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Archive for the ‘Web Design and Web Related’ Category

June 2009 – An experimental week without Facebook and Twitter

In Dreams, Health and Healthy Living, Mental Diarrhea, News, Personal, Simon Fraser University, Tech The Crazy, Web Design and Web Related on June 26, 2009 at 8:51 pm

I declared last Sunday, on Facebook, that I would be going on Facebook hiatus. I didn’t say for how long, but in my mind, I’d be quitting FB and Twitter cold turkey for one week. I am 5 days into this experiment. I find myself resisting that URL address bar like an unsmoked half pack in the back upper corner of my closet, kept for emergency use only. Nagging at my mind every couple minutes. But mind you, I don’t smoke. Never have. I know my addictive personality well enough to not bother trying. Just thought it was an appropriate simile for habit breaking. But I haven’t faltered yet. Those links are everywhere, though. EVERYONE trying to be someone is on Twitter, to the point of ridiculosity. Well, not really…just businesses, oddly enough. CKNW, CNN, BBC Science, BBC Health, Daily Planet…(my personal favourites) …and there was that one week where everyone hopped the bandwagon at the same time. T’was an odd week.

But I couldn’t have picked a more interesting week to go FB/Twit free. I just couldn’t break the habit of thinking that my thoughts all needed to be expressed and thrown into some intangible online world, that, excepting global nuclear meltdown circumstances coinciding with the time of my death, will exist beyond me, providing that inactive accounts don’t get deleted after a certain period of time, and there isn’t a massive server crash affecting all the backup copies of my accounts…etc. SO…I took to writing down all my thoughts on index cards. GOD do I love index cards. For some reason of kinaesthetic x visual learning it works for me. And here are some of the thoughts that rampaged through a manic mind going through withdrawl. Actually, happily, this week seemed like one of those rare weeks that I wasn’t overly manic or depressive. Actually, no. I take that back. I may have thrown a temper tantrum on monday. But after that things seemed to clear up, mood wise. Hopefully it lasts a little longer this time.

From the index cards:
June 23 1700h: Fascinating that so many things – economic phenomena etc. can be described/explained by little lines on a graph. Really cool.
June 24 10ooh: How the hell did I injure my knee? Left inside tendon/ligament thingy sore upon awakening. Did I sleepwalk?
1110h: There are a lot of funny looking asian men in ECON103.
1230h: I really enjoy talking to professors in office hours.
1345h: Correction: I enjoy talking to ungrumpy professors in office hours.
1400h: For every short and cute asian woman that exists, there exists an equally short, not-so-cute-asian man.
1415h: When you can’t figure me out: The secret to women is that we say things we don’t mean and we mean things we don’t say. But not all the time.
1415h: Today I feel very happy and calm and content.
1710h: I am quite possibly…floored. On gradebook, if “MT” stands for midterm, I just got 34/34, i.e. 100%. WTF?! In CMPT120! And so far I have 100% in the course! This has Never Happened Before. Not even close. Never.
1734h: Just discovered my flash animations don’t work on the CSIL computers. Not pleased.
1756h: The secret to not being frustrated and irritated all the time…getting laid.
June 25 1000h: Farrah Fawcett died. Cancer. Brings out my fears. And Jon and Kate Gosselin are divorcing. Not that that matters to anyone except their kids. I hope deep inside that all people who die are at peace. I hope the suicide bombers and war criminals, and serial killers given the death penalty are all at peace. I hope the man who believes he will be rewarded with 72 virgins in the afterlife gets just that. If that’s the best thing he had going for him, I really hope he gets it.
1315h: I just get so fucking agitated at jerks like the guy who made a left turn from behind me while I was halfway across the street during my pedestrian walk light who then told me to look for traffic. It’s my walk sign, fucker! Concentrate on your own fucking half baked fucking driving, idiot!
1350h: playing piano really gets me unagitated. New “easy piano” piece yeah that disney song “A whole new world” from Aladdin. Love it and it’s just so beautiful and takes me away to a different time and place and imaginary life. Need to get a piano of my own so i can stop renting rehearsal space.
1425h: Low F + high GAC chord. Quite a nice way to end a song.
1700h: I had a breakthrough at singing class today. Lowered larynx + space + focus. Singing the exercise “Me-lia”. Letting go. Throwing it away. Fuck yeah. And going to McD’s inbetween rehearsing and class and thinking to enjoy fully and be present doing anything because it might be the last time I do that thing – gosh Steve cried last week when he ate a chicken nugget, having not had one for so long, and thinking that it might be his last. So I went and bought chicken nuggets today to remind myself to live. I couldn’t bring him any, though because he’s fasting, preparing for his colonoscopy tomorrow. And then I came home to find that Michael Jackson had died. What a day. What a week to choose to be facebook & Twitter free.
June 26 1117h: Watched Confessions of a Shopaholic and it wasn’t good. I am disappointed because I had been looking foward to that one for quite some time. Movies and people that try too hard to be funny are rarely really funny. The Make More Money scene ended up on the cutting room floor. All the essential bits of the story that made it a charming and funny story got cut out of the script. Nobody is sympathetic towards a woman who spends too much money (GUILTY!), but somehow the book made you identify so strongly with the protagonist, and the movie just did not succeed. Director needs lessons in directing comedy.
1440h: Been at Burnaby General Hospital since 1230. Steve’s colonoscopy today. yay. One year since we’ve been here for one the last time and we’re still where we began. Not pleased. Hopefully some answers.
1700h: +1 Medication for Steve. Prednisone. At least it’s cheap. + Humira starting ~2 weeks pending all clear from upcoming “urgent” MRI. Apparently the colonoscopy looked very different from last time. Some serious side fx on prednisone i hear. fuck.
1745h: Found out Lorena Gale (Priestess Elosha on BSG) passed away on June 21st. Shocked and saddened. Cancer. Found out Google, Twitter and Wikipedia etc crashed yesterday from too much traffic/too many edits. Again, I re-iterate. What a week to be Twitter and Facebook free.
1800h: Realized that I have this lifelong pattern of disillusionment with stuff. Note to self: write blog entry about disillusionment.
2143h: Made myself a little jar with little 1/8 index card chips inside with things to do when I don’t know what to do. Will pick one each time I find myself not knowing what to do and be just one minute more productive. Each task can be completed within one minute. I like this jar already. Note to self: write blog entry about this jar.

first wordpress blog post from iPhone

In Web Design and Web Related on November 24, 2008 at 6:25 pm

so today is the day I move to the truly mobile blogosphere. I am blogging on my iPhone on the skytrain home. The saving grace of the iPhone is that when typing in Safari, you can turn the darn thing sideways and type with your thumbs a la Crackberry, with comparable speed. I am definitely a noob though. I do think that it would be a great feature to be able to text message sideways though, a feature that is definitely lacking. Maybe in the next iPhone update. Oh I am at lougheed now so goodbye ! Experiment is a success!

Making iPhoto Not Launch Automatically

In Web Design and Web Related on September 26, 2008 at 11:34 am

iPhoto launching automatically every time I plug in a device that has even one picture file on it has been driving me absolutely BONKERS for the past 2 years. Well, not bonkers enough that I have bothered to solve the problem before today…BUT TODAY I have found the solution.

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=78880

The above thread on macosxhints.com pertains to the particular case of plugging in an iPhone, but really, an iPhone is just another storage device, like a USB key drive thingy or an SD memory card, or any camera etc.

Basically, open “Image Capture” in your Applications folder. In the menu bar at the top, choose [Image Capture] >> [Preferences] and change [when a camera is connected, open:] from “iPhoto” to “No Application”.

Done and done. Now you don’t have to wait for that RAM hogging application otherwise known as iPhoto to open and you can photoshop photoshop photoshop happily away. Or just move photos from your camera to computer. Or delete files en masse. Or pretty much anything you want, because you won’t be wasting your time trying to force quit iPhoto anymore!!! BOOYA!

getting email off server with untrusted security certificate

In Web Design and Web Related on September 12, 2008 at 11:05 pm

So apparent eHostPros (the server Steve has my beverlywu.com website on, that he describes as “crappy”) upgraded a whole bunch of stuff ~ 2 days ago…and trying to connect my email over a secure connection to their server something something something the certificates don’t match because it appears to be connecting to “ehostpros.com” when i ask it to connect to “beverlywu.com”

long story short,

my mac Mail program stopped retrieving email from beverlywu.com. ergh. couldn’t figure out why, until steve told me that they upgraded a bunch of stuff 2 days ago and/or the new browsers are getting really tough on security.

basically mail used to bitch about the security certificate, but now it just started rejecting it altogether.

long story even shorter,

i fixed it by somehow making it permanently accept the security certificate that it didn’t like, and presto! it retrieved a load of email to my inbox. i’d give more instructions but i can’t remember in which which menu i did this.