Fretting that I'm being lax about updating on here. The lack of writing to publish is a big part of that, which I hope with my recent purchase of an iPad(!!!!) giving me back computing portability in a size bigger than a phone I'll be more able to find time to write away from my desk.
I'm also hoping this ipad is going to give me opportunity to draw a bit too. There's some transformation i'm going through at the moment where digital technology just seems so much more convenient. Like I'll look at my bookshelf and see a few unread books (ASoIaF) and just think, man I wish I had the digital versions so I'd read them on my iPad/phone instead of having to lug that heavy hardcover around and need the light still on. LOL.
I mentioned this on twitter/tumblr and got a few suggestions but just in case there's anyone here that doesn't follow me there, I'm new to the iOS world so if you have favorite apps that you can't live without and would like to recommend I'm always looking for new apps and I'd rather not waste money on bad ones you know? :)
I'll try to do better to at least forward any original posts that i put on my tumblrs over here like I promised I would. Most of my fanfic tumblr lately has been posts on shipping after having seen Man of Steel and OZ. I'm behind on my reading but I'd like to rec more than I do, but lately all I've been reading is either Glee/Mass Effect fic with a dash of Star Trek. And my main tumblr is full of reblogs with a dash of instagrams and an occasional life blog post so I definitely can do a better job of that. I think a lot has to do with my dissatisfaction with the mobile interfaces of dreamwidth/livejournal, now with a bigger ipad screen I'll feel more comfortable.
Looking at Printers
Aug. 28th, 2012 11:44 pmMy old printer (ancient HP DeskJet) died about a week ago and I'm making due without one right now but I know I have to buckle down and commit to a model sooner than later so I thought I'd reach out and see if someone can swing me one way or the other.
I'm looking at inkjets around the $100 range and have narrowed it down to Epson XP-400 AiO Wireless Printer or Canon PIXMA MG4220 Wireless Printer. Anyone have experience with Epson or Canon printers or have a different suggestion/recommendation?
I've been looking at reviews on Amazon, Cnet & PC Mag and honestly it's frustrating how often the reviews are pretty much complete opposites with no consensus.
Rechargeable Batteries
Apr. 30th, 2012 11:08 pmAnd as such I find myself looking at 10 AA batteries that I have here waiting to be properly disposed thinking that there has to be a more efficient battery method to use so I've started looking into rechargeables. I know I've seen a charger and some batteries offered on Woot a few times now and have been tempted but I want to get something that will last, not just cheap.
Anyway, if anyone has gone the route of rechargeables I'd love to hear your thoughts on them and any specific device you use. These wireless controllers draining my batteries!
Not in a Box or With a Fox
Apr. 11th, 2012 10:44 pm
Hope everyone had a good Easter. I would have liked more chocolate as it is one of the few holidays where its somewhat expected to partake in sweets, and I only had a little bit this year. Skipped a family dinner this year because of all the sadness surrounding the extended family since April started so it was less of a standout day.
I still think my best piece of photography came on an Easter a few years back when I took a picture of my niece and nephew on an Easter Egg hunt. So much so that I actually have framed that photo and it is sitting on my dresser. Now that Instagram is on Android I'm hoping to take more pictures while I'm out and about. Been wanting that app for ages.
Speaking of, I just changed the rom I was using on my android phone and have now joined the few with the 4.0 OS and I LOVE IT. It totally reaffirms my confidence in the android ecosystem, the widgets that I love on my homescreens have improved and honestly rarely are there apps that are only on iOS, frustratingly usually the android version takes awhile to come if at all (like Instagram) and right now there is only one app that I'd like to try (Viggle) but that's more for curiosity than need.
Bleeping Blu-Ray
Feb. 25th, 2012 08:56 pmOf course it came out after working once, my old computer didn't have the power to just be a Blu-ray player like I wanted so I had to wait a year until I got my new PC this past Christmas. Finally I was able to watch Blu-rays through the drive, all except one (TMNT the original movie disc) were playable and everything has been fine.
Now I bought Puss in Boots yesterday and had plans tonight to watch it, and what do I get? A notification popup that interrupts the disc starting up that says my player needs to be updated to continue playback. The thing is ... THERE IS NO FURTHER UPDATE for the version I have that came with my drive.
So it looks like if I want to see this new movie disc .. .I have to upgrade to a new version ... which they will only let me get the latest which is pretty much $100. WHAT THE F CYBERLINK?!
This is just so disheartening. I'm probably going to look to get a standalone player that's a new model.. It's fun to have a drive on the PC but I'm not going to pay $100 just for in two years to lose compatibility again and probably have to shell out more.
I can understand wanting to put out new versions of your software but at least keep the player up to date! That's all I want! But they probably know a majority of their users just want that and tie in the other software to try to justify the exorbitant price.
The Holidays were one big blur once again. When December started I thought I would be more productive but I always seem to forget how time consuming the holiday season is. Throw in the fact that I got a new PC for Christmas and the transition back from Mac to Windows pushed me into January before I knew it.
I have not regularly been a resolution person when it comes to the new year but it does give me an excuse to rededicate myself and steer my life in the direction I'd like it to be heading in so I am pushing myself to follow 3 big resolutions.
Get Fit - The older I get the harder it is to stay in shape when the average day does not lend itself to a lot of opportunities for activity. So far this week my effort to put aside a set amount of time to get some exercise has worked but other things (like late night writing) has suffered from it. It will take awhile to find time for everything.
Write, Write, Write - I almost think there are too many outlets for one's words and I feel I may have stretched myself too far (as I tend to do/very ambitious I can be) and as a result almost all of my for fun writing suffered the last few months as my workload intensified. Even my most reliable outlet Twitter can go in dry spells but I do think that direction is what will work here too. Short, fast, thoughts as they come posts will be my target here, but you know how I tend to ramble (like now). We'll see. More importantly will be my prose work, where I should be focusing my time and energy. Again I have some fic I'd like to continue and I hope to this year.
Be Social - I think I really need to work on my time management (which is LOL because I do try to schedule my day to fit everything in) but as what feels like a broken record, I just tend to lose track of many relationships because of lack of time/energy and I really want that to be different. Will it be different, I don't know but nothing will change if you don't try. I'd rather annoy you with constant reminders that I want to interact with you than giving off the idea that I don't care. Because I do.
P.S. Today was the birthday of the one and only sandoz_iscariot, a dear friend and fellow fanatic of ALL THE THINGS. Technically I tweeted you already but you can take credit for being the reason I finally posted on here again so I can wish you merriment on here as well. :)
P.P.S. I know I need to update all my icons here. Also need to find Photoshop since I'm back on windows. And it's like changing curtains, need to spruce things up here. Done with doing layouts, too damn time consuming. (And now I'm rambling ...)
Saturday Salad Mix
May. 28th, 2011 06:30 pmDoes anyone use Sidereel? They seem to have a programmable calendar to follow your TV shows that makes me think of the pogdesign calendar that I use for this purpose but it also has a phone app (iphone only right now so I haven't jumped on and tried it yet) that seems like a handy thing to have on the go.
I thought this was a pretty neat site for those looking for a way to archive your tweets and have them displayed in a neat timeline. I give you Memolane (short for Memory lane I imagine) where besides twitter or facebook you can even connect photo sites, video sites, social check-in sites and rss feeds to have displayed for your visual needs. The only downside on the twitter part is that it seems to have the same problem all of these sites has is the limit twitter puts to the last 3,000 tweets you've done from the moment you first connect your account.
I don't know if I've asked this before on here but has anyone tried purchasing refurbished technology? I've always steered away from it and preferred to just go new but lately I've been having thoughts that anything that was wrong with the tech would be fixed before they sell it and most of the time they come with a warranty/guarantee of some kind.
Tools Writing Wifi
Apr. 25th, 2011 08:17 pmAlso I am apparently completely blind about the online alternatives to text editors/word doc writers. I was shown EtherPad, which is an online word processor that does all the markup features as well as allow collaboration between multiple authors with a timeline feature that can display how the document was written in real-time. I haven't had a situation yet where I wrote when I didn't have access to Word or Pages but before I would think only to use Google Docs and this might be a better alternative, especially if it's a collaborative project.
I am beginning to tire about my home wireless network problems. The things I do because I finally signed up for Netflix. So i moved the wireless router/modem to the TV so that Netflix instant could be streamed over there. Apparently a combination of age and i assume some spill damage over the years my macbook pro's interior wifi adapter is very weak with distance, leading to several days of trying to fix my laptop only to give up and just adjust the location of the router by about a foot and now it connects. Sometimes it'll slow and I'll have to turn off the MBP's wifi and turn it back on but it's a minor annoyance that I've been dealing with for a year or two now anyway - has nothing to do with the distance. And in the end, the xbox 360 Netflix app is ten times better than the instant queue that is through my blu-ray player.
ETA: Fell asleep in the middle of this entry. -_-
I Missed You, Internet!
Dec. 21st, 2010 04:22 pm
Slight Mushy Ahead
Apr. 23rd, 2010 10:13 pm![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
Only saw some of Smallville tonight. I think this is the first time this season that I haven't watched an episode completely and I really don't mind that much. (I don't know what that says about me, but I have to say with all the uncertainty with Chuck & Seeker, I think I'm growing tired of TV. :( ) I'm going to probably try to see it all tomorrow but I did have to comment that I thought the end scene with uncertain Clois would have been perfect if they had one of those music moments that the early seasons of Smallville had. IT WAS JUST ASKING FOR IT.
Lastly I had a question to ask before I collapse in bed (was falling asleep but wanted to get this out or else I'd never post, like I've been trying for the last two nights). For those of you using Google Chrome, is it normal to not be able to select a portion of text on a webpage and be unable to print only that selection? I have no trouble doing this in IE but I'm trying to shift to using Chrome exclusively but whenever I print, the selected button is like grayed out even when I had selected text beforehand. Is this just a normal thing that I shouldn't expect in Chrome or is my browser messed up? Any help is welcome because I hate wasting ink printing a full page of a website instead of just the text i want.
Idle Chatter
Mar. 5th, 2010 12:49 pmDC's next direct-to-DVD animated film, Justice League Crisis on Two Earths recently just came out and because of that release the previous two DVD's (Green Lantern First Flight & Superman Batman Public Enemies) were on sale (less than $9 each) so I snapped those up. I have yet to watch a DC DVD that I haven't enjoyed so I imagine I'll like these as well. They were backordered so I'm just waiting them out right now. I also bought 17 Again for less than $9 too. Don't judge, I liked the movie.
Something that has irritated to me over the years is when I notice that I'm missing content out of my control. Every so often I'll notice several journals here on LJ that for whatever reason will not show up on my friendslist despite being mutual friends. This has started to happen with me on Twitter too where there will be people who will tweet and I'll never see their updates but I'm a bit more lenient there because I follow so many that it's easy to fall behind on the timeline. LJ it's more of a convenience thing and I hate having to dig through all of my friends journals just to see if I missed something.
Alice in Wonderland comes out today and I can't wait to see it. I haven't been a very good theatre watcher so far this year. Outside of seeing Avatar, I missed The Princess and the Frog, Sherlock Holmes, and I'm still planning on seeing Percy Jackson. But back to Alice, from what I devine from the trailers I've seen on TV, this looks like a quasi-sequel to the typical telling of Alice's original journey to Wonderland. With the proposal and going into the rabbit hole, I am thinking this movie is one of those returning to your childhood to put a close to it and be ready to move to adulthood. Also, I think I'm developing an attraction to Helena Bonham Carter. She's a little odd, but I love it.
Olympic Folly
Feb. 17th, 2010 11:41 pmWatching the Olympics is extremely frustrating. When the Summer games were in China, I didn't think much of the delayed broadcasts because of the big time difference, the everything now data/digital age was just starting to grow and there were actually some events shown live even if it was at one or two in the morning.
But now the winter games are here in North America, hell even in the pacific time zone, and everything is still being delayed for primetime. The problem with that is throughout the day you can easily hear on the radio or tv news updates that say "_____ wins gold" in events that happened in the morning or afternoon but we can't see any of it till the evening! And when they save events for prime-time, that means not showing anything big until about 8pm (there is a short afternoon block I believe) and the new content ends up going well past midnight.
I know the website offered live coverage during the Summer games and I haven't checked if the same for this Winter games but I'm just disappointed that I can't pick a channel in NBC's family of networks and not have at least one on the Olympics at any time. I think I'm at a crossroads with at least the TV broadcasting of the Olympics. There are events I enjoy at the Winter games and I just get frustrated that I miss them completely or don't get to see enough of it.
BTW, rant aside and on a much more pleasant note, it was
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Two Days Today
Nov. 12th, 2009 11:38 pmSecondly, and perhaps more importantly some of my fabulous LJ friends had their birthdays today. I'm talking about
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
Lastly, my phone is a Razr3. I've had it for over 2 years now. The contract I agreed to has now expired and honestly I'm just waiting to get into a better financial position before diving into the smart phone market and getting an iphone because those phone plans are expensive! I really want one though. ;3 Anyway, the flashiest I get with this phone is using the bluetooth to upload ringtones onto it, and changing the wallpaper on it. Since I just recently switched to a more Smallville flavored wallpaper I thought I'd go ahead and show off all the ones I've used so far (from first to my current): ( My Razr Wallpapers )
All A-Twitter
Oct. 15th, 2009 11:50 pmNormally that's pretty much all I'd have to say on it since it's self explanatory but lately its been on my mind because of the timeline problems I've been having when using a desktop client. At times the timeline will become static for lengthy periods of time, making the client useless and forcing me to check the main twitter website on the browser. Originally I thought it was just a problem of the client I was using at the time, but looking at Twitter's own status blog cleared up the fact that they were struggling with that bug from their side.
It still hasn't fixed itself but has happened less often as the days go by. Less annoying than having the website be down, but still annoying nonetheless. I thought I'd use my current twitter-obsessed mind to wonder what everyone else is using to view their tweets and share what I've used in the past.
( What I have used to Tweet )