, we found a bench but the Disney police (okay, not really police but still!) kicked us out so we had a seat on the ground with everyone else.

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The parade was super cool. It started with Mickey and featured a lot of the classic characters as well as many of the ones that are in right now. The song they played was really cool, too. I know it was something about being welcome in this wonderful land where everyone is special. I felt very much like a little kid.

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Snapping pictures was hard because the characters kept moving and, obviously, so did the parade. Plus, I was sitting down and we all know I’m not the tallest person. It was still cute. I was especially impressed when they had boo and Sully from Monsters Inc. -l-

The parade ended with Cinderella, followed by Minnie Mouse who was quite stunning.

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After, we followed the parade for a bit trying to get out of the mess of people and browsed some shops back in the World Bazaar. We took the early bus home at 5 pm. I certainly had had enough of Disneyland and wasn’t in a great mood. We spent a quiet night at the hotel ordering sandwiches and wahtching a rented movie.

My first Disneyland experience was great but certainly extracted a high toll. I’d love to go again with more money, better shoes and sun screen!

Oops!

You may have noticed 2 things with the site recently: 1 being that the content section seemed FUBAR. It is. It’s my fault, I’m working on it.

The second was some down time which was due to an emergency server issue my hosts had but, hopefully, seems to be resolved now!

I keep having layout ideas. I sketch them up all the time. Rarely, do I make them but they’re great ideas which would work well. I think my issue is that what I create in my head surpasses my actual graphic and coding abilities so I don’t even want to try because I’ll fail.

I mean, it’s not like I have a fully coded layout up and waiting to take over my site on the server right now. I do. I’m not sure the layout is graphically finished so I’m sutmped but I like to leave my layout as surprises so I don’t want to ask for help -l- Plus, with this new version I want(ed) to switch to WP, which is also installed.

Honestly, I’m hesitant about using WP. It will have a lot of great features that I don’t have but I run so many scripts, already, that relying on yet another one isn’t the most pleasant of prospects. Plus, coding for Blogger layouts is so easy (even though I’m still using the old style) and coding for WP is much more difficult. I have edited some WP themes for Lyrical Musings but the task ahead is still daunting.

The problem is, I want something more than Blogger but perhaps a little less than WP and there don’t seem to be many good alternatives. Suggestions welcome.

Anyway, I haven’t done a meme for a while so here’s Booking Through Thursday

1. Do you cheat and peek ahead at the end of your books? Or do you resolutely read in sequence, as the author intended?
Sometimes I do. It depends on how suspenseful the book is, really. I usually feel guilty after doing it, however. -lol-

2. And, if you don’t peek, do you ever feel tempted?
Sometimes I force myself not to look but it’s damned hard.

Also, here’s the Thursday Threesome:

Onesome: Crazy– things happen with the heat; is there anything strange happening yet where you live? Not so much, really. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.

Twosome: with the– changing seasons,.how does your wardrobe change? No, we’re not trolling for the pervs; let’s stick with outerware… It doesn’t really. I don’t like how I look in shorts and have a hard time shopping anyway. I guess I wear tank tops a little bit more and hang out in PJ’s more at home.

Threesome: heat!– Okay, what is “heat” to you? When do you figure it’s time so stay out of the sun and cool off? Well, it’s been in the low 70′s here. It’s not too bad outside for short periods of time, but inside where there’s no AC on where we’re on the top floor isn’t fun. Last night was the first night I had trouble sleeping because, for some reason, our bedroom is hotter and more humid than any other room in the apartment. I’ll survive the 70′s but anything warmer and the freezer is calling my name.