Little-Wonder.Net

16 October, 2008

Mickey and Mojojo

13:09:42 | Little Things | writebacks (5)

Relapsed yesterday, and slid into another (and still relapsing) now - just as I’m about to head to school. So I’m just sitting around, waiting for the heart palpitations and giddiness to stop before I actually do make my way down.

Anyway, I’d love to introduce my new toy - a Canon DSLR.

An EOS 450D Digital Rebel, to be exact. (Specifications here.) My little family now comprises two babies; my Canon Powershot SX100 IS, named Mojojo. And now this new fellow which I named Mickey.

Mickey and Mojojo.

Sounds like a formidable pair, huh?

Mickey is no mouse though. He’s huge … double the size of Mojojo. Mojojo suddenly looks very puny and small, although Mojojo is no mouse either.

Mojojo has served me well the past one year plus. He isn’t a DSLR, but was close to being one. I’ve learned a lot about shutter speeds and aperture settings with Mojojo. Plus, Mojojo took excellent pictures even on automatic mode (back in the beginning days when I was too lazy to explore the vast array of manual functions Mojojo had to offer).

Mojojo impressed everybody. My family, my friends. Even my fellow photography tech geeks who owned DSLRs themselves fawned over Mojojo, which made me a really happy girl, proud of her little baby.

So now with Mickey around, I’m going to ensure Mojojo doesn’t start getting an inferiority complex, non?

Mickey came along with a huge, padded Canon shoulder sling bag which had two additional compartments for lenses (of which I still have none at the moment, and am still hunting). Mojojo is presently ’sleeping’ on one of them, next to Mickey, so as to not induce any sibling rivalry.

HEHEHEHE.

Even I amuse myself with how I attribute human personalities to inanimate tech gadgets.

Mojojo and Mickey spending quality time together. ;)

I can’t wait until I’m better so that I can bring Mickey out for a test run. No wait, I still need to look around for a good set of second-hand lenses.

Feeling less dizzy now - so I shall head over to school slowly. (A ten minute walk to contend with in order to get to the bus stop outside.)

Okay ah! Mummy’s going to school now ah. You continue to stay with Mojojo okay? Don’t bully Mojojo ah! Be good boys ah!

And Mojojo, you’ve not been relegated to second place. I still love you. (:

09 September, 2008

Yay for code.

00:10:39 | Daily Life, Little Things | writebacks (6)

I’m so happy.

I managed to complete coding a nifty little program for one of the modules in my FYP. It features adorable little coloured blobs with numbers attached to them, and you can adjust the numbers and in turn, the blobs grow bigger (or smaller).

Wheeeeeeee.

(Yes, yes, yes I know. It seems weird that here I am, seated at my desk at almost midnight, going gaga over a program I coded. The epitome of geek?)

I love coding.

Even though I’ve picked up Actionscript 3.0 only barely three months ago, it wasn’t as much of an uphill struggle as I initially expected it to be. Yes, the initial learning is tough but sooner or later, it gets better and one will start enjoying the coding process more.

More people should learn how to code. (Haha.)

—————-

Oh and yes, there was the cardiologist visit last Saturday which I’ve yet to speak about.

Well, the same issues are back after a short period of calm. The giddy spells and the occasional fainting spells are coming in waves now and in addition to these, I suddenly find myself having extremely strong heart palpitations.

I find my heart racing and seemingly threatening to thud right out of my chest after climbing up a mere two flights of stairs (I used to be able to climb up ten at one go), when I reach up to get something from my shelf, or when I bend down to pick up something I’ve dropped.

First, those palpitations, followed by the fainting spells. They come in pairs.

And one particular day last week, I experienced the same strong palpitations even when I was seated at my desk, reading a textbook.

In lieu of this, the cardiologist wishes to rule out arrhythmia. As such, I’m going to be hooked up to some portable ECG monitor (Holter) coming Friday for about a day or so - and I’d be concealing everything with a big, baggy sweater as I go around with my daily activities.

Am soooo not looking forward to it. :(

02 September, 2008

It’s back to haunt me!

23:44:33 | Little Things, Random Musing | writebacks (4)

Indeed, it seems that technology advancements have pampered us all too much.

Take the optical mouse, for instance. Now, you can move that little cursor on your screen so freely, without the need to yank out the balls (har har har) of your mouse ever so often to get rid of the dust within.

I salute the optical mouse. It’s made my life so much easier ever since I got my first one in … 2005. Suddenly, Photoshop seemed three times easier to use, especially since I don’t have to CTRL-Z as many times when I do my illustrations and whatnot because that stupid ball within the mouse refuses to move again.

Perhaps this perfectly explains why I was practically tearing my hair out at Sakae Sushi this evening.

Some background knowledge. Sakae Sushi is a chain of restaurants located predominantly in Asia, serving sushi of all sorts at cheap prices. (At least, they claim to make sushi affordable - but with the recent price hike, I am starting to have my qualms.) The outlets provide computer screens with an attached mouse at every table from which you place your orders.

Apart from having to deal with the occasional soy sauce soaked mouse, and perhaps the mouse which has had its inner mechanisms completely whacked out by the previous occupant (most probably a kid!) spilling water all over it which I encounter ever so often - I also have to deal with the old, traditional wheel mouse.

Yes, the wheel mouse.

With the ball within.

I am guessing that they chose to stick with the wheel mouse because the mouse was in the shape of an adorable green frog which matched the restaurant chain’s logo really closely, and perhaps there was no optical mouse in a similar design.

But what’s the point of having an aesthetically pleasing wheel mouse, especially when the ball within simply REFUSES. TO. MOVE?!?

That wheel mouse was practically as useful as … a male mouse without any balls. (Err, okay. Corny, I know. I couldn’t think of anything better, considering all that is in my head now is nothing but mice, mice, mice.)

Oh, and the frog-shaped wheel mouse had two big eyes - which were actually the control buttons. And I found it extremely disconcerting to punch my fingers directly into the eyeball of a frog, real frog or not.

In a nutshell - placing one order of salmon sushi involved twenty slams of the mouse on the table (to dislodge the ball from it’s stuck position), another twenty attempts to move the mouse at least one centimetre (that’s the maximum the mouse will move before it gets jammed again) and countless frantic punching of the eyes … err, buttons.

-Facepalm.

Someone should declare the wheel mouse a lethal weapon. It drives people mad.