Tag: Books

It was obvious that I hadn’t adjusted to Tokyo time yet, because while I didn’t have to be up and ready to go to class until 9:45am; I was awake by 5:30. My room-mate (L) and I got up and went out for a look around. Being really early, there weren’t many people around yet, but a few business-men and office-ladies were hurrying off to work. I think it was when we were about a block away from the hotel when it really hit me that I was in a foreign country. Something about there only being one another white guy around and no English to be heard or seen anywhere around. It was just a small but impressive moment for me.

Anyway, L wanted to find the McDonald’s; so we wandered around for a while and found the train station & a KFC but not the McDonald’s. We headed back to the hotel because the heat was starting to get to us and now the hotel’s cafe was serving the free breakfast. We ate and then AWelkin-sensai, A & Bryon came in for breakfast. After we all finished eating AWelkin-sensai took us out to show us around the area a bit and help L find the McDonald’s. She also pointed out some banks for us (useful for exchanging traveler’s checks) and showed us the interior of the train station.
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I’ve been working on a project designing a personal website for AWelkin. Last Friday, I gave her the templates I’d constructed for her. She seemed pretty excited & happy with them, but then I tried to start showing her how to edit them; only to find that she doesn’t have any good tools for doing such a thing. The only real editor she had was TextEdit (I think it just comes with OS X) and it doesn’t do syntax highlighting; which would make life hard for her. Since I don’t have a Mac1; I couldn’t really offer recommendations to her.

The only editor for Macs that I’d heard of is BBEdit but I had heard that was a rather complex program and I really thought it was more than she’d need. Then I talked to my local Mac geek and found out that BBEdit is really expensive! So I asked if he could recommend any other cheaper/simpler editors. He did a bit of searching and said PageSpinner would be a good option. I looked at the PageSpinner website and it uses valid HTML; which is a good sign. The screenshots also looked promising, but were kind of small and there doesn’t appear to be any larger versions available2. On the plus side, the feature list for PageSpinner does appear to cover everything that I think AWelkin would need (e.g. syntax highlighting and a preview function).

Anyhoo, I’m posting this note in hopes that AWelkin might read it and let me know if this PageSpinner program will work for her.

1 I’m not a PC evangelist or a Mac-Hater. I just don’t have the money to buy a Mac right now and I’m not likely to any time soon. Oh and for the record, those 15 inch G4 Powerbooks look like the sweetest laptops on this planet!
2 Guys, you really need to get some larger screenshots up. Some of us are nearly blind as it is and trying to look at your product from tiny shots like these really doesn’t help our eyesight. So please, please, please post some larger images for us to look at. Remember, not everybody visiting your site will be willing to download your app just to see if it will work for them; they may be stuck using WinBlows and trying to find something suitable for their Mac using friends.

This update was partially delayed due to some problems with our domain name. And depending on what the old bank balance looks like after paying my bills; I’ll be seeing about moving musings to it’s new host/domain name/style (maybe).

Most days of the week, I end up staying up far later into the night than is good for me; so I sleep late on the weekends to help catch up on my sleep. This last weekend, I actually managed to drag my sleepy but out of bed and make it to the bank so I could store some stuff in my safety deposit box. Whew!

After I got back from the bank; Ariesna and I headed over to the Coralville Public Library Booksale. We picked up a few interesting looking books, including one that I later started hoping wasn’t somebody else’s purchase.

See, CPL has a freebie section and a purchase section. We always go into the purchase section first and buy whatever strikes our fancy before going through the freebies. We’d done that and while looking through the freebies; I noticed a small book, titled Understanding the Scots, in a box near the door into the purchase section. Being part Scottish, I picked it up and started flipping through it. While I did this I turned around to see what Ariesna might be up to and then turned back to see if any other books in that box were of interest. Alas, the box was gone. Now, I don’t know if those were supposed to belong to somebody else (e.g. they’d finished in the purchase section and just set the box down) or if they were legitimate freebies and somebody grabbed the box with all the rest of the books. *sigh* I doubt I’ll ever find out.

After the booksale, we headed to downtown Iowa City for their 2004 Art Fesitval. We did a lot of walking around looking at all the cool stuff and I bought Ariesna a silver bracelet with a daisy in the pendent on the bracelet. She loved it and was going to just walk away from it, but I couldn’t have that so I bought it. While I’m not sure that it was a sound financial move; the smile on her face was well worth it.

Oh and I took some photos of the Art Festival with my new camera but I haven’t had a chance to go through them yet. Once I have; I’ll see about posting them here.

Later in the afternoon, we met up with Ariesna’s sister (Dee) and her husband (Ken) to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter 3). To sum it up, I think the overall production values were higher in this film than any of the others but the story was very badly hacked up and if you’ve not read the book; I can’t image how you’d be able to follow what was going on. Still, if you’re a fan of the series; it’s worth seeing on a matinee.

As I usually do, I’m listening to Air America Radio this morning and Unfiltered briefly mentioned the USA PATRIOT Act and played an audio clip of Vice Pres. Cheney bashing Kerry because Kerry wants to let: “vital portions of the PATRIOT Act expire“.

I heard that and I have to (partially) agree with him. I’d rather Kerry argue to have the entire law removed from the books; but given the current politcal climate, I doubt that would happen.

*grump* I dislike this law more than I can take the time to adequately describe right now, so if you need more info; check out one of the links below:

EPIC USA PATRIOT Act Page
EFF: EFF Analysis of USA PATRIOT Act
American Civil Liberties Union : USA PATRIOT Act
ALA | USA Patriot Act
USA PATRIOT Act – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I know I’ve kind of been in the habit of updating musings most everyday and in the last few; I’ve been slacking off, but I have a pretty, good excuse. I’ve purchased a new domain name for this website and I’m busy working away at a new theme to fit the new name. I hope to have to ready in the next week or so (and then I need to get back to working on some templates for a friend’s new site).

In other news, I once again succumbed to the lure of buying a new sketchpad. I don’t know why I do this because if I look around my apartment I know I can find at least 4 sketchbooks that I haven’t used all the pages in yet. *sigh* Oh well, this one’s a lot nicer than my previous one. which was a cheapish clearance item from a bookstore, hardcover but with a standard spin so pages are not really removable and one can’t really scan the sketches either. The new one is roughly 6″x8″, has a cover made of a dark corkboard, the pages are bright, white acid-free paper and the book is spiral bound; so I can actually scan the drawings from it without killing the book. I was thinking I would save this sketchbook for my Japan trip later this summer, but last night as I was laying down trying to go to sleep, an idea came to me and the new sketchbook was the first one I could find. So, it won’t be blank for trip but that’s probably just as well; since I only want to take one sketchbook with me and it wouldn’t hurt to have some art in it to show people in the class I’ll be taking.

Umm, what else can I write about to pacify my non-existant audience….. Oh, I know. Last night after I got home from work, Ariesna and I walked down to the local Farmer’s Market. On the way down, we stopped in the library and I picked up a copy of Neil Gaimen’s American Gods to read. Some friends of mine (Bryon & Aizuchi) have been talking about the book in relation to the new RPG that we’ll be starting up soon. From our group’s last discussion, it doesn’t sound like we’re going to be following the premise of the book as closely as perhaps was originally thought but I still thought it would be worth reading through and so there you go. I hope to have the book finished in a week or so and I’ll let you know what I think then.

Err, the last thing I can think of is that I’ve been thinking about getting a digital camera again. The one that I’m currently leaning towards is the Canon PowerShot S 500 Digital Elph. My main concern is that I’ve got no real money to speak of and plenty of bills to pay. To compound the problem, I see that Best Buy is currently offering 10% of all their digital cameras (only when you order online) and I know I could get at least 6 months 0% financing. But I also know that I should replace the following bits on my car:

  • Timing belt & water pump: The estimates I’ve gotten on this tell me it’ll cost between $600 & $800. Ouch!
  • Air bag sensor: $500
  • Front brakes: They still work, but are getting really damn soft and I’ve not checked into this yet.
  • Speedometer: Sometimes when I first start up the car in the morning, I’ve notice it takes it a while before it actually starts registering my speed. Fortunately, my morning drive is all in town, on 25 MPH roads, so it’s pretty easy to guestimate my speed to keep it under the limit.

*sigh* Some days I really hate being an adult and long for those golden days of yesteryear when my parents handled all this sort of thing.