Cleaning

no not me - but the cleaner, Carol. She comes on Wednesdays and cleans. I thought she would vacuum and mop and maybe straighten and dust. But no - she does everything - even some of the laundry!!! I was in shock, still am.

Must Know Mandarin

I guess because our Prime Minister speaks Mandarin it is now the in thing to speak it too :) I just searched the ABC website for 'Mandarin' and found all sorts of articles about it and Rudd.


Anyway - what I was after is a program called Must Know Mandarin. The ABC website that is on is so poorly designed:

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2
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5

Languages

This afternoon I learned how to sing Happy Birthday in Mandarin from this blog:

http://blog.wku.edu/~haiwang.yuan/


I also found this great forum which has some great resources:

http://www.gchinese.com/

It's here

It was probably here since Monday - but it was actually couriered not Aus posted - so it was at the Newsagency. They could have rung us up though!

So I have a docking station for my ipod and some av cords and a little remote - but my ipod doesn't play videos and I'm trying to work out how to put jpgs on there. Also - setting it up to test the theory in this house is pretty scary - too many wire for me to unplug and stuff up!

ANZAC day tomorrow - I'm going to the dawn service again.

Mmm, hungry - I've had two pieces of toast and some miso soup today - no wonder I'm hungry.

Fontage

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Not much

The Ipod stuff didn't get here today so that makes me sad - I could have used it today and tomorrow :(

This week is just not working well - tomorrow and all day Wednesday we have visitors coming to the school - so the kids are going to miss a lot of classes. I just feel that something is not right, I feel all out of sorts I guess.

Friday is ANZAC day. We'll get up early and go to the dawn service.

I did a bit of crafting today - just because - and made a notebook. It worked really well - so I might make some more for my stall at the markets - they start up again this weekend. Hopefully I can get some doll money together.

Oh yeah - while make the book I watched a few episode of Card Captor Sakura ! Yay so cute.

Survived

the first week back! All except my tongue which I burnt last night on miso soup.

I'm waiting for my ipod stuff (AV cord) to come it - hopefully Monday. So I'll be set to show movies, clips and powerpoint slides from it!

I think they - as in Jake my past student - have finished with the windows for a while. We have big new windows in every room of the house now. Excellent for when i take photos - not so good because I have to make curtains now.

I made a new pattern today, for a tight sleeveless top - to be singlet. Pretty happy with how it turned out I just need to use thinner strips of fabric for the neck and sleeve edges.

Here is Raiu in the making of the pattern - I use him because he is the larger of the two SDs


And this is Bi trying to be manly in it.



I like random flickrs that post cute images:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25308692@N07/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/endless_sky/page2/

there was another one but I can't it anymore. This might have been the original artist:

http://www.toonzoo.co.kr/

Had my hair cut yesterday

We were going to go blue - until Cailee realised that Pinky (the owner of the salon) had taken the blue with her on holidays. WAHHH! I think I am the sole reason why the salon got in blue and I have still yet to get it put in my hair.



So we went back to magenta :3

The holiday has gone by too quickly - today I plan to mark some assignments and sew. Tomorrow I plan to write an English unit :(

I'm addicted to fonts - 10 step program coming up!

I collect fonts – I can’t help it – I just love them. I have a huge folder called “Pammy’s Fonts” that I have lugged around from computer to computer since 1999!

So anyway, I usually only get free ones but, whenever I see a font that is so wonderful that I must purchase it – I do.

I bought two fonts from flat it today - they are pretty cool fonts – I won’t tell you which ones they were though ;-)

Also this page is awesome because it has so many links to Japanese fonts – or fonts that are made in Japan – that you wouldn’t normally find!


Anyway – I finally set up an Etsy store called spare clothes. It’s where I’ll sell the spare clothing that I make, hence the name of my shop Spare Clothes. But I need to take some photos of the clothes,,, right after I eat my cup of noodles.

So,,, not much done today

I did put up a lot of books on Ebay and I did a lot of school work.

No sewing - :(

However I got my Momoko dolls:

Presenting:
Good Night Cherry on the left and School Mix on the right.



School mix doesn't actually have a body lol!



I had to pull the neck joint out of Cherry's head and put her all together again. Unfortunately - when you pop off a Momoko's head her neck will get little cracks in it. I heated up a needle and melted the worst of the cracks together and then sanded the plastic with a nail file until it looked good!

A Good Night Cherry costs about $70 US when clothed (She normally wears a nighty). Cherry did come with some clothes and I paid $52. Plus I got School Mix's which if whole would cost $90 - it's too bad she didn't have a body and that she doesn't have her original hair though :( Oh well - I don't mind a fixing her up!!!

Sew much to do

So I set up my overlocker today, on my desk, in my workroom. But it no longer works :(

So I set up my spare sewing machine, on my desk, in my workroom. But it no longer works :(

See a pattern?

So I buggered around and finally got the sewing machine to work. But really it no longer sews.

So I rang up the local electrical place to see if they could take a look at the overlocker's pedal - in case it was something was wrong with the wiring. But no one was there.

I gave up.

Fortunately - nothing is wrong with my normal machine - touch wood - and I got two jeans made which are totally awesome if I do say so myself.

Tommorrow I'm planning of making a few t-shirts, some jocks and stuff - plus do some school work :)

Decisions about zippers

This morning I broke Mazin's glasses - twice - Doh! Oh well, at least I got a few photos of him in them - I'll look out for a new pair though.

We had August's birthday party today so we went to that - yay - I wish I was 8 again!!!

We moved the linen cupboard from my workroom to downstairs, and put in my desk in its place. So now I can finally set up my overlocker and second sewing machine!!! The 2nd sewing machine is usually set up with a double needle or a zipper foot depending on what I am doing.

So now it's time to make some doll clothes - serious business now. But I was getting worried about buying doll sized zippers.

I compared a normal dress zipper to the pair that were in the Soul Doll jeans and really there isn't much size difference except that the zipper pull is longer on a normal zipper.

Honestly - why buy a doll 4" zipper for $1.20 US when I can buy a 12cm zip for $0.99 Aus from Spotlight?

I would think that doll zippers would have to be much smaller though. Is it just Soul Doll being cheap like me? I don't know, I only have one pair of official jeans :P but the zipper in them feels more flimsy anyway.

Make backgrounds in a folder for Windows XP

I decided to give myself a headache.
I decided to add interest to my folders.
I decided that I couldn't remember the name of every drama or anime we have on file.
I decided that I could remember images of the drama or anime though.

So a quick tutorial on how make a .jpg image into a folder background.



Step 1 - Find a picture to use as a background.
Step 2 - Open the folder that you want to add a background to.

NOTE
To make sure this all works you will need to select "Tools" from the top menu of the folder. Select "Folder Options" from the list. Click the "View" tab and make sure there is a dot beside "Show hidden files and folders". Press "OK"

Step 3 - Somewhere in the folder right click with the mouse.
Step 3 - In the menu that pops up, click on "New".
Step 4 - Select "Text Document".
Step 5 - A text document will now be in the folder called "New Text Document.txt".

Step 6 - BUT it will need to be renamed:
- the name of the file may already be highlighted - so type in "Desktop.ini" (without the quotation marks).
- or right click on the text document and select "rename" to highlight the name of the file and then you type in "Desktop.ini" (without the quotation marks).

Step 7 - Windows will pop up a warning after you change the name - just press "Yes".
Step 8 - Double click "Desktop.ini" to open it up.
Step 9 - Copy the following confusing code stuff and paste it into the opened file.


[{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}]
Attributes=1
IconArea_Image=background.jpg
IconArea_Text=0x00000000


NOTE
- to copy you need to highlight the above text and press the keys "Ctrl" and "C" on your keyboard at the same time.
- to paste you need click in the opened file and press the keys "Ctrl" and "V" on your keyboard at the same time.

Step 8 - Close the "desktop.ini" file and say "Yes" at the warning.
Step 9 - You will now need to put the image into the folder.

NOTE
- drag the image icon over from the folder you already have it in or
- select the image icon and copy and paste it into the folder - see above NOTE
- if it is still on the Internet, right click on it to pop up a menu and select "Save Image As" and save it into the folder.

Step 10 - You will need to rename the image to "background.jpg" - use the same method as above.

Step 11 - Right click somewhere in the folder, and click on "Customize this folder".

Step 12 - Click on the "Change Icon..." button, and just select the closed folder picture that it normally is. Press "OK". And press "OK" again!

Step 13 - You might need to shut the folder and open it up again before the image will appear.


NOTE
If you are doing more then one folder you can just copy and past the Desktop.ini file into each of the folders, copy in the background.jpg image and do step 13.


Now - what if your image is on the small side and tiles? What I have done is in some sort of image software, create a new image to the size 600 height and 800 wide - white background. Then paste the image you want to use into the white space. I also fiddled with the transparency!!! Then save that image as background.jpg to use.

Done - hope that wasn't too confusing!

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

This guy had an obsession with pink rooms, roasted chook, hat boxes and making his servants skate when he wasn't happy with them. I like him a lot.

Blogs

I've found two great new blogs to read:

hello kitty hell
A husband dealing with cuteness overload of hello kitty dealt out by his wife. I need to get me a Hello Kitty belt sander!

the road to otakuness
Gritty reviews of dramas!

Nathan Cavalieri

After watching Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, We started talking about Nathan Cavalieri - Where is he now??? sort of thing. I don't really know where the link of Bill and Ted and Nathan came from buy hey!!!

Not much info out there except people mentioning that they played with him, some photos of his CDs and this:




However he is in a band called 'The Dirty Skanks' and here is their website

I stayed home today with the headache sick thing - runny nose, sore throat, dry lips. I had it on Saturday as well. I'll have some more panadol before I go to bed.