Today just sucks, so I bought a few Slam Dunk manga (yes, about 6 years later than the majority of the population in S'pore). Fell into my bad habit of starting with only the interesting volumes, and then filling in the spaces. So now i have vols, 6,7,16, 17, 19, 20, 21...it is very very funny though...

On the bright side today also made me more focused, so I finally decided to add another module, and made it 3-2 instead of 2-3. Probably means i gotta watch my time more, but i guess it just comes down to determination, ne? Plus i've gotten to know more about the module, so it shouldn't be too bad...

...still, today just sucks, damn!

kyaaa! Last day of the vacation! *runs frantically around in circles* the psycho student in me is just itching for something non-academic to do before it's TOO LATE and term starts...some stuff I've done during the hols -

• 65% done on the Xellos costume, yay!


• club stuff like matric, chalet, registration


• knowledge management! *cackles evilly*


• crosstitch bookmark and card for a friend


• Streams on Cobblestones Ver 1.0 and half of 2.0


• Violet Haze 3.0 - Beautios!


• experienced 2 days in sales of anime


• borrowed lots of library books on website but read only half of them, heheh


• chased down Karekano manga

.....damn, I knew I forgot to wrap my manga again....and those friendship band threads lie still unweaved in my drawer...

Spent the last two days with my hours completely turned over - waking at 9pm, sleeping at 3pm. I think it messes with my head, how i have to struggle to get to sleep cos at 3pm my head wants to think because its daylight hours. My sis said she went into my room once and i was sleep-talking...worrying, indeed....

got my hands on my sis's headphones and now i understand the phrase -"shivered in pleasure" - because for the longest time i had to make do with earphones where only one side works. Her headphones surround your ears with sound - much much better.

Anyways, went mad over this song - "Someday We'll Know" by The New Radicals and later re-done by Mandy Moore and John Foreman(?) for the movie A Walk to Remember. This song has a history with me :

• August 2001 - first heard it on an internal bus from Science to Arts, got bowled over by the part where "the stars crash into the sea"


• September 2001 - used as the image song for a personal website assignment I got for programming class - comparing Spike and Julia from Cowboy Bebop. Website here - see those tiny words on the left?


• July 2002 - heard the song playing in Royal Sporting House(?) and sat down to admire the shoes, but actually to listen to the song. Thrilled to hear the cover version which sounds smoother, though not as soulful as the original.


• 25 July 2002 - bought the ost of A Walk to Remember - hmm, maybe can use it again for a layout...also, note to self to buy a proper set of earphones soon

Also spent time making a card for a friend. Last scrabblings to do something non-academic before school starts...already it is looming and hovering behind me *sigh* but am kinda excited - spent so long letting my brains ferment, feeling the familiar writing of lecture notes is almost soothing...in a totally too-long-never-study warped kinda way, of course...

Another one! *goes on self-quiz rampage*

Find your Realm of Influence at SailorOrion.com

My Senshi Colors Are: Silver: Powerful, Intuitive, Self-Aware Turquoise: Elegant, Graceful, Classy Get Your Senshi Colors At SailorOrion.com

Heheh, this is what comes of stalking blogs at weird hours...

whoo! really heating up my keyboard just now cos was typing up the matric fair name list - 138 names to add to the ML! Got so sick of the sound of my own voice droning out matric numbers and emails. It's a bit weird because I never like doing it, but somehow I got the inspiration to just type through all five pages of names...hmm, must be the bit of coding I tried (<==operative word here) last night made my fingers more limber tonite, heheh.

The Yubiwa layout's coming along ok. But I want to encase each blog entry in a bubble-shape so if the size changes depending on the length of the entry but can't find a nice floating-feathery-bluey-escaflowney way of doing it yet....

Thought of another topic for my research paper - Hypertext and Usability. They kinda conflict because the former is about experiencing a text non-linearly (i.e. clicking your way and reading random passages yet piecing them together in your head), and the latter is about making things easy for the user to find, easy to orientate himeself. Hypertext fictions can be pretty disorientating and it's easy to feel lost and frustrated. I wonder if I can compare them, and get away with eschewing as much human contact as possible. Well, to be honest, I would need to do some test subjects, but hopefully not as many as those needed for the virtual community topic.

This is me trying unsucessfully to get to sleep at 6am in the morning *grumble* My mind is so determined to process stuff that i read HanaKimi 7 through to 16, and that only made it worse, so I took out my programming text and started flipping through. So this is me now, trying out one of the more interesting Javascript effects.

Problem is I got an appointment tomorrow at 4.30 pm to watch MIB2 (again).

Am I crazy or wat?

Happy! Happy! Happy!

I've read about it, i heard others talk about it, but it's never happened to me before - until just now.

I dreamed in anime!

woohoo! *breaks open the celebratory Pocky*

It was a weird mixture of Inuyasha from Inuyasha, Hiei and Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho and those little robots from Twin Signal. There was a whole lot of horse-riding, falling of cliffs, floating in mid-air and seeing ethereal creatures. It had a plot too! Maligned hero is exiled, loses brother and seeks vengence. Hiei as a six-shooter - i think i was influenced by Zelgadiss in Slayers Try when he took on Jillas. Had a fantastical adventure feel to it all, kinda sad as well.

Had a darker dream, when me and a friend are on this metal staircase and a psycho technician tries to electrify the staircase, and we were only warned because the handphone she left on the lower rung starts smoking. We eventually escaped by bashing open one of the air vent and wriggling out...into the study area of a secondary school. What happened next was probably going to be a whodunit...except i woke up by then....

so, checking my modules, i was crushed to realise that they shifted cs4251 strategic blah blah to tuesday! there goes my much-cherished hope to have a one-day timetable, mwahahahahah! Oh well, Tuesday's good. I should thank my lucky stars it's not Friday.

They have this essential module activity thing for IF4101, hmmm....i think the part we really need practise one is how to come up with an honours topic first. But this is good as well, bet it'll sooth our nerves, heheh...

Heheh, sat down for a few hours and finally did something that's been at the back of my mind - no, not wrapping up my manga in protective plastic (but i'll get around to it...) - transferring all the stuff I can remember about club operations into a hypertext that can be easily accessed and navigated. Didn't do it in a word doc because it seemed to much like typing minutes, and I'm sure if you saw a tiny little bar in the word doc scoller, you won't want to read it either. So a website it is...

Lots of re-reading and editing and still it seems incomplete to me, which is kinda logical cos there's still a lot of stuff i don't know....this is bad karma for laughing at knowledge management in CS2250 Information Systems class, i just know it. But i had a lot of fun doing it. Now I feel like a load's off my mind.

Still haven't gotten around to supergluing the red crystal to Xelloss' staff. I think it's cos i subconsciously know that if i do, it won't lean nicely any more, cos the jewel will be in the way. Or maybe cos that'll mean I have to finally get started on the cloak.

Turned out matriculation was half-day on Fri. Well, I found out later that it's because the afternoon batch are Medical and Dentistry students, whom everyone seem to take for granted will be too busy to join clubs, hmmm....But it was lucky for me, cos i couldn't get to sleep the night before, so by 3pm i was out. I woke up again at 9pm. Which is why at 7am now, i'm still awake. Kinda ironic, that after all the sleeplessness, my internal clock stubbornly clings to such weird timing...

The Yubiwa layout's definitely a bloggy one. Got the lines in, but the pic is squarish and ends kinda abruptly, but i don't know what to do about it yet. Kyaa, more painful run-ins with Blogger's code.

Tried the Yubiwa layout - liked the song soooo much I ended up putting 2/3 of the lyrics in, heh. Probably using it for Ver 2.0 of this Streams on Cobblestones

Sora's a real medieval sounding track - like that Record of Lodoss War one, except much more magical-sounding. Yosh! I'm look for the soundtrack...

Just watched MIB2! I can't decide if the first movie is funnier or not. Though the singing dog Frank was funny. A nice little twist at the end with the "Light" thing - but the way it ended seemed a little obligatory bittersweetness...feel sorry for Kay that it didn't work out for him...

matriculation tomolo, better sleep soon...

Kyaa~~ I'm torn between a number of layouts for Violet Haze 4.0 - i keep bumping into really meaningful words and I keep searching for pics to match. The list so far

• "What Happens to A Naughty Xelloss" - pic from when Lina pops out at a critical moment and lands a much-needed stomp on Xel's face


• "Mandarin Orange" - a black and orange lines layout


• The two first lines from Yubiwa, the theme from Escaflowne: A Girl in Gaia

Listening to this and Sora, also from the soundtrack, makes me really wanna watch the movie....but i sorta know how it ends, and putting myself in a very depressed mood before terms is a very baaaad idea.....

wah~~~really shack from matriculation, managed to go two days with only six ours of sleep. Yeah, i'm a crazy woman...but at least, now I know front-line sales is not the thing for me...matriculation also teaches you to be happy with what you have, and be really grateful for what you do have...a whole lesson in the meaning of life really, matriculation....

Had some really weird dreams - they even had plots! And I can see some really strong waking hours influences. Like this song "Wildfire" - theme of man trapped in pursuit of a woman already on the other side. That dragon drama serial they have on ch 55. Handphone and voicemails. Big 2-level shadowy house. Bird's eye view. Inner commentary. Streaming water and thin wooden bridges. Chinese scholars and wooden doors...Adeline's mind is a real stew....

Anyway, gonna catch up on my costume. The test varnishing worked, it was cheap and didn't eat through the poster paint. Since the styrofoam didn't decompose into piles of white slush, I'm gonna apply more layers...

But I'm gonna need more enthusiasm for the cloak though. I use the needle and thread like using scissors and duct tape - no elegance and skill whatsoever *sigh* Still high on making that Filia keychain doll, but that means I need a bag to hang it on, and no way i'll do the bag before for cloak...*sigh~~~*

Getting really tempted ever since I found out Kino can get their hands on Twin Signal chinese-translated manga for $6+ each. Comic Connection would sell them for $7+ each if they had the stock.

yay! finally painted the staff today. Was afraid I was gonna blow myself sky high when I mixed the waterproof paint with black poster paint to get the right shade...or maybe melt the container and burn a big hole in my desk.

But all was well. Aside from having to open the windows to breathe properly, I had a fun time smacking on the paint. It dried really fast, as the waterproof paint label said it would and I could add the layers easily. It dried smoothly and a nice matte dark finish. In about four hours I was done. I was afraid I would have to leave it over night across my desk. Can you imagine having Xelloss' staff suspended across your desk while you sleep?

Visited the Bedok rental store to get my fix of cheap Inu Yasha manga, but it look like they didn't have new stock for quite a long while. Guess I'll have to buy from Comics Connection now.

Had a funny dream last night. In it I was really scared, and I zoomed (i really mean F16-kinda-zooooomed) into the sky. I could barely see and it felt like I was navigating purely by memory/orientation/sixth sense. It was the kind of catapulting through the sky and landing around 200m from where you intended kind of flying. I remember I was trying to fly back to my old home in Chai Chee.

That's the second flying dream I had about flying over my old home. The first time was nicer....I dreamt that I leaped from my bedroom window towards ??? (heheh). It was a smooth flight. I flew towards the sea. Except where the sea should be, I saw a row of snow-capped mountains...I vaguely remembered it's tropical Singapore we are talking about, but what the heck, it's a dream right?

Did have a nasty dream twice about climbing a very narrow staircase - curving wall on one side and open air on the other. It curved more and I mis-stepped and started falling down. I was going straight for a stone bench when it felt like someone grabbed my POV or eyeballs (painlessly) and yanked me back. Then I woke up. Had that dream twice and my sis said I said "Circle of Moonstone" in my sleep. Eeek! Wiggy......

.....hmmmm......interesting website name no? heheh....

Damn...now i'm too worried to go to sleep. Oh well, registration's at 9am, might as well stay up for it....

oh yes! another cheer cos my html-challenged brain finally figured out how to link my archive index to my main pg. Copied off how other blogspot pages did it. I actually wanted to keep the individual archive links on the main page, but hell, I know when to throw in the towel against the Evil Fiend of Programming, no?

Watched Gosford Park todae! Not as exciting as the mysteries I usually watch, and for the first half i was dizzy from the sheer number of names, plus they talked a bit fast...reduced to identifying them by height and hair colour. But definitely worth the watch - interesting watching the interactions between the servants. Some parts were downright funni! Prof MacGonnagall (Maggie Smith?) was incorrigible in the show. The end was very sad for me though probably not considered a typical sad ending. I don't think it could have a sad ending, the situation was already that way. Very interesting for the audience, lots and lots of special clues for you to juggle around in your head. Some bad audio kinda spoilt the experience, it made the actors talk like the droid army from Episode 2.

Was busy with the matriculation stuff, but now free to do my Xel costume again...ack....and ponder on my honours topic, of course, lazy lump of humanity that I am...

Really felt like a cosplayer-at-work as I painted the styrofoam spheres today. Upon inspected the cracked paint, i remembered why i shouldn't paint too many layers. Then "red crystal" accidentally rolled across my table. Now i have "blood"-stained table to match my hands.

Yesterday went to Art Friend to buy the paint, and upon seeing all the knick-knacks they are selling, I was overcome with a strong urge to make a Filia UFO doll keychain for Xel's bag. That does seem like something the fruitcake would do....except I gotta find a bag first, which is pretty low on my list.

The website is coming along quite fine - but i'm regretting calling it Ade's Functional Cosplay Site. It was a working title anyway, but i've done almost a dozen pages already....used my sis's very handy web cam to snap the pics, except i gotta shift the stuff to be photographed over to her room.

all~~~~rightey then! have finished the paper mache-ing Xell's staff! Major milestone!

Countless times of comparing with the anime pics from various angles, and finally it looks reasonably similar. What the heck, I'm no engineer. I have got a mondo backache, just behind my lungs.

Slicked on the final coat of starch (really re-living my kindergarten years of arts and crafts) and once again, the damn thing is splat across my table, which means i have to type pretending i don't have a paper mache staff running across my screen. I probably read more news paper while paper-mache-ing than i did the entire week. Not that it's not therapeutic anymore, but i think i've moved into the fufilling stage - now that this bunch of starch, hangars and paper finally resembles a staff, i feel fufilled, heheh...

Gonna watch Gosford Park on Wed with Jane and David! Really oni watching cos i saw a pic of MacGonagall when she was young and she looked really chio - the sharp, refined, long eyelashes kind. Plus, always liked a good murder mystery...Also cos it beat LotR and HP in terms of that dunno what awards, so I wanna know why...

phew! just spent 5 straight obesssed hours doing matric pamphlets in Photoshop for my club. It's not much, just take a nice B&W pic that can be photostated well, and try to arranged the words around it. It has a bit of editing-on-the-fly as well because if a sentance won't fit, it either gets changed or just deleted, depending on how important it is.

I tend to really get into thing when it comes to making pamphlets, and next thing i know, the birds are chirping and the sun is rising. It's not like image-editing/designing for websites because with pamphlets it's easy to see the end. With brainstorming for website navi, etc, it can go on forever, so sometimes I just stop and come round later.

Well~ it won't call it therapeutic this time cos my brain was working all the time, but i definitely feel like i've (almost) finished a project...

...and now that Xelloss's staff has had time to dry, I can do the third layer soon, heheh...

phew! spent a contemplative 2.5 hrs adding on the first layers of paper strips. I think i made a mistake re-heating the starch to lighten the consistency. Now it looks exactly like porriage. But had a lot of fun getting my fingers all gluey and wrinkled, and the paper hasn't unravelled yet, so i guess the starch must be working...you know, paper mache is therapeutic too! I think i find all manual labour therapeutic because my mind is free to chew stuff over...

Now i'm impatiently waiting for it to dry by doing other stuff, like blogging. The funny thing is that since I had to use my desk as a work table, the staff is suspended right across my line of vision as I type now. It's 8 plus now and i wanna do something to while away the time, like watch anime, or a movie...

hahah! did more work on Xelloss's staff today. managed to wrestle (i believe is most appropriate word) the hangers into a skeleton and taped them together. Then spent a few lovely hours reducing a pile of news papers into strips with a scissors. So now other parts of my hand hurt...buuuut.....you won't believe how therapeutic it is. I thought about everything from my honors topic to harry potter fanfiction...ok ok, that's not very far apart (at least in the hills and valleys of my mind) and i listened to all my old mp3s.

a theoretical topic sounds pretty attractive now - esp. something in usability studies, or the one about the form vs functionality debate.

Me in a huge pondering mood today. Got to see my honours teacher today. He was encouraging but noted that my thesis proposal (Examining an old virtual community and re-designing a new one) has a fair chance of failure.

Not that failure is bad, in that we still learn stuff as well but i may not have enuff to work with in the end. On top of that, the numbers may work against me cos the VC i'm proposing has a small target audience to begin with. Plus the best time to implement it would be registration period in about...three days. I dun think he'll approve setting up of a VC is such a short time when I haven't done the background reading and the audience surveys yet.

Sooo....I'm pondering....and more than a tiny bit scared. I tend to take calculated risks, and this time no matter how i look at it, the odds seem stacked against me....Perhaps I should go for a nice theoretical topic where I can aschew all vestiges of human contact, and stay in the library for a few months with my laptop...

In a bid to escape reality, i worked a little more on Xelloss's costume and after buying too much black cloth, and straightening *three* hangers, I have sore hands and damn persistent pondering mood....it's amazing how much you can do once you just sit down and start...dunno if it'll work with my proposal though....*ponder*....