all things me

Finally decided to join the clique A Year of Reading. I’ve been reading DT5 crazily to get it read in May (one of the rules, one of two, is to read one book per month (at least try) and I was determined to do that even though I wasn’t in the clique) and because of that I’ve stayed up preeeetty late. I have 4 days to finish it now but I only have about 300 pages so it’s no biggie. I’ve been reading Everything’s Eventual for my translation studies paper but I don’t know if I’ve really read it or just skimmed for the appropriate words (realia). Some stories I’ve read and some just skimmed. Maybe I’ll be true to myself and admit it doesn’t count as reading. Besides, I’ve read it before. I am going to read Carrie — and EE in *Finnish* — after the paper’s done, though. Cause I can keep them till (*checks To Do list*) mid-June.

Luckily I’m working for the summer, so I get to read Black House on my way to/from the department. I know nothing keeps me from reading my backpack books in more places than bus stops, buses, train stations, trains, trams, University, cafes… but when I’m not in one of those places (or similar), I’m at home thus I can read my bedside book.

A bit silly, but I updated previous entries. I noticed I had forgotten to add some things to the new layout’s blog after writing them to the old one (i.e. written while I was making the new layout). Anyway, nothing serious, just some spider stuff. Check out May 14th and 22nd if you want.

@ 13:50
Quote of the day: Purple sold scary books better than any other color, Mike had been told. — Stephen King: Everything’s Eventual, 1408

@ 23:18
Day 5 without my TV: I hope the Stand they showed on Estonian Channel 2 ended last week cause my tv is the only one which shows that channel…

I started wondering how many games I do in fact have installed… Let’s see: 1. Black and White, 2. Blair Witch II, 3. Desert Storm, 4. Enter the Matrix, 5. Ghost Recon, 6. Globetrotter II, 7. Half-Life, 8. Half-Life Blue Shift, 9. Half-Life Counter Strike (haven’t played though, cause it’s only multiplayer), 10. Half-Life Opposing Force, 11. Hitman I, 12. Hitman II, 13. IGI II, 14. Iron Storm, 15. Monkey Island III, 16. Grim Fandango, 17. Max Payne I, 18. Max Payne II, 19. Morrowind, 20. Need For Speed Porsche 2000, 21. Need For Speed II, 22. No One Lives Forever I, 23. Outcast (it’s a great game, must play again sometime), 24. Prisoner of War, 25. Quake II, 26. Rogue Spear, 27. Starsky & Hutch, 28. The Longest Journey, 29. The Sims (plus extensions), 30. Sum of All Fears, 31. X-Files, 32. Splinter Cell, 33. Tomb Raider II, 34. XIII.
Eh…. maybe… I could… uninstall… a few… I mean, most games keep their saved games so I wouldn’t have to worry about starting everything from scratch…
Got rid of some other programs as well while I was at it.

Word of the Day: Meh – verbal equivalent of a shrug, means indifference (and other similar things). I’d never seen that word written before last night and I think it’s so comical. I don’t know know why, maybe I connect it with something funny where I’ve heard it. A bit like ‘knackered’ makes me always think of Jamie Oliver and when I see the word I can “hear” him say it

There was a truck parked on our neighbour’s front lawn for quite some time (since autumn) and a bird had made a nest under it. Mum told me that yesterday when they came to tow the truck away after it wouldn’t start, the bird was just going to take a worm to the “kids” but it didn’t dare go near the truck cause there were people around. After they towed the truck away the mother bird didn’t understand where the nest had gone and it kept flying around the place where the truck had been. That’s so sad.

@20:36
Updates: Joined Blue Cheese Fanlisting
Day 4 without my TV: Watched ER and taped some new restaurant reality tv show thingy… Rocco something [edit] never got around watching it though[/edit]. No problemo.

@ 23:54
Decided to try a step bigger font for all things me; it means that the pages are longer but at least you can see better

Started playing Morrowind (Elder Scrolls III) today. I haven’t played much RPG (Final Fantasy 8 only I guess — on Play Station 1) cause I don’t really find it interesting, but I have to try. The game has been sitting in the shelf for ages. (hmm… as if I didn’t have enough games installed on my computer already…)

(and all the Minnas out there, of course. And whoelse has a nameday today)

Updates: Huge update!! Changed the method for mailing forms entirely. Now it works the way I want it to and doesn’t mess up my frames. And I can have a thank-you page for each section and not a shared one.
Added “other sections” in the menu image there <— (hmm, what other scribbles I could add) [edit: June 25] old version of the site [/edit]

Now I have to read the paper for today’s proseminar presentation (bachelor’s thesis stuff)…

@ 17:26
<ha ha>
Day 3 without my TV: My heart overjoyed for a while when Dad remembered something he had in the car (reminded by “concrete”) and I watched as he went to get it, open the trunk and lift something heavy. I didn’t see what it was before he disappeared behind the hedge and when he walked to the front door my heart sank. It was his scanner slash printer slash photocopier – slash toy – from work.
</ha ha>

Updates: Bought myself a nameday present — Dark Half by Stephen King, so that means I updated TGWLSK‘s bookshelf and the list of books I own, at all things me

Worried I (hurried ) went to the department today to do a final assigment of the Semantic Web course. I sat down at the computer, opened programs (assignment instructions, GATE), loaded documents on GATE, created a corpus, ran ANNIE (a information extractor, tagger), saved a DAML+OIL exporter, created a corpus pipeline with the DAML+OIL exporter and fiddled with the settings to get it to work (to output files to the correct place, or at all, to tell you the truth). Checked that it output the files and went to see what next. Nothing. *jaw drops* That was it. The professor (the “it’s trying to rain” professor) had planned on a more challenging assigment with an ontology we had had to make ourselves but it turned out to be very difficult to do. So, with the term swooshing by, he had had to give us some assignment whether it be quite trivial.
I’m not complaining. I was worried it would take a LOT of my time and require continuing tomorrow or something. Instead, I was able to hunt down a book which I’ll use for the theory part of my translation study.

Been pondering: It feels strange to write to a person (professor usually; maybe I should think that I’m writing to more people than me and the course teacher, but let’s be realistic, besides, I don’t actually ever write TO anyone. I just write. Like now. No offence.) and quote their work in the paper. I can only wonder what it would feel like to write a paper and quote one’s OWN work in it by referring to oneself with full name… Schizophrenic?

Updates: Joined Piano fanlisting cause I like playing the piano and I enjoy classical (or actually any type) music played on a piano. I’d play it more often if I got some privacy every now and then cause I don’t like playing when other people are around.

Eeeeh! Starting work next Monday

Roughly 2 months ago I said, quote, I’m not a crazy blogger, unquote. Should I rephrase that?

Now I’m officially without a tv. Oh the tv stand/table looks so empty. My sister offered to sit on it so I wouldn’t feel so lonely ;P

@ 16:43
Day 1 without my TV: Off it went. No withdrawals yet Had to tape Entrapment (although I think I’ve seen it before…) but Mum didn’t watch some garden shows so I was able to see Scrubs and Charmed. And I also watched The Agency (funny to see “Jackson Haisley” on two channels at the same time, the actor (for the life of me I can’t remember the name [edit] Will Patton is the actor [/edit]) was in Entrapment too, with more hair and funnier moustache! He played Hector Cruz) and Harsh Realm with no problems.
[I hope you won’t take all this too seriously…]

Updates: At Fanlistings, changed the images’ alt-attributes to title, so that Mozilla people (including myself) can see the topic of a fanlisting on mouse hover, too. (Mozilla, at least the V.1.6 I have, shows alt-text only when the image is not loaded.)
I also made a new button for all things me (they’re over there <—- [edit: June 25] now over there —->[/edit])

But now, coffee time!!!

Updates: Joined a Libraries fanlisting.
Hmm…. there was something else.. oh yeah (see next)

Been deciding: I think I’ll update the layout soon. Even though this is a nice one (in my entitled opinion), but why keep a layout in store. I might “revert” back to this one some day. Besides, I have to get rid of my blue “image”! (says she in blue pajamas)

For ages I’ve been wondering where these nice “blog stickers/buttons” came from. I’d seen them on many sites. Now I finally found a) the term, b) a sticker/button maker, c) a site with loads of links to stickers/links to their makers
I haven’t put any of them up, though. Maybe someday. I just needed to know what they were.

@ 18:05
Updates: New layout for all things me (!!!)
Let me know what you think of it.

I can’t seem to be able to keep a layout for more than 2 months Maybe I’ll have a “creative pause” after this. As much as I love making layouts, I don’t want to change the look of my sites ALL the time. Once again I wish I’d be a professional web designer. (And once again I point out that I’m not saying that I have the talent…)

Yesterday I had finally had enough. I evicted my 8-legged friends; yes, plural. Another one appeared next to my door so I couldn’t take it anymore. Don’t worry. They went to the… um… the amusement park for spiders. The rollercoaster… *looks all innocent*

[edit] hmm… I was sure I had put a “Been freaking” purple text about the spider in my toilet, but I hadn’t. Or had, but only in the previous layout and didn’t remember to add it to the new layout’s blog… Now it’s there, May 14th [/edit]

Oh yeah, I still have my TV. Dad agreed that it would probably just sit in the repair shop over the weekend so he’s taking it on Monday. (*gasp* final episode of Sex and the City before summer break is on Tuesday)
Updates: Finally I find a fanlisting for dictionaries. Do you know how much I love dictionaries?
Note to the nice dictionary fanlisting keeper: if you read this I just forgot to thank for the fanlisting so I thank you here, thanks!

Updates: Joined Daria Morgendorffer (i.e. the character) Fanlisting and apparently there is a new listing for the *show* Daria, so I joined that too

Quick note: I saw Survivor Amazon’s finale today and all I can say is BOOOOOOOOO

@ 23:29
Shoot! My Stephen King site’s counter had been “destroyed” and I lost all the hits. I have no idea how many there were…

*gasp* Tomorrow I’m going to have to say bye-bye to my TV (and VCR, for they’re the same entity ) for a while. Dad and I are taking it to a TV hospital (has to be done sooner or later and no moment is better than the other, except that this is much better than if the XF was running…). I wonder if they rent out TVs to fill the void…
Anyway, I think I’ve told about the problem it started having a while (a MONTH) ago. Turning off every 10 seconds or so. And spitting the video cassette out as well (luckily I can record if the TVs turned off cause the VCR upstairs is crappy).

Been pondering: Should I publish a new layout for all things me so soon

MegaOxymoron of the Day: Minna giving a presentation without a panic
Minna + presentation + no panic = oxymoron Strange things do happen. It actually went pretty well. Meaning that my face wasn’t red (I think), my heart didn’t pound in my ears and out of my chest, the words didn’t come out all mushy. And I actually was funny too! On purpose! I noticed the ambiguousness of something I was about to say before I said it so I was able to make it clear that I was aware it was ambiguous. Ambiguous in the bad way I mean — “dirty”.
And the prof said my presentation (slide show) was “unique”. In the good way. I had taken time to prepare it and had nice (but not too flashy and disturbing) animations. And nice colours: black and purple I didn’t wear my purple sweater/cardigan because otherwise people couldn’t have told me and the slides apart… besides, purple doesn’t go with army boots anyway (See Thought of the Day).
Anyway, now it’s done. The opponent (a person how makes questions and comments about my work and pinpoints places that need changing) gave me good tips on how to improve my thesis. So, technically I still have that paper to write. Shouldn’t be that much of a problem. Only thing is it has to be done by the end of this month — as if I didn’t have enough big things to write

Thought of the Day: Don’t judge a girl by her shoes.
Not that anyone has judged me (or how could I know… maybe some old lady crossed the street when I was coming towards her and I just didn’t notice Although, it’s my *sister* who does that to people…), but I was just thinking that today when I was walking from the department to the bus station wearing my army boots. Yeah, the ones skinheads use. Don’t worry, I still have my hair intact. And my wonderful personality too.

Brain-itch of the Day: (I’ve been told that brain-itch is something that keeps going around and around in your head, e.g. a song; let me know if it isn’t ) Ukraine’s Eurovision Song Contest song: Wild Dance
Shi-riki-dai shi-riki-dam-dey

Oxymoron¹ of the Day: Rational fear

[added; had this in my previous blog but forgot to move it to the new layout’s blog ]
Hmm… I was reading yester’s entry and wondering, could ‘cough’ be spelled ‘coff’ when it describes the sound of couging… That’d be nice.
OK, on with the show (bachelor’s thesis; I have a couple of auxiliaries to wipe off the face of the ea…computer screen and a couple of words to spin around). Sounds fun, ¿huh?

Been freaking out: (not related to the oxymoron; that came when I was thinking about my presentation on this coming Wednesday, bachelor’s thesis presentation) I’m convinced that the huge spider (huge by our, Finnish nature, standards) that is living above the door in my toilet is going to jump on my head one day.
[/added]

1. [oxymoron] noun, putting together words which seem to contradict one another

First time for everything
I had my first Jehova’s Witness experience today. Seriously, not one has ever been on our doorstep in the 22 years I’ve been around. (Hmmm… Witness repellent) Oh well, not much of an experience, I got a magazine (…”these jesus dudes showed up on my doorstep and all I got was this lousy magazine”…) Nice guys in nice suits, the “witnesses” that is. Not in the magazine.

Btw, it snowed (!!!) today. This morning (*cough cough*) when I left from home it was snowing nice little flakes and in the afternoon when I was coming from the Uni it was huge wet sleet — i.e. rags.