Last night, Heather and I went to a Screenprinting Workshop at Blim!

I’m not so big on the t-shirt so I screened a bunch of scarves, while Heather did a variety of wearable items as gifts. We had emailed our chosen images to Blim to be printed on transparencies for the burning process – I opted to stray from my usual MO, and went with a video game theme:

so unusual for me

I was pretty happy with how my images printed, as it took some doing to get them black enough for a solid transfer – I had one of the graphic designers at work tinker with the JSRF image for me to make it awesome, and I used a stencil-making site to turn Vault Boy into a flat black image (that turned out smaller than I wanted, but still cool). Heather went with cute: her image was a grid of nine cube animals, which looked great when printed. We settled into the class, and after a slow start, it was time to make giant messes.

My first pass was the most successful, and I ended up with a gold print on a teal scarf:

shiny!

We quickly lost both our inhibitions and our fears of fucking up, and started experimenting:

washing the screen in between colours is for pussies

I did actually fuck up a print and made it way too ugly to even be worn ironically, but such is the beauty of printing on scarves: I simply hacked the ugly end off, and kept going.

Things even got a little fancy:

olive, magenta and silver on white

It’s a good thing I really, really like Jet Set Radio Future.

I almost ran out of time, but I did manage to screenprint Vault Boy onto a couple of things:

thumbs up for thumbs!

He looks particularly dapper on a yellow scarf, but then I just went crazy:

he kind of makes me dizzy

Also, here is a goose:

lonely goose missing a mate

Screenprinting was a whole great big pile of fun, and I want to try different paints and items and images and eeeeeeeeee. So fun! I put things on things! As soon as I figure out what I want to make next, I’m gonna do a drop-in session and make more stuff – who wants a scarf? Scarves for everyone!

I had a great big review half-written for my Samsung Behemoth, but I scrapped it – I didn’t like how my finger words were coming out. I will instead sum up my thoughts in one sentence (followed by some additional sentences):

I like my Apple devices better than this particular Android device.

If you’re looking for a reasonably priced device to get into the App World, the Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0/5.0 is a good choice. You can get an 8GB 4.0 (the only difference is the screen size) for $150CDN, which doesn’t SOUND much better than the comparable 8GB iPod Touch – until you realize that the Player has a microSD slot, allowing you to add up to an extra 32GB to your device.

You’ll have to trade features for features: if you want a device to take pictures, get an iPhone or iPod Touch. The Player’s 3.2MP camera is not even in the same universe as the 8MP camera Apple devices have. However, if you loathe iTunes, you’ll want to go Android: load your device by ye olde drag and drop, and you can use Winamp. Remember Winamp? It still really whips the llama’s ass, which made me all nostalgic for 2001.

Display: Apple’s Retina display is gorgeous, but as long as you don’t hold the two devices next to each other and nitpick the imagined flaws, you’ll never notice.

Basically, this –

Samsung Galaxy Player Wins:

• Expandable memory
• Android developers constantly trying to prove they’re better than iOS developers; will work harder to give you cool shit
• Much more reasonably priced
• 5″ screen option excellent for anyone who doesn’t want to drop $500+ on a tablet

Apple iPhone 4/4s/4th Gen iPod Touch Wins:

• Display makes angels weep
• Camera is amazing
• Staggering number of apps available
• Is not the size of a mini van

It all boils down to what you want to do, and where your fanboy allegiance lies. There’s room in my life for both devices, but my iPhone will always be number one with me. Your mileage may vary – decide what is important to you, and do your research.

Tonight I am going screen printing!

I just sold my 5 3-day PAX 2012 passes to a co-worker.

I am a sad, sad monkey.

It’s for the best – vacation days are at a premium for everyone, we just bought a new car, I don’t want to impose on Doug and Ali to house my band of merry men during the ‘con, we didn’t really enjoy last year, I can use the money for London instead.

It still sucks ENORMOUS AMOUNTS OF SLOPPY DONG, though. The only thing that will get me through this brutal blow to my nerd cred is to grit my teeth and think of England: eventually, I will appreciate having more spending money in London than I would a 3-day nerd orgy with my favourite people.

*sniffle*

• Friday is payday (my first full payday at new job)
• It’s a long weekend
• The sun is shining, and promises to do so for a while
• Sunshiny times = super awesome scooter riding
• Don’t wanna ride solo? MINI MINI MINI MINI MINI MINI MINI

I should be excited about all or any of the above, but I’m not – I’m too busy being excited at the thought of holing myself up in the Lady Cave  on Friday evening with 12 litres of Diet Coke, a bag of Bachelor Chow, and DIABLO FUCKING THREE.

I *love* the Diablo series. Until last night, I had avoided all trailers and screenshots of the game; not so much out of suspense but more out of fear: what if they changed it super lots and now it sucks? There are few things more heartbreaking than the release of a sequel of a beloved game, only to find that the gameplay experience has changed too much and it just isn’t as fun as the previous version. It’s happened more times than I can count:

• Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was amazing; Prince of Persia: Warrior Within featuring New Angry Prince was terrible
• Fallout 3: One of my favourite games of all time; Fallout: New Vegas gave me negaboners
• Katamari Damacy/We Love Katamari – the first two games in the series were riddled with bugs, but positively oozed hilarious good times. Newer Katamari games are hard and feature a mean King of All Cosmos which makes me sad.
• The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the DS was groundbreaking and awesome; The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks put me to sleep
• SSX games before Blur: hours upon countless hours of fun. SSX Blur and onward: oh god why
• Little Big Planet: super awesome. Little Big Planet 2: super annoying.

I’m sure there are others, but I can only think of one game off the top of my head where this formula worked in reverse: Jet Grind Radio was good, but Jet Set Radio Future was AMAZING.

I’ve been trying to avoid getting ridiculously excited about game sequels, because I’m almost always disappointed. Logically, I know it would be hard or impossible to recreate the exact moment in time that made something so memorable for me, but I never keep hoping that I’ll be able to recapture the fun I had previously in the new game.

I had insane amounts of fun playing Diablo I/II/expansion pack, and I’ve been looking forward to III for years. Last night I finally caved and watched some of the Character Class videos online, and .. well, it looks like the Diablo games I’ve known and loved. Reviews are mixed all over the internets, but I’ll wait to form my own opinion: on Friday, I’m picking up a PC copy (for Ed) and a Mac copy (for me), and I plan to stay a while and listen.

It’s been a long, long time since I was this excited about a video game.

so mighty

So, we kinda bought a Mini Cooper S:

:D :D :D

My name suggestion of “Minibator” was shot down in favour of “Cini Mini”, but that’s okay. She’s a 2005 Mini Cooper S in British Racing Green with a 6-speed transmission, dual sunroof (it took ten years for me to get one), and is so much fun I could – and do – squee all over myself when we drive.

MINI !!

It all happened really fast. On Tuesday, Ed forwarded me a link to the car – we had been talking about getting a new car for a few years, but more seriously in the last couple months. The ad for the car was almost too good to be true, but we decided to go take a look at it after work that evening. One thing led to another, and yesterday morning at 11 we signed many papers, shook many hands, and drove off in our new (to us) Mini.

the ‘s’ stands for SQUEEEEEEEEEEE

Yesterday was the kind of day people wrote sonnets about: we picked up our ridiculous new car, spent the afternoon at Whytecliff Park and Cypress Mountain, then had 15 pounds of Anton’s pasta to celebrate Shan’s birthday; all while enjoying Vancouver at her most glorious. Today? A repeat of yesterday (but maybe with less pasta) – as far as weekends go, this one is a keeper.

Sadly, we did have to trade the Mazda 3 in as part of the deal. We don’t need two cars (truthfully, we barely need one), so we had to say goodbye to our beloved Mazdabator. It was a fantastic car for us, and I hope it goes to someone who will love it as we did – farewell, Mazdabator. You were an extremely good egg.

In memorandum of the Mazda 3, here’s the poem I wrote for it several years ago when I had nothing else to blog about:

Ode to the Mazdabator

White 5-door hatchback
There’s only one catch that
Keeps my marbles abreast

Where’s my moon roof?

You wanted white
I caved without a fight
I only made that one small request

Oh, Mazdabator
You’re not a scooter
Or a Lexus Hummer Escalade
But I do appreciate your namesake:
Sticky hobo marmalade.

.. but secretly, you’re TOTES ADORBS (whatever the fuck that means; I was going for “cute and useful”):

cute, damnit.

Truthfully, I loathe the trend of putting pink flowers and crap on everyday items then marketing them to women, as though a woman would never have use for a normal man-hammer (but if you shrink it for delicate woman hands and cover it in roses it’ll be exactly what I need; bonus points if it’s shaped like a goddamn shoe [because wimmen and shoes, lol rite?]). My rage has nothing to do with my issues with hammers but rather everything to do with the incredibly offensive idea that women need to be catered to on such a basic, idiotic level before we can do anything at all. There are so many things wrong with that line of thinking that I could easily spend days on my soapbox; ranting into the wind .. but this post isn’t about adorable little screwdrivers covered in posies; it’s about that thing up there that is totally great.

It’s a portable battery charger for the iPhone, and it’s TINY. It weighs next to nothing, and in an emergency it would charge your phone up nice and solid for making calls or taking Instagram photos or playing Sky Gnomes repeatedly. It doesn’t require cables; there’s a 30-pin connector right on it to connect your phone to.

People, I am in love with this thing.

You see, I have a problem: I absolutely cannot be separated from a power source for my iPhone at any cost. I start to friggin’ panic when my phone dips below a 90% battery – not normally an issue because I have chargers strategically placed throughout my life, but if I am ever OUTSIDE then I am kind of stuck. I am sure there is some kind of fancy name* for this syndrome of mine; one that sounds science-y but still makes you aware that I am a loony: but I need to charge my phone always. A charged phone is a happy Kimli.

Enter the portable battery charger! I had one while I was in Europe last year, and it was the most brilliant thing ever. Plugging my phone in could really only happen at night with a complicated series of weird pronged items, and I used my phone as a camera every three steps or so. My battery drained quickly, and often – so being able to top myself up whenever and wherever I wanted was a sheer delight. Since then, I’ve routinely carried the portable charger with me when we’re doing things that don’t involve my being tethered to a wall, but it’s too sizeable to be carried around on a regular basis. I also had to upgrade to a different charger this year, because my old one doesn’t work on the iPhone 4s – I gave it to Ed, and purchased one off eBay. It works great (and has adapters so I can charge many things in addition to my phone), but it’s even bigger than the old one: I’ll happily carry it all over London later this year, but I don’t want to tote it around daily.

Today while out looking at things, I stumbled upon the Power Mate Plus: a tiny, 1000mAh 5v charger. It’s much smaller than my eBay one both physically and batterically (5000mAh vs 1000mAh), but it’s perfect for tossing in my bag for emergencies. I’ve been carrying around the standard Apple charger and two cables (just in case), but I might actually be able to lighten the load a little thanks to this ridiculous pink flowery battery thing – I’ve seen many, many portable chargers in my day, but never one as small (or as flowery) as this. It works with the iPhone 4s, too (it won’t work with an iPad; those require 10v to charge). I may be in love.

*: the closest syndrome I could find was “range anxiety”, but that’s generally used for electric cars and the fear you won’t make it to your destination/home/closest charging station before your battery runs out. I should probably try to coin and trademark a phrase for my condition soon, because The Man is cracking down on batteries – before long, people everywhere will be terribly afraid of being caught with a dead battery and no means to charge up. Kimli Syndrome? Red Battery Phobia? What-if-I-miss-an-Instagramable-moment-itis? Dead Zone Anxiety? That might work, actually – I don’t much like areas with no cell service or Christopher Walken with psychic powers, either.

I can’t see my scooter, and it’s freaking me out.

I’m chopping off my mullet after work today, so I rode Lola downtown. While on the bus the last few days, I took note of places I saw motorcycles parked and which locations that still had spots available around 9am – so I left at 8 this morning to make sure I’d get one of the coveted spots closer to my office. It was a success; I parked next to a scooter (who unfortunately parked like a tool, he took up way more room than necessary) a block from my office in a shady, tree-free area in the uber rich district of the downtown core, for free. Free is delightful!

I am worried, though, mostly because I tend to worry about everything but also because I can’t SEE Lola and therefore strangers could be all up in her grill with the touching and sitting and stealing her rainbow legwarmers. I never had to worry when Lola was in the parkade, because she was covered and secure – but to take advantage of the free parking, she’s out in the open and exposed to all the dirty grubby elements of other people. On the plus side, there’s almost no danger of her being hit by a car thanks to the concrete barriers everywhere. We’ll see how this goes, but I know I’ll be spending the rest of the day in knots with needless worry times.

I desperately wish my eyes were not filled with gummy bears.

Also, yesterday’s post will be explained tomorrow. :)

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

(details, complete with consonants, coming soon!)

This entire post a) has nothing to do with the title, and b) is going to come off sounding pouty and smacks of “I’m taking my ball and going home”, but it really isn’t – you’re just going to have to take my word for it that my motives here are not ulterior, posterior, interior, exterior, anterior, or otherwise; they’re coming from a good place made of rainbows and puppies and logic (which can totally be cute if you dress it up right).

I’m not going to be bugging people to vote for me in the West Coast Social Media Awards any more. I appreciate all of you who nominated me, voted for me, and asked others to vote for me – you are awesome, and I thank you from the bottom of my mighty bosom. However ..

I have multiple issues with the way the nominations and voting have been set up, and it bugs me to the point of considering everything a lost cause. For starters, the nomination process: it was complicated, required information that shouldn’t have been necessary (I may be an open book, but most of my readers do not have my phone number handy), and was LONG – two pages of essay-style questions, asking why you were nominating someone. A couple of questions, fine. Even one page of them, sure. Two pages? A lot of people contacted me and said “I wanted to nominate you, but I didn’t have time to write a thesis on why you’re great” – I feel terrible asking people to take that much time out of their day to do me a favour, and if I had put more thought into it past “ooh, blog awards!” I’d never have asked.

Then there’s the voting. If you ask people to wax up some poetry as to why they’re nominating a site, don’t you think it would be helpful to actually share that information with the public? Without listing WHY each site has been nominated in the category they’re in, the entire thing becomes a contest to see who can spam the links the most. You’re not necessarily voting for me because you truly think I deserve to win an award for Best Personal Blog; you’re doing it because I shared the link here and on Twitter and Facebook. I can’t say that for certain – maybe you DO think I deserve to win – but by asking others to vote for me because you asked them to makes the whole thing a popularity contest; one I don’t want to win. If I were to get an award for blogging, I’d want it to be because I’ve been blogging daily for 11+ years, or because someone thought I’m funny, or because I inspired someone to never go A2M – not because I’m good at getting people to click on links.

Lastly, and I fully admit this one really IS a bug up my ass but I think it’s a bigger problem than that and deserves to be mentioned, is the categorization of the nominees. Out of the 8 sites nominated for “Best Personal Blog”, you have:

• one food review site
• three entertainment sites
• one academic/literary site that I can’t properly categorize
• three actual, factual, personal blogs

Maybe I’m putting too much weight in the dictionary definition of “personal”, but when I claim Delicious Juice Dot Com is a Personal Blog, I mean it. I don’t review things for others, or let you know what’s happening in the city, or tell you about upcoming events; I write about my personal life. I’m not selling things, or telling you how to make millions, or shilling for companies that give me things. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying those types of blogs are bad in any way – they’re just not personal blogs, and I don’t think they belong in the Best Personal Blog category. Entertainment Blogs, sure. Foodie Blogs, of course. Weird Academic Blogs that actually have more words than my own, why not. But personal? Not by a long shot.

Personal blogs are a dying breed; replaced by micro-blogs or Twitter (if by anything at all). I like that my blog is so personal, though, and that I have a dumping ground for every half-baked thought that runs through my head. Does that mean I deserve some kind of award? No; that isn’t up to me. Sure, I’d love for my efforts to be acknowledged in some way – who doesn’t – but if that happens, I want it to be because someone truly thought I deserved it .. not because I was the best at spamming the link to the voting page.

I’m crazy melancholy today, and this post was likely caused by said melancholy. I’m just feeling really “what’s the point” about everything today, which is very much unlike me. I do know what’s behind these wicked blues though, so there’s a light at the end of the tunnel – but until I get there, I am cold and tired and sad all over.

hi.

It’s been over SIX MONTHS since I’ve ridden my scooter to work downtown (to be fair, I was unemployed for 4 of those months and working in Burnaby for the other), but not much has changed. The weather was finally nice enough for me to forego the hated bus and ride Lola in, so I got up nice and early this morning to a) rinse the henna out of my hair (I only destroyed two pillow cases this time!) and b) leave the house early in the hopes of securing a parking spot near my office.

I was successful at both of these, but I am confused and tempting fate: I did not pay for the meter where I parked Lola.

Because the “discounted motorcycle rate” for the designated spot I’m in is $18.50 for the DAY.

That can’t be right .. can it?

The City of Vancouver is trying to do right by those who prefer two wheels to four by creating additional parking spots for them downtown. This is great, and I approve of the initiative as well as the 50% discount on metered rates. However, the majority of the spots still seem to have either a 2-hour time limit (making them useless for people who work), or are apparently RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE. I could drive my car to work, and it would only cost me $16.50 for a day – what force on this earth could ever make it a good idea to pay $18.50 for 8 hours of motorcycle parking? Let’s do some Monday morning math:

• Parking on the street at a motorcycle-specific spot: $18.50/day = $370/month
• Parking in the lot down the street: $8/day = $160/month
• Renewing my motorcycle parking pass: $5.25/day = $105/month
• Bus: $5/day = $100/month
• Bus tickets: $4.20/day = $84/month
• Bus pass: $4.05/day = $81/month
• Employee Discount Bus Pass (requires a 12-month commitment): $3.53/day = $70.50/month

For the sake of the work I need to do, I’m not calculating gas or insurance or depreciation on my shoes. It would seem that taking the bus to work is the most logical route, but DAMN I hate that idea – having my scooter available to do stuff is just awesome, and riding to/from work on a gorgeous day simply can’t be beat. Want to go to the beach after work? Meet friends across town? Grab some groceries on the way home; stop at the post office to pick up packages? All of this AND MORE can be done when I ride Lola to work. Hell, it even opens up my lunchtime options considerably – when I get sick of the offerings nearby, I can go for a quick ride and fetch myself anything that tickles my fancy times. On the bus, I’m trapped. Strangers are standing up in my business. There are never any seats, and people smell bad/talk loud/are obnoxious. It’s desperately hot, and there’s never enough air. I HATE THE BUS.

At best, I could combine a couple of options (parking pass during the summer; bus tickets/pass the rest of the time), but that is a hassle: if I don’t remember to cancel my parking pass on time, it costs me an extra month and I inevitably double up on one pass or another.

All of this is VERY EXPENSIVE. I should just move downtown, or live under my desk.

You know what the worst part of this is? In San Francisco, they charge motorcyles $.25/h to park and there are hundreds upon hundreds of spots. $2 a day to park your ride; $2.50 if you decide to stay the entire 10-hour limit. Vancouver’s parking situation is so incredibly frustrating – they’re penalizing people who drive to cover the cost of the bike lanes, used by people who don’t pay gas or insurance. Yeah, that’s an awesome idea: cater to those who contribute the least to the city’s coffers, at the expense of those who pay out the ass for the absolutely everything. Love it.

get with it, vancouver.

Now I’m grumpy, and I’ll probably get a parking ticket. BOO! BOO ON MONDAY!