Tired on Tuesday
So I present you with evidence as to why I love this town:
A bus, with a boat on top. Photo taken last May at the Willamette Valley MusicFest. Fun Fact: I did the design for the MusicFest site (coded by someone else). I'm not sure how much it may change for WVMF 2009, but as of the time of publishing, it is my design.
The Backside of Your Eye
I went in for an eye exam on Monday and was offered an alternative to dilation. I hate having my eyes dilated (even if I know it is a necessary evil). This is in large part because my focus actually flips when I'm dilated, leaving me very disoriented. So the OptoMap seemed like a good idea, even though it cost a little bit more. The best part? I got to see the photos it took of the back of my eye!
The procedure is slightly awkward because you have to point your eye perpendicular to your face and mush into the machine (there's a nice pad on the machine though!) It takes just a minute or so and the images are ready immediately, no waiting! How does it work?
The instrument uses coherent red-green illumination, enabling it to image pathology throughout the layers of the retina, from the sensory retina and nerve fiber layer, through the RPE and down to the choroid. The ultra-widefield image can be separated to present the distinct retinal sub-structures and the individual red and green laser images can be displayed in grayscale separation for enhanced contrast.
Lasers! Lasers are awesome! And these lasers showed that my retinas and lenses look good, as well as my optic nerves and all so I have no signs of glaucoma or cataracts. I do need stronger vision correction and will be getting new glasses as soon as the lenses come in. I guess I have a very high curve to a prescription that is normally pretty flat and they couldn't cut them in-house. I'm looking forward to having sharper distance vision, that's for sure!
I am Knitting Giant Man-Socks
Occasionally, my husband looks at me and says "my toes are cold. I have no hand-knit socks." Now, many people would say it was cold hearted of me to live with him for going on four years now and have not knit him socks. These people would be the ones who don't know that he wears a size 13 wide (US Men's) shoe. Thems some big, wide feet. And because he is frequently too warm, they can't be too heavy. And, they need to be knit at a tight gauge so that they won't wear out in the first month that he wears them. Enter some lovely yarn and I embarked on what is proving to be a somewhat arduous journey.
Knit to 9 stitches per inch on very pointy size zero crystal palace bamboo double pointed needles, these socks started with a figure 8 cast on. In that cast on, you cast on a smaller number of stitches and increase to create a toe pocket. In this case, that number? 40. Total number of stitches in a single round once I finished the toe increases? 88. To give me an unstretched size of 9.75, 90% of my husband's foot circumference. Once the toe was done I knit a little further with pagoda (the orange) to get a toe that looked right before I switched to the seaweed (green yarn). And then I just kept knitting for, well, a while.
Right now I'm stalled a bit, I haven't been knitting much. I've reached the point where I need to be thinking about the heel. Because my husband also has big ankles, the afterthought heel I was originally going to use would make it difficult to make sure the sock will fit up and over his heel. My current thought is to put the sock on waste yarn, knit a heel (using the same figure 8 technique I'm using for the toe) and graft it on, then go back to knitting as scheduled, up the leg. I just need to get around to picking it back up. Stay tuned for the further adventures of the giant man-socks.
And now, apropos of nothing, I give you the pig butchering guide:
Mmmm, pig.
PiDay FriDay
Happy Pi Day folks!
I'm taking a short break from the Pi Day festivities to share today's fixation: Garfield, two ways.
Number 1: Without Garfield
Number 2: Live, full color, filmed in front of a blue screen, with bonus music videos.
Guitar Hero 3
I've never been one to spend too much time playing video games. I'm generally not that good at them, with the exception of games that benefit from many buttons being mashed all at once (Soul Caliber, I'm looking at you). That said, we purchased a Wii in December of 2006 and since that I've found a lot more games that I'm decent at. I can stomp all over TheBoy when it comes to playing Mario Kart on the virtual console, much to his consternation.
One of the benefits of being at the LAN party last weekend (more on that soon, I came down with a massive case of exhaustion coupled with a large amount of fluid in the ears) was that I got to watch people playing things. Rock Band, for instance, breeds an awful lot of tone deaf singers, singing loudly. Guitar Hero looked complicated beyond belief, but also really really fun. Unfortunately, I didn't get any time to play myself and Sunday found me whining to TheBoy that I really wanted to play it. His solution? Let's go buy it. And we did. And after a few frustrating starts (boy, I cannot wait until they make the left-handed guitar for the Wii, so I don't have a whammy bar in my palm all the time) I managed to beat the game on easy by the end of the evening on Monday.
Since I beat this version, I've started back at the beginning in medium level. It's more challenging to add in that fourth note, plus more chords. Great fun though, I highly recommend it.