Author: Heather Meadows

Normally I save Sluggy for last when I’m reading webcomics, because it was my first-ever webcomic and I still consider it the best, and I always save the best for last. (Penny Arcade is next to last.)

But here lately I go to Sluggy right away, because I’m dying to know what happened. It’s been awhile since that’s happened for me with any webcomic :)

The current story arc starts here.

So this year’s online trend in digital photography is photos of real places that look like pictures of models. I’ve thought it was neat since I first saw some of the photos, but I thought I couldn’t do it because I don’t have a tilt-shift lens.

But then yesterday Wil Wheaton linked to a photo of his that someone called vertigo25 had done up fake model style. From that page I found a link to a mirror of a tutorial on how to replicate the effect in Photoshop.

The result isn’t quite as cool as the real thing, but it’s still interesting. So I tried it out.

This is really the best I was able to come up with. You can see my other attempts here.

As you can tell, there are some issues with photos with large height variations. It’s kind of difficult to find the best focal area. Still, it was a fun experiment. Maybe I’ll eventually figure out how to do it better, or take a photo that is better suited for the process.

(vertigo25 used a different technique to create his mask, and linked to this example. It looks like he traced around the tree and bridge to keep them in the foreground. That would probably work better with the heights I’m dealing with.)

My aunt has had some pretty serious complications from surgery. She’s in the ICU; my mom is with her.

Any good thoughts you might be able to send her way would be appreciated.

So yesterday I decided to spend far too much money at Wal-Mart on Christmas decorations. (After the fire, I don’t have any. So it’s only natural that I catch up. Right?)

When I got home I cleaned and decorated the office.

I’m pretty happy with my little Christmas tree done up in pink. It goes with my armchair. Plus, pink is pretty :>

When I first started picking out ornaments, I went for a bunch of silver and blue stuff. This is one of two garlands I bought, thinking I would use them on a larger tree that I would buy later. This time around, I just picked a small tree that at the time I thought I’d put in the kitchen.

When I got home and realized there were two little trees in the box instead of one, I decided to put one of the garlands on one of them.

I could have made both trees identical, but what point would there be in that?

I also kept both trees in the office, because unfortunately they have to be plugged into each other–I can’t have one in here and one in the kitchen. But I think they look okay in here :)

It was impossible to avoid bringing this snowman home.

Here’s the full view. As you can see, I also got quite a collection of Christmas CDs, as well as some peppermint-colored candles.

Not pictured are the ornaments meant for a larger tree (which I still hope to get later!), the little silver reindeer hanging from the bathroom doorknob, and the larger red candle tray with a peppermint pillar surrounded by additional round peppermint candles.

I’ve been listening to a CD called Christmas Dinner – Elegant Saxophone Quintet, filled with instrumental Christmas favorites, since yesterday :)

The web is transient by its very nature. In the time it takes to open an FTP program or change a few settings in a CMS, years of content, years of history, can completely disappear.

Maybe it’ll get captured by Google cache or the Internet Archive. But it won’t be where it used to be, and you won’t find new content along the same lines, either. More importantly, if the site was a place of interaction, that means suddenly you have lost a community.

The result is just jarring. You’re left wondering what happened, and sometimes there’s no explanation. If it’s a larger website, the abrupt transition or closure might have made the news somewhere, but if it’s someone’s blog…

It’s a place where you used to interact, even just a little, and suddenly it’s gone, and you don’t know why.

Whoever took everything away probably didn’t mean anything by it.

But it’s insulting. It demonstrates antipathy towards the site’s community. It says to them: I don’t care that you came here. I don’t care if I ever interact with you on the web again.

I would have liked to, but things just didn’t turn out that way. I suppose if I had tried harder I could have made time for it.

Oh well.

Here’s a survey I found over at the Extraordinary Bride’s blog.

That part about not giving a paragraph explaining why is talking directly to me.

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Hey you! Yeah that’s right, you! When you do this survey you can only use ONE word to answer each question, no more and certainly no less (what would be the point then). And for the love of god, don’t type one word and then give a paragraph explaining why, it kinda defeats the purpose (and i haven’t figured what that is yet).

Not as easy as you may think.

1. Yourself: searching

2. Your girlfriend/boyfriend: happy

3. Your hair: flat

4. Your mother: ideal

5. Your father: warm

6. Your favorite item: camera

7. Your dream last night: interrupted

8. Your favorite drink: water

9. Last time drunk: never

10. Your dream car: bicycle

11. The room you are in: lonely

12. Your ex: bald

13. Your fear: trapped

14. What you want to be in 10 years: me

15. Who you hung out with last night: hubby

16. What you’re not: humble

17. Muffins: blueberry

18: One of your wish list items: tickets

19: Time: incomprehensible

20. The last thing you did: googled

21. What you are wearing: comfortable

22. Your favorite weather: crisp

23. Your favorite book: expelliarmus!

24. The last thing you ate: minty

25. Your life: good

26. Your mood: odd

27. Your body: huge

28. What are you thinking about right now? wanting

29. What are you doing at the moment? blinking

30. Your summer: nothing

31. Best part of your life: opportunity

32. Best friend: two

So, with the ending of the Audioblogger chapter of my online journaling experience, I’ve been wondering what to use to replace it, if anything.

It occurred to me the other day that I could produce video posts and host them with my spankin’-new YouTube account. Because I have no editing software, the videos would simply consist of me, talking. Perhaps the camera would be on me. Perhaps it would be focused on some sort of scene.

It wouldn’t be as immediate as my phone posts, or as simple…but it might be interesting.

It would also open me up to ridicule from the YouTube masses. But hey.

I made a comment this afternoon and it’s still not up. Perhaps some of you made comments as well! So this post is an effort to get the blog to republish and maybe reveal any activity over the past day.

Godspeed, intarweb.

The other day on my way to work, I was headed up the I-20 Exit 1 offramp to Martintown Road when I looked to my right and saw about a bazillion birds camped out on Frontage Road.

Hey look; I have a YouTube account now. I like the fact that I can upload movies straight from my camera without converting them to mpgs first (the site does the conversion, to Flash, for me).

Check it out: at first the birds are just hanging out, chirping like crazy. Then, in the third video, they start to organize…and in the fourth, they’re outta here.

Chicken nuggets, beautiful fall leaves, and ladybugs.

I have the TV on at work so I can cut out the commercials for the web videos. There was just a commercial on for windows. The guy said, “Custom sizing to fit your openings.”

I heard “ovaries”.

Mari held her pumpkin carving party again this year, and I took some pictures.

At first we sat around eating all the fabulous food Mari and others had made. Some people played card games. Then people gradually started carving pumpkins; I was in the first group.

My pumpkin:

More pumpkin carving:

There was a little family there that was so cute: a husband and wife and their 3-year-old son and 13-month-old daughter. I had some stickers that I had previously passed out to everyone, and I was pleased when they arrived so there was actually a kid to give stickers to.

I asked parental permission first, then gave the little boy a sheet of stickers. He put a pumpkin sticker on his forehead, and pointed at it and said, “Head!”

:)

Here’s Brooke and her new boyfriend:

Oh, calm down. It’s just Mari’s dad.

Someone at the party asked me if Brooke and I were related, because she’s seen us together a lot. That was kind of cool.

Mari’s house was once again done up for Halloween, and it looked awesome.

After I got home, I stuck a candle in my pumpkin and set it at the kitchen window.

I hope people can tell it’s a bat :>