There’s such a thrill making something you can wear from what starts out as a bunch of unconnected bits of cloth! Last night I finally finished the cuffs for the costume I’m working on, and the end results are pretty good, which says a lot considering that I know I made a lot of mistakes! The next time I make a schoolgirl uniform, I’ll do a much better job. Something seriously wrong with that last sentence I think… Hey, it’s just cosplay! /wink
There’s been a lot of talk about how people have put all sorts of personal stuff up on MySpace only to have it come back and bite them in the ass when they’re looking for jobs. The new Google Code Search may to doing this for some developers now. Kotte.org has an article summarizing a lot of interesting, and embarrassing stuff that people have found using the code search tool. Some of the things that are turning up may also open big security holes as usernames and passwords are also being revealed in some code. I guess the long arm of Google is going to force many coders to clean up their acts! I wonder if it’s time to get to work on a profanity filter plugin for Eclipse.
The streets of downtown Chicago were overcast and cold today. It wasn’t the greatest mood raiser to be had, nevertheless, I always feel better after my lunchtime walk, so I went out anyway. I grabbed a bench in Millenium Park and finally had a chance to dive into The Day Of Revolution
I just read that Brian Vickers had been locked out of Hendricks team meetings since announcing his move to Toyota at the end of the season. Way to go Hendricks, stirring up all of that bad karma! I don’t know all of the internal details obviously, but I’d hardly call that a classy way to behave. So essentially, Vickers hasn’t really been on the team for some time. I don’t think the contact that took out Johnson and Earnhardt Jr. today was intentional, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Vickers did not have the warmest feelings for so-called teammate Johnson. It wouldn’t be any surprise at this point to see someone else driving the 25 car next week. I just hope that Vickers kicks some serious ass when he moves to Toyota next season. I wasn’t a Vickers fan before today, but it just boils my blood when I hear about people being shunned like that!
After 107 starts, Brian Vickers finally got his first Nextel Cup victory at Talledega today. This victory came at the cost of wrecking teammate Jimmy Johnson and race leader, and fan favorite, Dale Earnhardt Jr.. Needless to say, Brian isn’t going to be very popular with a lot of people, loud boos were plainly heard in the winner’s circle once the winner was announced.
It doesn’t look like Brian intentionally wrecked anyone, but probably could have been a little more careful. Still, I’d like to say thank you Brian for turning what was shaping up to be a rather boring Talledega finish into one that people will be talking about for a long time. I’ve never seen so many drivers being so cautious so close to the end of a Talledega race. Generally there will be two line of cars going for the win at this restrictor plate race, but the last laps of this race consisted of a single line of cars tucked in behind Jr.! NO ONE was brave enough to duck down to the bottom and challenge. Unbelievable! This is just points racing at its worst when the race is over before it’s over because no one wants to risk points, or worse, wreck a championship contender.
So thanks again Brian for giving us all an exciting finish. I don’t watch NASCAR races to see people get hurt, but I do want to see a good race from beginning to end. If I wanted to watch a parade, I’d turn on F1.
Well it’s not exactly Iron Chef on the DS yet, but it is definitely one more reason for me to get a DS of my own (my daughter bought one for herself recently) and another reason that I think Nintendo may just clean up with the Wii versus the PS3 and Xbox 360. Cooking Mama is a cooking game for the DS that as you might expect involves following recipes, etc. Here’s a review with more details. It sounds like another game with quirky, innovative, and fun gameplay elements that Nintendo has enabled with its outside the box thinking on game consoles. I think Microsoft might emulate this kind of thinking and risk taking eventually, but I’m not sure that Sony gets it just yet. But if Nintendo’s Wii does come out and trounce the PS3, I think Sony will get the religon of risk taking innovation real quick.
I was reading up on the new anti-piracy measures in Windows Vista on Information Week this morning and was reminded of that Star Trek episode in which Q first introduces Picard and crew to the Borg. There’s this scene after the Borg’s first curt surrender demand in which Q says something like, whew, they’re tough, you sure you don’t want me as a part of the crew?
In a nutshell, borrowing the car from mom for a hot date with the trampy girl down the block will be easier than trying to run Windows Vista if it even thinks your copy is not legit. But you know what, despite what some analysts are saying, people are still going to run Windows Vista because there simply is no alternative for at least 90% of users out there. Comments like this,
Wilcox, however, sees it as a mistake. “Microsoft’s making software potentially harder to use. I don’t think it’s a good move for them to make things hard when competitors are making things easier.”
are laughable. What competitors? The desktop OS war has been over for about 10 years now. Microsoft won, Microsoft is the man, resistance is futile, you will be assimilated, you will run Genuine Windows Vista.
I do agree that the potential hassles, to say nothing of the hardware requirements will make many stick with XP for a while, as I plan to. But we’ve seen this all before. Windows Vista will make its way into homes and offices via new PC purchases. And I’m sure that the next version of MS Office will have some Vista exclusive features to further drive open a wedge for Vista to get into the corporate space.
So Microsoft really doesn’t have anything to lose by getting tough on pirated Windows. I’m sure the pirates will find ways around the new checks, which ultimately will make trouble for hapless end users rather than the pirates themselves. But mass migration to Linux or MacOS is not likely to happen. If it were so easy to migrate, it would have happened already. Again, Microsoft won the OS war on the PC and they know it.
There are just a few more weeks until this year’s Reactor and my first foray into cosplay, and now I find myself with not just one cosplay project nearly complete, but two! Once I started making things, the JoAnn’s fabric store I get supplies at took its place alongside the Microcenter and Home Depot as places that fire my imagination and inspire me to create new things! My second project is a more modest mini cosplay of Yukino Miyazawa’s dad Hiroyuki in Kare Kano. I like the silly “I Love My Daughters” shirts that he wears, so I decided to make one of my own. Unfortunately, the kanji on the shirt are translated in the English version of the manga and I don’t have the anime episodes or anything online to use as a guide. But I did see the first kanji, musume (daughter) in a manga panel that was not translated. So using that little scrap of info plus a Wikipedia entry that said that the shirt says “Daughter Love”, I used my limited Japanese skills to guess that the front of the shirt probably says musume ai. The back of the shirt is translated as “My Daughters Are My Life”, which I took to be musume no seikatsu. I checked the kanji with my Chinese wife, so even if it isn’t exactly what is on the shirt, the meaning makes sense, so the character should be recognizable to fans of Kare Kano. I made a simple stencil to form the kanji painted with white fabric paint on a black t-shirt. So far it looks pretty good. I hope to finish the back tonight and then I’ll get to work on a Pero Pero plushie as an accessory. Maybe I’ll make him a bag.
Despite reminders everyday of the selfishness that humans can express, I think that fundamentally we want to share ourselves with one another. I think everyone wants someone to understand what they are about, even if we aren’t sure of that ourselves.
To that end, it was with great pleasure that I got the chance to watch Mobile Suit Gundam III with my wife last night at the Columbia College Asian Animation Film Festival. She only tolerates my love for anime, manga, and various elements of Japanese pop culture, in part because she’s Chinese. So getting her to go see a feature length production with me was no small feat, but I think she’s been trying to be nicer to me lately. <3 The good news is that she didn't totally hate it at all. She said it was interesting, and I really had fun filling in the details of the various characters for her and expounding on how many of them are repeated in the many parallel Gundam series. I hope that maybe she has just a little better picture of what makes me tick, through the things I like. We've been married for a long time, but even now there are so many things left to learn about each other.
Maybe I’m just too sweet a guy or something. Or maybe I should practice being more obnoxious… I was looking over some lab results and noticed that the sex in the records is incorrect! I’ve been involuntarily transgendered! Hmmm, this might just explain something weird that happened yesterday. It was minor, but I’d better get this cleared up before any further hilarity ensues.
I ran across the ad graphic below yesterday, and as proof that sex sells, I’d love to get one of those, especially if the girl comes with it (dirty old man face)… Of course the association of the hardware with sexiness collides with a harsh reality as I recall seeing an old man wearing one of those yesterday as well! I may just wait for the implantable ones to come out in a few years.
Over the last week I’ve witnessed not one, but two downtown Chicago promotions that involved lots of people dressing up in costumes and making a commotion. The first had people dressed as fruit shouting and carrying picket signs for Naked Juice (and giving away samples, yum!). The second featured perhaps hapless employees dressed as orange and white cows (yes it was cowsplay) for ING Direct. I got a bad cell phone pic of the hapless cowsplayers. The people were probably not regular employees, but it still takes some guts to get dressed up like that even if you’re getting paid. I wonder how many of them actually do cosplay for fun? Hmmm, I wonder how many may actually be turned to cosplay after this gig?
Morning time is not the time one expects to get one’s socks blown off. Indeed, during most of the morning one usually isn’t wearing any socks at all! Nevertheless, I find myself having go and put another pair on at what I just witnessed.
I got a rare (for me anyway) peek at one of my youngest daughter’s drawings in progress. She’s a little smarty-pants perfectionist who usually won’t let anyone look at her drawings before they are completed, and perhaps not even then. But this morning, I was allowed a peek and was totally blown away. Looking at her drawings of scenes with various Naruto characters, I could easily mistake them for the work of her older brother. So in a very short time it looks like she’s caught up with him! I can’t wait to see how her own unique style develops as she continues to draw!
Perhaps it was only vanity if not cosplay per se, nevertheless, I think I may get some more years on the planet out of the deal. It all started with the crazy idea, fueled somewhat by my experiences at Otakon this year and the creative enthusiasm of my son, that I should do cosplay. So one of the first things I thought about was weight. I’d been trying to lose weight for a while previously with limited success, but now I was doubly motivated to do so. I got really serious, and the pounds have begun to come off. Next, the character I’m doing doesn’t wear glasses, so it was time to get contacts. I hadn’t been to my eye doctor in ages, so I was overdue. Little did I know what this would lead to.
My doctor checked me out and she noticed that my prescription had changed significantly in some weird ways. So she said I should go get a physical and some tests. This didn’t seem to be good news at all. But, I had been planning to do that sometime this year anyway (yeah right…) so I went ahead. To make a long story short, the doctor found some things that needed attention that are being addressed. So the cosplay can go on, and I get to live a few more decades in good health! Yeah, I’m putting a nice spin on this, but I really really hate being reminded like this that I’m not a kid anymore!
I had some extra fun on the way to work this morning. I was poking around in iTunes 7 when I remembered that I thought I’d seen something somewhere that said that Ayumi Hamasaki albums were available on the iTunes US store now. So I checked it out and w00t! Ayu albums on iTunes! So I bought one of the RMX remix albums and the Fairyland EP. Then I quickly burned the RMX album to a CD to play in the car on the way to work. Yes! <3