Friday evening I met up with jadeejf for a really lovely supper at the Rendezvous. That's an interesting place. I've been there twice, and while the food was fantastic both times, the ambiance sucked on the first visit and rocked on the second. The only reason I went back the second time was that I had had two Groupons (purchased blindly because the place is to close to our apartment). I'm really glad I had a reason to go back, because it would have been a shame to write the place off. I'll definitely return, and if when I poke my head in the door I'm greeted with loud music that clashes with their interior design scheme, I'll just come back another night.

After supper we took advantage of another Groupon, this time one that jadeejf had, for the Market Ghost Tour. I'd been to their late evening 'lust' tour, which still talks about ghosts but features a lot more Seattle brothel history, and had found I wanted to come back at some point for the ghost tour, because there's a lot of history there as well. Turns out there's a third tour they do as well that might be fun, where they go inside one of the buildings looking for ghosts, so maybe I'll hit that one as well at some point.

Anyway, if you're interested, I took my camera with me. There aren't any weird orbs of light or interesting anomalies in my photos, but there are some okay shots of the market, Post Alley, the gum wall, etc. ( Images behind the cut. )

I went back out with the camera this afternoon after that other photo post to practice some of the new skills. In case you're interested, ( here are some photos of the Seattle Art Museum's Sculpture Park )

I have no excuse for not posting in forever. Well, I have some excuses, I guess, as it's been a busy winter of blessings and tragedy, high highs and low lows. But life is generally interesting, fun, filled with friends and new endeavors...

I should probably be writing about it, but I haven't really had it in me to do so for whatever reason. Sometimes it's been due to sadness, but mostly due to being more active, more creative, more social. Maybe I'll write again soon.

I mostly came by to tell you I'm okay. But so long as I'm here: among the interesting things in my life as of late, I guess, is that I took a photography class on light and metering yesterday. I took the class because I live in a city now and such things are offered in cities. (I've been in the big city for six months now, can you believe it?) Anyway, I also took the class because I was guessing a lot more with my camera than I needed to; I wanted to be more in control of the way my photographs come out.

After the class was over I was understandably in a photo-taking sort of mood. So I'll share how my very nice day went yesterday. Not so much because I feel up for writing, but because I can mostly just show you the photos I took, such as the one seen on the right.

Pictures, are, after all, worth lots and lots of words.

Hope you are doing well. ( More photos behind this link. )

It's always a touchy thing, paring down my reading list on LiveJournal, but I just cut dozens of people. If you were one of the folks who was removed, it's nothing personal. Of course, I say that, and I mean that, but I also know how it feels to be removed from someone's list. Even when it's not personal it feels that way, because the facts are one thing, but then there's what we tell ourselves about those facts, and that's where the emotion comes from, right or wrong. And although no one I removed is a good friend (unless I made a huge mistake in my unchecking of boxes... if you think I did, please send me a message), even being removed by someone you don't know too well can feel like a blow.

But sincerely, I literally cut dozens from my flist. Some were people who truly won't care and some are folks I added and had hoped to get to know but for whatever reason we never really connected.

I'm sorry we didn't connect better, and I wish you the best in 2012 and beyond.

If you already had your holiday, I hope it was grand. If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a wonderful holiday. As for us, Sam and I had to mix up our annual solstice tradition a bit... no winter star-gazing hot tub in Alaska this year, having (a) sold the hot tub and (b) moved from Alaska. So instead we tried to get away from it all in Olympic National Forest. We didn't succeed in getting away from much of anything (lesson learned: hike-in only cabin next year), but we saw some nice things...       Comments here or comments there or no comments at all, whichever... but if you have a preference like, "Yay photos, but just post them here, not off-site!" or "I like the way things get laid out over at Google, hooray for posting them this way!" I'm interested in knowing that. kthxbai

 
 

Sam and I are hanging out a bit on Fitocracy. It's kinda slightly silly, but it is actually motivating us to workout. It's like a social networking game where you get points for doing stuff and you level up and have quests and get to see how your friends are doing and give 'em props when they complete quests or have a best set or whatnot.

The site is in beta (and thus does still need some work). I tried getting an account on my own only to be told that I would be notified when they were letting more people in. So then I whined to lno and he sent me an invite... VOILA! Instant access!

So, if you would like an invite, let me or Sam know and we will send you an invite. Right now it's just Sam and lno on there, and it would be fun to see how other people are doing. I like giving props to my peeps for doing good stuff.

If you are into interactive fiction, you have five minutes, and you want to play the game that I coded in under an hour today, it can be played online at:

http://www.allthingsjacq.com/play_youareaturkey.html

Happy Thanksgiving!! ; )

Some of you may have read the initial report on the adventure of the standing desk and be curious about where I went with that.


I'll tell you where I went: I went to work.


( Take Your Standing Desk to Work! Check out the corner office! )

I've been mulling over alternative desk setups for awhile now, because I (for better or worse) spend a lot of my life at a computer, and it's starting to catch up with me, even though I've made some serious strides in ergonomics in most of my workspaces.

I considered but ultimately rejected the idea of a treadmill desk. We have recently purchased a manual (i.e. not electric) treadmill. A coworker, knowing that I'm always weighing my impacts on the environment, has gleefully placed the idea in my head of how to hack that treadmill so that it not only doesn't consume power, but also generates it. I'll let you know where that goes, if it goes anywhere.

But what I have decided to try is a standing desk. Specifically, the one pictured here. It cost me $60, which isn't too spendy as experiments like this go.

( Drawbacks on this particular desk... )

BENEFITS

---

Thus far, I've used it for about five hours straight today. I like it, overall, and feel it was money well spent, even if I wish it were made of actual wood. I can move it around the house pretty easily, so for instance I've been easily monitoring ClubFloyd while doing dishes and making lunch. I can also set it in front of the dining room windows and gaze out at the St. Elias range as I type... and the view is easily changed if I grow tired of a particular spot.

Ergonomically, the desk is adjustable to the perfect height, and my arms, neck, and shoulders feel pretty good this morning. I'm shifting the weight on my feet more or less subconsciously, my feet don't hurt a bit. I'm not a fidgetter, but I find that I'm moving a lot while at this desk, and am able to stretch out the things that have been bothering me a bit while still working at things on the keyboard—my low back and hips are going to benefit a great deal from shifting from sitting to standing when at the computer. Perhaps I'm burning more (albeit not many more) calories while using this desk. And it also seems to help with inertia... it feels like less of a big deal to go make a cup of tea for whatever reason (lazy as that sounds).

An added bonus of this particular model is that there's a tiny book case in the bottom, in which I plan to keep coding references and source material for projects on which I'm working.

Anyway, if people are interested, perhaps I'll post about it again in a month or so.

ETA: I originally meant to include a link to this great blog post that finally inspired me to try out a standing desk.

ET further A: Here's my follow up: The Continuing Saga of the Stand-Up Desk!

Pretty nice northern lights last night, and for once it was actually not cloudy (I'm not complaining; I adore the rainforest in all its moods, and clouds keep things toastier in the winter, but still—it was nice to see the lights). No clouds also meant that it was below zero (F), which is super cold for us, but Sam and I took a walk anyway.

Soooo many stars, such a rich dark blue sky, and the aurora kept appearing and disappearing like ghostly blade-like sentinels standing at varying distances on an ever-shifting, sometimes rippling, but generally stable emerald horizon of light.

Thank you, Spaceweather.com, for the heads up!

There's really no point in answering this Writer's Block question when the example given with the question is pretty much the best answer.

In other news, last night I encountered the best 404 page on the internet. Go check it out if you are either (a) a geek or (b) susceptible to cuteness. If you're both a geek *and* susceptible to cuteness, you should probably sit down and not be drinking anything you might spit at your computer screen when taken off guard.

Have a great Wednesday.

When I awoke yesterday before six, the first tinges of light were already on the Fairweathers. When I left yoga last night at seven, there was still a hint of dusk beside St. Elias. The days are quite noticeably longer; we're gaining over five minutes of light every day. The most striking image I hold in my memory from yesterday was the waning but still brilliant moon against a dark indigo sky. The sight stopped me in my tracks, and I took a few moments to really appreciate its beauty, but it also made me sad: we're slipping quickly toward the time of year where I'll rarely see the moon, never see it that luminous, and the stars will seemingly disappear altogether. It's one of two major reasons why I greatly prefer Alaskan winters over summers, even if I'm out and about more during the months of light.

So, it has been recommended by a few that I listen to the news in German every day. I have not been doing this religiously, but I am trying to remember to do it. Tonight I decided to keep a running transcript while I listened, ( which I inflicted on the ifMUD )

Don't worry, I'm not going to start posting nothing but Minecraft, but ( who put this freakin' meteor here? )

As I told you at the start of 2011, Gentle Reader, I have been playing some Minecraft. And I didn't think I needed to really go into the details, because the details were just far too geeky, and I felt that one could really only truly appreciate the game first-hand, but I think I might have been wrong. Enough has happened in Minecraft that I think I should show you a little of that geekery. westwardho called it virtual LEGOS®. That's an apt description. Except that then LEGO® would sue Minecraft, and we wouldn't want that, so rest assured, it's nothing at all like LEGOS®.

So, without further ado, a big post about my Virtual LEGOS® Minecraft!




Every time you launch the game, some funny words appear diagonally in yellow,
zooming in and out excitedly. They say things like, "20 GOTO 10!" or,
"Ceci n'est pas une title screen!" or things that poke fun at the game itself
like, "Do not look directly at the bugs!" (it's in beta).

And then there's what's written in this image:
"This text is hard to read if you play the game at the default resolution, but at 1080p it's fine!"



If you're interested in what I've actually *done*... ( Click here. )

I came home from work, brandishing this cake, which I then nearly dropped on the floor right in front of Sam... but rescued! 

Then we put the right number of candles on it, and it took awhile to light them all.  The light was bright and heat was surprisingly intense.  But they were good candles and responded well to forceful respiration, and Sam managed to blow them all out in one try!  He wished for something, but a lady never inquires about these things.

The man at the store had tried to encourage me to buy trick candles, but I am not that kind of girl.  So then the man tried to talk me into buying him pink candles.  I told him Sam was a confident sort of chap who would be unfazed by such a gesture, and that I appreciated the suggestion of trick candles and pink candles, but that plain white candles would do just fine, thankyouverymuch.

Staff at the Alaska Commercial store also tried to talk me into a bigger cake so they could write more stuff on it.  I had asked them for a hyphen in "Sam-Day" and an exclamation point at the end, but it was just a tiny cake.  I declined the proposed upgrade and told the guy that Sam would probably moan about how much sugar was in just this little cake (I was wrong; we ended up just eating cake for supper, with beer for dessert, which is sort of shameful, but we're adults and can do what we like and it's Sam's birthday and that was his suggestion, so that's what we did).  Anyway, the man told me that if Sam complained about the sugar content then instead of eating the cake, I should just smash it in his face.

I am not sure what Sam has done to deserve all these suggestions from the man at the cake-gettin' store.

Anyway, Sam said he's never had a store bought cake before.  I told him I loved him too much to give him anything less than the very finest store bought cake made by, um, professionals.  He deserves something I spent hard-earned money on.  None of this cheap home-made cake business!

(This made him smile, fortunately, but honestly I think he is onto me and my tricks.)

...we're playing Werewolf in the Toyshop right now.

You know, this evening she seems to not look quite so bad. (Maybe she is the Messiah Frog!)

So maybe it was something she, dunno, got into. Or maybe it's that while I was cleaning her tank she got all freaked out (as is her usual, which is why I hate cleaning her tank) and she tried climbing out of the pint glass in which she'd been sequestered, and was thus exposed to more air than she normally is.

Fortunately, she is now feeling more photogrenic. So here you go:


Frog shown much, much larger than actual size.
But you can actually see her eyes in this photo,
and they're not too cloudy. Huzzah!

Remember Gren? Mademoiselle de la Grenouille, aka the Messiah Frog who has been murdered once and committed suicide once, but lived through both? Yes, you remember. And yes, she is still alive.

But I noticed this morning that she's got rather cloudy eyes. Cataracts, perhaps. Science no doubt has a laser small enough to perform cataract surgery on a dwarf frog, but probably not within my price range. Sigh.

She still seems to sense movement, though, so she sees me come to visit her. And while she didn't eat the food dropped in front of her this morning, she doesn't seem to be thin at all, so she's finding food.

Sam had an old white's tree from, Rana, that got cataracts, so I'm not too worried. Rana lived a very long time with cataracts. Good frog, Rana. But they hand fed Rana. Gren I can't hand feed. Hopefully she will continue to look for food in the usual spots.

I have thought that after all the close calls she was, perhaps, truly immortal. But I guess I might be wrong.

ETA - I tried to take a photo of her to show you, but she's not feeling photogrenic just now. I actually *did* type photogrenic on accident, and almost corrected it, then decided to leave it be. Sorry. Anyway, perhaps I'll post a photo later if she'll show her face. She is in her cave right now, and I can only see her rear end. That is her mood ce soir.

I heard a lot of, "This looks like a freakin' motivational poster, Jacq!" after my last post.

Sigh, I know. Those motivational poster people stole a very simple, effective poster frame layout!

Some have asked why I even bother with a frame. Is it the website I use that imposes such a thing? No, they're handcrafted by me, and I am committed to a frame. Most of my photos will be marketed as posters or, better yet, wrapped on a canvas. I also want the option for non-standard crops, but standardized printing doesn't always allow for non-standard ideas. A border works well for both these needs: it works for posters that won't be matted, and allows you to bridge the gap from non-standard dimension crop to standard-dimension printing size.

If you've got a second, there are ten fourteen (after comments, I added some more) experiments here. Please scroll through, and let me know which one you like most. For comparison they are all of the same photo (a photo that I'll sadly never be able to sell except perhaps on a postcard), seen here with only a narrow black border and thin white line:




I had requests to tinker with white borders, too. And I tried that. The thing is, a white border won't work for this image, and possibly many others.  Why?  Because the orca doesn't actually have a white belly.  A white border thus makes him—yes, though it looks like a female, there was some consensus that this was a juvenile male—anyway, a white border would make him look dingy.  I also take lots of photos of snow (I live in Alaska), and snow isn't always white.  

So I'm thinking that a black border is the way to go if I want continuity across photographs (I personally like the thin white line, but be patient, as there is at least one example in the mix behind the cut that ditches it).

But I still want text, I think, and I don't want them looking all motivational!!  I'm looking for something original, classic, that will work on any of my photos so that I can have consistency.  

( Nine more behind the cut... )