Ptocheia.net » Twilight

Twilight (the last post about it, honest!)

admin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:27:18 +0000

I finished the series, finally. It was addictive to the end. In some ways satisfying, in other ways rather frustrating. I wrote a rambling review of it on Goodreads, should anyone care.

I will include a brief snippet here, something that in scanning over reviews of the books I just hadn’t seen touched on at all.

“One thing about the books that I do appreciate is this: In many fantastical pieces of fiction, there’s a central character who ends up being the savior (Harry Potter, Frodo/LotR, Neo/Matrix, Rand/Wheel of Time, etc etc). That character is usually “different” in some way or another that ends up saving everything, and that character is consistently male. It was a breath of fresh air to read something where the character with the awesome powers who saves the day is actually female.”

Job hunting, Florida, and more Twilight

admin — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:23:12 +0000

So I spent a bunch of time finessing my resume, seeking out references, trying to figure out how to write a salary history that doesn’t make my actual salary history look wacky, and writing the perfect cover letter, all for a job that sounded rather ideal. I submit the materials, only to get an email back soon after stating that the position had already been filled. Which was a surprise to me, as the position was still listed under the “Employment” heading of their website. Ah, waste of time. I suppose I at least have a cover letter and resume with more finesse at the point, at least. Am still snouting around for other jobs. I’ve gotten rejected by a few, have heard nothing from others, and have also gotten vague “We’ll contact you if something comes up that fits” messages from recruiting agencies. No matter what, we’re vacating this apartment in two months and heading westward, so something needs to rear it’s head at some point in the near future. If not, I can always get a job driving a van or something, and write lots of PHP in my off time to keep up skills, in the hopes of acquiring employment at a time when not everyone else in the entire freaking universe is also attempting to acquire employment. I have the advantage of being a cheap bastard, so my standard of living never bothered to increase along with my salary. While I’d be a bit sad to need to take a job that isn’t exactly what I want and that pays less, I’m not going to be suffering economically or anything.

In other news, in a few weeks Drew and I are gonna head off to Florida. He’s got multitudes of grandparents there, as well as a friend or two, and I have a penchant for palm trees. We’ll have couches to crash on, and a tent for nights when we don’t. Aside from obligatory stops at Shake and Steak that Drew requires, I figure we can hit grocery stores and fruit stands for food and be cheap that way. Gas prices are rising a bit, but still under $2 a gallon around here, which still seems incredibly cheap compared to the almost $4 a gallon we were seeing not too long ago.

I’m also wanting to bike to Williamsburg sometime soon. Haven’t done a long ride in awhile, and I really need to stretch the ole legs a bit. Also need to consider other closer adventures, like biking to Regency or something.

So I finished reading New Moon. I liked it better then the first Twilight book. Still full of drama by the bucketloads, but less of the *long stare….dramatic thoughts…..glancing away…..dramatic thoughts…* and more of the *dramatic misery….time to do something really stupid that will entertain the reader!….holy cow, wolves!…*. Mostly, it’s just got more action, along with a main character that actually isn’t all dramatic (well, for the first half of the book, at least). They’re working on a New Moon movie, and I really hope it’s better then the freaking Twilight movie, which was aesthetically pleasing, but that’s about it. It’s like the director(s) took all those godawful long pauses in the book literally and stuck every one of them in the movie. Err, to be honest I only got about halfway through the movie because my brain fell out at some point.

Next up, I’m reading either some sci-fi book about bears, or another fantasy Bujold book (“Paladin of Souls”), which I’m really hoping is more enjoyable then “Curse of Chalion”. If only I didn’t compare everything else she writes to the Miles books.

Sushi and Twilight!

admin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 03:48:19 +0000

I’m gonna totally spam now, but I made some super awesome sushi the other day and wrote a post about it at my food blog, so go check out my super fun sushi time if such things intrigue you!

By the way, I finished the first Twilight book. I don’t think the writing is terribly good, but the end really managed to hook me and I now desperately need to get ahold of book #2. Too bad that all of the library’s copies are checked out. So now I just need to find another person that’s trying to sell their copy for $5 (which is how I got the first one).

Javascript Ramblings, Etc.

admin — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:16:40 +0000

So I’ve got this textbox that you can expand and contract, because of this the textbox is created by javascript rather then by html. I decided I wanted some BBcode capabilities, so I found a script that was similar to what I needed and made some snazzy images to go with it. It works fine as a separate entity, but does absolutely nothing when added to where I need it to go. Like, you click a little icon and it should place ‘[b][/b]‘ into the textbox, but since the textbox is created by javascript, the BBcode javascript can’t figure out what to do. So nothing happens. And now I’ve got to figure out how to combine the two separate scripts, I guess, as I can see no other way around it. I think javascript is a pain, and I’m fairly clueless when it comes to working with classes, so I’ll see how this goes. My normal solution for such things is to google search until I can find a similar instance of my problem to work off of, however in this case I think the problem is so particular that I’d be wasting time trying to google for answers. So instead, I’m posting here wasting time! Actually, it’s at times like this when I most miss having a a technical work environment, as this is the sort of thing where the ideal situation would be to have someone with another brain to lean over my shoulder as I point stuff out. Oh well, it’s a learning experience, in any case.

In other news, I bought a copy of the first Twilight book off someone from Craigslist. I’m super excited to read it. I’ve heard that it’s cheesy and not necessarily what you’d call ‘good’, but I’ve also heard that it’s addictive in a similar way that reading Harry Potter was addictive, so thusly I’m all about giving it a go.