all things me

After complaining about not updating my other sites, I finally found something new to add to TGWLSK: 3 new books I bought today; Green Mile, IT, and Firestarter. I’m going back tomorrow with a list of books I have, because I don’t have Desperation yet, for instance, and I saw it there (I’m desperate to get it, har har).

It was quite a lucky find today because Firestarter is a paiiin to find in the libraries (read: it doesn’t exist) and IT’s been quite difficult too. Now I have them! And I only have to wrap them in book plastic and finish the Cook I’m reading and I get to read them too!

I also placed an order on the Bachman Books.

Being a best-seller I felt dubious about this book (I did wish for it, however). Best-sellers all seem to be mushy romantic novels for stereotypical middle-aged women (I added the word stereotypical to exclude all potential readers, just in case, because no living person is a stereotype ). Nowadays best-sellers aren’t so bad really — Grisham-type of books which are good, and detective/suspense novels which I don’t care for.

Probably the most noteworthy feature of this book, apart from the over-used word ‘immaterial’, are the numerous riddles that guide the protagonists on their adventure. More often than not I found myself thinking “why don’t you get it already?!” Have I read too many Enid Blytons when I was a kid? (I didn’t read a single Nancy Drew, mind you. They are too girly.) Nevertheless, I love a book that shows the author has gone to a lot of trouble to give their book some extra seasoning, or jooshing

The name, Da Vinci Code, is in my opinion a bit misleading. I was under the impression that the story would include a text found below a painting by Da Vinci (Mona Lisa for instance). But maybe the name refers to the certain way to code texts. Which way? You’re going to have to read the book or familiarize yourself with Da Vinci.

Wouldn’t it be great if everything in the book, the historical “facts” and truths about religion were true? I don’t know if they are or aren’t, but I read somewhere about a site that disects all the facts presented in the book and sets them straight. I didn’t read the site back then, obviously, because I hadn’t read the book yet, and now I can’t remember where I saw the link. I don’t really like this kind of uncertainty. Facts should be facts and fiction fiction (ah, the possibilities of ellipsis). That is my opinion, that is. I want to know if it’s safe to blurt out my “book-knowledge” as smart comments if opportunities arise. And most likely, this kind of knowledge — sponged out from recreational reading — is going to stick in my head better than the one acquired while achooing through history books.

I do recommend Da Vinci Code to anyone and everyone. It’s very catchy and interesting. If you like feeling more intelligent than an educated symbologist and an experienced cryptographer you should definitely read this book.

Read: 29.12.2004 — Rating: * * * * *

Author’s website

On Tuesday at the study group meeting of Introduction to Application Design I made “a joke” with ’42’ in it. And people understood it. That was surreal.

[42 refers to Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I’m not going to explain it further, that’d spoil everything.]

I just love it how Stephen King sometimes refers to himself in his work (my emphasis)

Frank’s niece, Bobbi Anderson, lived on the Garrick place now — not that she farmed, of course; she wrote books. (…) Also, she wrote good old western stories that you could really sink your teeth into, not all full of make-believe monsters and a bunch of dirty words, like the books that fellow who lived up Bangor way wrote. Goddam good westerns, people said.
— The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

King also uses a lot of brackets and short paragrahps

2

(…)
‘Relax,’ Newt said, and Dick nodded. ‘No one is going to connect the disappearance of a four-year-old boy who prob’ly just wandered off into the woods or got picked up and driven away by a sex pervert with the disappearance of two big strong State Bears. Right, Dick?’
   ‘As rain.’

3

Wrong.

4

(…)
— The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

I’ve reserved Stephen King’s “Tommyknockers” at the library (there’s only one copy in the capital city area libraries) and the person who has it hasn’t returned it yet even though the due date was on the 18th. I don’t want to reserve any other book in case Tommyknockers arrives soon. (IT is available; Firestarter is nowhere to be found — in English that is; of Insomnia there’s one copy available, and the rest I’ve read.)

I don’t know what to read now. I’ve almost read Salem’s Lot and with luck (i.e. noisy people on the bus which hardly is luck as such) it’ll last till I get home from work on Monday. But what next? I can’t carry DTVII with me cause the cover might get scratched

Maybe I should think about broadening my horizon… Maybe some other author in the horror section might be able catch my attention. Koontz? Straub? J.K. Rowling?
Broadening outside horror?! Whoa, I’m not ready for *that* big a cultural shock!

This morning in the bus a girl sat next to me and after a while she picked up a powder compact from her bag, pawed all over her face for quite a while, and put the powder back in her bag. After a while, she picked up the powder from her bag, pawed all over her face again, and put the powder back in her bag. After a while, she picked up the powder, pawed all over, and put the powder back. (At this point I was biting my lip so I wouldn’t laugh.) Then she went on putting the rest of the make-up. Good thing she didn’t put any more powder (she did apply blush though, had me fooled for a second) cause I may have injured my lip badly…

I bought a new dictionary today: The Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang by Jonathon Green. Am I an Obsessive-complusive dictionary collector?

The redesign of all things me is finally done! Now I’m just waiting for the domain to start working to the right direction. (aaagh, 1 week free trial period and the domain won’t be registered before I pay the bill — but they won’t send me the bill!!)

So, I’ve changed from green/purple to purple (or lilac or violet — I don’t know!). I was planning to have my “colour depth of three” (black, white, purple) on the site but black was so bright!! So I made it a little “foggier” (#444444). I’ve used Harrington font in the pictures. I don’t know where that splash came from; I was looking for a nice bullet (which, in the end, I didn’t use) and then I decided to add it in front of the post titles to separate them more clearly when there’re several posts in one day.

The layout is flexible. That means the text is as wide as it can be (minus the menu). I used to have it at max 760 pixels which I — on a 1024×768 screen — didn’t like but I had to think about you little people. I mean, people with little screens — whoops!

Now that I have a proper domain I’ve enabled ping/trackbacks (not yet on all posts cause I have to click through them all dammit). I said bye-bye to category pictures. They just didn’t fit anywhere. Hmm… I *could* put them on a post’s individual page.

On to another topic. I finished reading Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah on September 27. At 4:40 am. Ssshhh, don’t tell anyone! Now I’m waiting for DTVII to arrive in the bookstores. It was published on 21st and when I went to ask when I could expect it to be on the shelves they said “in two weeks”, so I’ll probably check it this week (as I have to drag myself to the center on Friday — 2 months of work starts, again) and then, naturally, next week.

Now I’ll add the category image thingy…

I also changed from Pagination to "vBulletin Style page navigation".

Yesterday night I was glued to the screen reading a blog (Myrskymurmeli) that had a convenient page navigation (hmm… actually I think it’s the default WP navigation which I’d removed to enable ScriptyGoddess’s Pagination… anyway) and I read the whole blog to the very first entry… thank gawd there wasn’t a lot more entries — I would’ve been stuck to the screen till the wee hours.

I’m starting work tomorrow… I’ll be working for 3 months’ worth and doing as-long-as-I-can/want-days until I’ve filled the required hours. I’ll be working till the end of spring I bet

… must be funny in a rich man’s world. (ABBA)

I went shopping today. Apparently the 2-hour gap between my intro to databases group meeting and localisation is very very dangerous! I have to think of something (reading!) to do on these occasions in the future. I bought the Dark Tower Concordance by Robin Furth although I was only supposed to ask when DT7 could be found on the shelves (“in about two weeks”). Then I bought two shirt/jacket things (two!) when I thought “I’ll just take a peek” (and actually I’ve been meaning to buy t-shirt type of things to wear under these blouses and jackets but actually, it’s nicer to have different things to wear *over* a simple shirt — excuses excuses :wink:). Oh, but they’re wonderful! The other is a sort of denim jacket type and the other is a 3/4-sleeve shirt with blue pinstripes.

Money burnt — big time. Luckily I paid for the clothes with plastic I could’ve felt remorse if it was paper money.

I bought Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah today. Unfortunately I could only find Hodder & Stoughton’s copy. My sister got me the Grant copy of DT V for Christmas so I would’ve wanted to get a similar looking book. Oh well, H&S’s version is more beautiful (and it’s the same series than my DT I-IV box set).

That means I updated TGWLSK: there’s a picture of the spine of SoS in the Bookshelf.

Tomorrow is the enrolling to computer studies courses. I have to wake up before 9 am for that. Luckily I have to go no further than my computer because the enrolling is done via their website. Also, on Monday I have to enrol to Monako (translation stuff) courses and that too is computerized nowadays.

This autumn is very bad course-wise. There’s really not much to take. The spring however is packed and I probably have to give up on some of the courses I’m drooling over now. Oh well, I’ll do some book exams, and a silly computer course (mandatory) at home.

I don’t understand why there has to be so many courses to be done by book exams. I don’t want to read books and answer questions about them, I want to attend lectures!! That’s why I am at the university — for the lectures!

Last night (after being scared s***less by a moth that bumped into my bed lamp and flew crazily around only to be crushed between my sheet (ewww) and a magazine) I finished reading Douglas Adams’s The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide. I started it gawd knows how long ago so I’ll probably read the Finnish version soon. The Ultimate guide includes the Hitchhiker trilogy (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy + The Restaurant at the End of the Universe + Life, the Universe, and Everything) and three other stories (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish + Young Zaphod Plays It Safe + Mostly Harmless). I enjoyed the book because of it’s crazy humour (nutty names) and of course the wonderful, and surprising, playing with language. I don’t know how on earth the Finnish translator has been able to transport the word plays to the translation — but I will find out soon.

I had removed the month abbreviation from the calendar (template-functions-general.php, line 385 fwd) but now it turned out that the long word ‘September’ causes the arrows (») to go to the next line. So, I put the abbreviation back. I still will have ‘June’ and ‘July’ in their full form cause I’m just used to it. Why abbreviate words that are so short already? (A bit like b for ‘be’, u for ‘you’, 4 for ‘for’ etc. etc. etc.)

Yesterday I noticed that my hostess Shirasade had changed from Movable Type to WordPress. YAY!

Finally I found out what the amazing intro song of Splinter Cell is: Name of the Game by Crystal Method. The title of this post is partly from it, excluded the bad language (m*****f***er, fill in the blanks if you want to).

Some updates. A friend of mine, Fritz, told me he had problems with the fancy JavaScript pop-up window thingamabob on LGM (my alien collection). So, I added normal links, too. The pictures will open in the frame and if you have a smart browser like Mozilla or Mozilla Firefox they’ll also resize if the pictures are too big.

Alas, I read in an article my Grandma sent me that Stephen King is retiring. I can’t see nothing on this on the official site, nothing apparent at least.