Updates and Such-like

It's been a busy month. A busy, busy month. This fella is something we bought a while ago with our tax return, but I love it so, and thought I'd post a bit about it. It's a full 88 weighted keys that feel very much like a real live piano, and the sounds it makes are quite satisfactorily piano-y as well. It has MIDI outs, so I can theoretically plug into the computer and record various things as I think of music. While nothing can replace the creaks and warmth of an ancient, slightly out-of-tune upright piano, this is a perfectly great digital stand-in for now.

Other (not really that momentous) events:

We now have a second car, so exploring a wider area of the city during the day is possible. Thrills! I'd like to do some camera excursions in order to take photos with which to play with HDR and fake tilt-shift photography. I will not let the ridiculously awesome examples of these things I've seen online make me throw up my hands and read a book instead.

Holy cripes! I went to the dentist today. For the first time in...well, a shamefully long time (as in, years). Thankfully, (and somewhat shockingly) there was absolutely nothing wrong with my teeth a little plaque removal didn't fix.

Speaking of teef, this is a sweet little comic I linked from Facebook a little while ago. I really wish I knew where the little ceramic figurines came from. I know they're vintage, but I had no luck finding out about them online.

Speaking of Facebook, that's where I've mostly been in the past while. Because of my lack of time, bite (or byte--haw haw) sized updates are what work best right now. The ability to pop online, check on what people are up to, dash through a sentence-sized updated and be off... is a good thing at the moment.

Projects currently on the go:

I found a shirt I particularly liked the cut of, except that that fabric was super-cheap and kept getting holes in it. So I dissected the shirt, made a pattern from it, and have been working on modifying it to make new shirts. It's actually pretty simple, but I'm sure I'll manage to screw it up somehow. I've done one new shirt so far. It turned out okay for a first attempt, and I see what I need to change next time around. At $1.25 / yd, it's not very costly to make a mistake.

I've also gotten some t-shirts and fabric paint and will be doing some shirt illustrating. Hopefully there'll be something decent enough to post a picture of.

Miniatures: The Boy bought a bunch of tiny Eldar Army figurines which need to be assembled and painted. Since he would like the stategy-gaming with them, and I would like the painting better, guess who's doing what?

Homemade flaxseed hair gel: I know this sounds kind of awful. I was talking to a sister today about exactly what chemicals we dump onto our scalps, and after consulting the Internets, I figured I'd try making something a little more simple. If you've ever eaten a plain Flaxseed, you've probably noticed they're a little ...slippery is a good way to describe them, I guess. It's very slightly tacky, and has a very slight oiliness to it. Mostly, it's just slick. It shares the same properties as silicone, which is in a lot of the styling products I use for curly or frizzy hair.

When boiled, Flaxseed (or Linseed in England) emits a substance that thickens the liquid and makes it usable as a de-frizzing gel. You can cook it to the right consistency, strain the actual seeds out, cool it down, and add essential oils for a nice smell. The flax seeds are re-boilable as well. You can keep them in the fridge and boil them three of four times before they "stop working." If you leave it cooking on the stove, it practically turns into a firm jello, I hear. (Off-topic--I wonder if that would be a tasty base for vegan jello rather than animal based gelatin? ) I picked up some seeds tonight, and I'll be boiling them down tomorrow. I'll try to do picture documentation, and I'll relate my findings.

And now...bed, bed, bed.

Sigh of (semi) relief

Update:

After a barrage of complaints, federal regulators shifted gears Thursday and said they would no longer require that used children's clothing, toys and other items sold at secondhand stores be tested for lead.

While this is good news for resale stores and such, people who make handmade children's items are still under the strain of having to comply with testing laws.

Such a very important update

Yeah...no. I lied. It's not important. I've just been thinking about things like Twitter, to which people voluntarily submit up-to-the-minute news reports about the mundane details of their days. These reports are sped over the interwebs directly to their friends, who can keep tabs on them at all times. It seems like knowing that so-n-so just ate a cookie or found their lost keys would be not only tedious, but an overload of information. Also, do we really want to voluntarily let people that far into our lives?

It makes me a bit worried about people in general. How can we continue to care about protecting our privacy when we're voluntarily allowing the whole world to spy on our every move?

Technology has made the world so much smaller. We're connected virtually to a vast crowd of people. It's made contacting someone a continent away as easy as popping next door. Things like MySpace and Facebook make it smaller still, where we can even know day to day what a friend has been doing. Twitter brings it an even more microscopic level--an up to the minute level. It's this last part I'm so very unsure about. Sometimes, especially in this day and age, I want the world to stop at the walls of my house, and not come inside.

I like being in contact with the people I care about. I enjoy knowing what folk are up to. I want my friends to know what I'm up to. However, I doubt I'll ever feel okay about serious twittering. I'm sure none of you are sad about that.

If I were to twitter, what sorts of things would I write?

I lost a red sweater. Then I found it.
I did work on the computer.
I thought about making goi cuon for dinner tomorrow.
I walked upstairs. I walked back downstairs.
Laundry. Cleaning.
Talked to my neighbor.
Soy candles smelled nice.
I worked on building a webcomic wiki.
I took off the red sweater that I found.
I lost the red sweater again.

Is anyone thrilled? Neh. I didn't think so.