Viva Forever

Firstly:

I finished the fanlisting to “My Fair Lady” (awesome movie!) yesterday as it’s due on the 17th. Rush job! I didn’t mean to, but I just didn’t feel like designing I suppose. Yes I know it’s very pink, but that’s honestly the shade of pink of the DVD cover and at the time, it seemed like a good idea to make it the base colour. I’ve… never done something this saturated before. So yeah… oops. At least it’s done!

Secondly, I finished converting all the old greymatter pages into actual post entries. Yes, manually, and yes it was incredibly tedious but it’s done! Officially this is the 341st post with 2,541 comments so far. It was interesting going through the old posts back in late 2002-2003. I was so… hyper! I used to think I was quite clever for my age, and now I realised that everyone must’ve been humouring me; the posts were mostly random, filled with typos and would spontaneously become INCREDIBLY EXCITABLE!!!!!!! Also, emoticons like “^o^” and “^_^” were everywhere, as was descriptions of actions: *demonstrates*. I can’t figure out whether that’s a good or bad thing. *is puzzled* >:P

The people who used to visit my site had a different style of commenting from many that I get nowadays. Not only was there also more emoticoning and descriptors of actions (like “*whacks Belinda with a frying pan* ^o^”), everyone was also quite hyper! Lots of exclaiming, glomping, hugging, “love you!” etc… it just seemed incredibly fun and boisterous. I bet that’s in no part due to the anime influence on bulk of the visitors of those days. I guess I kinda miss that.

Oh and I used to quite frequently and expressly fangirl over anime/manga/gaming men. While this may be reduced some what, images like this still gets an automatic “teehee :3″ from me. :P I guess it’s not true to say that I spent my teen years not liking guys, it just so happens the guys I were interested in aren’t living.

Oh and one other thing! I used to plug people ALL THE TIME!! Every day was blog day! Maybe I should take that up again. Also, many of the more amusing posts concerned my wacky family. I think I’ll install a plugin that highlights my favourite posts or something. More work needs to be done!

Anyway, I’m on a two week break from Uni, which means I now have two class-free weeks to do some super-cramming to get my notes together, doing all the readings I’m behind on and completing two huge assessment due right back after the break. So I guess, “happy holidays” to me!

Been manually converting all the archive pages of the really old entries into actual database entries. I long lost original greymatter exported logs, which means that all entries had to be manually re-entered and backdated, and because I’m pretty anal insistent about preserving the content of old entries as much as possible, I’m manually re-entering all the comments too (and backdating them). I’ve nearly finished 2002! Tedious work, but not without some fun in skimming all the entries I used to write when I was… what, 16? Ah nostalgia.

So, dear readers, got a question for you: what kind of blog entry do you want to see me write more of? Alternatively, what type of entries are more entertaining (coming from me) than others? Don’t pick more than two! :)

• More updates regarding how I’m doing in real life
• More philosophical opinions, musings and/or rants
• More trivial (but fascinating!) tidbits and knowledge about the world I’ve picked up
• More reviews about games, books, media, anime etc
• More opinions about online-related issues
• More craft posts (this really is limited to the time I have for crafts… hint: I don’t have any)
• Nothing. I should give up blogging and pursue another hobby. :P

Any input would be appreciated!

In other news, I watched Magicians today and I quite enjoyed it, then again, I do love Mitchell and Webb from Peep Show. LOVE THAT SERIES. SO MUCH.

I wish I can do magic tricks. =/

I was at the library today, doing research for my intellectual property essay on copyright, and I was reading through the book The Copywrights: Intellectual Property and the Literary Imagination by Paul K. Saint-Amour. One of the chapters mentioned a type of poetry work I’ve never heard of before, called a Cento, which is basically taking verses of existing poetry and putting them together to create a new one. Apparently, this has been around for ages, and it demonstrates how this is an example of how copying and remixing to form new works has been around for years.

Anyway, the book quotes a particular cento that I found to be positively charming (if not a bit frivolous). It is quoted from another book called Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature A Melange of Excerpta, Curious, Humorous, and Instructive by C. C. Bombaugh, first published in 1870 (this book sounds quite interesting, I must try to find a copy) of an anonymous cento involving a rather dramatic (albeit a bit confusing) retelling of a love story. I’ve taken the liberty of researching for the author of each line to their original works, and linking to them when I could find a source (this took much longer than expected).
 

¹ Spelt “Alice Cary” in modern days.
² Not too sure on this one, lots of Brownings who write literary works and none I found that exactly match the line.
³ Maybe a miscredit? I couldn’t find anyone by the name of “Hervey” having written that line, but Aldrich did use that line in his poem written around that time.
⁴ The line that Wordsworth uses is actually “The sweetest thing that ever grew”.

I’m no English major but… is it just me or does the content of the poem refer to the (presumably male) protagonist successfully wooing a lady he fancied with… alcohol?

I got sick of the complexity of the last theme. This one is a lot more simple than the last, though it does look a bit too web 2.0. Reminds me of my LJ layout. Oh well, it’s only temporary. I needed a layout that’s simple enough that I can fiddle around with the navigation and adding/editing of content without confusing the hell out of my no-longer-familiar-with-CSS brain. I’m planning to add more content (more “about me” and also an articles/review section, mainly importing articles I wrote from my now-closed writing site) to grow the site before moving the whole blog to its new shiny domain and hopefully, a decent, original layout. Dunno when that’s going to happen though!

Looks like the sidebar links are way too large in IE. Ah stupid browser.

In other news, I’m sick. You know that feeling you get in your lungs when you’ve run heaps and it feels like your lung is burning, but not in a heated way (just really dry and almost cold-like)? Yeah, well that’s what my lungs feel like, plus a good amount of phlegm. Blargh. My voice is totally gone.

One bright note of the day though, my brother’s making me dinner. I was quite touched when he offered (my mum’s too busy tonight), even though it’s just instant noodles and eggs. I don’t think he’s ever made anything for me.

Edit: Random plug to Dee for being a very helpful host! I had bad wordpress loading issues whenever I tried to edit anything. Even though the solution turns out to be just upgrading from 2.2.1 to 2.2.3, Dee nonetheless help me eliminate other possible avenues fixing the problem that I wouldn’t have thought of myself.

Edit #2: I’m in the process of finally transferring all the really old greymatter pages in the archives to properly, backdated entries. I really hope that it doesn’t clog up people’s RSS feeds, and if it does I’m really sorry!

Completely on a whim, I crocheted a snail.

It was fairly easy to make (though the pattern instructions were a tad bit confusing), started on Friday afternoon and finished yesterday night. I love his little antennae, though the photos make it look like it has tiny cat ears. Oh well! :3 I’m thinking of making him a little beret and/or scarf.

Well, not really finished, as he needs a face still! Below are the ones I’ve come up with (badly photoshopped, mind you :P). TELL ME WHICH ONE YOU PREFER! Of course, completely new suggestions are more than welcome! Note: I can’t guarantee that the end product might look anything like the pictorial representation (I have non-existent embroidery skills at the moment) but I’ll try! Currently my favourites is the one with the moustache and the first smiley one. :)

Oh btw, his name is Oscar Gou. COME ON, IT’S A PUN!! *is lame*