Thursday 27th of January 2005
Japanese or EU size?
Basically these are glasses in the shape of a condom mold, I’m not sure if an actual condom mold would be made of glass, but it probably does melt at a higher temperature than latex.
And there’s two different sizes to choose from! -the page seems to say that the smaller sized one is the Japanese specification and the larger one is the EU specification. :D -which makes, of course, the European sized one more expensive at a costs of 14,100¥, while the Japanese one is 12,600¥.
Anyway, I think once you fill these glasses with your drink of choice (ビール!) you can’t put the glass down on the table until you drink it up, or else it will spill. I see these stand things, but I’m not sure if they come with it.
These should be great ice breakers, just the thing to pull out when your mother and father in law come to visit you for the first time. Having a glass of wine in these gems with the sex dice laying on the coffee table is possibly the best impression you could ever part with, don’t you think? :p
Tuesday 25th of January 2005
It’s a sushi world
Sushi: Look at the pretty colors!
I have been on this massive sushi craving these past few days which has led me to punch in “sushi $keyword” on some search engine every free chance I get, and I though i’d share my findings.
First, we have twinkie sushi, and I just have to quote the “hostess”: “Japanese animation, Hello Kitty, samurais, ninjas, and Sushi are really popular right now! Here’s a wild recipe that’s super easy to make and super fun to eat as a light and fruity snack! This recipe transforms the much loved Twinkie into a hip and tropical flavored treat“. These were created by Clare Crespo and here’s an interview with her that features some sushi cupcakes. She’s also written a book about “yummy fun cupcake recipes” if you care for that.
Now, if that was too low-carb for you, let us try a more sugary version, the crispy candy sushi snacks:
There’s definitely something fishy about these Japanese-style rolls. The rice filling is crispy, the wraps are fruity and your kids will love them.
A more elaborate offer would be these gourmet chocolate sushi, which look like sushi, but hopefully won’t taste like sushi. Feel absolutely free to look at the menu and send some my way.
Leaving food behind, for those who like charms, here are some sushi bracelets with swarovski crystals (did you know that the owner of swarovski, Dietrich Mateschitz, is also the majority share holder of RedBull?), including charms of Maguro, Ebi, Tamago, Maki and Ikura.
Mothers of monst.. er, teenagers, for your unquestionably laborious students, why not help their productivity with this most owesome sushi pen set? and if the ink were erasable, and let us assume it is, you most surely need to get these sushi erasers to go with the package.
Speaking of which, I’m not sure yours, but my mother has always wanted some 100% cotton, machine washable, totally genuine sushi kitchen mitts; made in the USA. And why not embrace the opportunity and give her some sushi napkins while at it?
Then we have this very conservatively priced sushi soap (14 whole ounces for $52 -what a bargain!), the set comes with four maki sushi soaps, one wasabi soap and one bamboo mat to display soaps, totally ensuring their special status. All soaps are cucumber and seaweed scented.
And I sure wish I had these sushi adhesive bandages way back in my tender childhood days.. hum, way back I say? -anyway, they would have certainly made boo-boos much more easier to bear with it, by the looks of it, they are able to cut the pain down by a great margin, I mean, just look at their “incredible healing power“! -Amanda, if you are reading this, please make sure to get some for Bennett, he’ll grow much happier. :p
Moving on, and I actually want one of these, we find this lovely sushi clock -deluxe. The actual clock is a Seiko, so it shouldn’t be bad. Honestly, you could say these are expensive too, but I’d much rather pay $50 for this totally deluxe clock than $52 for the soap.
If you ever wanted to reach ambiance enlightenment in your living room, and possibly even transcendence, make sure to get these great sushi candles and “light up your home the same way you’ve lit up your taste buds” -”with sides of Ginger and Wasabi to turn up the heat!“.
Yes, it’s ending, just one more. Dynamism is offering us sushi USB flash drives, and these, too, can be yours, for the very expensive price of $110 each for the 128MB version, or the cheaper-but-even-more-ridiculous price of $80 for the 32MB version. Replicating this lovely meal pictured here, would set you back 980 dollars. Weee.
Sunday 23rd of January 2005
The almighty sidebar
I started playing around with the sidebar again, I think I’m happy with it now. For the rounded corners I made two gifs with transparency (pngs with alpha channel would have been worlds better, but there is some stupid browser out there that doesn’t support them without a hack), the white color is actually there, while the inside of the gif is the one that is transparent. Generally you do it the other way around, but since I don’t intend to change the background: #fff; of the content div and the sidebar might get new colors and even new boxes, this is much better -I can swap, change or add colors to the sidebar, and still use the same two images for the rounded corners.
I had to use the h3 element to set the top left corner since CSS2 won’t let me set more than one background image per div. While I was poking at it, I also gave the h3 area a different color background and a bottom white border resulting in the titles of each box being separated from their content. The div of the second box (archives) uses the following code for example: background: #b6d638 url(images/box_top.gif) no-repeat top left; while the h3 element states border-bottom: 1px solid #fff; for the white border.
For the bottom left corner I just gave a background image and color to each div like you normally would, resulting in: background: #c0dd5b url(images/box_bottom.gif) no-repeat bottom left; for the same second box (archives).
I embraced the opportunity to play around with the flickr images too, I took out a redundant div and used the same trick flickr itself is using on ther site with the white background, grey border and margin/padding to center the image inside of it. I might play around with their API later, but next thing on the line is the banner.
Friday 21st of January 2005
The unstoppable time
Sad as it may be, I can’t stop time just yet, and today it takes it’s toll again for providing me with the privilege of the ride of life.
Whenever i think about how it would be after my body ceases to function completely and never again shall blood be pumped into my nether regions (how it would feel to me), I get this.. “void” feeling that gives me the shivers (I don’t believe in any sweet-life-after dead thingymajiggy). Honestly, it’s hard to describe, but it’s a very scary feeling that makes me want to quickly change the line of thought I’m having and then I start chanting in my own head “think about something else, think about something else“.
We either mock or deny what we don’t understand (and hence -fear) and I’m going for the latter on this one. Could be worse i guess, I don’t see the shame in respecting what is greater than me, but it still upsets me and I guess humbles me that I still have this “fear” -and that it is able to get the best of me like on the first forsaken day I decided to think about it all.
Right, so, as much as I’d like it differently, today is my birthday, and like hell I’m going to allow anything or anyone spoil it. :p ¡Fiesta!
Sunday 16th of January 2005
Layout and coding changes
I finally got around re-coding the CSS (I also just slightly changed the markup, nothing drastic), this time the spacing finally does look “pixel-perfect” in IE.
Apart from adding the contact button on the menu bar right on top (I’m an attention whore, what can I say?), i modified the overall width of the layout, bringing it down to 800 pixels wide, so that it barely just fits on a 800×600 resolution screen (who’s using that anymore?) without any dreaded horizontal scroll bars. I took away the user link at the footer of each post: It’s always going to be me, so i thought people don’t need to reminded continually of it. The background also changed, just a simple doodle with lines (not that the last one had a more elaborate “making process” anyway), I’m not sure if it’ll stay for long.
The sidebar is now less wide, it is now float positioned, no longer is it a crappy position:absolute element with margins to fix it, the unordered lists on it have less padding, allowing for a wider content area (in order to compensate for the now smaller width).
Less nested divs are in use, and the CSS has been generally cleaned up (redundant stuff taken out, et cetera) which should speed up rendering and possibly usage.
I still need to make an about section, and I will probably turn the contact button into a php mail form instead of directly a mailto: link. But I’m lazy -I’ll just bask in my grandeur for now, I’m happy it looks how I meant it to look on stupid IE.
Update (9:35 pm): I just changed the line spacing, I think it’s easier to read this way.
Saturday 15th of January 2005
I feel a great disturbance in the force..
As if millions of teenage girls cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. At least now millions of users might actually have something to write about when the servers are back up. “Today I went outside. My pupils have never been tinier”.
Ok, heh :p sorry for the generalization, couldn’t stop myself. Let’s go back to regular stuff. First, here’s some pictures of fish that have been driven up to the shore by the tsunamis, seems mostly they are those that live in the bottom of the ocean, where sun light does not reach them. I see what looks like some Angler fish in there.. mwahaha! -”Rape” is the Angler fish’s name in Spanish.
Shiny things. The Japanese have a great way of finding excellent and thoughtful names for their toys. Take an exclamation, add the word “Super”, and append the product function; you then get the Oh! Super Toaster! -a 1.1 million ¥ toaster (~$10000) that not only can slice whole loaves of bread but also can toasts them with an infrared beam. Intelli-toast, step aside.
On to more important things, a salute goes to the Huygens Probe, which touched down yesterday on the surface of Titan and the people at ESA have been busy churning out pictures. Here’s some of the first, and even more that were released today. I’m happy.
I’ve got nothing else, so I’ll just leave you with the furminator while I go do something productive.
Thursday 13th of January 2005
Computers, anime and octopi: what a combination
Octopus: Mwahaha you foolish cephalopod! i have eaten you!
Free time these past few days I have dedicated to building a htpc of sorts. I’m doing it on the cheap, meaning I’ve been just grabbing old parts I’ve had laying around. The only thing I feel I want to invest on is on a nice case for it, but first I’ll get it all working on a shitty atx tower and see how it goes. I’ll try to get some pictures of the process too.
If you thought the “octopi” in the title had to do with tentacle rape hentai or something similar, you are wrong. In fact, I may be offending some animal defense bullshit group here, but yesterday we had one of the best octopus I had yet tasted. It was expensive, at 26€ for 2 and half kilograms; but damn was he good :p -he was prepared as pulpo a feira which is the most common Galician way of cooking it, with potatoes, olive oil and paprika. Lovely.
Also yesterday I finally got done (not that I really wanted it to end, I was havings problems with the last few episodes: should I hold on to it and watch it tomorrow? -no! I can’t wait!) watching Hagane no Renkinjutsushi (Full Metal Alchemist). I find it somewhat similar to Full Metal Panic, specially on the humor style, but I think i liked the Alchemy setting better. I recommend it, it’s a good one. Now the sad thing is, I have to find a new one to watch.