ruminations 2 Comments

Overkill

Tacked onto the bottom of a forward I received today at work:

Hunt the terrorists to the ends of the earth. Since most of the people of the United States, indeed most of the world’s population, will not live their lives as the terrorists demand it the only way to make the world safe. The terrorists will not be allowed to rest, regroup, or lay low. Death, not capture, is the only way to deal with zealots who will not compromise on their goal of a non-tolerate Islamite one world religion/government.

The co-worker that forwarded the e-mail to me did so just so I could see this amazing worldview that someone had apparently included as a sig. WTF. We both agreed that this approach is just as scary as the terrorists’.

And… “non-tolerate”? “Islamite”? Way to convert the intelligent citizens of the U.S. to your cause.

otaku

Time To Go All Otaku On Your Ass

First, I would like to make you all aware of a new podcast out on the podwaves: the Weekly Anime Review Podcast. Which just so happens to be produced and hosted by one Aaron Schnuth.

Every Friday, Aaron will be reviewing a different anime; this week, he reviews Genshiken. He’s been trying to get me to watch this short series for some time now, but his podcast review was what finally drove me to drag it out of the stack o’ anime and watch it. (That, and coming to the end of my Muppet Show Season One DVDs.) I’m on episode three, but only because I’m pacing myself and not letting myself have a crazy Friday Night Genshiken-a-thon.

If you want to find out what it’s all about (both Genshiken and the podcast), check it out! Better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed in the podcast aggregator of your choice, and you’ll never miss a show.

If you’re at all interested in Japanese animation, I would highly suggest checking it out. And not just because my husband is the host. ^_^

Now that the WARP plug has been covered, on to Otaku topic #2: I need a cosplay idea for Youmacon in November.
Continue reading →

crafty

Serger Test #1

While I was sorting through some of my random crap last week, I found a Ziploc baggie of buttons. Pins. Whatever you want to call them. I used to collect them, once upon a time — not really as a hobby, just as something cool to have. Kind of like my varieties of Post-It Note pads. But I digress.

It occured to me that it’s kind of pointless to keep all this crap if I’m only going to pull it out of a box every now and then, look at it, and put it away again. I have other knick-knacks and keepsakes that I’m planning to make shadowboxes for — but for my button collection, a simple fleece display will do.

I had threaded my new Singer Tiny Serger (purchased at Savers for $3) with hot pink, blue, and yellow thread, so that I could tell a.) how to thread the bitch thing, and b.) if it didn’t work, where the problem lay. As it happened, there was no serger troubleshooting needed, but threading it took FOREVER. I really didn’t want to have to rethread it for my next project… so I chose a relatively funky-friendly project to practice with.

All I did was serge around the edges of a 12″x18″ piece of white fleece, install eyelets in the corners (I didn’t use interfacing, and that might come back to bite me later), and thread a couple thread chains from the serger through the eyelets for hanging. Just add buttons. Pins. Whatever.

An extremely simple project, but fun and useful. I’ll get this arts-n-crafts thing down yet.

geekspeak 12 Comments

OMFG SQL WTF BBQ

Dude. SOMEBODY please tell me what’s wrong with this statement:

$query="UPDATE eventTable SET date='$ed_eventDate',
   eventTitle='$ed_eventTitle', location='$ed_location', 
   desc='$ed_desc' WHERE eventID=$ed_eventID";

I’ve been fighting with this one line for over an hour, trying to get the damn LSM calendar to update, and it keeps telling me I have a syntax error. I know it’s gotta be something small and stupid, but fuck if I can tell what it is.

If you know what’s wrong and you’d like to share, or if you might know but need to see the code around this to be sure, please share your infinite wisdom with me.

I’m getting that old frustrated “Come on, Diana, it’s time for a break / No, I’ve almost got it, I don’t want to stop now” feeling that I used to get when I was learning attempting to learn Macromedia Lingo back in the day. Except this time, I’m not going to stay up all night and watch Weird Al on MTV or Futurama on… whatever channel it was on. I’m going to go to bed instead.

Update, 8/24/2005 8:55pm: It was my variable names! I used “date” and “desc” as variables, and they’re reserved words. Once I changed my variable names, the query worked in MyPHPAdmin. I’m still working on getting the actual page to update, as I have several variable names to correct…