anoisette » geek

Make your own background patterns

anoisette — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:17:08 +0000

I was just playing around with the fantastic pattern maker at bgpatterns.com and was pretty impressed at how easy it is to make nice patterns I’d actually want to use! It would be the perfect place to make a quick background for say your wedding website. If only they let you download the patterns in a higher resolution so you could use them on your invites as well… Anyway, the site is super easy to use and you can pick from a very nice selection of patterns, pick the color, the size, the texture, and a whole lot of other stuff that makes it so easy to end up with something you like! Even if you don’t have an immediate need to make a pattern, it’s a lot of fun to play with.

Killing time at YVR

anoisette — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:11:40 +0000

One of the things I hate about flying is how you have to get to the airport so far in advance of when you are actually leaving that you always end up sitting around waiting. Well on my recent trip to Calgary, I actually didn’t mind waiting at YVR so much because they now have free wifi that I was able to use on my iPhone, and also I found a really sweet spot to wait around in the international terminal. There’s a quiet little upstairs part to the food court with plenty of empty tables and natural light. The perfect place to sit back and catch up on your rss subscriptions before you have to mosey on over to your gate.

Pretty word clouds

anoisette — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:10:52 +0000

I’ve been playing with Wordle, making word clouds that I could somehow incorporate into the wedding. Not sure for what yet? The invitations maybe? Table numbers? A big poster? Anyway, it’s fun to pick fonts and colors and I like the way it looks and how it has significance to us as a couple. I ended up using text from the story of the development of our relationship and I like that you get the main gist from the big words and then can dig down and read the smaller ones. But really you could use text from anything, whether a favorite story or poem, or even emails you’ve written to each other… Or if you both have blogs it can pull the words from the RSS feed. Lots of possibilities!

New printer

anoisette — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:39:10 +0000

So we got a new printer, yay! First thing I did was print a test sheet, a photo, and a pdf (calendar from Mibo). The pdf came out pretty good so I am happy enough. The photo left much to be desired, but it’s not a photo printer so I can’t complain.

What’s with the ‘usb cable not included’ racket though? Why can’t the printer just come with a cable that probably 99% of people buying the printer will need? We got the printer at Future Shop where they were selling the USB cables for an outrageous $30. So we went accross the street to NCIX and got one for $7. Yeesh.

DIY running podcasts

anoisette — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:43:16 +0000

Ok so it’s January and it seems cliche to say that I am starting the Couch to 5K running program. I have good intentions to see it through to the 9th week yadda yadda yadda but it’s more about the journey, right? And a journey needs good music.

So that’s why I was pretty happy to find out that there are quite a few Couch to 5K podcasts out there to make the journey more enjoyable. Unfortunately after downloading and listening to a few them and realizing they would actually be more of a disincentive to run, I realized like so many other things in my life (it seems everything?!) I was gonna have to DIY it.

Thanks to the googles I found a step by step guide on how to Create your own interval running playlist. So far I’ve spent more time making the playlist to go running than I have actually running. But let’s just keep that between us.

Free Marimekko desktop wallpaper

anoisette — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 19:50:24 +0000

My first encounter with Marimekko was discovering a vintage dress from the 1960s in the Clothing and Textiles collection at my University. The dress was one of the pieces in the collection that was lacking documentation so I took it up as a class project and delved in to the research and have been a fan ever since.

Today I discovered they offer free desktop wallpapers on their site. I’m getting a Marimekko theme going on at my computer with my Marimekko desktop and mousepad.

Art for your iPhone

anoisette — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:28:55 +0000

These iPhone Art vinyl stickers from infectious are a nice change from the usual iPhone case selection that is out there. I’m not sure whether they’d actually have any kind of protective qualities to them, but they sure look cool. I’d almost consider getting one and putting it under a clear plastic case… iPhone armor!

Hi wordpress 2.6.1

anoisette — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:51:38 +0000

So it was a few weeks ago that the new wordpress upgrade was released but I only got around to upgrading just now. It wasn’t as straightforward as I thought because I’d originally installed wordpress with Fantastico De Luxe but to my dismay when I logged in to my control panel to do the upgrade Fantastico was telling me I had the newest version and there was no option to upgrade. A quick search on the Bluehost forums led me to find out that Fantastico is apparently slow about wordpress upgrades and one user was changing over to SimpleScripts but there were a few things to watch out for (namely naming of db tables). One lovely person took the time to type out an explanation on how to migrate a blog to a SimpleScripts installation but just skimming over the post I was thinking “too. much. effort.” in the end I used SimpleScripts for a 1 click new installation (in a new folder) of the lastest version of wordpress and exported my posts (1 click) from my old Fantastico installation and then imported them into my new SimpleScripts installation (1 click) and it looks like nothing broke so hurray! Then I uploaded my theme to the new installation (1 click) and next I will delete the old Fantastico installation. Easy peasy.

anoisette — Sat, 31 May 2008 16:24:08 +0000

I’m a little frustrated to find out that the keyboard I ordered from FutureShop.ca last Wednesday is actually sitting in a warehouse in Richmond as of last night and will just sit there all week-end until Monday when they deliver it (I hope). I want my wireless keyboard! Actually I am mostly just very curious about what a $30 wireless keyboard and mouse is all about. That seems like a pretty good deal to me?