hansel and gretel: The abridged edition

I realize it's been a long time since I've posted. I've gotten many great ideas, but too many time constraints to achieve them.

I rewrote the story of hansel and gretel for my Japanese class. The pictures are AWFUL but i was told they are in fact rather cute.

I absolutely LOVE the font I found. It's an adorable Japanese font, and it's free! What luck! It's the first font on this website.

And here is my story, which I'm sure any 5 year old in Japan could trump:

The Fair

For my birthday Berge and I decided to go to the county fair for some old fashioned cheesy romance.

This was one of the better things happening around my birthday, the other being surprise oral surgery.

The first thing we saw going in was this optimus truck:


And there was much rejoicing.

Berge, being the gentleman he is won me a stuffed animal. More specifically a tiny snake that got him heckled at by other booths. He later won me a plastic flute and soon regretted that. Luckilly for him the snake is very adorable.

Lastly we went on the Ferris wheel where the view was stunning, but I was petrified and clinging to the center pole for dear life the entire way. I did pause long enough to get a couple of pictures, and for Berge to get his revenge for me picking on his reluctance to go on the dangerous (FUN) rides.

Also, there is a picture of me making a ridiculously stupid face on a rollercoaster "action shot" that will never make it's way to the internet if I have anything to do with it. EVER EVER EVER.

The Farm

Berge and I went to New York state around the end of August: A tradition for me, another social occasion to worry about for him. Meeting my extended family? *gasp*. Anyway, everyone seemed to like him well enough, despite his concerns.


I was really excited to meet the new alpacas that my grandmother had adopted.
They were very timid. And still recently sheared. My mother has their fleeces and is going to spin them.



More excitingly I was finally up there when THERE WERE PIGLETS!This one was named mouse. He puts a new meaning to runt and will likely be bottle fed. But he was so cute.
So were all the other babies. Awwwwww.

Japanese Drama: 花より男子 (hana yori dango)

In efforts to not only boost my casual Japanese, but to prevent myself from falling into a slump over the summer I started looking into Japanese dramas. (A bit more realistic language than say, anime)

The first series I tried out is 花より男子 (or, boys over flowers - a play on words from the phrase "food over flowers"). I was hooked instantly (as Berge can attest to,he was much less interested than I was).

First off, yes, it's a drama. There's a moderate amount of action, but mostly it's about a gripping storyline and an unending assortment of complicated love circles and awkward antagonists.

Our hero, Makino, struggles through a pretentious private high school full of arrogant rich kids. Meanwhile her and her family are in poverty. And if this was not enough, she weaves in and out of love with her greatest enemy and her best male friend.

I had a very easy time finding a fan-subbed copy of the first season, but I had a lot of difficulty getting working subs for the second season. I wrestled with vlc for a while, and finally got some of them to work, though the translations seemed to vary a bit.

Reassuringly enough, I understood at least a lot of the basic conversations, and this helped me a lot with casual form, which is not enforced as much as masu form in my Japanese classes.

Be ready to see more drama posts from me!

Pixie Cut

So, Berge and I have been very busy - what with the settling in and all. (And me losing my hard drive -muttermutterpissmoan-) But I think we're both ready to start blogging again. At least I am.


I recently tried to cut my own hair. Why on earth would I do that? Well, last time I went to the hair dresser they made me look like a prepubescent boy. I've been cutting it myself ever since.

I finally worked up the nerve to go short again. Here's what happened:

What I wanted:

What I got:

Priorities

I'm in a laundry mat. I'm not as starved for clean clothes as I am for internet. Berge and I recently moved into a new apartment (which we're in love with) but we have yet to set up all the necessary utilities. Actually we have... if you don't consider internet "necessary".

Moving was a huge hassle, which I'll get into at a later time, when I've uploaded my camera and drawn a few diagrams.

The new place has had a few mishaps. The last tenants took the shower rings with them, leaving just the bar, and my new curtain. We were all filthy for a couple days before I finally found some. Unpacking has also proved interesting in that we have a dip in our floor. Not just a casual incline.. no, it could double as a half-pipe. We should rent the room out as a skatepark. (pictures to come). The fridge smelled like something died in it and then got covered with mildew. I nearly threw-up the first time I tried to eliminate the odor. Berge cleaned it out last night with a frightening amount of bleach. He's so brave, bless him. Lastly, our roommates are painting their room - and so have all of their things are in the kitchen... and they have a lot of things.

All that aside though, everything about the place is amazing. The location, the space, everything. We're both getting more and more excited as we unpack.

First Plush: A Handsewn Mudkip

I had a recent and random urge to make a stuffed animal. I gave it to my mother, mangofeet, for mother's day. I tried to make a mudkip, but a lot of things went wrong here. I've never done this before, so I was really making it up as I went, roughly basing it on a pattern I found here. Keyword here is roughly.


I also tried my best to make a wide ball for the head, but found it challenging to work in three dimensions. So, after all, though recognizable as a mudkip... he developed his own character. A little sinister at first, but still colorful and happy.


One of my main issues is the how rough the hand-sewing makes the edges. I have the feeling that that's what makes him a little creepy. That and the eyes. I could use a machine, it would be faster, and I might once I get an actual pattern done (at which point I'll make a tutorial). But as it is, with how much taking apart, cutting, adjusting there was, it was nice to be able to easily undo my stitches. Also, I could watch movies and be generally more social while hand-sewing.










For reference and any of those unaware, this happy fellow is a mudkip.

Problem Solving

My roommate and I found ourselves in a predicament recently. That is, that I wanted to eat something from a can, and we had no can-opener. Here's the resultant outcome:



Of course, during the moment we felt rather proud of ourselves because it was working (for lesser values of working) another roommate heard all the noise and came in. She looked at us for a moment and told us she had a can-opener.

Metroid: Hidden Worlds

Here we find a map unlike any in the programmed levels. There is a one-sided door
hovering on the neighbor map. Below Samus is acid that eventually turns
Samus back up through the ceiling to fall again.

We all remember Metroid, back in the good ol' days of the NES. That spirit-crushing game with tough platforms to jump and even tougher enemies to deal with. Well, in case that wasn't enough, there is a whole other world to explore by exploiting a wall-climbing glitch. With this glitch, the hidden worlds, with all their glitches, one-ways, and infinite bees, is revealed.

The coolest part about these worlds, which is also ironically what caused a sudden disinterest in the whole thing, is that they are not programmed into the game. They are not little easter eggs left for only the elite to find (much to their dismay). They are actually blank sections of map. Each room is 0 bytes on the game cartridge. The room itself is only generated when Samus enters it, at which time the room assembles itself based on surrounding map data. Only about half of the grid for the map is actually programmed, leaving almost an entire game left to explore. (Approximately 500 rooms to be considered "hidden worlds").

When I was younger I experimented a lot with the glitch, but found that all in all it was rather tedious to do on the NES. There was a lot of getting stuck in walls and having to re-enter passwords and backtrack. I gave up on it after a while and went back to enjoying the game for what it was.

Which brings me to recently: experimenting with the rom. Save states and screen-capturing are made of pure awesome. When you find a room like this one to the right and you're sick of killing off an infinite number of bees and have worn out the entertainment potential of running off the right and appearing on the left, you can just open the last save state right before you ascended up the wall.

My goal is to eventually map out the entirety of the hidden worlds. It's going to be a slow process and an ongoing project. And although I would not be the first to do or explain it, I would be the first to include pictures/screenshots rather than cold explanations. Because lets be honest here, describing an 8-bit world in text can't be anything but dull.

First Post!!1!1

First post! There, got that out of the way. Got the blog up. The name is an anagram of our names, and as Berge put it: "I like the implication that ours is one of many tabs open... and that it is geekier."

There will be more to come, mostly random geekiness from the both of us... that and better icons. Sketching is not my strong point.