geekspeak 3 Comments

Database Wrapup

Tomorrow’s going to be a mighty early morning. James and I are getting to work at 7:30am — half an hour early for me, a whole hour early for him — to put the finishing touches on the Loan Corrections database.

It’s been nearly three months that we’ve been working on this database, and it’s finally reached completion. For now. The next step is developing databases for other departments within the Loan Servicing umbrella. We have meetings scheduled with two out of three supervisors: one on Friday, one on Monday. After our preliminary meetings, we write synopses/proposals for each department’s potential database and submit them to our supervisor, who will then submit them to his supervisor, who will then decide which department gets first dibs on us.

We haven’t been promoted, per se, and we haven’t gotten a change in pay or job description. We have been removed from the main brunt of Loan Corrections duties indefinitely, though, and are getting beaucoup experience. If they don’t change our MRs (Major Responsibilities), we can just leave. By the time these other databases are complete (and after I’ve safely taken maternity leave sometime next year), we will have amassed enough experience to get a better job elsewhere. Then Loan Servicing will have a bunch of databases with no administrator, and Application Services will have to support even more products made by “rogue programmers” (their words).

That said… I probably shouldn’t have indulged in that 90-minute nap today. It’s going to be a challenge to go to bed early enough to wake up at the buttcrack of dawn tomorrow.

otaku

Ouran High School Host Club

My experience with anime and manga has mainly been through Aaron. After ten years together, he has a feel for things I would probably like, and introduces me to them. That’s how I found out about Neon Genesis Evangelion, Serial Experiments Lain, Tonari No Totoro and all the other Studio Ghibli movies, and all my other favorite anime (of which I may or may not have yet finished watching the entire series). Hence, I get exposure to a lot of robots and mecha (like Eva), or blatant mind-fuck anime (like Lain, and like Eva), and some sci-fi type titles. I haven’t really gotten into the shonen titles, because I’m not much for ninjas and hack-and-slash type entertainment.

However, I am also not a overly girly person by nature. I shy away from anime featuring bishonen or magical girls or anything overly girlish. If not for Erin’s manga review of the Ouran High School Host Club, I would certainly have passed it by without a second glance. I mean, really. A bunch of obviously bishonen guys on the covers of this manga, and with a pink and purple cover, no less? Please.

Erin’s review piqued my interest, though:

By 2002 host clubs were all the rage…. Rich women would pay big money to talk to hot young men. Ouran High School Host Club is the high school equivalent thereof – idle rich girls at a private academy hang out with the host club’s hot young men in an ornate, unused library. They’re not looking for sexual favors later, but they might want a date.

The protagonist, Haruhi (Haru for short), stumbles unknowingly into the club, breaks an $80,000 vase, is mistaken for being a hot guy herself, and is forced to work as a host to pay back her debt. At least one character is surprised to discover that Haru is actually a frumpy girl and not a guy – as a scholarship student she simply couldn’t afford the school’s fancy uniforms.

Much of the humor of the book is derived from fact that Haru is middle class while the boys are upper class. They’ve never had instant coffee or instant ramen! Haru has never had fatty tuna! The rest of the humor stems from Haru’s calmness as she is surrounded by metrosexual prettyboy dramaqueens, many of whom need their egos stroked continually. Haru becomes the calm in the middle of the host club maelstrom.

Ever since listening to this review on the Ninjaconsultant podcast, I’ve been buying up the English translations of the Ouran High School Host Club manga. And just last week, Aaron told me that he’d heard that the manga was being made into an anime — so, of course, I went out and downloaded the fansubs via BitTorrent.

Maybe it was just my inexperience with the act of reading manga (right-to-left just ain’t natural to me), but it took me watching the anime to finally realize why it is that I love this series so much. Sure, there are the guilty pleasures of looking at cute (yes, cute, but not necessarily handsome) high school boys. Even more than that, though, is the protagonist’s view of the metrosexual guys she’s forced to hang out with, and the flighty fluffies who come to the host club to drool over them.

The biggest draw for me, I just realized, is the satire. The stereotypes are fantastically funny: the supposedly popular guy whose ego gets crushed whenever anyone sees through him, the twins who border on having just a little too much “brotherly love”, the baby-faced Senior who carries around a stuffed bunny, the smart and diabolical schemer behind-the-scenes. Even Haru is kind of dull-witted at times, more so in the anime than in the manga, which makes for hi-jinx and hilarity when the punch line needs a little more beating into the ground to be truly funny.

There are six volumes of the manga available in English, and currently there are 13 episodes of the anime, which is still in production in Japan. Until Ouran is licensed in the U.S., I will valiantly download and watch every fansubbed episode, and be proud of myself for reading a manga and watching an anime that Aaron didn’t find first.

photography

Black and White Film Photography

Like I mentioned earlier, I had loaded up my Olympus XA with black and white film a few months back, in preparation for Beth’s wedding. I was curious about shooting black-and-white with my XA, and it’s great in low light. I had also planned to test out the proprietary flash, but I realized too late that I’d forgotten to put a battery in it.

When I saw how dark the reception hall was, I thought for sure that none of the pictures would come out with no flash. So, I only took half the roll, not wanting to waste a relatively expensive roll of Kodak.

That was a mistake.

Had I just gone for it, and not worried about wasting film, I could have gotten so many great images. As it was, I only got about ten. This is where digital has definitely spoiled me: had I been able to see that the images were in fact good, I would have continued to shoot. As it was, I shied away from using up my film, because I’d started thinking of it as such a commodity as compared to my reusable memory card. I can’t let myself do that when I’m shooting film instead of digital, even if I’m not positive the pictures will come out. I have to take chances. After all, it’s just money, right? Besides that, I ended up blowing the rest of the roll on pictures of trees and shit, just to finish it up and get it sent off for processing.

I can also see the allure of black and white photography now. The last time I shot in black and white was my very first photography class, I think, and I truly didn’t appreciate the artistic possibilities back then. Shooting in black and white forces your brain to look at the scene a little differently, to see the tones and the composition, rather than the colors and the literal scene in front of you.

It’s difficult for me to see what would make a good black and white image when I’m looking at a color print (or jpeg). I know that people say you should shoot in color, then convert the image to black and white later if you think it would work better that way. If left to my own devices, I would focus on isolating the subject of a given photo using depth of field (having only the subject be in focus, and the rest of the photo be blurry). Using b&w, though, I don’t necessarily find that the only (or easiest) way to isolate my subject. Lighting conditions and composition can help create a powerful image, as well.

I should set my Nikon to black and white mode and go out photographing. Get some practice, see some different compositions, so that next time I’m faced with a film-based situation, I won’t feel so frugal with my frames.

photos 8 Comments

Beth’s Wedding


[Posted on Flickr by dianaschnuth].

Finally got my pics back from Beth’s wedding back in February. I had experimented by loading some black and white film in my Olympus XA… but I forgot my flash. The pictures actually came out extremely well, though — I’ll have to post the rest here shortly.

Update, 5/27/06: I scanned in my negatives and posted them to Flickr. You can now view a slideshow of the ten good photos I took at Beth’s wedding. When I did my post-processing on the photos (i.e. Photoshop adjustments), I purposely left them a little dark, just to keep the ambiance. I was honestly surprised that so many of these came out — I don’t think they would have if I’d been shooting color.

sewing

Return Of T-Shirt Surgery

It had been almost a year since my last t-shirt surgery, so I was getting that hankering for some sewing action. I’ve managed to collect a decent number of XL t-shirts that fit, but are kind of boring. I’d like to turn these into cute Diana-sized girly tees. (Unlike Threadless XL girly tees, which are about two inches’ circumference shy of being comfortable for me to wear out of the house. That does not stop me from ordering them anyway and hoping to shrink into them.)

My first reshaping attempt was using my Otaku Generation t-shirt. Aaron and I got matching Otaku G shirts free from the Otaku G crew at Ohayocon in January, and I’ve been meaning to surgerize it for a while now. It fits just fine, but I wanted to do something to make it a little more distinctive, and easier to tell my shirt from Aaron’s in the wash. 🙂

I followed this tutorial on resizing a t-shirt, for the most part, although I didn’t really have any resizing to do. Mainly, I just wanted to shrink up the armpits and make the sleeves smaller and more girlish. First, I lopped off about an inch and a half from the length of the shirt. Then I put the shirt on and figured out how much smaller I wanted the armholes to be, and pinned the armpit of one sleeve. I then marked the spot with white fabric pencil and removed the sleeves.

Enter the Singer Tiny Serger. While I watched my Logan’s Run DVD, I sat on the living room floor and serged up the armpits of my t-shirt torso a couple of inches. Then I adjusted the length and width of each of the sleeves, serging them up the armpit seam. Finally, I serged the sleeves back onto the t-shirt torso — inside-out, of course, so the seams were on the inside.


Three hours later (including movie-related distractions), this is how it turned out. I haven’t hemmed up the bottom yet (the “real” sewing machine was having bobbin tension issues), and I’m considering altering the collar and adding white bias tape. Until then, though, at least it’s all girly on my figure. I know it doesn’t look all that different, but it definitely *feels* more fitted.

As usual, I did have one or two screw-ups. I accidentally sewed the left sleeve on wrong-side out, so the red-and-blue serged armpit seam on the sleeve shows when I lift up my arm. I decided it adds to the character, though, so I’m not redoing it. I also serged some of the sleeve-to-torso seams a little loose (although I’m unsure how to do it any differently with my Tiny Serger). Once I get the Giant Singer (aka the “real” sewing machine) going right, I’ll probably straight-stitch next to my serges while I’m hemming the bottom of the shirt. And maybe fixing the collar.

For my next attempt at restyling a t-shirt, I’ll probably make the sleeves a little shorter and cuter, and maybe make the shirt itself a little shorter. I’ll also adjust the shoulders, so the sleeve attaches a little farther up my arm. I’m thinking my next victim will probably be either my Relay For Life 2005 shirt (once I find it) or maybe my Youmacon 2005 shirt. Should be fun!