Crystal's Journal

- 20:20 -: This post apropos of nothing.
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- 21:26 -: Fannish idea
Sam Raimi should remake The Greatest American Hero, with Bruce Campbell as Bill Maxwell.

- 03:50 -: I made some background noise.
I just saw an article on /. that mentioned playing music to shut out distracting sounds, which I do, but I realized I'd rather have background noise. Maybe I will try to make some more.

http://auriplane.net/backgroundnoise.mp3

Louder: http://auriplane.net/backgroundnoise_normalized.mp3

- 22:55 -: Question for Japanese speakers
Okay, so as some of you know, I am a student of Japanese, though not a very good one. But ever since fonts like this started appearing, they've given me headaches:

Some text

It says "Sakura". It's fairly readable, but it still gives me a headache. Oww.

Do fonts like that give headaches to native speakers or, well, anyone who feels like responding? Oww.

Another font

In the above font, A = タ, D = り, E = モ, T = イ, L = レ. (Is リ ever joined like that in a katakana font?) Mostly I can read it okay, but it depends on what the word is. I trip over the モ most of all.

I hate these fonts :-(

... Oh no! There's a whole category of them here! http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=201

Another font

Oww. Okay, maybe this was more of me saying "oww" than a question, but I'm not actually under the impression that many Japanese speakers read my LJ :-)

- 09:47 -: Also, there's this
Ad wars: Droid manly; iPhone girly

Stupid Droid ads.

- 16:37 -: Do the Droid ads remind anyone else of Sega Genesis?
That is, Genesis Does! (What Nintendon't.)

It's basically the same thing. Maybe soon there'll be a Droid phone with blast processing!

- 13:12 -: Studying Japanese: List of transition phrases (en/jp)
http://abacus.bates.edu/~kofuji/StudyResources/EnglishConjunctions.html

I like that page.

- 14:43 -: Today I made egg fried rice.
I pieced together what to do from multiple recipes. Here is what I did:

1. Start boiling some rice
2. Peel & cut an onion into bits
3. Scramble an egg
4. Wait for rice to finish boiling
5. Drain rice
6. Start frying onions
7. Put in rice, stir a lot
8. Put in egg
9. Pour in a bunch of soy sauce
10. STIR A LOT
11. Nom

I did not think of spices until later. When would I add spices?

Any suggestions? It turned out really well I think ^-^

- 20:22 -: A snail!!


Image from: http://www.freewebs.com/worldofsnails/

EDIT: Here's another from that page. Look at this shell!! http://www.freewebs.com/worldofsnails/Snails%20of%20the%20World%20page/liguusvirgineus.jpg

- 10:49 -: Haha.
Final Fantasy Tactics on Playstation has a sword called 備前長船. They translated it "Bizen Boat" XDD

- 20:12 -: Armor-plated snail
http://ermionline.com/475fb226.jpg

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/1107_031107_snailarmor.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaly-foot_gastropod

- 22:27 -: Screen shots!
http://auriplane.net/snail.png
http://auriplane.net/rainbowshot.png
http://auriplane.net/robot.png

- 13:05 -: A snail!!

- 18:09 -: Wow...
The FF4 fan translation is pretty bad ^-^;

- 08:09 -: Snails!!
I looked for snails for about an hour today. I really wanted to find a garden snail big enough to wear the little hat I made for it. But sadly I did not find such a snail :-( I did find plenty of little snails and more than a few slugs, but I'd never put even a paper hat on such delicate little things.

I think maybe it's too cold out. It was in the 40s yesterday and today. Maybe the snails are waiting for it to get warmer!

- 07:45 -: LJ feeds
Come on LJ, stop sucking at being a feed reader. ;-(

- 04:54 -: I think I know why I liked tea when I was little.
As an experiment, I made some sugar water--nothing added except sugar. I tried it, and it was kind of gross, and I ended up pouring it out. But the weird thing is, it evoked this really strong memory of "tea" flavor.

When I was little, I loved to drink tea all the time. Well, apparently I put a lot of sugar into it! I didn't remember that until the flavor association. And, well, it was a really strong association, despite having no tea in it! So that must have been a lot of sugar.

I've been doing a lot better in recent times, with much less sugar in my diet. I wonder if I'd have thought making sugar water was gross back when I drank soda all the time, or if I'd have thought it was tastier.

- 08:00 -: Q: Why did the snail cross the road?
A: I have no idea. But it was crossing it! I saw the poor thing, and picked it up and took it safely across in the direction it was going. Luckily it wasn't a busy street! That snail could've met an untimely end T_T

I told the snail, "You're a *silly* snail! Don't cross streets! A car could've hit you!" It didn't say anything in response but it seemed happy when i set it back down. Or, well, at least, to the extent that a snail can emote happiness.

- 12:08 -: Snails!!
Snails ^-^

A snail from google image search

- 12:17 -: Hee
This is a lolsnail

- 01:42 -: Snail News at 1:42 AM!!
Two mornings ago, I found two snails!! They were big garden snails, and they were cute. One was being brave and exploring, and the other was nomming some grass.

Yesterday morning, I found no snails ;-( But I did find a tiny little slug!! I watched it for about nine minutes, and all it did was look left and right, and at one point, it turned partway around, then looked left and right some more.

This has been Snail News at 1:42 AM!!

- 04:21 -: Pizza!!
Today I cooked my own pizza from scratch, which took about three hours. It was delicious!!

Soft, thick seasoned whole wheat bread for crust, tomato sauce with fresh garlic, onion, red bell pepper, and pepperoni diced into it, mozzarella and monterey jack lightly grated on top, then on top larger pieces of onion, red bell pepper, and pepperoni. The seasoning was mostly in the sauce, and was heavy on the oregano, since the other elements were fresh and not from spice jars.

It turned out really nice!! And delicious ^-^

First I made the dough. I put all sorts of things into it--I even grated some parmesan into it. But it was mostly a basic whole wheat bread, with whole wheat flour, yeast, sugar (not too much), a little olive oil, and no salt. I shaped it into a ball of bread and covered the mixing bowl, and let it rise for an hour.

After the hour was up, I separated it into two pieces, put each piece into a round nine-inch deep dish, and squorshed down the middle. Then I pinched the edges up so it would have a crust and be concave. At this point the bread needed to rise again in the pans.

While the bread was rising again, I opened a big can of 6-in-1 ground tomatoes, poured it into a sauce pot, put in some spices, and started heating and mixing (on low). Then, I went to cut the onion, red bell pepper, garlic, and pepperoni. I used half an onion, one quarter of which I diced finely to put into the sauce. The other quarter I cut into larger pieces to go on top. I did the same thing with an entire red bell pepper, and roughly the same thing with the pepperoni (quarter slices in the sauce, full slices on top). Then I crushed a clove of garlic and cut up the garlic-ish bits; this went in the sauce only. I stirred these in and heated it a bit more, now that I was there to actively stir it.

After a few minutes the sauce was actually quite hot and I turned off the burner, walked over to the pans and squorshed down the bread in the center( where it had been rising most), and poured half of the sauce onto each. I used my red bendy spatula thing to spread it evenly (VERY chunky sauce!! nom!!), then grated some mozzarella and monterey jack directly over the pizzas. Next time, I'll grate the cheese onto a plate, then sprinkle it on afterwards.

Now the pizzas were ready!! I put them in the oven at about 350 for 45 minutes or so. They were delicious!! And I have plenty left over to reheat over the next few days.

- The End -

- 14:50 -: Plastic Hippo
I has one ^-^

- 20:45 -: Bread!!!!11
Nom!!

- 11:08 -: A snail!!!
:o

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ファイル:SnailWynaad.jpg

- 03:57 -: I like this snail picture.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/75771006@N00/45588907

- 04:32 -: ZSNES 1.42 (for netplay) on Ubuntu
Here are the crappy instructions I made for a friend, since he couldn't build it on his own.

http://auriplane.net/build_zsnes_142.txt

ZSNES 1.42 is the last official build to include netplay, which is why it is of some interest to build this old version.

EDIT: Also, to fix choppy sound, I installed libsdl1.2debian-oss, and I edited a couple files to make it work with a PS3 controller properly (terribly hackish, sorry):

http://auriplane.net/zsnes_sixaxis.tar.gz

- 12:54 -: Snails!!!
Here is a tiny snail I filmed on a big leaf.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGpIvGPzqwA

^-^!!

- 14:13 -: I filmed another snail!!
Here it is: a tiny snail.

I also filmed a couple tiny slugs the other day.

- 19:42 -: I wrote a Choose Your Own Adventure this evening.
Here it is: Grocery Trip Adventure!