katiefoolery

I have been half-inspired by the

crazedturkey's WITL. Well, completely inspired, really, but that inspiration comes to a screeching halt when it encounters the wall of effort. Wait, I mean Wall of Effort. It requires capitals, definitely. So: completely inspired in a half-assed sort of way.

It's hard work remembering to take photos. Seriously. And there was a completely awesome opportunity to take a photo of a mostly-disassembled traffic light this morning, which I passed up due mostly to running head-first into the Wall of Effort.

Despite this, I did manage to come up with half a half a dozen photos.

:D

Which is... yeah, it's half-assed.

Anyway, right now I am obsessed with this:

( Obsession... )
ILOVEITILOVEITILOVEIT.

It's quite an unholy love, really. But seriously - I can get the internet on it. I left a comment on the

bathmat's latest post WITH MY IPOD!

Of course, it's entirely possible I may be getting just the tiniest bit too excited about this... But. But. But. It's gorgeous and shiny and I have it mostly due to the boy's habit of buying the latest iPod and then selling it a few months later. And he was splendid enough to sell it to me this time around. And now I can check out the latest lolcats and fail blogs and download addictive games and generally waste hours and hours of time from the comfort of my own couch!

Also, I believe it can play music. Haven't actually tested that theory yet.

( Pickle, of course... )
My cat. Again. Because she's cute and that's exactly how she's curled up right next to me now. Uh, except she now has her face hidden behind her back leg.

( Right here, right now )
And this is what it looks like right now in front of me. Mostly, I'm a fan of the completely random map of Australia that appeared on the TV right at the moment of taking the photo. Oh yes, you can tell I live in Australia because I have a map of it on my TV. It's so subtle...

So that's my day in a couple of photos.

And now I have to post this and then attempt to stop my cat from climbing onto my keyboard...

Current Mood: obsessed

Sometimes, work comes with that most delightful concept known as “perks”. Not always, of course. Previously, my perks involved a great long list of nothing much at all. Now they involve being able to take home the resident Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ30 in the name of, uh, learning how to use it so I can instruct staff and students on said use in the future.

*grins like a loon*

It was practically work.

Really it was.

Oh, how arduous and time-consuming it was, working on my long weekend by playing around with... um, I mean, concentrating workfully on this camera with its generous amount of pixels, spectacular zoom and manual focus. If there’s one thing I’ve dreamed of since owning my first digital camera, it’s manual focus. And it was lovely to have it, even just for a weekend.

Since my attention was recently alerted to the fact that I have no music-related icons whatsoever, I decided to make that the subject of my photo shoot. The resulting icon is up there near the title, but here are some left-over shots. (Oh yes, that would be my lovely new iPod video, that I bought mere weeks before the new ones were released. I don’t care, though; I still love it dearly.)

(All pics are links to larger images.)

I like so many things about this shot: the slight graininess, the shadows, the softness of it. (Never mind the bit where the two pieces of paper join together.) Bonus points go to the person who used the camera before me and who left it set on black and white. Thanks so much for that, idiot. Because when you’re photographing a black iPod on a white background, you don’t really notice that the colour’s been turned off...

This one I like for the swirling reflections. Those headphones may be the best headphones ever, it's hard to tell. I like my music sharp and defined and I like my public transport sounds muted out, and they provide both of those functions.

Pickle was incredibly unimpressed by the fact that I was paying more attention to the little black thing than to her. She was actually asleep on the chair in the lounge room five minutes prior to this photo, as you can tell by her ruffled fur. I guess some sort of “Egads! Someone’s ignoring me! Me! A cat!” sense must have kicked in, causing her to wake up and demand appropriate attention.

And this would be a flower. I ventured outside after the iPod shoot to have some fun with manual focus and ended up having extra bonus fun with the white balance. It’s still way too dark in this pic, but it’s better than the auto setting.

I love this camera. Does anyone think work would mind if I just... kept it safely at home for the next five years or so?

Current Mood: contemplative

It’s been quite some time since I last updated my LJ… and even then, it was just a ficlet. This is mostly because I suspect that not many people want to hear about my exciting morning doing the laundry or the thrills of standing over the central heating vent in the kitchen in order to defrost myself (usually after coming in from taking the laundry to the dryer – non-stop thrills!).

I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

And of course, it’s around this time that LJ tells us they’ll be providing permanent accounts for sale soon. I’ve longed for a permanent account since just about forever but I don’t think I could justify it if I’m only updating once a fortnight. If that. Of course, irony will ensure that I’ll start updating like mad the minute the permanent acccount sale is over, but I’m prepared for that.

So, what have I been doing?

Apart from the laundry?

Well, yesterday, I spent quite some time wailing, yelling and swearing at my iPod mini, due to the fact that it decided to die. Again. CURSED PIECE OF PINK RUBBISH.

No, I take that back. Well, not the bit about its being pink… but everything else. I adore you, little (unfortunately pink) iPod. Won’t you consider coming back to life? Again?

Because if it doesn’t, I’m seriously going to consider smashing it into many, many pieces with the nearest available heavy object. Or perhaps I could take it outside and throw it against a wall – either way, I’m sure I’d feel better after getting all that frustrated rage out.

So I have no iPod and my iriver player is still being daft, on top of having the worst shuffle function in the whole of existence. Oh, it’s nothing but angst around here.

In less angsty news, it seems as though our landlords have decided not to sell right now. How much this has to do with the fact that a developer has put in an application to build four townhouses directly across the road is anyone’s guess… but my guess is that it was a major factor in changing our landlords’ minds. Of course, this means we’ll have to put up with the sound and disruption of construction but I’d far rather do that than move.

Then again, I’d far rather coat my head in honey and stick it in a bucket of ants than move, so that’s not saying very much.

The rest of my time seems to be taken up with being a beta. Which I still love. If I could do that and be paid for it, then I’d be very happy indeed. I very rarely find my brain falling asleep during beta-ing. And I never have to deal with the sort of students I was dealing with last Thursday when I’m beta-ing. That’s a huge appeal all in itself.

And that is why I haven’t been updating. Unless you want to hear all about commas and how fascinated I am by the way people use them.

Current Mood: pensive

I’d be interested to know how people manage to use laptops for significant periods of time without utterly destroying them, I really would. How on earth do you do it?

I won’t deny that my laptop’s incredibly handy from time to time, especially when staying at one’s parents’ place for a few days, but... It really has no idea how close it came to utter and irreversible DESTRUCTION over this last weekend. How many times did it annoy to me to the point where I had to sit and breathe very deeply for a few minutes, whilst the urge to ANNIHILATE THE DAMN THING faded away? Lost count. And sometimes, that fading away process took quite a while. I think a little bit of it might still be lingering, actually... It’s probably a good thing that there are several rooms separating me from my laptop right now.

But in other news involving less mass destruction of items of technology... my iPod lives. My little (unfortunately pink) iPod mini has come back from the dead... and is working.

I can’t explain this at all.

Last October, it was completely dead.

And now it’s not.

The story begins a week or so ago, when my iriver player decided that it wasn’t going to accept any more music, no matter how I reasoned with it.

“But look,” I’ll tell it, “I have all this new music and I don’t know, wouldn’t it be kinda neat if I could listen to it on my long and tedious trips to and from work?”

To which, my iriver player will simply point at the music already on it and insist that it needs no more.

I beg to differ but I’m fighting a losing battle here. Also, its shuffle still sucks. A lot.

If my iriver player could manage an indifferent shrug, it would probably employ one at this point.

Which brought me to thoughts of my dead iPod and the fact that a new battery would bring it to life. So I plugged it into my computer, just to check how dead it was, and instead of the absolute, underwhelming nothing I was greeted with last time I tried that, a low battery symbol came up on the screen. It didn’t look like it was going to charge via the USB, though, so I got my wall charger back from the Bindi and... it charged. And then I connected it to my computer and updated all of my music... and it was still alive this morning.

I have no idea how long this situation will last, but it’s making me very happy while it does so.

Current Mood: pleased

I am experiencing a bizarre idea to write silly stories. And I mean incredibly silly stories. The sort of things that might turn up in a really bad film pitch in a Hollywood studio or something. For example:

Character One switches bodies with Character Two by accident; hilarity ensues! (Also, some sort of lesson to do with respecting others, blah blah, very touching, can I fall asleep now? - will occur.)

Or:

A girl who has lost her ability to feel emotions has teamed up with a man who may or may not have a Jekyll and Hyde complex. They solve crime!

Or:

A and B are mixing a love potion to use on their friends when an accident occurs and it affects them intead. But they can’t stand each other! Hi-jinks ensue...
(Rated M for abuse of dessicated animal parts)

See what I mean? Silly stories. Hackneyed things full of stereotyped characters and recycled plots. And these examples aren’t simply plucked from the air: they are actual stories that I am working on.

I don’t think there’s any harm to them, though. It occurs to me that I need to do more writing practice and there are worse ways to practise writing than to play around with unoriginal plots. At least, I think there are...

Quick iPod update:
It’s dead.
(Told you it’d be quick.)

Current Mood: floaty

My iPod just died. In the blink of an eye. I’m still in shock.

It’s just so sudden. Yesterday, it was working fine. It kept me sane on the two bus trips and one train trip home, faithfully playing music to distract me from the ennui that is public transport. Then, tragedy struck. I pulled it out of my bag this morning to wake it up (it insists I wake it up each day, to remind it that it exists or something...) and there was no response, despite the battery being half-full when I put it away yesterday afternoon.

So I went to charge it. Usually, if I charge it for ten minutes or so, it will remember that yes, I do have half a charged battery left! What luck! Stupid thing...

Not today.

Today, nothing happened when I connected the charger. No happy little Apple symbol on the screen, no industrious little charging animation.

Just a blank screen and a Buneater staring in dismay.

“Er,” I said to the empty room. Then I glared at the power point. “I bet this is your fault!”

So I took the charger to another power point and met with a similar lack of response from my little pink iPod.

This time, I glared at the charger. “I bet this is your fault, then!” I told it. “I’m going to plug this into the USB on my computer and then we’ll see.” Because talking to inanimate objects makes me feel better when things are going wrong...

I did just what I’d told the charger I’d do but nothing happened. No sudden awakening from the iPod and no little alert from my computer. In an act of desperation, I loaded up iTunes and went to my iPod preferences menu, only to be told there was No iPod attached, despite all physical evidence to the contrary.

And now I have to face a life without music on the way home. For the next two days at least, I’ll be sitting at bus stops and riding trains with no music to distract me from the boredom of it all. It’s just tragic. Especially when I spent much of yesterday afternoon’s trip home planning a new playlist. Not to mention the fun I’ve been having making up silly music videos in my head to go with the songs as I listen to them.

It’s even more depressing than the time I had to bid farewell to my elephant head slippers.

Gods dammit, this means I’m going to have to get out my notebook and actually write something in it, doesn’t it?

Current Mood: sad

I sit here with some questions which I hope some people out there can answer. They are most perplexing and confounding and driving me to distraction.

Firstly, I shall list the question foremost in my mind, due to my attempt to wrangle with it not five minutes hence. Viz., Why is Yahoo such an unmitigated piece of human waste? Seriously? They had a sweet set-up with their free webpages at GeoCities, only to stuff it up by destroying validated code with their Javascript ads and creating an ad that couldn't be closed, unlike their previous version. I was just updating my details on my Yahoo account which I have purely for a group to which I belong. There was an option to upload a userpic, which I always like to do, to give visitors an idea that I might be a real person. So I naïevely went along and browsed for a picture on my computer... only to be told I couldn't upload it because I wasn't signed into that piece-of-rubbish Yahoo picture-management palaver.

Alright.

Foolishly, I went into it and tried to upload a picture... only to find I'm required to first download a 30mb program that will look for all the pictures on my hard drive so I can simply choose which ones I want to put on Yahoo. Yeah. I really want to do that because a) I have that much time to kill and b) I'm an idiot.

So that will teach me to think Yahoo might have changed since I last dealt with it.

My second question is iPod related. Yesterday, I installed an iPod nano that Bindi, my sister-in-law, received for her birthday. All was working well - she put songs on it and we worked out how to find the sleep timer. Much delight was experienced by the good Bindi. Then it suddenly went sour this morning when Windows now refused to acknowledge the iPod's existence. Perhaps the iPod said something rude to Windows? Or maybe Windows is just being childish because the iPod nano is so black and slim and pretty, not to mention efficient. So why have they suddenly stopped communicating? It's a brand-new iPod!

Third question. Which I seem to have forgotten... Oh well, I suppose I could ask why I've forgotten question three, although it seems a little counter-productive.

Nuts. I'm positive it was a really good question, too.

Oh well. Answers to the two questions I could actually remember would be much appreciated, lest I start tearing my hair out over them.

I just remembered the third question! Plendiferous! It concerns an orange fruit drink and the bottle it comes in. Please tell me why you think a company would design a bottle that ensures that every time you put it on the bench after pouring it, the juice sloshes out of the neck and onto the bench, floor and possibly even your footwear. What is the point in that? Do they want us to run out of juice quicker, causing us to buy more? Or are they just really, really stupid?

Actually, you don't need to give me an answer for that one - it was mostly a chance to rant a bit about the design of fruit juice bottles.

Any other answers will find a ready home here, though.