Now Norma Knits

No Stupid Questions, Right? And Teabonics, the Newest American Dialect

Camera people, help me out.

WTF is this thing, and what is it supposed to do?  

 

It fits on my Sony digital camera like so. It's two pieces that screw together.

 

But what is its purpose?

I assume I bought it or it came with my camera, (I'm guessing it was a promotion value-added/"plus free" whatever this thing is) but I don't remember it. I just found it in my office. I have no idea under what circumstances one is supposed to use these things.  

Hey, I'm a point-and-shoot person. Give me credit for even knowing that it was supposed to go with my camera. Heh.

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This is like a Norma Field Day:   Teabonics.  "This is America. There is only one lanaguage, English."  "Make English America's ofical language!" "Respect are country - Speak English!" "English is our language - no exections! Learn it!"  

This is way too much fun. WAYYYY TOOO MUCHHHHH FUN. If it weren't for the fact that those wackos are seriously dangerous creatures, that is.

Bloody Blinkin' Blogoversary Button and Other Narcissistic Goings-On

After I don't know how many years, all of a sudden something went wrong with the Blogoversary counter on my sidebar. I noticed it was saying (every day) that there were...I don't know...something like 214 days till my blogoversary, which I prefer to spell "blogiversary," because the construction should match "anniversary" and there ain't no "o" in "-iversary."

Seems logical to me.

So anyway, apparently the blogoversary factory has been closed or something. I'm not very good at the maths, but I'm quite sure there are not 214 days between now and March 6, which is my blog's birthday. I went in and re-entered the date, generated a new code, and then I put it in my sidebar again and it was blank. So either I'm doing something wrong, or they are, or Typepad is not recognizing it, or whatever. So I took it down. But wait. I took it down, but it's STILL THERE. (Or is it?)  As of late last night, the number had inexplicably changed to 213. A quick Google search tells me that I'm not alone, so perhaps the site has gone defunct.

There is some sort of mischief afoot.

Funny enough, I searched for "blogoversary widget," and Google asked me, "Do you mean 'blogiversary widget'?"  

Why, YES, as a matter of fact! Yes, I do!  

But it took me to a site that didn't seem to create anything that was useful for me. So (I will admit, without putting a whole hell of a lot of effort into it) I gave up.

Now I will have to remember all on my own that my blogiversary is March 6. But I think after six years I can do that, hm? 

Can ju believe it's been SIX YEARS?! I can't. Man, this year I might even do one of those deep and meaningful posts full of thank yous and reminiscences and all that stuff. Or I might not. We shall just see. 

Here's an old photo of almost three years ago from the archives that I played around with (maybe a little too much?) last night on my new Picnik Premium account.  

and

Even after spending wayyyy too much time, I did not get it to be exactly like I wanted it, which is to make me look eggZACKly like Angelina Jolie. Ah well. 

Wanna see the original? 

Imagine how good it could be if the original was not all grainy and stuff. Uh-oh, this could be fun. 

You Wouldn't Be Pulling My Leg, Now, Would You, La Mode?

I went out to JoAnn's to get buttons for a sweater yesterday. When I got there, I discovered that buttons were 50% off, and I kind of went a little bit crazy. 

What was I thinking? Ah, well. At least they were cheap. Le sigh.

Lately I've been intrigued by the interesting patterns and buttons in this Green Earth line by La Mode. I put a set of buttons on one of you-know-who's sweaters recently that were supposedly 50-60% post-consumer recycled plastic, and they look for all the world like wooden buttons. Kinda nifty, I thought.

Up there in that collection of buttons, you will notice a set of black buttons from the same line. Up close, they're quite nice, with a marble-ish line running through them. Very tailored, very vintage-looking:

I had a surprisingly hard time getting buttons to go with this Lauren's Coral Peace Fleece, which is really why I ended up with so many dumb buttons, none of which seems just right. 

The ones below are, to me, the most pleasing with the yarn, but they are a bit too large. I bought them anyway. I figured I'll MAKE them fit. But when I got them home and read the card more closely, I said, "HUH?!"  

Recycled COTTON? Seriously? The card says these are "up to 80% recycled cotton fiber."  SERIOUSLY? 

If it says so, I guess it must be so. But weird.

I can only show you a hint of the sweater for the moment. Maybe later.

And I'm really not so sure I can make these big buttons fit. But we shall see. 

P.S. I got some online chat help with my camera from Sony last night, and after several tries, we got the camera reinitialized. Now it seems that at least it works -- all except that the flash will not pop up automatically. I don't really care about that much. If I really do want it to work, I can pop it up manually, and I don't usually like the flash anyway. What I was mostly concerned about were the lack of ability to auto-focus and the macro didn't work. We managed to get those back, so I'm happy. And I PROMISE NOT TO EVER TOUCH THE SETTINGS AGAIN. Yeah, right.

P.P.S. How much you wanna bet that next year my resolution will be:  Use up all the BUTTONS I've collected!

Can't Stop Photographing The Garlic

Collage created using Picasa photo editing software, free from Google.

I can't stop admiring the garlic.  I also can't stop counting it.  If I start in one direction I invariably get 50.  In the other, 49.  Seriously, I can count to 50!  

41. Fun With Flickr Tools

Oh, all RIGHT.  I'm slowly being won over by Flickr.  I still get a cramp in my cool when I have to wait for blogs to load, or when I click on a photo in a blog and have to wait forEVER (forever, of course being a relative term of 2008. If I tried this a mere 10 years ago, I would have thought it was faster than the speed of light) for it to link me.  (I remember the first time I saw a microwave demonstrated.  A cup of water got hot in a minute!  Holy cow!  All right, make me feel old now:  How many of you have never lived B.M. -- Before Microwave?)

Whatever.  I had some fun using the Warholizer yesterday to magically turn this self-portrait that I took last summer:

..into this:

Me likey.

40. Saturday, February 9, 2008 Edition

Apparently Gwen's yarn is going to be sold off today. I'm sure several people will be attending the sale to get some bargain yarn. I know the yarn has to go somewhere, and it should rightfully go to avid yarn lovers (and I'm sure Gwen would want it this way), but I can't bring myself to go watch the spectacle. So I will think of some other way to fill up my time today. 

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For starters, I will celebrate Oliver's new wheelchair.  Have you Americans bought your raffle tickets for the incredible American blanket yet?  A little of my stash sale money bought in, and I hope I win win win!

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Then after that, maybe I'll play with Flickr tools, which turns out to be a wicked lot of fun. (But I will never, ever link my blog photos to Flickr. Takes so long to load, it gives me hives.) (As always, click the photos to make them bigger.)

I will contemplate the gray Saturday sky.


Maybe I'll squeeze some more juice out of my Zitron.


And think about Vincent.

Turns out to be a busy day.

Take My Money -- Please

Oh, you don't even want to get me started.  The computer woes, they do pile up.  I have not wanted to bore you, but I picked up my long-suffering laptop last Saturday night, which I had brought in with broken USB ports after having been (not) repaired twice before for the same problem.  The elusive diagnosis, it is apparently very elusive.  When I picked it up this time, the receipt said they had replaced the motherboard.  Hm.  Didn't know the motherboard needed replacing.  I thought the USBs were broken.  The guy behind the counter says, "Maybe there was a problem with the logic."

Truer words were never spoken. 

I don't have it in me to write the whole sordid story here, and trust me, you don't have it in you to read it all, either.  Suffice it to say, those extended warranties they sell you?  Not worth the paper they're printed on.  Although I was told that I should be THRILLED that mine covered the replacement of the mother(fucking)board.  Great.  In earlier days, I wouldn't have touched buying one of those extended warranties with a ten-foot pole, but since everything they make is CRAP now, and people have SO MANY PROBLEMS with stuff, I feel compelled to buy them.  Why, I don't know, since, you know, I might as well just light my paycheck up in flames. 

Anyway, while the woman behind the counter the fourth time I went in for the same repair was pretending to try to ameliorate the situation, I had time to kill. It's a big store, and since my camera has been held together with duct tape for a while now, and the photo quality has not ever been what I'd like, I decided to go looking for a camera.  You know:  while I was waiting. 

So I'm livid with Best Buy, and I'll tell you what:  I SHOWED THEM.  I went into another part of the store, and I was so angry that I spent $500 there.  I bought earbuds for both Abigail's and my "new" hand-me-down iPods and I bought a new camera with accessories. Yep, I showed THEM, all right. At least this camera, which seems like a huge improvement, is way less expensive than the disappointing Nikon Coolpix it is replacing.  That's something.  Or is it?  I feel I would be ill advised to make such grand statements at a time like this.

I'm such a crappy shopper for things like cameras.  I look around blogland and I get so envious of other people's beautiful photos. I want to take photos just.like.that!  Why can't I take photos like that?  It can't be me -- it must be the crappy camera!  I should buy a new camera!

The salespeople ask all these questions, and I just go, "Um, yeah. Whatever.  I'm a shitty photographer and I'm probably just going to point and shoot, and probably the photos are going to be NO different than the ones I already take, because it's the woman behind the camera, not the camera, and I have limited patience for photo-taking.  I'd just like to give you my money because THAT'S WHAT I DO when I'm angry."

[Pause.]

"Ma'am?"

"What?!"

"Do you want the extended warranty?"

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Pack up your things, Nikon Coolpix.  I want you out of here by the morning. 

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This is what I bought.  My affection for it may already be considered by some to be unnatural. 

 

Saturday Cam

In my typical slapdash fashion, I made a rudimentary light box. I spent about 90 seconds on this, as you can see.  [ed: You guys are laughing at me.  Of course I love it when you laugh at me, but I want you to know I was not smart/stupid enough to come up with this on my own.  I got the outline of the idea here.  Of course I unvented it by about five essential steps, and I therefore did not get the effect I wanted, but it's a start.  Go ahead.  Laugh away.]

It helped a little with the photos, but not as much as I'd hoped.  Of course, all I did was put it in the bay window in the morning light, and I didn't use a tripod for my camera to hold it very still.  And I really can't figure out how to turn off the flash.  Of course it turns off when I accidentally do something, but I don't know how to turn it off purposely. And Cara, don't scream at me about reading the bloody manual.  The manual is USELESS.  It tells me nothing, except a bunch of mumbo-jumbo that assumes I know WTF it's saying. Apparently I need a photography for dummies book. I know I'm not alone in this assessment.  Someone else wrote me an email a little while ago, saying essentially the same thing.  The manual tells us nothing.  It says things like, "To change the aperture, do blah blah blah..."  Well, that tells me nothing!  Nothing!  I don't know what practical effect changing the aperture has. And then the domino effect of changing the aperture, so then what else do I have to change, and for what effect?  For example.  These are rhetorical questions; no need to answer.  Just send chocolate.

Other than that, it (the light box) was really great. 

It did help somewhat with color accuracy of the yarns of my sweaters.  It was not accurate at all for the new skein of Rowanspun that arrived yesterday.  It showed tweedy bits of pink and purple when there are orange and blue; and the red, which is a true brick red, showed almost cherry red up close.  This is not accurate: 

By the by, I adore this yarn and can hardly wait to knit it up. Someone outbid me on the lovely Baltic Blue Rowanspun Chunky I was bidding on on eBay.  Was that you?  I'm mad at you, if it was.  (kidding!)

So, on a day when I care more, I will work on the light box some more.  Or not. Meanwhile, I can't stop knitting on that Jo Sharp Silkroad Ribby Cardi.  It is pure loveliness.  I have not forsaken my Peace Fleece Central Park hoodie, though (that's the left front in the third photo).  Perhaps I'll be finishing two sweaters, not just one, relatively soon.