The single crochet stitch keeps vacating my mind. I have to keep watching videos of how to do it to remind myself of it, even though it’s really simple. And I hadn’t crocheted in YONKS so I decided to make myself a little arm cuff sweat band thingy. With big buttons. Buttons are good.
I think I might make a couple more to make sure it’s completely drilled into my mind / hands. And because I have more buttons.
I feel rather sorry for my mouse now. The first two hours of my day are pretty darn clicky.
Made with IOGraphica. Which is pretty nifty.
Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t been making much as of late, which in itself is rather sucky, but I am now going to explain why.
I was having on of those “Why don’t I have a job?” moments, thinking through my abilities, thinking of things to work on when I realized something. The one thing I rock at, the one thing I truly freaking own at, is learning. I love learning, I eat new things up. And I rock at teaching myself things. And I’ve taught myself computer languages in the past, so I’ve decided to learn a human one. I’ve started learning Japanese.
I’ve been doing it half-arsedly for some time, learning some Hiragana, then not touching it again for a couple of weeks, and forgetting it all. But I’m now taking it a more serious attitude to it. I’ve now got Hiragana and Katakana down, which are the two simple writing systems, and I’m now working on my Kanji. I’m learning 15 a day at the moment, and I’ve got 115 learnt, out of around 2000ish. WOOP.
I’m not going to really document my learning process or create any learning tools any time soon, there are plenty of existing sites that are awesome. I just thought I’d share them incase anyone else was thinking of learning Japanese, or any other language.
AJATT – (All Japanese All The Time) Probably my favourite site so far, doesn’t contain much in regards to learning materials, (I think all that is in AJATT Plus, which I’m too poor for) but contains lots of articles about getting yourself into the right mind set, and the most efficient way of learning a language – listening to it, all the freakin’ time!! Khatzumoto’s writing style is also quite nice, but I am a fan of the tough love / cut the bullshit attitude. Basically, you can do it, get on with it, but by getting on with it he means listen to music, play games, do anything fun in Japanese. And screw lessons. Awesomesauce.
Tofugu – Japanese cheat sheets, culture and learning discussion from a like-able chap. The cheat sheets are well good.
Wikipedia – This one is such an obvious one I’m not going to link you to it, you can do the work yourself. There’s Hiragana and Katakana charts, showing you the pronunciation and how to draw them properly (it’s all about the stroke order kids.) I’m also looking forward to the day when I can read more than two words on Japanese Wikipedia. I would say it’s very useful but you should know that already.
Hiragana and Katakana drill – I. Love. This. It’s a basic form that drills you on your recall of Hiragana and Katakana, you can even use it as you’re learning them all, as it allows you to break them into their groups (na, ni, nu, ne, no. ma, mi, mu, me, mo etc.) I find it quite addictive.
Smart.fm – Haven’t used this much in all honesty, I’m planning to though! Contains little goals to set for yourself and pronunciations of kana, kanji and phrases.
Anki – My current SRS of choice (see AJATT), basically a flash card program, that is pretty. You cool kids with iphones can even get it as an app. Really works when it comes to learning your Kanji when it’s paired with…
Remembering the Kanji – Learn the Kanji through little stories and primitive elements. You can download a preview from somewhere (forgotten where I found it >_<) and get yourself going relatively quickly. I'm 115 in and it seems to be working. Although some of the stories are weird. Not all teenagers are on heroin and not all mothers fondle their kids. All I'm sayin'.
itunes – Enter the store, scroll down, click the Union Jack or whatever flag represents your country. Change your country to Japan. You can now download Japanese podcasts!! WOOP. But not music. BOO. But there’s enough English left to get around. Great for getting used to conversational Japanese, although it’s a bit weird when they all start laughing and you have no idea why. I haven’t really found any Japanese lessons on the English store worth raving about. Just get the proper Japanese stuff.
Youtube – Another one I’m not linking you to. But OMGZZZ PUFFY AMI YUMI.
And for the Squeenix fanboys / fangirls. A little game of guess the Final Fantasy character. And and and OMGZZ SAMURAI.
That’s it for now, this post is long enough. Will post more if I come across anything else useful.
I need to get back to making stuff.
One of the most annoying things about the lilypad is prototyping with it. Every time you move from one prototype or project to another, you have to rip it out and sew it back in. It can get rather frustrating, especially when the frayed conductive thread decides to go all over you projects creating tiny little shorts in your circuit.
But clever people (Angela Mackey and David McCallum) have come up with a clever idea: pop fastener thingies!
They’ve created a little e-textile shield allowing the lilypad to be moved from one project to another without all the hassle. You just make sure your project has the corresponding fastener popper thingies, and all is well. There’s even a little pouch to place a battery to power your project.
Awesome.
Via Fashioning Tech.
So, you’re out somewhere, in the “real” world, and you need to show someone something that is freaking awesome, but some URLs are too pesky to remember. Here is where p8tch comes in handy.
It’s a wearable QRCode, that you can stick to just about anything. (Although you do need a QRCode scanner app) It links to a URL of your choice allowing for a handy conversation starter:
THEM: “Hey, what happened to your leg?”
YOU: “Oh, I broke it in a highly harebrained, yet thoroughly entertaining way. Here, scan my p8tch and you can watch the YouTube video!”
THEM: [scans the p8tch, watches YouTube video] “OH DEAR GOD YOU IDIOT wow ha ha, let me buy you a beer.”
YOU: [enjoys beer]
(Excerpt from http://p8t.ch)
Although I personally would prefer cake to beer.
You can buy and set the URL at http://p8t.ch/.
I have been grannying it up as of late, making loads of granny squares to make my first granny square blanket, just in time for summer when I wont need one. But I don’t care because it’ll still be awesome.
I’m quite enjoying crochet so far, it grows a lot quicker than knitting, which is nice.
The new look fiomakesthings is here!! Woo. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks learning the PHP and tweaking the CSS, to get this lovely theme. At least I hope you think it’s lovely. There may be the odd tweak over the next couple of weeks but I’m glad to get a pretty, functional theme again, and it’s even better this time because I coded it all by myself.
If you’re viewing this on IE6 I don’t care if it works, go away. Then get a better browser and come back. Or not.
Anyway YAY.
Unfortunately some nasty people put some nasty things into the theme I had been using, so I’ve had to move onto this more basic theme to stop there being any nastiness. The good news is the nasties are gone and I’m working on stopping it happening again, but the bad news is that my old pretty theme had to go. I am working on a new theme though, so hopefully the site will be all pretty again soon. I’ve just got to get elbows deep into some major CSS-age.
I don’t like the nasty people. You did a NAUGHTY thing.
This little project is really cool and only requires a few components, namely a lilypad, six or eight LEDs, conductive thread and material and velcro for the bracelet. POV stands for persistence of vision, the bracelet makes use of this little kink in our eyes workings, and creates words in thin air.
I love the simplicity of it, although figuring out how to program the word you want to use might take some time, the simplicity of the bracelet itself is made more awesome buy the brilliance of the effect it creates.
Full tutorial can be found here. Made by quasiben.
I don’t know what’s worse. Not being able to find a job, or seeing people making the ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for the past few months but haven’t been able to get out. On the one hand, great, there are people out there making things, which is brilliant, but on the other hand, BOOOO. I wanted to make it.
I’m not feeling too great about my etsy shop at the moment either, I don’t have the money to make it into a full time business, it was simply something to keep my hands busy and stop me going insane until I found work, but I’m not sure if it’s worth it anymore.
In other happier news, I’ve been working on a new wordpress theme for this site, which I’ve built from scratch myself. PHP is a bit fugly and annoying. I’ve got the background workings set up, just need to get the CSS aspect sorted, which always takes longer. I can never settle on a single idea when it comes to my personal websites.
