deng aideng’s diary

Update: 2007 wasn't particularly special for pictures.

Show us the best picture you took in 2006.
Submitted by Captured Moments.

No photoshopping, though it could use some.
2007 is looking like a good year for photos.

I was checking out pikoeri's vox and saw his "pile of shame" he had on display. Of course, I had to one up him! Let's just do this year's stuff:

The list:
Games:
Devil May Cry 2
Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (I don't even have bongos!)
Eyetoy antigrav
Final Fantasy 1+2: Dawn of Souls (the shiny one up top )
Get on da Mic
Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 3

Movies:
Ah My Goddess Mini-Goddess (4 disc set)
Captain Herlock (4 disc set)
Howl's Moving Castle
Kimagure Orange Road TV series (12 disc set)
Kimagure Orange Road OAV and Movies (3 disc set)
Master Keaton  (8 disc set)
Project A-ko
Sherlock Hound (6 disc set)
Whisper of the Heart

Now my justification, heh. Looking at it looks like I really like anime, huh? But I'm not a big fan! That's probably why they're all still in this pile. Earlier this year rightstuf had a sale on Geneon brand anime, 25 discs for $100, I couldn't help myself! So I picked up some series I've  had high recommendations for. There's another 3 discs to Sherlock Hound not in the picture, because being a nice guy I let someone else watch them rather than hoard them away. Kimagure Orange Road is my favorite series ever and I had to pick it up when Animeigo stopped printing it earlier this year. Silent Hills 2 and 3 are the only used items on there, and the only ones I "had to get" after falling in love with the first game. I've been waiting for a nice amount of free time to start them so I never touched them during the semester. The rest of the games were bought on clearance deals. I played maybe an hour into Silent Hill 2, but other than that this stack's been untouched by me.

There's a lesson to be learned from all this: if you're not going to use it, it's not a deal. I don't know why I still do this, I've got movies and games from years back when I worked at Blockbuster that I still haven't opened.

Hey, not going to go into a real post here, but for class I had to write a website to promote myself. Figured everyone would like to see what I do in that school I go to everyday. It's my first real attempt at html and it's all handmade, so I feel pretty good about it.

check it!

Well, Vox stopped putting comment updates on my main page, so now I don't feel any draw to keep coming back here. Unless I'm gonna write something, but why would I want to do that?

School's been kickin' my pants for the past couple months. Why is it that the semester I have the least amount of classes I find myself with no social life, working on schoolwork outside of class longer than ever, and still don't manage to get it all just right? I need to learn some time management skills.

Seeing Codi's Harvest Homecoming entry reminded me that my family entered a chili cookoff this weekend! It was an appropriately chilly day. The season's finally started to feel the part. We all gathered at the park early in the morning to set up before the public came in. There were about 8 or 10 or so groups there cooking and some other people with tables advertising crap or doing activities. Like pie throw or haunted house or horse ride! It was a lot smaller than Codi's gathering but we still had fun. We were competing for the grand prize but the judges were too damn affirmative action. They wouldn't recognize the superiority of our white chili, though many passersby assured us that we were the best. I've been eating chilis and soups since. :(

I was gonna post some pictures but looks like Vox is sucking even more and won't let me. Too bad for you!

I've begun eating fine chocolate again. I bought a bar of Lindt 72% on a whim and now I'm hooked again. Man, there's nothing like a good dark bar. I'm currently nibbling at Hershey's new fancy line, Cacao Reserve. I know Hershey's no good for a true chocolate connoisseur, but I'm enjoying it. "Extra dark", but it's only 65%. That's baby chocolate. But it's got cacao nibs in it and I've never experienced that before. I'm enjoying it. Next on the list is Ghirardelli's entry, then I'm off to the finer food store to get the fancy stuff. I looked around online and came across this website about the hobby. I had no idea it was so deep.

That's about all I want to say right now.

Share a photo of something that made a huge impact on your life.

These three introduced me to the beast.

Share a photo of something that comforts you.

This is about as good as it gets.

So you know how if you go on the vox homepage you get a list of recent entries and comments? It's pretty convenient to keep up with all of the different blogs. So Facebook implemented something like this today, except their's is way more extensive, tracking friendship changes and profile changes even. Pretty much if any public information can be changed, all of your friends get notified of it on their homepage. It's really nice! I might even use the place if I could keep up with all this stuff. The old Facebook was really unwieldy trying to stay on top of anything beyond what was posted on your profile and private messages. It really didn't serve a perpose other than collecting contact information of other people you know. Now they've implemented light blogging and this new feeding feature and I can really see it being useful to keep up an online community.

But is that what it's users want? Judging from my feed, there aren't any people with good comments on the system, but they're gathering to get rid of the changes. The argument is that it's now too invasive of their privacy; say you break up with your boyfriend and set yourself as single, all of your friends get a little note announcing the breakup.

But, see, here's the thing: all of that information was available before hand. You just had to go get it yourself. All they've got is brought all the information to you, the user. No more going to other profiles to see what's been written on their walls; it's all fed to your homepage. This is all information edited and posted by you in a (semi)public area to friends that you manually regulate. Web 2.0, people!

So why does everyone care? I know I wouldn't keep up with everyone on Vox if I didn't have the feed just because it would be too much effort. Not all information's of the same importance to me; if I miss a few comments because I only check a blog once a week I won't feel like I've missed anything. And, of course, those who I really like to read I'd make the effort to check all the time. Do other people feel the same way, and thus think of their profiles as somehow "more private" on a public forum?

It will be interesting to see how things progress in the near future with the site, in any case.

Share a photo of your commute.

Curse you, Vox! How am I supposed to post a Hello! Project girl like that?

H!P girl and a cat? That's too easy!