cerealjoe | Entries tagged with lj related

Small heads up that now cerealjoe on Tumblr is a thing and it has the exact same posts as here but the photos are a bit bigger there and you can reblog stuff and follow me on there (hint hint hint).

No reblogs of funny stuff there though, and no random posts about nothing and everything in general. That's what my main tumblr is for!

Meme time! Snagged from

carnifinda!

1. Username/real name.
2. Favorite musical artist.
3. Write a sentence.
4. Location or where you would like to live one day.
5. Draw a heart.
6. Tag five peeps!

I forgot to mention something rather important yesterday and that's the importance of everyone who reads this. Even though I like to pretend I don't care, I really do care! LJ wouldn't be the same without the social aspect. So a huge thank you to everyone and anyone who has ever read, commented, posted a link to here, etc. Love you guys!

( +2 - playing hide and seek with the last rays of sunshine )

Holy moly! I have a tendency of missing the date by a few days (and to be honest I thought it was on the 13th and not the 16th) but today marks the 9th anniversary of the creation of this LJ! 9 years! It doesn't seem like it at all. Heck, that means I've known some of you on here for almost that long...

9 years of random thoughts and memories, stuff I most likely will never read again but it's rather comforting to know that I have this huge amount of... stuff, there really is no other word for it, accessible. It's true that I don't really post very meaningful ramblings about my everyday life anymore, I haven't emoed on here in so long! But all things must evolve and so now it's a scrapbooking place more than anything. If I didn't post most photos here they'd just stay forever and ever on my harddrive and cry about their little sad lives. Because really, photos are like that, most just get taken and then transfered and then forgotten only to be remembered again when one has to show some distant relative just how awesome that holiday in Memphis was. And then you have to wade through hundreds of photos, only to give up... and that makes those little photos cry. A lot.

Oh, I could scrapbook the old fashioned way with paper and glue and all of that, I've started projects like that hundreds of times but that's not my thing. I even looked up those tiny photo printers, now they even have ones without ink, kind of like polaroids except that you can print from any photo source. I gave up the idea after three hours, come on, where the heck would I keep the photo album? And you can't tag stuff on there.

I guess the LJ site itself should be thanked because, no matter what people say, it has been an incredibly stable platform in a world where most sites die after a few years. Sure, there are downtimes, they don't always provide the changes we'd like to see implemented, etc. but as a whole you cannot deny that even though there have been huge changes in terms of buying/selling/updating, the overall structure still provides a great place for someone who uses online blogging as I do.

In any case, happy birthday 9th birthday LJ!

"Memes are the comfort food of LJ." Discuss. You have three hours.

Now on to the meme...
- Comment with "I see what you did there!"
- I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
- Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
- Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.

My set of questions from

ninamalfoy:

1) What's your favorite dish?
It really depends on the moment but most definitely it will always be something that either my mum or dad make. There's boeuf bourguignon, cheesecake, different versions of baked salmon, tomato soup, stuff on the bbq, etc.

2) Who would you like to switch places with for one day and why?
I would most certainly have to say a Renaissance man or woman. The historical accounts we have of them have are just fascinating and I'd love to live one day of basically just doing arts and science and all this other stuff. These days we're expected to be specialists in this one tiny field, but these guys... they were different.

If it has to be someone living, I don't even know. Just out curiosity maybe I'd choose one of the girls from SNSD, see what life is like in that industry.

3) How would you describe yourself with only three words?
Major procrastinating weirdo.

4) Where would you never travel to and why?
I wouldn't want to visit an active war zone as a tourist. Not because I would fear for my safety but because I have a lot of trouble dealing with violence, especially if it's in front of my eyes. Hello ostrich syndrome!

5) What are your Top Five movies?
Oshii's Avalon is still #1 on my list. The rest of the list is made up of films that have a sentimental value rather than because I love the plot or actors, Together (yes, the MTV film), History of the World, Part I, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the first Austin Powers film.

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.

This list is actually the hardest one to make for me because my life motto (besides "live to eat") has been for quite a few years "never regret doing something, worst case regret not doing something".

So I'll change this one. I'll make it "Six things you wish you had done".

( and now on to six things )

And now back to our regularly scheduled activities. With a massive headache from hell. It looks like a pre-I-will-soon-have-a-massive-cold headache though. Why, world, why?

Continuing with the second day...
Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.

I'll list things which are often on my mind but not necessarily the things most on my mind right now. Just, you know, in general.

( seven things this time )

Continuing with the second day...
Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.

( and now for eight things )

And speaking of food, I tried out a recipe on a tiny batch of wine cookies the other ~~day~~ week (need to catch up on so many things).

Alas I wrote the recipe on a post-it and forgot to save the original source.

( +3 - the recipe and the result )

Continuing with the second day...
Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.

( 9 things about myself )

And now for some last photos from the Diana Mini roll. This one was a Fuji200 if I remember correctly.

( +2... or 4, depends on how things are seen )

Meme time! This one was stolen from

abbichicken and it's one of those ten day things:

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.

I'm also stealing the idea of writing the ten things about peeps on my flist (or in my google reader).

( 10 things I want to say to 10 different people right now )

Every cloud has a silver lining, right? Well, all that rain we've been having lately was bothersome up until my mum pointed out that some of the plants have a rather lovely drop collecting technique.

Don't these kind of look like bugs with huge eyes?

( +4 - they're everywhere! )

I was complaining the other day that the embedding I had on where-is-gali.net wasn't working well... and as the Shadok saying goes "pourquoi faire simple quand on peut faire compliqué" ("why take the easy way out when there is a more complex one").

I went and clicked on "install wordpress" on my cpanel, updated it, imported all of my LJ there (after 17 import errors, everything got imported), now I have a back-up for this place (just in case the Russians decide to do something evil again, it's still the Russians who are supposed to do evil things to LJ, right?) and it looks roughly like that:

(click here to see it live in all its glory)

Now my mind can rest for a while. And back to reading up on thermo-economics we go. Yay! Reminds me of a comment I once got at a conference when I said that I didn't know much about some random subject "you're doing a PhD, you can teach yourself anything!"

Just a little PSA while I brew some more tea. Yeah, I'm a pro at tea. I'm soon going to start patenting my own private brews. In these photos you see some dried mint from the garden with oolong tea. Life, I win at it.

~~No, what do you mean I have a huge ego? I do not! Stop it!~~

Now on to the PSA. It has come to my attention through some PMs and other means that some people are offended that I don't comment a lot if I've added them to my flist and others get offended that I don't "add them back" automatically right after they add me.

First, the comment thing. If I've added you to my flist and you're an interesting person, trust me, you're on my to-read-daily group and I read your entries. It does not mean that I have something to comment about all the time. There are a lot of times where I'll open a separate tab with an entry to comment on and in the end just close it because I can't formulate what I want to say correctly. That's life. My LJ stats tell me I have left over 12000 comments on LJ (that's 3000 more than I've received, btw), so I do leave comments. But really, don't take it personally, per day I perhaps leave one comment on my flist.

Second, as it says in my profile I don't have a friending policy because 99% of my entries are public. As it also says, if you promise me you're not a creeper, I can add you to my flist and you'll be able to see that rare 1%. Some people are really keen on keeping the whole "friends" and "friend of" numbers up... if that's your thing, I really don't mind.

End of tiny PSA. At least peeps on LJ seem to have calmed down with the whole friends cuts and retributions for not adding back. Tumblr often suffers bouts of "omg I lost a follower" times and makes me wonder if at least 90% of the people there are not 12 or younger.

Whee Friday. And I'm behind on posting about so many things... I have so many tabs with different posts started that it's quite scary. But hey, sunshine, warm weather, almost lunch time, numbers related to solar thermal and PV cells pouring out of my pores. Life is good.

Let's start with some more from the Zenit roll.

( 3x2 more from the Zenit... and that's the end of that roll )

And now meme time! I got my questions from

annastesia

Here are the rules if you want to play along:
Leave a comment saying "What's up?!"
- I'll ask you five questions to satisfy my curiosity.
- Include this explanation and offer to ask other people questions

1. Have you found the perfect cupcake?
No, I have not. I have not even come close to finding that perfect cupcake that I've been seeking! The worst part is that I know in my head what I'm looking for but, as with all things, it's full of baking contradictions... the closest I've come to a decent cupcake is the one from Cafe Carusel with the dried flowers.

2. What was your worst experience here in Finland?
I can't say that I have too many bad experiences in Finland and it's actually quite hard coming up with what could be called "the worst" one. The one experience that I didn't quite enjoy, and it was actually partly my fault in a way, was when there was that windy day of major cold last winter when the bus drivers went on strike. It was a Thursday, I still remember that. I say it's partly my fault that I froze my butt to death because I actually didn't check the bus schedule before I left and therefore did not see the notice about the surprise strike. After years in Finland with only a few strikes with a three weeks' notice, I think I was lulled into thinking that surprise strikes of bus drivers and in the middle of winter, at that, could not happen.

3. A thing you hate most in France?
I really dislike the way in France people are not really considered adults up until the age of 25, or sometimes even later. It's incredible just how many things my parents had to sign or co-sign for me since I turned 18!

I also highly dislike the inherent distrust most people have... especially when renting out flats. If I were to rent a flat today I would have to either provide tons of proof that I can pay for my flat (tax forms, pay rolls, etc.) whereas in Finland I just paid my two month advance and I had my flat, no questions asked!

4. What draws you to Asia?
That's a tough one and actually I don't seem to be drawn to all of Asia, it's mainly just China, Korea and Japan (and Taiwan and Singapore in a way). First of all I really like the different foods they have there, I also quite like eating with chopsticks. Second, like for Finland, I quite enjoy the people in those countries. It's true that I don't understand what they're talking about and it's true that I don't get treated like a local at all, but I love just sipping on some tea and people-watching. Then there are the little things like the ajumma and ajusshi in Korea and the 2 yuan shops in the back-streets in China.

5. Do you see yourself as a mom someday?
I think the fact that children and I don't get along is not a big secret... and well, the short story is that no, I don't see myself as a mum at all. Why? I'm selfish and the chances of producing children who could be as amazing as my sister and me are rather slim. I would hate to be disappointed in my own children, I suppose all parents take that risk but given the population of the planet, I don't really think I need to. I honestly feel like I can make a good contribution to this world without spawning children, there are so many other things to spawn.

Right. So let's share some more politically incorrect opinions: I don't give a damn about the whole "share the comment/post on FB/Twitter" affair!

I'm not worried that somehow my stuff will end up at the end of the universe and somehow my super-duper sworn arch-nemesis will see a link to an entry of mine and use that against me. Then again I don't have a damn arch-nemesis! Woe is me. I want a cool arch-nemesis, dammit! If Stephen Colbert can have Bi/Rain as his arch-nemesis (watch that video, the fun starts about 1:40 in) I want someone just as awesome and badass, I want to have a damn dance-off also.

Back to my point. Everyone and their mother is saying that LJ is an arse for putting in that option and they weren't asked about it. This is like H2G2, you probably were asked about but you had to go down to some basement and go past a tiger (metaphorically speaking, in internet terms that means "it was written somewhere at the bottom of a post about potato chips") to actually read about it.

What's the main problem most people have? They lose the control of what they've written and their LJ is "theirs". This is the interwebs, nothing belongs to you. These options that were introduced just make it easier for me to spread something... trust me, if I wanted to make fun of your little post and get you some hate mail, I could easily post a link to your entry on some random board with a couple of trolls and public/friends-only/other posts would get spammed. It's a bit like people moaning that their HQ photos are being stolen. Don't want it stolen/made fun of/photoshopped? Don't post it on the interwebs. Easy breezy Cover Girl.

Alright, so yes, I'm not taking this whole drama too seriously because LJ has so many other problems which were introduced (ads anyone? ads you can control on your paid account?) and which in my opinion are so much worse. Why the hell get your panties in a twist about something which actually existed before but is now just made easier?

Conclusion: LJ, in your next update can you send me my own kpop arch-nemesis with whom I'd totally be able to have a dance-off? We could even go to a norebang now that I can read Hangul very slowly (not that I know what anything means but I can read it)!

And in other news, this is for my mum if she'll ever get around to backtracking up to here in my LJ when she's back from her holidays.

See, Mum, this is what Linda the bunny was doing while you weren't here! She somehow managed to get past the mesh that's in front of the bottom layer of the garden and she quite enjoyed the food there. She also absolutely ignored me when I told her it was dangerous and that she could fall off easily at any point and she kept on jumping along the edge. Bad bunny! But I guess that's what bunnies do, they jump.

To say that the majority of pet bunnies are in cages and never get to go out and only eat round bunny food! I don't think Linda quite realises what an adventurous life she leads compared to those bunnies.

Meme time! As per usual, the rules first: 1. Reply to this post, and I will pick six of your icons. 2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose. 3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts. 4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon squee. Whoo! Now the icons picked for me by ninamalfoy:

( the story behind each icon here ) The icons picked for me by allangtegek:

( the story behind each icon here )