Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

I made them myself, can I have a cookie now?

Creating those little cards was a lot more work than I expected. Seriously, I am a writer who sometimes designs on a computer but rarely draws anything worth showing to anyone with decent eyesight. But I finally got them close to what I was envisioning, and that made the effort worthwhile. I can’t wait to hand them to people at Comic Con next week!

Here’s how I made the design:

1. Thought about what kind of business card would work well, and came up with the idea for a comic-style card.
2. Started drawing caricatures of myself. Some were really, really, horrible. I had to look up how to draw a female body because I wasn’t getting it right.
3. Finally figured out that I should draw the caricature elements separately, scan them, and then piece them together in Adobe Illustrator (CS1 that I got in my last year of college but never really learned how to use).
4. Hit the jackpot with Blambot.com, where I found some awesome free comic fonts (for Mac and PC) and pre-made dialogue balloons in .eps format. Perfect!
5. Swore a lot as I learned how to alter the Illustrator files to get the dialogue balloons in the size and shape I wanted.
6. Added the text (Blambot’s Anime Ace 2.0) and obsessed a little over the exact wording.
7. Tweaked and tweaked until Illustrator and Photoshop both worked together with me enough to get the final result you see above.

It’s not perfect, but I won’t be embarrassed to hand out that design. And there is probably a better way to do something like that… so if you have any suggestions for next time, please leave a comment. I’m not under any delusions that I would be able to illustrate my own graphic novel, but it would be nice to learn a little more about art ‘n stuff. I would like to write one someday (soon, maybe, with all this Comic Con inspiration).

Next on the agenda before Comic Con: packing and maybe finally getting around to updating my website?

It never occurred to me that a non-third world country would view cell phones as anything but ordinary at this point in the timeline of the technology-addicted world. But I never paused to think about the possibility that the Cuban government would have prevented people from getting them.

Oh yeah, communism still exists in some places of the world.

That changed today, according to a report from the Associated Press. Good for the people of Cuba. But too bad that the cost to get a phone and maintain a calling plan is so prohibitively expensive for the average person. Baby steps, right? I hope this is a sign of better things to come for them.

When I mentioned how much I love my mouse at home, I should have also told you about my wrist cushion. It is absolutely THE BOMB.

I may complain about a sore middle finger from scrolling too much, but I haven’t complained about wrist pain since I started using the IMAK wrist cushion. It’s a slightly stretchy cotton-nylon shell that is filled with ergoBeads, whatever those are. It doesn’t matter what they are, because my wrist loves them.

I bought it about the same time as I purchased my Logitech trackball mouse because using the new mouse without one was, admittedly, a little awkward. And I’d never found a wrist cushion that I liked, despite trying several different types.

The IMAK cushion I purchased had been sitting patiently on the shelf of an office store, inconspicuous next to the colorful gel-filled mousepads and the various "adorable" comfort-inducing items with kittens and puppies and American flags on them.

If you’re in the market for a wrist cushion, this is the one to get.  The thumb-controlled trackball mouse isn’t for everyone, but  everyone needs a good wrist cushion. It probably comes in several colors and with fewer bits of lint than appear in this photo.

Someday I’ll probably upgrade to the wrist cushion for my keyboard as well so my left wrist will stop feeling so jealous. But I figure that my left hand gets out of doing a lot of the labor that my right hand endures, so it can just shut its proverbial mouth and be content with the fact that it gets to wear a pretty ring every day.

I have been scrolling pages on Teh interwebz too much lately and it’s catching up to me.

For as much time as I spend with my hand on my mouse (that’s not innuendo, thanks very much) and on the computer, I’m fortunate not to not (yet) suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome. Today, however, I realized that the underside of my middle finger is tender.

At work, I use a semi-ergonomic wireless Microsoft mouse with a scroll wheel. My middle finger logs many hours on the slightly raised bumps, pulling repetitively as my brain demands more, better, faster visual input on the screen in front of me. My right hand middle finger is much more of a workhorse than I give it credit for.

(My left hand middle finger also works diligently in tandem with my left hand thumb, resting on the Tab and Alt keys respectively as I frequently switch views on my taskbar.)

At home, my preferred mouse for the last couple of years is a Logitech with an optical Trackman Wheel. It stays in one place and I move my on-screen cursor around with a red track ball… and I absolutely love it. It took a couple days for my thumb to adjust to the new movement, and now I can go effortlessly between different mice without even noticing (like hopefully someday I will do with  Dvorak and QWERTY keyboards).

But it also has a scrolling wheel upon which I rely heavily for my internet needs. And isn’t it always embarrassing to talk about a seemingly benign injury that is related to a cushy desk job? Well, whatever. At least the underside of my middle finger gets a break when I’m playing the Wii.

On a side note, it absolutely drives me crazy to watch people surf the internet, wholly dependent upon their mouse to scroll down a page, etc. in a painfully slow manner. If I just described you, dear reader, please do not take offense. Just learn the faster way or let me do the fingerwork while we’re looking at something together next time, okay?

In the meantime, I better go check into what kinds of rehab I might expect to endure if I continue to abuse for my poor, tender middle finger. But I’m thinking that there also has to be a fancy gadget out there that will allow me to scroll down pages through eye movement!

I usually save my smirks for later in the day, but a headlining CNN.com article caught my smirking attention this morning.  I’ve heard about the uncontrollable satellite that could come crashing to earth in the next couple of weeks, and that The Man was going to attempt to blow it up with a missile before it entered our atmosphere.

Here’s the first sentence of the article: 

"Pentagon officials said they think a Navy missile scored a direct hit on the fuel tank of an errant spy satellite late Wednesday, eliminating a toxic threat to people on Earth."

Everything sounds great, right? No danger to life as we know it? Hold a sec. Was the phrase people on Earth really just used? Eliminating a toxic threat to people on Earth? That sounds like a sci-fi B-movie to me. Or maybe a fantastic sci-fi cartoon. I hear it in the distance…

"I am Lrrr, ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8 and controller of a toxic threat to people on Earth!"

Seriously, it doesn’t sound real. It’s weird, scary and humorous at the same time that stuff like that makes it into real news articles. Here’s another snippet, where you can guess which phrase made me smirk a second time:

"China is continuing to closely follow the possible harm caused by the U.S. action to outer space security and relevant countries," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said Thursday."

If you guessed outer space security, give yourself a shooting star. I love that China is (supposedly) suspicious because of the USA’s potentially devious actions involving outer space.  I’ll probably never know anything detailed about our government’s full story with this whole thing (or, if you believe any of the conspiracies you see on TV and in the movies, if we’re really the good guys or if we have top secret alterior motives). Maybe China is just cranky about it because this news is stealing their New Year thunder. Or the Rat does not approve of outer space hulabaloo in his/her Year. For chrissake, people, the Rat only gets one out of every 12 years!

Overall, I’m happy to hear the reports of the spy satellite being shot down. I don’t know what naked pictures of me might have been on there, you know? And it’s a really good thing that the spy satellite didn’t fall into China’s territory, because they really don’t need to be seeing that stuff.

Speaking of outer space, I’m bummed that I didn’t get an opportunity to see the lunar eclipse last night. It was cloudy and raining/snowing. Or maybe it was a government cover-up so we couldn’t see the explosion of the spy satellite….

*cue the X-files music* 

There’s now an easy-peasy way to convert your now-antiquated HD-DVDs into now-high-fashion Blu-Ray DVDs, according to a Wired How-To Wiki article.

(In the course of writing the subject line and that first sentence, I just used a record-breaking 10 hyphens… wow! Plus one for that sentence!)

Here’s the quick-and-dirty (I can’t stop using the hyphen! Augh!) process for each one:

1. Rip the HD-DVD
2. Burn to Blu-Ray

See how simple it is? All you geeks should be done by lunchtime. 

Alternately, if your player and discs are still in pristine condition, you should pack them carefully back into their original packaging and put them on a closet shelf to allow for proper fermentation of nostalgic value. Unless you already have one there, you MOC collector.   

If you still have some repressed anger about HD-DVD losing out in the end, you can put on your Wikipedian hat and add helpful and/or false information to the Wikipedia entries for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

The nail is in the coffin for HD-DVD, and the people at Sony are surely ecstatic to finally have a Booyah! in their pocket after the 1980s embarrassment of Betamax. And there’s no doubt that Blu-Ray will rock my world and wreak havoc on my finances in the next couple of years.

I’m very much looking forward to it, though I think I have the majority of the movies and TV shows I need on plain old DVD, most of which look great on my bigass HDTV with my under $100 upconverting player. 

So my acquisition strategy will be different for these new-fangled discs (once I have a player, or a PS3 if Ben has his way). I’ll probably lean more heavily on Netflix, which fits better into my long-term strategy of being less materialistic without giving up my entertainment budget.

I’m not saying that I won’t buy any Blu-Ray DVDs, because that would be complete insanity. I claim only partial insanity. There are select movies and shows that I am already looking forward to… remember that little TV show called Heroes? Please allow me to quote a covetous Wayne Campbell:

It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.  

All future Pixar films will also come into my home in delicious Blu-Ray HD glory, plus a smattering of other fantastic new titles as the average prices (hopefully) decline.

Amazingly enough, it was less than a year ago when I first posted about this format war. And at that point I was considering one of the dual-format players… I’m glad I waited. The thanks should really go to Ben, who convinced me to be patient until a clear winner was revealed.

Now everyone can move forward and Think Blue in ’08! (Aren’t thinly-veiled political statements okay in election years?) 

What’s weird is that a lot of other people whose blogs I read seemed to just come back from a blogging break. I feel better knowing that I’m not the only one. Not that I’ve gone as long this time as I have in the past.

Really, I’m just procrastinating checking my notes on how Sunday at the SFF went for me. Part of the problem may be that I already wrote it all down (by hand in a tiny little notebook that still lives in my Sundance coat pocket… so far away from where I am waking up right now). I’m at my desk sipping coffee and basking in the tentative anxiety of being on my computer. One hard drive failed and for some reason I’m expecting this one to go at any time. Like using it will cause it to fail. I’m not normally a superstitious person, but I done been spooked.

Speaking of ill grammar usage, I would just like to say for the record that I am sick and tired of people writing and saying the word "that" in place of the word "who." For example, this sentence is correct:

"There are many people who deserve an email reply from me today." 

This sentence irritates me:

"There are many people that deserve an email reply from me today." 

I’m not a grammar expert. I had to look up the defined reason why the two are different, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t learn at some point in my life that the word "that" should not be used in conjunction with a person. There are subtle differences implied in the misuse of the word "that," mostly related to grammatically treating a person like an object instead of a subject.

Then again, I’m also known to throw the letter M on the end of the word "who" in certain scenarios, often with the one-two punch of not ending a sentence in a preposition ("with whom did you attend that bitchin’ party?").

"The woman with whom I slept with last night" clearly refers to someone (the woman)  whom you first took out to dinner and to the movies before boinking.

"The woman that I slept with last night" objectifies the subject and perhaps implies that she was paid for her services. Also note the double whammy of improper placement of the word "with."

Don’t get me wrong. I still appreciate slang and its intentional uses (you should know the rules before you break them). When the phone rings and Ben has a mysterious conversation, I sometimes ask my question with a brief "who dat?"

What have I been doing, and why haven’t I posted any additional stories about volunteering at the Sundance Film Festival?

Saturday: Played Super Mario Galaxy almost all day. I think it’s the best video game ever and am still seeing star bits even when the game it turned off. Did some laundry and waited for Sunday.

Sunday: Went to Park City for the SFF. Got home around 2am, finally went to sleep around 3am. More on that later.

Monday: Woke up at normal time to go to work. Computer told me it had a critical RAID array problem. Called Ben, who had the day off (my company doesn’t care about MLK or civil rights, apparently) and he said he would check it when he came home. Went to work, where I had to restart my computer twice to get it to boot correctly. Ben called me with "worst case scenario" that I’d lost everything. I was overcome with panic for an hour or so, when Ben (still casual in tone, which pissed me off and comforted me at the same time) called to say that there was a glimmer of hope. Still panicked. Ben finally called back to tell me that the one hard drive had failed, and the other still had my data. Relief, finally, as well as perpetual panic because I am way overdue for backing stuff up. I needed to prune my data that evening, so instead I came home and ate dinner and pretty much crashed for the night.

Tuesday (today): Computer is working with one hard drive. I’m making copies of the most important documents (I think) on my drive but I need to go to work. I will write more about the SFF later today.

My experience at Sundance was incredible. I already know that I will volunteer again next year if possible. And I can’t wait to go back this weekend! Or some evening after work this week to see a movie. 

Some days require more defragmentation than others. I wish that defragging my personal life was as easy as this was at work today:

Yeah, my work computer has been overdue for some file-smooshing and file-purging. I couldn’t work very much while it defragged because I wanted to watch the magic happen. And what’s wrong with taking a few minutes for that? Nothing, unless I have a deadline. Mmm, it was a flexible deadline anyway.