Lifted from weegoddess's journal ...

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
...I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.

(For bonus effect, imagine it spoken in Neil Gaiman's voice ...)

My 100 movies of [insert year here] was a complete failure in 2009. I finished on 44. I really wish my final film of the year could have been ANYTHING other than The Midnight Meat Train, but at least I watched it in good company!

I think I burnt out in 2008 watching everything I'd always wanted to see, just so I could hit 100. There weren't 100 films left I wanted to watch for 2009!

I'm going to aim for 100 again in 2010. Maybe I'll actually aim for 1000 in this decade.

Nah. 100 in 2010.

So, in review...

The Best of 2009
I gave 9/10 to Up, I Love You Man, and Shades of Ray. Up probably inches it over the other 2, partly because it was awesome (okay, mostly because it was awesome) but also partly because seeing it in San Diego with Ryan, Jaina and Hilary was awesome in itself. Even if I was the only one who didn't cry.

Honourable mentions to Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince, Slumdog Millionaire, and 17 Again, to which I gave 8/10.

The Worst of 2009
The Midnight Meat Train. Nuff said. 2/10. Also on 2/10 was The Lodger. Then on 3/10, These Girls, Twilight, Three And Out.

One of the nice things about going home this Xmas time was going to Daikoku Ramen, which, as it says on the tin, is a ramen shop that makes the real thing, in downtown Auckland, right next to the Britomart transport depot (the old GPO).



It's been there since the late-80s - I went there occasionally when I was at university the first time round. The place used to be heavily patronised by Japanese and Korean sailors back in the day (it's literally metres away from the docks), and of course now with the huge upsurge in immigration from east Asia, there are plenty of people who go there for a taste of home.

The place has barely changed. There is still the huge pot of stock simmering away on the stove, with mysterious items in it, and a stream of water constantly running from a tap to replenish what is lost in the steam. The cooks are big friendly Japanese guys with not-exactly-immaculate aprons on. The noodles aren't those slippery wriggly soft ones from a vacuum pack, and are cooked fresh every time in their own basket dunked into boiling water. The decor is bare-bones, to say the least, although the early-80s style oddly-shaped wooden seats have been replaced with more conventional metal-framed seats with padding. You can still sit at the bar by the kitchen area, on the benches that have coloured stripes to mark which is your half. The only notable addition to the menu is edamame, because naturally that was unheard of in NZ back in the day. Oh, and cold noodles - must give them a try, since I've liked hiyashi chuka when I've made them at home.

You can get all different styles of ramen, shoyu, miso, Hokkaido style. You can get extra corn, pork, wakame, mung bean sprouts, menma (bamboo) added to your ramen. There are side-dishes, including very tasty gyoza. On the tables are extra soy sauce, chilli oil, vinegar and shichimi togarashi.

If you like ramen, it's the only place to go in NZ. :-) And a great place to get a healthy and tasty meal for around $10 (or a bit more with additions and side dishes). Open 7 days for lunch and dinner!

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Rocking in a new year with a 25-year-old song digitised and streamed to a 3-year-old computer. Just comprehend the years of engineering that went into this for a simple song.

This is probably my favourite love song. This is a 12-min long extended promo cut of the music video, and it's as transfixing a video as David Bowie's “Life on Mars.”




I hope that in ten years I'll be in the arms of the one I love, cozy and happy at 33.

HAPPY NEW YEAR F-LIST!

This is my new "rooster", Piper! He's a spangled Old English Game Bantam, and he's a "rooster" because he's still just a little baby! He fits on my hand easily with room to spare, haha, so cute. ♥

I know 2009 was a difficult year for a lot of you, so I'm hoping all of you have an absolutely fantastic 2010! I have a very good feeling about this year, myself, and I'm hoping you're all looking forward to 2010 optimistically.

Will do a more in-depth entry later today~

Yesterday was the last day for prereg for FC, so I jumped on it. Now I need to properly secure lodgings/transportation. It sounds like I can get down there, and it's still early enough in the semester quarter that going won't fuck up classes. So I'm going to try to bust my butt to get down there by the end of January. I'll get to see people, too, which is good.

And really? I need to get away, to do a vacation, to have a change of scenery. Josh and I both agree that it's something I need, since I'm burnt out.


I'm spending the new year's eve watching sci-fi shows because I like them. I'd prefer a laid-back evening with friends and snacks and drinks, but it seems like everyone's going down to First Night, and I'm not in the mood for crowds/live music/stuff tonight. Drawing might be a good thing, too.


I also got 10.6 in the mail. I think I'm a bit of a typography/graphic design geek, since the first and second things I noticed after booting into it the first time were that the subpixel smoothing was smoother and the icons/UI elements were crisper than before (ie, the keyboard selection menu applet), respectively. I believe this is part of the resolution independence in the system. This feature is not yet active, but it's finally part of the design*, though it's not accessible for the average user. At least not yet.

The 10.6 transition was very easy, fast, and even freed up 25gb on my HDD. The core of the OS is 64-bit (finally) on my Core2 arch. I'm not going to say that it's "faster" than before, but it should be better. There were some issues with nonworking 32-bit apps when I first booted into the system, but those issues were fixed easily with app updates (thank goodness for sparkle!) since Devs have had 10.6 in their hands for a while. On the whole, there's not a lot on the top layer of the OS that's new or different, and it all works as it should — besides, this upgrade was all about the stuff under the hood.

Quicktime X is one such thing, replacing the creaky old QuickTime7, it was rewritten from the ground up (with a new UI to match — perhaps the most “new” and “different” part of 10.6). Other new things are the elimination of PPC binaries from the system (at least first party apps), which is one thing that freed up space.


By contrast, I installed Win XP on a creaky, noisy old P4 laptop (so old it has 256mb RAM and an 802.11b Prism2 chipset). The OS preforms well, considering it's limited to an old extra 5gb HDD, but it suffers from the usual Windows issues, as well as odd issues when resuming from sleep (ie, it sometimes it won't resume). I was impressed that WIndows found all the drivers it needed right. Its sole duty is to be a Windows terminal for the father, who has three websites he needs to access to do his job as a realtor, and which work in IE for Windows only.

Windows XP SP3 with IE8 is decent (the IE6 it came with is a positively primitive browser, the likes of which I haven't used in years), but for anything with at least 3/4 of a gig of ram (768mb), a 2ghz Celeron/P4 (or 1.3ghz Pentium M — aka “Centrino” or better), I'd actually recommend Windows 7. It's fast enough, as well as modern. It works decently and without headaches, finding all the drivers it needs easily when connected to a network, and actually running very well as a PnP system. You'll get better gaming performance on an older machine with XP, but if you're still using an old computer with a P4 chip for gaming, you're probably not playing Crysis. Here it is: I'm recommending that Windows users use Windows 7. If you bought a new computer in the last 8 or 9 years**, you can most likely run Win 7 on it, and you'd probably have a good experience.


--
* Resolution Independence was one of the features initially slated for OSX 10.4 “Tiger,” but it was pushed back, probably because of other, more pressing things. Still, it's no “WinFS” — it's been present in various stages since 10.4, but it's never been very user-accessible or fully functional.

But this idea of scalable UI is especially nice in this day and age with 2500x1600 resolution displays — the sort that are above and beyond 1080 HD resolutions with small pixel pitches — and for people who may have more difficulty reading screens.

** If it's a PII you have, you're probably better off sticking with XP or moving over to Linux — probably XFCE, but it can handle Gnome, because 7 on a PII is not going to be fun.

My parents were both born in 1922.

Two years from now, they will both be 90.

We have just started a new decade.

It is entirely likely that by the end of this decade....both of my parents will have passed on.

I bought a cool book: Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway by Kirk Johnson and illustrated by Ray Troll. It’s a travelogue following a paleobotanist and artist on a fossil tour of the American West.

Since I grew up in the glaciated plains of the Midwest, fossils were something exotic. I assumed that they were rare and exotic things found by digging deeply in just the right spot, then carefully taken only to museums. When I moved west, I learned the truth. Fossils are everywhere, if you know where to look.

For example, I found a pretty convincing brachiopod on a hike through Mississippian limestone in Missouri. The Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque were topped with Pennsylvanian limestone, and marine fossils were easy to find there as well.

This book tells you what real fossil hunters do: they study geology, understand when rocks were laid down, and figure out where rocks of the right age are exposed. Then, they get in pickup trucks and drive there. This is particularly easy in the Rocky Mountain states because the earth’s crust has been deformed in all sorts of ways there.

So the real story is that there are more fossils around than anybody knows what to do with. The earth does the work of bringing them to the surface for us, so we barely even have to dig.

Great NYE so far. Went out for Thai food and a movie with my husband. Now am home with furry cat on the sofa with me. The gin and tonics are wearing off, but they were fun while they lasted. Off to a party tomorrow. It's been a pretty good year.

in the remaining hours of 2009 i cant help but say that this year wasnt very good at all. and it sucks to say that because i dont think ive had such a bad year in a long time, but overall, there wasnt much positive to say about it, hence the lack of real updates (that also combined with all work/no time and being without internet). 2010 however, appears to be the light at the end of this dark tunnel.


a new year, a new beard, and a new promotion.
lets throwdown already.



(also, one resolution i hope to make: update more often.)

Well, this was an awesome way to end an awesome year! I got a call this morning from Kim asking if I wanted to release the turkey vulture I found a few days ago. It turns out he was most likely stunned (he possibly flew into the side of a car) when I brought him in, and after a few hours he fully recovered. He had no lasting damage at all, and was very healthy and ready to go. :) I drove over to the raptor center and Laurel caught him (not easily, mind you, as he's very strong!) and put him in a carrier, and from there we put the carrier in my car.

I spent a while driving around near where I found him looking for the right place to release him, and finally found a hill on a property that was for sale and decided that was a good place. My dad just randomly happened to be driving by on his way back from work, so he stopped and got to experience the release, too!

The vulture was reluctant to leave the carrier, or rather was unaware that he could, and so we had to urge him to leave the carrier after a while. Once he was out though, he looked around for a second, ran, and took off soaring, eventually landing across the street on top of a pole, where he stayed until after I left. It was a great release! I feel wonderful about it. If I hadn't stopped for him, he very well could be roadkill, and instead I got to watch him fly off!

( Pictures! )

Ahhh, releases are always so heartwarming. :D

I'll post again later with a New Years' post and photos of my new "rooster"! (You'll see why the quote marks are there later.)

Not that there was much I could do to be productive, but I did most of it. Still no Greenwood trip, but I unpacked my suitcase and tried out the new DS games. They're fun so far, although playing 358/2 Days is making me want to go back and play the PS2 Kingdom Hearts games again. I spent most of the rest of the day getting the rest of my footage for King's Quest 7, and a bit beating the Shift games again, mainly as a buildup to beating 4, which I'd never gotten very far in before. I beat it this time, though, and got the good ending without running out of time even once.

Curt and I even did the traditional Chinese dinner, buffet style. And with that, Happy New Year, everyone. Here's hoping 2010 is another year.

And another new year is on it's way. I've never been much for celebrating it. J and I are chillen at home, watching netflix movies, TV and playing Borderlands. Haven't quite decided how I feel about the game. It's okay. We've played for a couple hours and still haven't quite seen where the hell the plot is :P Hands down, Dragon Age is my game of the year. Book, I'd say World War Z. Movie... there were just so many good ones! :D

Next year, I will be married o_O I didn't really think that I'd get married at... well, I'll still be 24 in May. Then again when I was really really young I thought that everyone got married right after college, so back then I thought I'd have a kid by now. Who knows, maybe 2011 will bring me a kid....

I'm JUST KIDDING! .... maybe.

There are Paul Frank diaper bags. I asked J if we could have a kid so I could get that. He said no. ...

It's Paul Frank!!! :P It was cute!

Saw some decent concerts this year... Travis, DC101 chili cookoff and virgin mobile freefest. I finally got to see Blink 182, my dream since I was 12. I was utterly ecstatic but pissed that I had to drive out to Maryland on a work night :P But ohman, it was great seeing them. They really aren't that great live but that's neither here nor there...

2010... no resolutions. I never follow them. Maybe update a little more. I've no idea what I did this year. Though looking for a house, moving in and cleaning took about 3 months of my life.. We're still not fully unpacked -_-

Well 2009, you were decent to me. Work sucked, but life was good. I appreciate that. And you brought me Remy :) And I heart that little bastard (he ate J's xbox controller charger yesterday.. needless to say, J was pretty pissed).

Anyway, in my boredom I made random collages of 2009.


The things that happened


i got a house; saw travis; puppers; dc101 chili cookoff volunteer;
fun at kings dominion; went to the beach; new niece; chilled with friends;
made deep fried turkey / had it for the first time; got blizzard'd


Entertaining things


played dragon age for hours on end; found love for star trek; fell in love with zombies; cried too much during up;
put muse on repeat for weeks; discovered a love for 1900 high society; got hungover; went teeny bopper;
more love for zombies; great mario games; finally a good new tv show; another step closer to the hp end...


Have a great New Year, guys :) Hopefully you're all out having fun!

Sara and Danny tried getting us to go out to bars in Alexandria. J and I didn't feel like leaving the house. They already came over last night. Sent Sara and I running around Fairfax looking for a Harris Teeter (which isn't open yet!) and then ended up going to 7-11. THANKS DANNY :P ohwell. I hearts them.

See you all in 2010 ;D

Last post of 2009!

Went for my last run of 2009 earlier. It was actually my first run in a few weeks and I definitely felt it. I plan to run each of the next few days to get back to where I was in terms of distance. The 10km cinic starts in 11 days, and I don't want to be lagging behind.

Just made a lovely purchase at Chapters Online. Thanks to bargain shopping and a coupon I got $143 worth of books for $48. With gift cards I only had to spend $9 of my own money :)) I will soon be the happy owner of :

Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Afterlands - Steven Heighton
How to Cook Everything:Easy Weekend Cooking - Mark Bittman
No Great Mischief - Alistair McLeod
Such a Long Journey - Rohinton Mistry

Finished Trudy J. Morgan-Cole's By the Rivers of Brooklyn this morning. Chronicling the lives of the Evans women over the course of a century the books travels from Newfoundland to Brooklyn and back again (several times!), with each woman's narrative weaving a thread through the book. Being familiar with both St. John's and Brooklyn in modern times, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to travel back 100 years to a time when both places were less densely populated, and watch their development unfold on the page. A couple of the characters felt a little underdeveloped, but I finished the book feeling that further readings would peel away more layers. It could be that I missed subleties that would see those characters fleshed out more.

Going out for a friend's dad's birthday supper this evening then going to said friend's house to ring in the new year. It will be low-key celebrations, but really that's how we like it. If the freezing rain lets up then we'll head down to the lake to watch the fireworks, otherwise I see movie watching and junk-food eating in our future :)

Happy New Year to you all! I wish you and yours all good things in 2010!

Thank you everyone for all the congrats in my last post!!! I love you guys. :D Haven't been able to be around much, got the fiance's (fiance!) cousin in town and staying at our place, plus family randomly dropping by and there's even more travelling/stuff to do in the upcoming days. Just wanted to drop in and wish everyone a Happy New Year and may 2010 be better than 2009!

(And yes, still trying to watch the final season of SGA when I can, *g*)