Tree Updates (That No One Cares About)

Been way longer than I intended since I last posted.  I was going to try to update with pictures as things grew and what not, but I (obviously) have not done that.

So this is how each one is doing, in a vain attempt at neatness:
• Shortly after I planted them one of the forsythias died, I didn't water the second one enough awhile after that and it died too.  
• My Japanese maple just barely tried to sprout leaves, but they went brown, and it's as dead as a door nail too.  
• My elm has re-grown it's leaves, they're rather small, but it seems to be doing well enough.  I think they might be small because of this effect I read about at a bonsai website (forget which) that a 'false fall' or something would cause smaller leaves and would look better.  
• My red maple tree had been doing pretty well, it had some brown spots, but was otherwise okay.  Now, after I was gone for a week it's nearly completely brown, I'm guessing my parents let it get too dry or something.   
• My wisteria plant is doing amazingly well.  It's got really nice leaves and grows even if I try to pinch it back.
• My white pine is has sprouts and the beginning of new pine needles, the tips of the old needles are still a little brown, but I guess it's doing alright if it's growing new branches.
• My grape plant and my mom's lilac are doing alright, not growing a lot, nor dying, which is good.

Oh, and I saw a little tiny toad in the garden this morning.  It hopped away before I could get a picture though.

Nifty Music Thing Is Nifty.

Otomata.  Click it.

Messing with CSS and Javascript

I worked on my cable scarf earlier, and decided to get on ravelry.  I was looking through my groups and noticed We <3 Progress Bars, and I thought "hey, I could stick one of those on my blog..."  Reading about how all these people made their progress bars all fancy with their photos, and links to the patterns and everything made me think it wouldn't be that difficult.  Unfortunately, I somehow don't understand JavaScript, despite the fact that I took a class on Visual Basic and Java.  One would think I could get JavaScript after that, but I still feel lost when looking at it.  I'm going to try to poke around with it more later.  I did manage to get it to show photos and both finished and in progress projects at the same time.  But now it wont work when I follow the instructions and do minimal messing with the code.  It either shows the default or nothing at all.
I gave up on the JavaScript bar and decided to take a look at the flash progress bar before going to bed.  I followed the instructions and it magically works in under five minutes.  I just have to fiddle with the colors.

Sleepy tiem nao nyan.

Readin' teh 漢字～

Read the Kanji is pretty nifty for learning kanji readings even if you don't pay for a subscription.  I'm to the point that all the kanji available to me are yellow or green. (Yay~!)  I actually like it so much I'm going to try to get my mom to pay for a one year subscription, assuming I don't get the $20 myself first.  It has example sentences and you can turn on/off whether it shows the big kanji, translation of the kanji, the example Japanese sentence, or the translation of the sentence.  Note that it isn't anything like Reviewing the Kanji, which is based on a book that preaches learning the stroke order and a basic one word meaning of kanji in order from simple to more complex kanji, but it doesn't really consider readings or learning more useful kanji first.

WAAAHHH! MY CACTUS!

NOOOooo!!!  I KILLED MY CACTUS.  WHY?  WAAAHHHH

Trees~

I found somewhere to plant my forsythia right before I went off to ACen.  They're under my bedroom window.  I'm hoping my boyfriend isn't allergic to them when they bloom.  One of them had exactly one flower bud when I planted it, and now that one has leaves.  I don't think the other one has any leaves yet.  I might've killed it, but I'm going to keep watering it, it might just be trying to make buds.  My Japanese maple and my elm took forever to get leaves, but they have little green buds on them now.  I'm really happy they survived.  My mom's lilac, my white pine, and my yoshino are looking okay.  It looks like the yoshino really is deer resistant, they haven't eaten at it at all like they did our apple trees last year.  The red maple is doing really well, it's huge and has lots of leaves and everything.  I also dug a little oak tree up from the yard, and I'm trying to grow it in my bathroom until I can put it outside without squirrels eating or digging it up, which happened to the last three or so oaks I tried to plant in little pots...  Way before I got my trees from arborday.org, I got a green grape and a wisteria from meijer.  I planted them a little too early though, so they had a little bit of frost damage, but now they're both healthy and growing too.

New Pinkies~

I'm thinking it might be better if I put more short posts more often, rather than putting one big post that I try to put too many things into.  I'm hoping it'll help with my random nonexistant subject transitions.

Before going to Acen, I made sure to know how much pinkies usually go for online at least, so I know if I'm getting a decent deal.  Last year I wasn't sure what good prices were, so I ended up not getting any.
Rather than trying to look through each and every stall's figures, which I sorta did anyway, I decided to just try to ask them all if they had any.  There was a guy at a pretty small booth that said he didn't, but he saw only one at a different booth, so I went there and discovered PK002/Suu for $12, and I'm totally glad I did.  I like her head, I really like her clothes, and I almost wish I had a second one, but not until I have all the other ones I want, I guess.  I also came across PC2023/Suito Kusanagi from 'The Sky Crawlers', for $10, and she came with a cute little uniform, and glasses.  I didn't originally want her, but at plajapan.com she's $30 on her own, so I figured it was worth it.
I looked it up after the con and at plajapan.com to get both of them together, but not bundled would be $48 including shipping.  If I got them bundled together, they would be $38 with shipping.  I got them at the con for $22.  Unfortunately, the booth that had the most pinkies for sale, had them priced at ~$20 or more, and I can order them individually for $16 wish shipping, less if I get more or do plajapan's bundle thing.  Or if I shop around.
By the way, I don't mean to be advertising plajapan, it's just that I find their bundle prices awesome, and they can tell me exactly how much shipping will be.  I'm considering maybe buying some pinkies from HLJ.com someday, but they don't tell how much shipping is upfront, so not for awhile.

ACen, Pinky:St, Another Scarf, Anki, Bonsai...

I'm going to be going to Acen this year, I'm rather excited. x3 I was thinking about wearing my Maka Albarn (Soul Eater) cosplay, but I grew out my bangs, so I feel like I'd look silly. Would I? There probably wont be enough room to safely bring it anyway...

A few days ago I accidentally elbowed my Kobato. pinky off of my computer monitor, at first I looked her over and said, 'oh, yay, I didn't break anything,' until I noticed her bottle had broken off in her hand. D: I've read about using warm water and a pin to get the broken part out, but I'm kinda scared to try it (I'm probably just being paranoid).

For the longest time I hadn't messed with my pinkies, so I finally decided to just take them apart and put them back together again last night. Before, someone else had put one together and it turned out particularly cute, so I didn't want to mess it up, but it also was using my favorite head, so I got over it, and switched them up.

I'm thinking I want to take one or two with me to ACen, but I'm not sure which ones, or if it's a terrible idea. I'm kinda thinking I'll bring Maki, or Ako, or maybe Mikimiki, but I'm not sure, we'll see.

(Wondering what the heck a pinky is? They're called Pinky:st (read as pinky street) and you can find out more from pinky-street.com)

I apparently started making a scarf back in January, but I kept not working on it, or forgetting where I was and frogging it. I finally got past the initial seed stitch rows and now I'm into the patterned part. It's already about 5" long, and I'm planning to work on it on the way to and from Chicago. I'm hoping I can make it a lot longer than my last one. I only had one skein of the type of yarn I was using, so it just barely fits around one's neck. My mom (the one I gave it to) said it was fine, because then she could zip her coat up to it, but I didn't really see her wearing it much... Oh well.

I'm terrible at transitioning from one topic to another, it's like I write one paragraph on one thing and suddenly the next one is something completely different. So I'm gonna just keep doing that, even though it looks stupid, because I'm not sure how to do it differently.

Anki is nifty. I'm surprised how long I've kept up with doing the flash cards. I'm not sure how much it's actually helping with learning Japanese though. I'm also trying to keep the little bit of Spanish I learned from my class. It's so much easier. I'm kinda annoyed by how much easier it is, when I've been trying to learn Japanese for so much longer. Besides Japanese and Spanish, I downloaded a deck of countries/flags/capitols/locations, but it's only showing me the flags so far, and I mostly wanted to learn the capitols/locations.

I think my last, and latest, silly hobby no one cares to read about is bonsai. I went to arborday.org and bought a lilac(for my mom), a yoshino cherry tree (which my dad let me plant in the back yard), a lacebark/chinese elm, a white pine, a japanese maple, and I got a red maple and two forsythia free with everything else. I put the maples, the pine, and the elm in pots. I still need to find somewhere I can plant the forsythia, I'm a bit worried, since I'll be away over the weekend. I think I might have shocked my elm tree, it had had little green leaves when I got it, but the day after I planted it they went brown. I bought that one specifically because people on the internet said that you could use it as an indoor bonsai tree, but I'm going to start it out outside. Hopefully I can get them well established without killing them, then I'm going to start trying to do the 'training' stuff.

Youmacon is This Weekend, Yay~

I'm finally starting to actually get (more) excited about Youmacon 2010. I've been slowly packing and started to try to get my camera together, and somehow ended up on YouTube, looking for cosplay shogi videos. I ended up finding one from 2005 that I'm actually in, but it's super blurry. One of my friends wanted to see the Simon-giga-drill-breaker from the 2009 shougi game, so I ended up uploading it here.

I don't think I'm going to wear my cosplay this year. I only did for a little bit last year and only one person recognized me. I'm going to try to convince my mom to let me try to modify it to be more accurate.

Spellcheckers don't like shogi or shougi. Anyone know which is correct?

Dropsy Tank Top

I haven't restarted any of my frogged projects, but I did start making Dropsy. I'm using the "Deborah Norville collection Everyday Soft Worsted" acrylic yarn I got from JoAnne's. It keeps having weird blobs and stuff in it, which is apparently great if you're hand spinning novelty yarn, but I didn't really want it in my tank top... ><

I survived the part with dropping stitches and casting on alright, but I mis-read the repeats and did three normal rows and then started to do four rows with an increase every row. On the third row when I realized, I tinked back the row I was on and just dropped the increases and knited a few stitches around them to even out the extra yarn. Hopefully it isn't noticeable in the FO.