Author: Heather Meadows

Tonight I drove through the Millbrook subdivision off Oakley Pirkle and took some pictures of the lovely Christmas lights.

I don’t know if it’s a problem with the C3030 Zoom camera, with all digital cameras, or with the way I take photographs in minimal light, but I have had to deal with the problem of bright, floating pixels in my nighttime photography for quite some time now. Usually I just leave the pictures alone; you can probably find examples of the evil pixels in my smugmug somewhere.

Tonight, however, I wanted to clean my Christmas light shots up to make them look as good as possible. They are all blurry due to the fact that I took them from my car, which, even while in park, likes to jump around…but I thought I could at least get rid of the floating pixels and despeckle the images a bit (thanks for that suggestion, btw, Charles!).

It took me something like two hours to go through and clean up the 24 new images I’ve uploaded to my December 2005 gallery. Here, for your amusement, are before and after versions of one of the pictures.

I opened each image in Photoshop, eyeballed it for floating pixels, and drew over the pixels with the Pencil tool. Then I Despeckled and did Auto Layers. Obviously I’m not a professional, but at least the pictures look better than they did before.

I just need to learn how to take night shots correctly. What I do now is set the ISO to 400 (I can’t adjust the shutter speed, I don’t think), turn off the flash, hold the camera as steadily as possible, and hope for the best.

I normally try not to filch other people’s photos, but I just have to have this one:

The sight of the grey-haired premier gingerly steering the two-wheeler around the building had Environment Minister Yuriko Koike in fits of giggles as she arrived for a cabinet meeting.

Nice to see that he’s enjoying his present :)

Mari linked to a pdf of the new rules for Greeneway use that were adopted on September 19, 2005 via the City of North Augusta Resolution No. 2005-19. I was going to copy all the rules and put them here, but the pdf was made like a photocopy and I can’t select text. Alas. (OCR, motherfucker! Do you speak it?)

So, just in case the official pdf goes the way of the dodo, I’m hosting a copy here. Some highlights:

Use of headphones is discouraged.

D’oh! Not that I have an mp3 player anymore…but I was kind of hoping to get another one and load it up with Japanese language practice files. (Or the audio only of Kyou Kara Maou episodes…)

Walk no more than two abreast.

I’ve been guilty of breaking this one, but then again I think it’s a good rule; there’s less congestion that way.

Cyclists must ride in single file.

D’oh!

Maintain control of bikes, skates and boards.

As I wondered over on Mari’s blog, does this mean I can’t ride hands-free anymore? I really enjoy doing that; I’ll miss it if I’m not supposed to do it. I am in control when I ride like that, and if I’m too close to people I always grab the handlebars, but maybe it makes people nervous regardless…

All in all I imagine the rules are pretty fair. (It seems that neither Brooke nor Mari has a bell on her bike…for shame!)

Check out the list of “expressly prohibited” activities at the end of the file :)

According to a study conducted by Meredith Chivers of the Center for Addiction and Mental Health and J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University,

The researchers found that while straight men are only aroused by females of the human variety, straight women are equally aroused by all human sexual activity, including lesbian, heterosexual and homosexual male sex, and at least somewhat aroused by nonhuman sex.

So, be honest, girls. Is it true?

;D

(via BoingBoing)

Really well, I think!

I should know something soon–the job may start as soon as January.

Tonight there was a hafla at the Warren Road Community Center for all the bellydance students and anyone else who wanted to come. Most of the women were resplendent in full bellydance garb; I and a few others just wore regular clothes.

When Chris asked me if I was going to dance, I said, “No,” and held up my camera. “I’m covering this event for the blogosphere.”

;>

There were bellydance videos, plenty of music, lots of delicious snacks, and much fun to be had. Brooke showed us how to wear hair falls and how to make tassels out of yarn. Jeannie showed us how to do tribal-style stage makeup. Towards the end of the evening, (almost) everyone participated in some tribal improv. Not only that, but there were plenty of bellydance items to buy, including CDs, videos, coin belts, tassels, and those cool stickers you can put on your face (like Mari, Bonnie, and Jeannie are wearing in the pictures above). I didn’t buy anything, but it was cool to look at all the stuff!

All in all, it was a neat time to hang out and enjoy everything about bellydance.

See the rest of the photos here. And check out the very end; I’ve uploaded my first two videos to smugmug!

Sunshine’s blog has been discovered by actor [redacted], and featured on MSNBC TV. When Sunshine heard that [redacted] had mentioned her blog on the radio, she wrote him an email to confirm, and got a really great reply. Check it out:

Yes, I did mention your website on the radio because I think it is great what you are doing and I want people here in the United States to see what you have to say about life in Iraq today. We get a very uneven view of things because all we have is the media and they are sometimes very one sided. The media pretty much only shows us all the terrible things, the bombings and the death toll but not the everyday life of the Iraqi people. We do not know how the average Iraqi citizen feels about things there and you write very well about your life in Mosul. Just being a kid and going to school and trying to have a good life. I know that there are many bad guys there who are making things very difficult for all of you. But I am very optimistic about the upcoming vote this week and I know that someday you will live in an Iraq your parents have never seen. A free Iraq where you have the right to chose your own leaders, go to work, become what you want, say what you want and have a good future where you will not live in fear.

Awesome, all around. I hope more people start reading Sunshine’s blog.

[Edit 6:06 pm:] The actor’s name has been removed from Sunshine’s blog. Sunshine states in her revised post, “In the same day I wrote a letter & tried to send it to that famous actorI deleted his name at his request)”. I removed his name from my post as well.

I’m trying to figure this out.

According to poll numbers, more people are supportive of the US being in Iraq. Also, people think that the US can win the war, but won’t. They also think that we should withdraw troops.

Does this mean people think we will win if we withdraw troops? How does that work?

(I know it’s logical fallacy to draw these kind of conclusions from poll results. I’m just being silly.)

「眞王陛下からお言葉が下さりました。
最後の箱、鏡の水底は地球にあると。」

Well, who’s surprised by that? I’m certainly not.

:D

What was surprising was the puppet/doll that looked like ユーリの母御！

I’m starting to wonder if my theory is off…or maybe they’re planting some stuff to make me think it’s not who I think it is. The actions all make sense with my theory, it’s just that a few of Murata’s comments could go either way. But really, it’s hard for me to believe that all of this craziness isn’t just 眞王‘s way of training ユーリ.

Really wish I could screencap that look on Murata’s face at the end of the episode…セクシー！

I could have had a job today.

I went to an interview at a national department store this afternoon. After I filled out the application, it became clear that I was an excellent candidate; unlike the other applicants, I was interviewed by a cheerful saleslady rather than the slightly grumpy HR person, and both women who looked at my resume were very enthusiastic about my education.

“How do you feel about starting…really soon?” the saleslady asked, and I could tell that “really soon” meant “today, if you’re up to it”.

“Really,” I said. (You know, the kind of really that’s a question but doesn’t sound like one.)

“Well, we’ve lost some people due to health reasons, and it’s so busy, we need someone now.”

I considered. “There’s nothing stopping me from starting immediately; I don’t have anything else going on. But I was planning on going back to Kentucky for Christmas.”

Do you see that, there? The part where I threw the job out the window? Yeah.

As I drove home, I felt terrible. What should I have done? I asked myself. Cancelled Christmas?

Maybe I should have, if it meant I would finally be gainfully employed.

I got home, checked the mail (It’s a Wonderful Life just arrived from Netflix), let the dogs out, and sat down to whine on my blog about rocks and hard places.

Then my cell phone rang.

“Hi!” came the cheerful male voice on the other end. “This is So-and-So with Regional Magazine. I was wondering if we could get together and talk this week.”

I was referred to this gentleman weeks ago; he’d said he’d call me when he was ready to hire. Now, apparently, he is. I’d be doing page layout and design for hundreds of magazine pages, on a deadline, but with great hours in a laid-back atmosphere.

We set up a lunch meeting for Thursday.

Just think. I could have had a job today.

From Shortpacked!

I haven’t really had anything to say this weekend. It’s not that I’ve been particularly busy; it’s just that I come to my journal and think, “What could I possibly talk about?” This has happened before, recently; here’s hoping it doesn’t become a trend.

Yesterday I spent the majority of the day doing laundry. I did four loads. While the laundry was in the washer/dryer, I watched TV. Exciting, eh? The first two Harry Potter movies have been showing on ABC Family, so I watched that, and the first two Back to the Future movies were on TNT. (Why not show the third one? Sheesh.)

In the evening, when the laundry was finally (almost) done, I ran out to Wal-Mart to get Christmas cards and the supplies I needed to make dinner. After dinner Sean and I watched the last disc of Smallville season 2.

I really didn’t sleep well last night. I tried to go to sleep at around 12:30, but Sean stayed up until past 5:30 and his music and pointing and clicking kept waking me up. I actually tried to go to sleep on the couch in the living room at that point, but the noise from the clock bothered me, and then I heard Cheryl getting up to let the dogs out so I retreated back to the bedroom. After Sean finally went to sleep, I did too, and slept until 1 pm.

I spent much of the day in my pajamas. Since Sean was still in bed, I watched TV for awhile, finally choosing to see Daredevil for the first time while I ate my Honey Bunches of Oats. I actually enjoyed the movie, but keep in mind that I don’t know anything about the Daredevil character other than what I saw in that one Hulk movie. (Not that one…that one.) Hai says the fight scenes are terrible, and I imagine he would know. I thought the movie was interesting and cute. (Of course, it was no Spider-Man, and certainly no Spider-Man 2, but what is?)

Eventually I got dressed and ran out to Michael’s with Brooke to grab some markers to do my Christmas cards with. Then I came home and watched Chamber of Secrets while I cooked. (Dinner was chicken alfredo and steamed broccoli, and it was quite good! I velveted the chicken again; I think I’ll just always do that, because damn if it isn’t tasty!)

And that has pretty much been my weekend. I plan to start on the Christmas cards tomorrow. Sean and I are going to try to take a nice picture of ourselves to include :)

I want a piano.

I made pancakes this morning. They were even better than the ones Cheryl makes–though, to be fair, I did use more syrup today.

Brooke and I are going shopping.

Anybody know of any software that works similarly to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk? Hmm, that wasn’t very informational.

OC Remix rules.

This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen! (via Japundit.)

I love to sing, and hear my voice fill up a room.

I used to have a video called “To Noelle from Heather”. I made it when I was a freshman in high school, I think (sometime after Noelle moved away), but I never sent it. It was really neat; it showed what my room looked like back then (full of stuff, but very organized) and it had “interviews” with my family members (I recall that Ben was watching a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, and I commented about how much Hanna-Barbera cartoons sucked). We were between dogs at the time (I showed pictures of Smitty and Toby that I’d stuck on my bulletin board), but we still had parakeets, so there was video of them, too. Towards the end I just babbled on and on about my life, and unfortunately I hadn’t set the camera up properly so when I zoomed it in, it only got my chin and chest…for like twenty minutes, or however long I rambled.

I loved that video because it was like a snapshot of my teenage life. Of course, it was in the apartment :>

I have eaten chocolate every day for weeks now. I think I’m addicted.