^My Powerpoint assignment on “Myself” (how vein).

The professor wanted us to do our only powerpoint assignment on ourselves.  I really don’t like talking about myself. I am very ninja and like to keep things low key. So, I RAGED.. and was going to put all this false information, like I was born and raised in England, while my father was a renowned scientist and my mom owns a bakery (all lies).  I don’t like to lie though, so I put as much/little info as I could, then filled the space with pictures because who doesn’t like pictures?

I actually like how colorful it turned out haha.  I am a colorful person maybe? I like colors.

I went on the goldline yesterday, and Sundays should be cool off days.. but nooo.  LT was packed full of people and it was kind of annoying on my behalf because I don’t like being in spaces with a lot of people blocking your way.

I think I’d fit perfectly in New York in the sense of walking (I forgot what the new popular walk is?).. in which you go from location to location the fastest way possible without anything getting in your way.

Anywho,

^I got some things for Kevin’s care package. I would have gotten more but I wanted to gtfo asap. I’ll go back on non-busy days where tourists wont make me nervous.

Rihanna se ha convertido en una de las morenitas mas deseadas de la farandula, desde que aparecio moviendo ese apetecible traserito que tan bien sacude. Convirtiendose en la competencia directa de Beyonce, ha cosechado bastante exito en el mundo del pop, en el cual, pese al despecho de las rubias, las afroamericanas se estan posicionando en las nuevas mandamas de la industria. Pero basta de palabreria, vayamos a lo que a todos nos interesa. Y lo que mas nos interesa de la bella Rihanna es su fisico y por eso todos vamos a disfrutar las imagenes en las que la morenita se le ocurrio ponerse una ¿vestido? practicamente inexistente, del cual sus suculentas tetas color chocolate pareciann escaparsele en todo instante. Bien, muy bien mamacita, a todos nos gusto tu modelito y esperamos que se haga muy popular… la neta!!!

Strange right? I know, it doesn’t happy very often. But for English we had to write a paper based on what we’ve been doing the past few weeks, and there were four options. Guess what option I chose? 

Create a work of art (drawing, painting, sculpture, poem, song) in which you, contrast the American Dream of 2 characters (real or fictional). Then, write at least a 3 page explication of your masterpiece, incorporating the relevant texts as appropriate.

Well let’s take a lookie at the song I wrote, shall we?

“As the time flies by
Am I wasting my life
On the material
That I always buy?”
We all wonder why

We are losing time
On the wasted nights
Spent following you
Not following I
Not list’ning to our hearts’ cry

Sometimes being alone
Is the best way to go
Way out in solitude
Away from where you’ll always go
Away from what you always know

The voice inside your head
Tells you to go to bed
Not worry ‘bout tomorrow
“The present moment’s best
Life day by day” it said

Now on the other hand
There’s this girl who always ran
Away from her problems
And go on a spending plan
Buy her way through the land

She thought that this would get her far
So she bought herself a brand new car
But before long this crashed and burned
The dreams were but a burnt out scar
Too bad she didn’t follow her heart

So one final thing now
It’s another story how
One man came to be
How his dreams would allow
His happiness to sing out loud

He would do what he loved
With the talents from above
Without desire for riches
This would get him far and proud of
The work accomplished and done

So go on live your life
For what you know is right
Go on take the path
That is less traveled by
You’ll be amazed by the sight

Now here is where I need your help, I’m debating whether to keep it the way it is, or change it (well, yeah…). Here is the other version, which would probably be the more catchy version.

“As the time flies by
Am I wasting my life
On the material
That I always buy?”
We all wonder why

We are losing time
On the wasted nights
Spent following you
Not following I
Not list’ning to our hearts’ cry

The voice inside your head
Tells you to go to bed
Not worry ‘bout tomorrow
“The present moment’s best
Life day by day” it said

Sometimes being alone
Is the best way to go
Way out in solitude
Away from where you’ll always go
Away from what you always know

The voice inside your head
Tells you to go to bed
Not worry ‘bout tomorrow
“The present moment’s best
Life day by day” it said

So go on live your life
For what you know is right
Go on take the path
That is less traveled by
You’ll be amazed by the sight

Now that I think about it, I think I like the first one better, and maybe I’ll just repeat one section. Hmmm…

While the Husband makes a flying visit to the US, I am living alone and unsurprisingly am proving unsuited to doing so.  I thought it would take me at least a couple of days before I stopped eating proper meals and started talking to myself, but no; I have plunged headlong into full-on crazy lady mode.  I have even managed to get toothpaste in my hair.  Anyway, the only upside is that I can download all the horrible girlie music that I want.  And then shriek along to the new Leona Lewis song and attempt to reach her ungodly high notes from the latest single.  God only knows what my neighbours think.

Continuing my random and short-lived tradition of going to gigs on a Monday, this evening I have been to see Lisa Hannigan.  Another completely incongruous setting in the Royal Festival Hall.  I bet they don’t have too many gigs where there are fairy lights draped all over the instruments and a large glowing mushroom on top of the piano, for no apparent reason.  It was lovely and I highly recommend going to see her.  She is much more Irish in real life and her voice is beautiful.

The warm up guy was this bloke called Mundy and after he’d been playing for about half an hour he suddenly announced that he’d had a single on the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack and was going to play that.  The Romeo and Juliet soundtrack!  That was the background to my life as a fourteen year old girl.  I can’t have heard it in at least seven years.  (My car was broken into in 2002 and all my cds stolen, so I can be oddly precise about this.)

So now I’m going to download the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack and remember when it was ok – indeed, obligatory – to love Leonardo Di Caprio.  I had the poster on my wall and everything.

Random train of thought – we had to watch this film – and the 1960’s version – several times during SATs English.  For some reason, we were studying one of the really boring scenes between Paris and the Friar.  My friend Emma and I ended up learning it by heart.  “On Thursday, Sir?  The time is very short.”  Of all the Shakespeare there is, I get stuck with ridiculous lines in my head for all eternity about how my Father Capulet will have it so.

Post title, courtesy of Lisa Hannigan.

So I’m involved in this year’s HASTAC community, and I’ve done a little blogging over there. This is a repost of one of those–it got a great response, and I thought the conversation was worth bringing over here. Apologies to those who’ve already seen and / or responded to it.

“What Are We Doing, Anyway?” (11/13/09)

I’d like to revisit Amanda Visconti’s blog post about the must-have technical skills for a digital humanist.

Our department’s Literature.Culture.Media Center was fortunate enough to be visited by Dr. Patrik Svensson today. Of course, I had class and then a meeting during his talk, but I was able to make the reception afterward and hear him talk about digital humanities–and, in particular, the state of the field.

Or lack thereof. It turns out that “digital humanities” is, like most things humanities, a slippery thing to define. Do you remember when it was “humanities computing”? Do you remember even further back, when it was just a humanist who knew a little about Unix, HTML, or C+?

But to get to the point: what are we doing when we claim to be “digital humanists”? We are clearly not all doing the same thing, or (I suspect) even on the same page at least part of the time. So what would you say to someone from the “outside” if they asked you what you mean by digital humanities?

Part of my reason for asking is that, even though I’m in an English department, my dissertation has slid significantly into the social sciences by way of online virtual worlds. I keep my humanist focus, at least in my own mind, by steadfastly sticking to qualitative methodologies. But my digital credibility–well, I’m not so sure where I stand. I use a lot of technology, and I understand a lot about its technical underpinnings, but coding left me behind right about when amateur programmers switched from PASCAL to C. Yes indeed, that was a very long time ago.

Thus, I consider myself part of the DH universe mostly because my object of study (virtual worlds) is digital, and I approach the analysis of it from a humanities or humanist perspective.

But that’s just one approach. As implied by Amanda’s blog post, the DH universe also includes those people who do humanities with digital tools, often creating said tools themselves with their programming prowess. Is that enough? How digital do you have to be, or how humanities, to be considered DH? Is it even right to try to fit such disparate activities under a single categorical umbrella?

One pragmatic / cynical way to look at it is in terms of fads and funding. The money (what little there is) is in digital humanities, so we have an interest in being considered digital humanists. But when the money turns its attention elsewhere in a few years, what will we have left?

What are we doing? What are you doing, and why do you call it digital humanities?

Song of the Moment: "Do You Love Me," The Contours
End of Line

Sugardrop tomato that’s sweeter than a peach

A revolutionary new tomato that tastes as sweet as a peach hits the shelves tomorrow in a push to encourage children eat more healthily. The Sugardrop is the sweetest tomato ever created and is a natural hybrid of two different varieties of the fruit. And because of its unusual taste it is expected to appeal to people who find the normal versions too sharp. Sugardrop tomato from Tesco The breed is the result of an incredible two years of trials involving 3,000 different tomato types and was developed exclusively for supermarket giant Tesco. It was grown on the Costa Calida, in Murcia, south west Spain and by the chain’s grower Paloma. And because of the highly competitive nature of the food world, the creators are not even revealing which two varieties were crossed to create the fruit. They fear that because of the potential of the Sugardrop other rival growers will try and copy it to muscle in on to the £520million UK market. Tesco tomato buyer Ashleigh McWilliams said the gourmet bite had been planned from as early as 2007. She said: ‘A few years ago met up with our suppliers and asked them to find us a high quality tomato which would appeal to gourmets with a sweet tooth. ‘It was the start of major research that involved our growers contacting all the major seed houses in the world. ‘They wanted to find varieties that they could cross pollinate to find a tomato with higher than normal sugar levels. ‘The result is the Sugardrop, which is the sweetest tomato there has ever been and now this week UK shoppers will be the first to try it.’ The tomato is a herbaceous plant native to South America, which can grow up to ten feet in height.They were not grown in England until the 1590s and by the mid-1700s were widely eaten throughout the country. It now used as the staple ingredient in thousands of popular dishes including lasagne, spaghetti bolognaise and pizza. This latest breed is expected to create even more fans of the fruit as they attract to its sweet flavour. The Sugardrop growers have managed to achieve sugar levels – or the technical term of brix levels – of nine to 13 brix. A standard peach has a nine brix level so each of the new tomatoes are guaranteed to be at least as sweet as the fruit. They are being sold as part of Tesco’s Finest food range and will cost £1.50 for a 280g punnet. Ashleigh added: ‘As tomatoes are so healthy we’re hoping that the added sweetness of the Sugardrop will also appeal to children. ‘We think they might be a draw for people who might otherwise turn their noses up at them.’

Tornado leaves trail of destruction as wild weather continues to sweep across Britain

A tornado left a trail of devastation today after tearing through a suburb as extreme weather continued to sweep across Britain. The mini-cyclone destroyed a garage, damaged trees and ripped off roof tiles when it struck Littleover, in Derby, shortly before 2pm. Residents of the streets badly hit by the freak winds described a ‘dusty cloud’ that turned the sky black and sent wheelie bins flying through the air into cars.

Andy Woodward surveys the damage to his garage in Dennis Close, Littleover, following a mini tornado One told how it was like ‘driving into a washing machine’ at the height of the storm. Others described the sky turning black. Richard Bryan said: ‘I thought I’d driven into a washing machine – a wall of water and wind just hit the car with terrific force and almost stopped it. ‘I got the wipers on full pelt and, when the window cleared, all I could see were three dustbins. The wind picked them up and they actually flew into the air. One of them came straight towards the car but just passed over the top.’ Stelios Panteli, 43, was knocked over in the sudden storm. He said: ‘I was in the kitchen when I heard the front door blow open. I went to close it, but I was knocked backwards into the kitchen. ‘When I went outside I saw a wheelie bin had smashed the back window of a lady’s car. ‘It was all over in about 15 seconds, but it was 15 seconds of chaos. It looked like a dusty cloud swirling around at the front of the house and then it disappeared. It’s just very lucky that no one was hurt.’

A resident begins repairing roof damage caused by the mini-cyclone

Andy Woodward, 28, returned from a shopping trip to find the garage on the side of his mother’s house had been battered. He said: ‘The garage is hanging off at 45 degrees. I think it was because it was a bit more exposed, but you don’t expect winds to knock a garage down. When I got back there were fences down and roof tiles strewn about. It was absolute mayhem.’ The emergency services inspected nearby buildings to check they were safe. Bryon Chalcraft, from the Met Office, said more tornadoes could hit the country over the next three days. He said: ‘Heavy showers, strong winds and thunder storms were all present in the Derbyshire area. They could well have combined to create the right conditions for a tornado. ‘When strong up-draughts meet down-draughts, circulations of air can form and when they drop to ground level they can form a tornado. ‘When you get a strong cold front at this time of year, as we have moving across the country from the east, there is always a small chance of a tornado developing.’

Teacher Attacked By 4 Year Old…..Get A Grip !!!…Hardly An Attack !!!

Boy, 4, becomes one of the youngest pupils in Britain to be  expelled from school

A boy aged four has become one of the youngest children in Britain to be expelled from school. He was thrown out of his primary just weeks after starting for constantly disrupting classes and attacking teachers. In one incident the youngster is said to have lashed out at a teacher after he was dragged away from light switches he was repeatedly flicking on and off. And a second teacher claims the boy, who cannot be named, kicked her after he got into an argument with another pupil over a jigsaw.

Up to a dozen five-year-olds have been given their marching orders from schools across the UK but this youngster is one of the first four-year-olds to be expelled. Under education guidelines children who behave badly can be sent home from school by the headteacher for a fixed period or permanently. The boy, who only started school in September, was kicked out after what teachers described as a catalogue of problems. His parents refused to agree to a special action plan to deal with his behaviour and he was expelled a few days later. But his family say he is a lively and lovable little boy who has never caused any problems before starting school. His mother said she was ’shocked’ when she was called out of work to  collect her son from the school. She said: ‘They are making him out to be a thug and I think they are treating him far too old. ‘They are saying he won’t listen, is disruptive and is just doing what he wants but he’s still only four and getting used to school and they just don’t know how to be with him.’

The mother, a caterer, said: ‘There is absolutely nothing wrong with [my son] and he knows the difference between right and wrong,. ‘At home he is quiet and if he does get a bit boisterous then he gets told off and told to behave himself. ‘He was one of the youngest in the class and it is down to the teachers to help him settle and I don’t think that has been done. ‘They are saying he’s very violent and all the other kids are scared of him. I’ve never heard such nonsense.’ The mother said she and her husband are worried their son will now find it very difficult to settle in a new school. She said: ‘They said he is being disruptive and he is very immature, but he is only four year old for goodness sake.’ The child was sent home on four separate occasions by the headteacher at the Lancashire primary school before finally being expelled a week ago. The headteacher said: ‘It is only on very rare occasions that a school would consider  permanently excluding a child as young as four. ‘At such a young age, behaviour of the kind that could lead to exclusion needs to be investigated and dealt with quickly by the appropriate specialists. ‘In order to do this, we do, of course, need the full co-operation of the family so that we can put the  right support in place. ‘Our aim is not to punish but to carry out an assessment and successfully reintegrate the child into mainstream school as  quickly as possible.’ She added: ‘When children are excluded permanently, if parents disagree with the decision, the usual course is for them to appeal to the school governors and then to an independent panel. Both have the power to overturn the decision.’ A spokesman for  the National Association of Headteachers said: ‘Previous fixed term exclusions for a four-year-old is highly unusual but they demonstrate how seriousness of the problems with this child.’ The youngest pupil to be expelled from a British school was a three-year-old girl who was thrown out of school for her violent behaviour. The unnamed little girl was sent home from a reception class for assaulting a fellow student at a primary school in Caerphilly in Wales last year.

Todays Earworms

What The Crocodile hat ???????

Onions are obviously very popular, Looking at what people searched Google for when they came across my blog today…Katie Price…Nope….Jedward…Nope….Joe Bugner…Nearly……ONIONS…..21 visits from people Googling Onions….What the hell ????

Pace University hosts online chats about every six months, and last Thursday, there was one concerning the Publishing degree they offer.  It was supposed to be from 6:00 to 7:30.  I got out of class at 5:15 thinking I had nothing but time.  Logging onto the site, I realized that the chat had already started.  Confused at their early start, I nonetheless jumped in.  It was only about forty-five minutes later that I realized that there is a time zone difference between Minnesota and New York.  Sigh.  I’m so on top of things.

The chat was fairly informative, plus I felt super high-tech chatting away with uber worldly New Yorkers.  In the chat room was myself, 2 admissions employees, a professor from the department and the director of the department.

I learned some semi-interesting facts.  For one, the Publishing M.S. degree at Pace is celebrating its 25 anniversary.  I didn’t particularly care, but the Pace staff made sure to emphasize the point.

All applications are looked at holistically.  There’s no writing sample unlike the applications for other universities, so my $70 fee, resume, personal statement, two letters of recommendation, undergraduate transcripts and the GRE score need to be awesome.  Admissions said they were looking for about a 3.0 GPA or higher and about a 1000 on the GRE minimum.  That reminded me that I can’t remember my GRE score exactly, which is just perfect.

At one point, I asked, “what’s the difference between pace’s publishing ms and the editing and writing or publishing and writing degrees of other universities?”  I got several responses. Admissions said, “The program prepares stresses publishing, not writing and trains one to work as middle management and execs in the industry. Grads who are successful in the industry are now coming back and teaching courses,” while the director of the program said, “The Publishing degree stresses publishing. All aspects of the industry. It includes marketing, book distribution, magazine circulation, academic publishing and editing. It is not an English degree.”

I was excited when another potential incoming student asked if the degree was right for them if they wanted to be an editor.  I listened up, especially as the woman took the question right off of my own list.  One professor told her: “This program prepares you to be an editor but it also prepares you in ALL aspects of publishing so that you can move in other areas of publishing if you desire. This program gives one great mobility.  You can more from books, magazines, newspapers and the new technologies and from editing to marketing to production etc. You are not locked in to one area.”

This is the link to their scholarship page.  Departmental scholarships have to be applied for. Only the graduate scholarship is given at the time of acceptance.  A GRE of 1100 is the minimum for the graduate scholarship.  There is not a “first-come-first-served” basis.  There are only 2 internships available.

There was a lot of info about their online publishing program.  Apparently Pace is the only university to offer such a thing (for good reason, I personally feel).

Admissions mentioned that Pace operates under rolling admission: “we get you a decision within 3 to 4 weeks of receiving your complete application.  That decision includes your admission scholarship.”

And then everything went a little south.  2 very promising students popped up, one from Bangladesh, both ridiculously experienced and smart. The transcript of the whole chat is in my pages.

Recently, I have checked on tools.pingdom.com and looked for TBSBungalow.wordpress.com and they said our loading time was an amazing 1.4 seconds! 1 second faster that YouTube and way faster than CBGFilms.com!

That was JUST to let you know!!

Kieran

Are you ugly? A liar like me?
A user, a lost soul? Someone you don’t know
Money it’s no cure A Sickness so pure
Are you like me? Are you ugly?

We are dirt, we are alone You know we’re far from sober!
We are fake, we are afraid You know it’s far from over
We are dirt we are alone You know we’re far from sober!
Look closer, are you like me? Are you ugly?

I’m not very happy.

Is it bad that, lately, my annoyance with a lot of my “friends” is steadily increasing?

I don’t know. These are the people that I’ve gone to school with forever, but I feel kind of…distant. Excluded. Out of the loop. I am out of the loop. They all have their little inside jokes and secrets that they don’t tell me. They don’t invite me to hang out with them.

And I don’t make friends well. I’m kind of shy and quiet, I guess. And terribly uninteresting.

I’m tired of being the butt of all the jokes. I’m tired of being the overly-flawed one. I’m tired of being the unattractive one with bad hair.

Meh. Apparently, I complain about everything. Which I do. But I’m not the only guilty one.

I need new clothes. I need to learn how to do hair and makeup.

It’s pointless anyway, I suppose.

Turn a blind eye Why do I deny?
Medicate me So I die Happy
A strain of cancer Chokes the answers
Are you like me? A liar like me?

Are you Ugly?

–The Exies

I had an interesting conversation the other day.

I was talking to a colleague about this, that and the other and happened to mention that I was a bit bored now that I only have one job. Uhm, well… one job and a freelance thing and two other projects. The guy looks at me. And looks at me.

-You should take a course in how to be normal, he says.
-The what with the who now? I answer intelligently.
-Yeah. You should be sent to normal school.

He pauses. Considers.

-It would be the only course you ever failed, he says and chuckles at his own joke, being sort of lame like that.
-Probably, I concede. “I’m fucked-up in about nine different ways.”

All true too.

I can’t really explain the many ways in which this is funny without going into how many people I know who have at some point told me how weird I am – while I on the other hand of course think I’m perfectly normal and sane and with all the shit I know about people (I have that kind of face, you know? people tell me shit) think that they’re all bonkers.

It’s really a sliding scale. It is. Normal … well, now, that’s one of those concepts that guys like Foucault get off on picking apart. It’s just what the general consensus has decided for the moment should be taken as the normative state. So I don’t really have a lot of confidence in the general principle behind the concept.

Here’s what you need to keep at the front of your frontal lobe – normal only means “normal to me”, as in “what I find normative due to societal consensus”.

Uhm. I guess pleading my case with the aid of French post-structuralists doesn’t really help, does it?

Anyway – Normal School. We probably all took that course.

Some of us just sat at the back and doodled in our notebooks, is all.

ROL

Jennifer had just finished swallowing her dinner and while I watched her digest the little furry ball that once had been a sweet white mouse, I started thinking of this vaccine they wanted us all to take. Every even tiniest cell of my body felt disgust when I even tried to think of taking it. I couldn’t tell why, but what they were trying to give us sounded oh so very fishy to me and for nothing in the world I would have taken it, but its consistence puzzled me. Beside it being untested and developed incredibly quickly, the ingredients weren’t the healthiest ones. And yet. One of them was a strong disinfectant also used in treatments of deadly venoms. That’s about when I turned my computer, an old mac I’d learned to love, but with the slowest connection ever, on. It took ages to load and in the meantime I went to look at my physics homework. To be honest, I really hate physics. Well, not hate. People use the word hate far too quickly these days. But in this moment, with a religion essay and a pile of work in front of me I’d rather be doing do some physics exercises and pretend I’d done really hard work for the whole evening when in truth I’d only solved two problems. In my opinion, physicians are looking for too much power, as knowledge means power and trying to know everything is too much power to not corrupt someone. I’m more into philosophy and languages, something I can rely on since I grew up bilingual – french and german. What I looked up when my computer finally turned its light on was “deadly poison”. I bumped into a list of the nine most deadly venoms on the planet and even though that wasn’t what I was really trying to find, some macabre voice in my head urged me to read on as soon as I’d gotten to the point of “excruciating pain”. I imagined myself writing novels as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and bumped into the well known story of that journalist that was put silent by some secret police in 1978. That’s when the internet passed out and my mother stalked up behind me to get a sneak peak on what I was doing. My mother’s a ninja, really. She can stealth around the house and there’s no way you know she’s there, watching you, just so. I’d like to say that she asked me, “What’s that, darling?” but all she said was “That’s no physics.” I jumped. Luckily in that moment the phone rang and since nobody in this house is able to pick up the phone, I’m the very original phone lady with as many rights as a secretary in the early twenties. My friend Jessica always asks me why it’s always me who picks up the phone. She’s only known me for two months – exchange student from the US. It’s often hard to talk to her, especially lately. Reasons why Jessica annoys me so much: – She supports the war in Iraq because her boyfriend’s in the war and she feels like people offend him when they say they’re against war. – She’s always sorry. “How are you?” – “I’m okay. Bit tired.” – “Oh, I’m sorry.” Like HUH? What should she be sorry about? Did she do anything to be sorry? I’ll give her something to be sorry about! – She always says I’m “adorable”. You know, I’m the kind of leader-person. I don’t order people around, ever, but when I say something then people usually do it. I’m not likely to be challenged. Too strong personality, some say. And it’s a good thing, because you see, I’m small, a real midget – even for a girl. 5′3″. You got to get some respect somewhere, you know? And it’s hard to feel taken seriously when people go around tell you, “Awwww you’re so adooooorable!” However, on the phone wasn’t Jessica, but Eli. And Eli was crying on the phone. Almost hysterically, and all I could say was, “No, honey, don’t cry, shh, shh!” and maybe eventually I got her to stop crying and tell me what was wrong. What she first said that was wrong: I don’t know!!!!!!!! What she later told me that was wrong: – School. Teen girls at school are terrible. One of them told her that “if you won’t change you’ll never make friends in life, you know?” – note that I am taking a very snobby voice when acting that stupid little bitch. Making my friend feel bad, what a whore. School’s something that’s really freaky and I don’t know if everybody thinks the way I do while going through it or if it’s just me, but something is terribly wrong with the current school system in Switzerland. More to that later.

Love dat logo.

The Adobe Integrated Runtime: it’s making my Computing project so simple. I needed a desktop solution – but I don’t know VB6/ C++/ Java etc. well enough. What I do know is HTML/ CSS. And a little bit of JavaScript. So hey – why not use AIR? It lets me build my app as if it were a website, which is really quite simple in this case, and then package it up

as a .air file and install for desktop use.

Better yet – Adobe are working on AIR 2, which includes support for both CSS3 and HTML5. So, that’s my design problems out of the way. All I have to do now is work on a way of calculating the maximum flow in a network using JavaScript…

In recognition that California’s crisis is Colorado’s crisis, or more accurately that the same crises and conditions underlie all of our embattled existences; that the same forces of privatization, policing, and emptiness drive the struggle on the West Coast and the No Coast; that we have much to do and much to learn, and we may learn it within classrooms, but only if we transform them into spaces of attack on systems of education…

This is how we learn, this is how we fight.

…til it breaks brings you: California, Occupied.

This past week, a wave of student occupations and unrest surged through the University of California system as the Board of Regents were approving a 32% across-the-board tuition increase.  Santa Cruz, Berkley, LA, Davis, and Fresno all saw occupations!

The New School Reoccupied has photos and video from the occupations, solidarity statements, and communiques.  Occupy California has detailed updates on how the occupations unfolded and spread and faced repression from without and sabotage from within.  And this is our emergency brings the bold words.  Finally, support Doug Gilbert and all the 100+ arrested.

Read and learn.  Get ready to fight and learn much more.

Coming soon to an institution of higher education near you…

Since Leia’s Farmor and Farfar were on their way here this past weekend, we decided to invite them to an early Thanksgiving dinner at our house on Saturday.  Family friend Aina also joined us and we had a nice day!  It was nice to have company and enjoy the holiday with others, even if it isn’t a Swedish holiday. And even though we weren’t in the US, the turkey tasted just the same, as well as the stuffing and even the pumpkin pies. What a looong day of baking and cooking though. It is very tiring. :/ Two pumpkin pies, baking at least 1 hour each and then the turkey breasts took a bit over 2 hours.. and that is just the start of a Thanksgiving dinner.. :/ ))

Leia loves her puzzles, and she spends a lot of time doing them. And she is really, really good at them too. It is fun watching her do them. She likes to test us, too. She will put a piece in a spot and look at me and she’ll smile and say “neejj” and take it and put it in the right spot. She is testing me to see if I will say that it is okay.

Right now I am “watching” Gladiator. It is such a fantastic movie. I had to study it and write a paper about it for my Mythology class for university. Quite possibly one the best classes I had.

I am trying to finish up a book I am reading for my Swedish class, Den vedervärdige mannen från Säffle (The “horrible” man from Säffle). I have to read it and write a big paper about it, about the language differences from the time it was written and now…… *joy* And I have so much other stuff to do as well. I have the National test coming up and I have a test that I missed in the beginning of the month that I need to take. And I have to come up with a small thesis about literature and write a big paper about it…. Yeah.. really sounds like a 100 point class (400 points is full time). There was really no choice but to continue after the New Year. All the work I have to do with the class and that I have NO motivation at all. I haven’t learned anything new; I know all the Swedish that I am going to know – at least from taking Swedish classes. I know all the grammar, it is just to learn new vocab, which I can’t do in a Swedish class, as strange as that might sound.

But last week I finished my English class. I turned in my last 4 papers (out of 12 total). Very happy to have that overwith! And I will be having a “fika” with my teacher this week, so I am very much looking forward to that!

Not that much going on.. Fredrik didn’t work today or tomorrow. But this is his last work week of being on 50% time. Next week Leia will start daycare Mon-Thursday, and Fredrik will be home on Fridays (80% time). And then in January, he goes back to 100% time, and it will just be Leia and I on Fridays. We are going to miss Pappa like crazy. He will have about 3 weeks off for Christmas, so at least we get to have all that time with him before he has to start working properly again.

I am anxiously awaiting my new glasses. If we don’t get a call by tomorrow, then we can call them and ask about them. I really need them, everything is becoming blurry and it is getting difficult to read any text.

Not that much else going on. :/ We went and bought two huge containers today to store more of Leia’s clothes that she is quickly outgrowing. We have about 3 already. I’m hoping to get to go through her clothes and put away things she has outgrown. We are going to try to sell her crib and changing table so that we can get her a bigger bed. Fredrik went to the dump today with lots of odd things. Tomorrow I will finish up the book if I don’t get to tonight, and then MAKE myself write the entire paper tomorrow. I am *extremely* nervous about the National test.. :/ They can be pretty intense. :/ But if I pass this class then I will be allowed to apply at Swedish universities and apply for any program that they offer. (If I wish to do so.) Obviously, passing this class means that my Swedish is good enough for university level.

Blah blah blah.. I need to read some more! I almost know who the murderer is!

Do not smoke.

I don’t care what they say; smoking does look cool. Too bad its disgusting.

You know those scene people with the diamonds and the homies?
I’m not one of ‘em. I’m straight up G.

School was so boring. This is me, in class. I look so gross. Oh well, I was tired and it was the end of the day. English class…

I can’t wait till Wednesday afternoon. WHY?! Because thats when Thanksgiving break starts, of course.

OK, I think I’ve found the answer to why I’m acting so weird and can’t think straight: I miss Kori.

Yeah. Kori.

Aka the sweetest person ever born. Ever.

I love her and I miss her and I cant talk to her for like another hour or two

Who knows what she’s doing.

She’s fucking a man, isnt she?

Oh my God, I’m gonna kill her.

How dare she!

How dare I make such accusations.

She would never.

-knocks on wood-

nEW fAVORITE sONG- jUST BY rADIOHEAD.

Clock reads 5.51am. I am the unearthly (quote Bobo) girl.

Despite such a weird hour, I am refreshingly awake and hungry. Thus, I am eating my regular supper, a bowl of koko krunch and milk. To think that 10 years ago, it was my regular breakfast.

Today is worth an entry because I have finally started mugging. I actually managed to write notes for 4+ consecutive hours. WOW! The diligence, I suspect, is largely due to my realisation that I know nuts when reading the lecture notes. Disorganization just clouded my mind.

Firstly, I had to admit I had not been very attentive in class. Secondly, other than during class, I have never read my lecture notes prior to this. Thirdly, I only read my textbook once, which is more of scanning for important stuff to highlight than understanding and absorbing.

However, the trigger is probably really because I cannot predict the exam questions! Usually, I will just instinctively pick out exam questions when I study. It’s my habit or instinctive behaviour since secondary school (I don’t remember doing that in primary school, besides I highly doubt there is anything worth spotting in primary school, at least during my days) and it works perfectly. This is no short-cut because for it to work, there has to be a foundation – adequate understanding of the materials, which is clearly missing this time round.

Anyway, it is good, because it grows the seed of urgency in me. Furthermore, like my helpful coursemate said, there is still a week! So all’s fine

Now, the real reason for this entry is because I received a sweet surprise in the mail!

It’s a postcard from Diana! She is my other intern friend, like Prof! But unlike Prof’s, this postcard is totally a surprise because she did not say anything about it and did not ask me for my address. Either the mailing label on the parcel I sent to her has my address or she has gotten it from Prof, I still have no idea. Anyway, it’s super sweet

I am very inspired to start mailing Christmas cards this year again! People please email me your address! LOL. This sounds very insincere. But the problem with not making friends write in autograph books, like in primary and secondary schools, is that is very hard to mail surprises to your friends. Because if I ask your for your address, it is like so obvious lah! Still, hopefully, I will get to collecting addresses after my exams and before I fly to Japan. This is so exciting!

P.S. There is no new episode of Gossip Girl today! I shall watch 富贵门 to sleep instead.

I tell ya, it’s hard to write when teachers are always giving you homework to do!

I’m always working, working, working, doing boring analytical thinking and writing.

This is right before Thanksgiving too!

So when I literally have five minutes to myself, I post or update something somewhere.

Thanks so much for reading!
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Zoals elk jaar werden de grootouders van de kleuters op school uitgenodigd voor het grootouderfeest.  De kleuters hadden het sprookje van Sneeuwwitje ingeoefend.  In kleine groepjes moesten ze een stuk toneel opvoeren.  Warre had de rol van poetser gekregen.  Samen met enkele klasgenootjes moest hij ervoor zorgen dat het kasteel van de koningin helemaal proper was.  Lomme en Leon waren dwergen.  Wat hun rol precies was, is me nooit helemaal duidelijk geweest.

Ik had opa en oma met mijn Nikon op pad gestuurd maar blijkbaar was ik vergeten vermelden dat er kon gezoomd worden door aan de lens te draaien.

Wat vooraf ging
Om het grootouderfeest nog aangenamer te maken, werden de ouders van de kleuters uitgenodigd om een taart te bakken.  Aan taart ging ik mij sowieso niet wagen maar ik was wel bereid om chocomousse te maken. Het was al laat toen ik kon beginnen (rond 22u of zo) en na het breken van mijn eerste drie eieren was ik er niet in geslaagd om het eiwit van de dooier te scheiden.  Terwijl de chocolade eigenlijk al gesmolten was, moest ik nog vlug naar mijn ouders rijden (gelukkig wonen die niet zo ver) om daar tot de conclusie te komen dat ik maar één extra ei kon bemachtigen.  Het prutsen duurde voor tot ongeveer 23u15 maar uiteindelijk ben ik er toch nog in geslaagd om 12 porties lekkere chocomousse af te leveren.  Allemaal voor het grootouderfeest… Of niet?  Vrijdag stond in Lommes schrift te lezen dat ik bedankt was voor heerlijke chocomousse.  Zouden ze durven… die juffen?