Photo Fun

I waited a few days for everyone else to update their iPhones before doing it myself. I thought maybe I would save myself some time that way. Sadly, this process is still taking forever, and one of the biggest reasons is that I had too many photos taking up all the space on my phone.

My first step in remedying this situation was to go through a delete a bunch of pictures off my phone- pictures I had only taken to text to a friend or to post on Facebook, pictures of which I had multiple shots, pictures of things I don't care about anymore...

Examples of pictures I deleted:
-pictures of the Eiffel Tower
-pictures of Sun Life Stadium
-pictures of Cowboys Stadium
-embarrassing pirate costume selfies
-pictures of hot chocolate and frozen yogurt
-selfies my sister took when she stole my phone
-"I got a flu shot!" stickers
-selfies of me with various clothing articles wrapped around my head

I went from 800-something photos to 600. Not bad. And now I won't feel as embarrassed if somebody breaks into my phone and goes through my pics.

While I was at it, I decided to move all my photos from Europe over to my laptop. Because there were a ton of them. So now I'm down to 336 photos, and in total, I've cleared up almost two gigs on my phone. Yay!

Flash forward in time:

I have now finished updating both my iTunes and my iPhone. Nothing exploded. And then I also finally redeemed a bunch of gift cards I found in my bedroom at home over the summer and I bought a bunch of songs. It's a great day for iTunes!





I wasn't feeling very creative today.

Random Fact #17

Random Fact #17: If you normally use amazon.comto buy things online but use Amazon.fr to buy something one time, you will receive emails about deals and sales from Amazon in both English and French.

Source: Personal Experience

The story: Once upon a time, I was in France and I needed to buy a copy of James Joyce's Ulyssesbefore I left for Ireland. I went to Amazon.com and found that priority shipping the book to my host mother's home in France would 1) take forever 2) be reeeeeeally expensive.

So I thought to myself, "Self, you've been in this country for a while and you've really gotten the hang of this whole French thing. Why don't you try the French version of the website?" So I tried it. And I found that ordering my book from the French website would 1) get me the book a leeeetle bit faster 2) be WAY less expensive.

So I clicked the button to finalize the deal, and a few days later, my book arrived. All good.

But then I started getting emails from Amazon in French. I was used to getting them in English and usually just ignored them. But getting French emails really caught me off guard. I had used my normal login information and account on the French website, so I didn't think it would consider me a new user or anything, but for whatever reason, I now get emails from Amazon in both English and French.

The novelty wore off pretty fast and now I just ignore the French emails, too.

ALL The Colored Pencils!!!

Earlier this semester I had a teeny little whine-fest about not having any colored pencils.As much as I love my Wacom tablet, I'm not ready to completely leave behind real pencil and paper. On top of that, I need to be able to color things quickly for my graphic novel class, and I can't always do that on my computer.

So I strolled on down to the student store and browsed their art supplies section. There is a ton of cool artsy stuff in that department. Paintbrushes, markers, easels, canvas, glue... the kind of stuff that makes me wish I were an art major sometimes. As fun as the art major supplies were to look at, I'm not exactly a professional and I don't need professional tools, so I just skipped over to the familiar-looking yellow boxes.

Crayola all the way, man.

I quickly located a nice box of 12 colored pencils, but just before I could pick it up off the shelf, I saw something that made me pause.

BIGGER boxes of colored pencils.

The internal debate began. Did I really need so many colored pencils?Wasn't I already spending too much money by buying pencils at the student store instead of Walmart? But what if I needed more colors for my comic book projects?

I settled for the box of 24 colored pencils and I have not regretted it. I'm moving up in the world, my friends.

LOOK AT ALL THE COLORS!!!!!!

Random Fact #16

Random Fact #16: If you put a package of gum through a cycle in the dryer, the sticks of gum will curl up into a U shape and turn hard as rock.

Source: Personal Observation

Note: NO, I didn't accidentally put gum in the dryer with my clothes! I actually opened up a dryer and found it there one day. It was quite odd. I'm not sure why the gum got left in there... I bet the person's clothes smell minty fresh now. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a picture until after I'd thrown the gum away.

Self Portrait Sequence

Hi, all! As you may or may not know, I'm taking a graphic novel creative writing class this semester. For homework last week we had to draw a series of self portraits, starting out very realistic but getting more cartoon-y. Since it turned out pretty cool, I thought I'd share it!

Panel 1: This is me, drawing myself as realistically as I possibly can. I drew this while looking at a photo of myself. I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out, seeing as I really only ever draw cartoons. I decided to do sort of a grayscale thing with this panel since I can't color something and keep it looking realistic.

Panel 2: This is me... as some kind of marching band superhero. Because... why not? I tried to use sort of a comic book style like I've been trying to learn from my Stan Lee book. I especially tried to use heroic proportions (that is, I eyeballed it and tried to make the character taller than a normal human being).

Panel 3: I tried several times to draw a super-cartoonish, almost chibi-looking portrait of myself, but couldn't get it to work right. I ended up watching a few Avatar: The Last Airbender shorts and sort of trying to use those characters as an example. Here's a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MoUM2vpshk

I think my favorite panel is the second one. For the record, my professor thought the idea of a marching band superhero was really cool. I might have to play around with that a bit...

Moussaka Strikes Again

Those of you who followed along with my adventures abroad over the summer will know that I developed a slight obsession with moussaka while I was in France. I mean, moussaka is a miracle. It takes something that looks as unappetizing as eggplant and makes it delicious.

But did you know that moussaka can also help you beat Disney villains?

I was reading the Oh My Disney blog because it is fantastic (as you will see if you go to http://blogs.disney.com/oh-my-disney/ and take a look) and I stumbled across an article which showed that the character Hades mentions moussaka at the beginning of Disney's Hercules. Specifically, that he once choked on it.

Not believing my eyes, I went to YouTube and found this clip:

(video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thuFj74xJeM)

So it turns out moussaka has been in my life since I was very young and I didn't even know it. Holy cow. The things you find when you re-watch old Disney movies...

But this really brings to light an interesting point: Hades, the ruler of the Underworld, has gotten moussaka stuck in his throat at least once. It could happen again! If Hades ever starts causing trouble again (and Disney, don't you dare make a sequel about that), Hercules could just arrange for him to eat some moussaka and then take him out while he was busy choking. Day saved.

Well... it would have to be a much more sophisticated plan than that, but you get the idea. You always have to capitalize on your opponent's weakness, and one of Hades' weaknesses is apparently moussaka.

Moussaka: What can't it do?

Investigation in the Library

I was in the library tonight because I had some reading to do and I can never seem to concentrate in my own bedroom. It was dull, dull stuff tonight- an article on literary theory, and a very badly-written one at that.

(Seriously. Typo-ridden and far too wordy with certain parts feeling so out of place that I was starting to wonder if the writer was desperate to reach a minimum page count. This passes for scholarly writing? I was offended by it. And it was, like, 35 Microsoft Word pages long. It took me more than two hours to read. Argh.)

The first floor in our library is classified as the "noisy" floor. There's a coffee shop that provides the sound of coffee grinders and blenders as background noise, while the students are permitted to talk and use cell phones. So I'm used to having a constant drone of noise while I study.

However, there's always the oddball noise. Like someone dropping their stuff, a funny ringtone, shouts of jubilation or despair-- stuff that distracts you for a moment before you move on with your life.

Tonight I was quite distracted by an oddball noise that wouldn't stop. Somebody was clicking their mouse almost constantly for the two hours I was there. Rapid-fire clicking. Clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick.

Someone was playing a game, I assumed. But as the hours ticked by and the clicking didn't seem to cease, I grew more and more curious as to what type of game required such constant clicking. And at one point my article got so boring that I decided to get up and investigate.

I strolled nonchalantly out of my aisle of computers, pretending I was on my way to the printer or trash can while I was really zeroing in on the source of the clicking noise. It was coming from another aisle of computers a few aisles away from my own. I strolled over that way, walking past the aisles and looking out of the corner of my eye until I found the offender.

He looked up as I passed, but I kept on walking like I had better things to do than care about him and his infernal clicking. But the moment he returned to his game, I glanced back to see what was on his computer screen.

The guy was playing Starcraft.

I think I've played StarCraft fewer than ten times in my life, but I'm fairly sure you can play it without clicking constantly. I mean, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but the guy seemed a little overenthusiastic. I wondered why his little Terran forces didn't just throw their hands up and quit under the pressure of his constant nagging. I also wondered how the guy's pointer finger hadn't fallen off yet.

So, mystery solved, I sat down at my computer once more and returned to my boring-as-insert-your-favorite-expletive-here article. The clicking continued on into the night, but instead of being distracted by it, I merely rolled my eyes as each new salvo of clicks began. Good luck, little Terran dudes.