milkypink [dot] net

I’ve added twitter and plurk widgets to the bottom of the main page (the archives have been a little displaced, they’re further down) so you can check those out if you like!
Twitter I don’t update as often, but try to occasionally since I have friends who use only it.
Plurk, I love. It’s much more interactive (rather than just spewing 140 charas out into the blackness of the internet, you actually get replies!) and karma’s the hook (I’m aiming for 100 eventually! only 9 points to go, but at this point I only get ~0.8/day XD).
I do update on Jaiku/other services but only through socialthing! (which I will talk about later) so I don’t read replies there much.

CES didn’t bring me much I’m interested in this year, aside from the Mini 10 by Dell (720p and a TV tuner? crazy) which wasn’t even priced so I’m wary.

Just about 2.5 weeks until I’m 24 (@_@) Even numbered ages are always better for me… I’m hoping for good things!

Lately I’ve been feeling like everything basic costs too much o(；△；)o I hate paying money for things like food because they disappear so quickly! Which is why you’ll rarely see me in a restaurant that charges a lot for food (´ー｀) I occasionally think about getting a job to bring in some nice disposable income for me but with the economy the way it is I’m not sure I *could* find a nice, moderately-paying job. (No min-wage please, I have a degree! So what if it’s not relevant…) I’ll have to think about it some more. Cold weather crushes my motivation anyway… XD

(Or: Why, Yes, I Do Need My Whole Music Library)

In my constant search for news on a possible 64GB iPod Touch, I run into forums where about 50% of the people are snubbing even the concept of a 64GB touch, saying that a) it’s impossible to fill up that space!!!11! or b) why do you need so much with you all the time?!?!?
My answers to these cries are a) no, it’s far from impossible. I have 45GB of music, right now, and if you add some videos and apps to that, it’s not so hard to fill up (^ ~) Plus it’s always nice to have room to grow – who wants an MP3 player that JUST fits their music/video collection right now? It’s bound to increase, someday, maybe sooner than you’d think, so why play so close to the edge?
and b) this is a multiple-part answer, and it can be broken down into just 2 simple facts:
1) I am fickle.
2) Music is my lifeblood
The first is pretty simple to understand – my mood changes suddenly, unexpectedly, and even I can’t completely predict it. How am I supposed to know what songs I’ll want to listen to today? What if I want to share some song with someone else, but I haven’t been listening to it lately? What if I’m out of the house for several hours/don’t have time to customize my iPod playlists because I leave? It’s just much easier to have all of my music with me all of the time.
By this point, you might be thinking “You spoiled girl! If you don’t have exactly the music you want, just suck it up and live with it!” and this brings me to my second point:
Without music I am fragile. When I say music is my lifeblood, I don’t mean that I’m an audiophile, because in general, I’m not. I have music ripped at 128kbps and don’t mind that much – I can tell when it’s better quality, sure, but it doesn’t bother me because it’s not so much the quality of the sound, but the heart behind the music, and what it makes me feel. Music calms me down when I’m nervous, allows me to function the way society expects (with the small addition of one headphone covering one ear), keeps me from emotionally exploding, gives me energy, helps keep me moving, propels me forward even when I don’t really want to be going anywhere. It’s like magic, it is magic, the way it affects me. Music has more control over my moods than I do – if you could figure out the exact way, you could probably emotionally control me like a puppet.
“But wait,” you might be thinking, “If this is true, why not just listen to whatever music you have with you at the time to move out of your desire for other music?”
There are times when this is okay, but I often get stuck on wanting something in particular. And nothing will move me from this want. Like I said, I’m fickle.

I’ll admit that reason #1 why I buy (and love) luckybags (福袋) is the bargain. Sure, sometimes the items inside end up only being worth (to me) what I paid for them (and sometimes not even that!) but it’s the lure of the bargain! 40,000yen worth of stuff for 15,000yen? Yes please! In a cute bag? What am I waiting for?!
But that’s not the only reason.
Why else?
Because fukubukuro are a random assortment of items, I get the chance to try out things I wouldn’t normally wear. Sure, this is always the case, but luckybags force this opportunity upon me – I’m faced with the clothing, and the chance to say “hey, let’s see how this looks” without having the option of thinking “am I really going to buy this?” (because I already did XD), only “am I going to sell this?” It’s much more work to get rid of something I already own, so I seriously think about each item before I put it up for sale. This time, I don’t think there will be much I’ll sell, just the coat, probably.
Oh, coats.
I can never fit into Japanese coats for girls because they always assume girls have tiny shoulders, which, I guess, most of them do. But when you’re ~173cm tall, you don’t have narrow shoulders, usually. And I certainly don’t. No matter how skinny I am in the middle, it’s always the shoulders that get me.
Anyway, I will probably take a picture of my current outfit and upload it later. If you know my normal fashion, you might be surprised! (no pink to be found XD)

While I was looking at netbooks before, someone asked me, “Why do you put so much emphasis on design?”
They were referring specifically to my wanting a pink netbook, but it’s more than just that.
Why can’t I just deal with electronics in terms of what’s inside?
Why does the color, shape, aesthetics matter?
I am immediately inclined to ask all of you who don’t care, why don’t you?
For laptops, especially, I’m going to be using it all the time. I’ll be staring at the keyboard, the trackpad, the screen border, the cover…. how can I not care? Using the same black/grey bleh scheme makes me want to scream! It’s not me, it’s not how I feel, it isn’t my computer if it doesn’t have the look that I like.
Maybe, in the past, when there was less choice it was okay.
But now! When you can get computers in almost every color you could want, why settle?
But manufacturers still don’t understand. They make pretty notebooks with awful specs. Like they design the case and then go “oh but no one will care what we put inside! they aren’t going to actually use it.”
I hate it especially when electronics are targeted at women, with elaborate, often gaudy outsides, and internal components from five years ago! Why can’t there be high-spec’d items with a cute/stylish outside?! Is there really no market for such things? Is it so hard to have colored casings? (Dell, I’m looking at you! You have a dozen outer colors but your insides are all the same! At least make a white version!)
It’s times like this that I ponder trying to start up a company to make cute/stylish electronics with nice insides… ( > >)
For now, I’ll just keep digging through the thousands of products that all look the same to find my perfect digital companions ♥ *pets her pink WD external hdd*

I got my package full of fake eyelashes, tubes of glue and a small eyelash curler while I was away but didn’t bother to open it until today.
That tiny eyelash curler is a godsend! I could never get my eyelashes to curl properly with the ones that go over your whole eye, but doing just the sections? It’s perfect! My eyelashes actually curl, noticeably! It really makes them look so much wider and brighter.
I got about four pairs of false eyelashes to play around with, in various styles. One of them has a silvery glitter strip, which has reminded me how much I love glitter liner. So of course I’ve been browsing online for glitter liners, and Urban Decay has come out with a light pink one! I’m excited :D
I’m planning on trying to add highlights to my hair soon, blondish ones. Maybe that will help.

I am not a patient person. But I am trying to be better about it.
When I want something, I want it now or not at all.
Well, not always.
The kanji progress feels slow sometimes, but I know it’s impossible to learn all 2000 immediately, even if I do know about a quarter of those already.
But I’m still working, and that’s the important part right now.

Generally, I don’t have any problem finding things that I would like to own. Being somewhat of a tech geek, I’m always on the lookout for the latest and greatest (as well as the cutest), but these aren’t always things you can put on a wishlist for other people to buy for you.
So I default to things like books, games and videos, in that order. But even those become sparse when I don’t consume what I have or if nothing good is coming out. Or, and this is the case every year, I haven’t even had time to really look over what I got for Christmas before people are asking me what I want for my birthday.
This is the problem with having a birthday so close to Christmas (a little over a month after). I’d much rather celebrate my half-birthday in August, but that doesn’t work out so well either, since it overlaps slightly with the someone else’s birthday, and no one celebrates “birthday-delayed-by-four-months” so I’m stuck with February.
Which, living in the Northeast, means my birthday is filled with ice, snow and general icky winterness. Plans are frequently delayed by bad weather and I’m usually very lethargic and uninterested in the winter season. I have to say I disagree with anyone who says that living or being born in the cold adapts you to it – I’m exactly the opposite. I really dislike the cold, I’m almost always cold except for certain times in summer when it reaches 80F or higher, and if I thought I had more choice in the matter, I would not have picked the Northeast for my permanent living location. I can’t dress the way I want, I don’t have the energy I do when it’s warmer, I struggle to be optimistic through the end of March, thinking “Spring is coming and then it will be Summer.” over and over again.
All of this adds up to the fact that the things I really want can’t be bought for me, right now:
- a 64GB iPod Touch { Apple, this one is up to you! }
- summer weather! { travel and lightboxes do not count. I need the warmth more than the light, and travel is too brief }
- to lose weight instantaneously without icky consequences { I’m working on this but faster is better… haha XD }
- to have the knowledge of all 1945 common use kanji implanted into my head { doing this manually is so tedious! XD }

Just a small entry right now, to update you all on my kanji learning progress. I’ve been using Otona Kanji Renshuu for about a month now, pretty steadily, and my progress is this:

Completed through Level 3
520 Kanji learned out of 2261 total (17%)
11% completion of the entire program (this includes, I assume, the side tests about things like opposites, kanji compounds, etc)

Recently I’ve avoided bringing my laptop with me when I travel. This was originally started because of news about Customs inspections (regarding those only coming back into the United States) confiscating and not returning laptops. { Each of those words has a different link regarding this issue… it was big news last summer. } So I didn’t take my laptop with me on my trip to Japan because I was afraid of losing it on the way home.

I want to make a side note here that I’ve had problems with customs/immigration returning home before, despite holding a valid U.S. Passport and not being a particularly suspicious person. I was questioned extensively upon arriving back in the US after a rather long and exhausting flight (I cannot sleep on planes) and was detained just long enough to miss my connecting flight. This hasn’t kept me from flying overseas again, mind you, but I do know that customs experiences can vary greatly and I value this notebook like my own life. { It’s really quite distressing for me when it stops functioning properly. Despite being able to troubleshoot most problems with calm determination, I break down when it’s my own computer (u_u;) }

Instead of bringing my laptop, I brought just my phone, an AT&T Tilt (a.k.a. HTC TyTN II, HTC Kaiser) which has WiFi capabilities. I thought I would just pick up some WiFi signals somewhere, or use an Ad Hoc connection through the Boy’s laptop. As of now, I have NEVER been able to get an Ad Hoc connection to communicate internet, anywhere. Not abroad, not at home, not ever. I don’t know why since I’ve looked at numerous solutions and explanations and nothing seems to click. Both laptop to laptop and laptop to phone do not work. I will say that I haven’t be able to fiddle with controls as much as I’d like since in both instances I was relying on someone else’s computer (which they stopped me from doing too much with each time). But I’ll talk more about the potential of Ad Hoc a little later.

To continue with this train of thought, I initially was planning to get a netbook of sorts to bring with me as a minimal tool for checking e-mail, etc, but at the time I’d just purchased my phone a month or two prior at about the same cost as a netbook, so it didn’t seem to make much sense. So I passed on the idea. I brought my laptop with me on the other inside-the-US trips I took, but I wasn’t completely happy with the idea, despite not having to go through customs. This last time I upgraded, I chose a larger laptop that I’d had previously. Sure, it’s only a couple pounds more, but those add up fast. I am not a light traveler, despite my efforts. I am a prepared traveler, which means that I bring everything I think I could possibly need, within a reasonable margin. Not quite a survivalist, but perhaps a tech-oriented survivalist XD So another 6 or 7 pounds is a lot to add on, not to mention the adapter (another pound or two), and maybe a mouse. In addition, I have to adjust how I pack my carry-ons and what I can bring with me. It just feels less and less worth it each time I try.

So this time, I didn’t bring it, and I’m glad I didn’t, for only four days it made absolutely no sense. But it was still frustrating to not have my unlimited data plan (since PR is US-but-not-US for data usage) or a flash-capable machine of my own (Poupée Girl uses flash). The hotel had wireless, but it was only really functional down by the pool. Each room had just one ethernet cable. A possible solution would be, of course, to bring some sort of wifi adapter to broadcast out into the room, but this only solves half of the problem. And so my mind returns to the idea of a netbook.

I’m not especially proficient in hardware tech specs, but I know what’s okay, what’s good, and what’s better. Obviously a netbook can’t compare in specs to my 15.4″ Sony Vaio, and it shouldn’t. There’s a good chance that it will surpass the specs of my old 14.1″ Sony Vaio, bought in 2004, which is just as it should be. That machine was good when I got it, but sustained a lot of abuse and now would require a new battery to function as a mobile computer, at the very least. There’s a trade-off of size for weight of course, and if I can live with the Tilt’s screen I can probably live with anything in the 1024x### range for a short duration of time. There’s no reason to have a high-powered processor if you run XP, and lower power consumption means longer battery life. RAM can also be skimped on a little, since my old Vaio only has 512MB and it runs pretty decently XD Appearance is probably more important to me than it might be to others, but since it’s a small, halfway-between-cellphone-and-laptop machine, why not make it cute?

And so, we come to my current conclusion of needing the Acer Aspire One, in Pink, of course. It’s cheap, cute, decent quality and will help me have internet access when I travel :D

Originally, I wanted my New Year’s Resolution for this blog to be one entry, no matter how small, everyday. But my year started off with a vacation, and I tend not to bring my laptop with me on trips anymore { it’s bigger than my last one, and the extra weight + size pushes me over the edge. for a 4 day trip, it was not worth it. } and I can’t really blog to here from my phone so I’m a little late in starting!
{ Maybe I’ll make five extra entries here or there to make up for it… XD }
So today! January 6th. Macworld keynote. The last Macworld ever, I think, since Apple is pulling out. Am I sad? No, not really. It isn’t as though Apple is going under, or disappearing. Just not planning to announce things in such a dramatic fashion anymore, and to be honest, what I’m waiting for will likely not be announced this month anyway. I’m also not an Apple fangirl, just a recent equal opportunist. After working with Macs in a multimedia computer lab setting, I became more comfortable with the interface, something I had previously completely objected to using. But all computers and operating systems have their flaws, not to mention individual applications.
The only Apple products I’ve ever owned have been iPods – the 4th gen photo after it was announced, and the 5th gen video, a year or so later. The reasons I didn’t look into iPods earlier were fairly simple:

- no color screen. I hate monochromatic screens, and this is the big reason I am not jumping on the kindle. I love to read, but I don’t want to be held back by black & white.

- battery issues. For a non-user-replaceable battery, it previously had a pretty bad track record for holding charge and overall play time.

- I was unclear as to how you could sort through thousands of songs on such a small interface, and this was due to my own disinterest to do research XD My first interactions with mp3 players (back in 1996/7 or so) had prepared me for a system that only allowed for less than 10 songs (usually) which meant sorting and organization was unnecessary. Even minidisc players (yes, I had those!) worked under the same principle, although you could easily swap out media for more choices. How could I deal with my entire music collection on one device? And why would I even want that?

Once I had it, I never wanted to go back. Playlists are fairly simple, and I’ve only recently discovered the ease of smart playlists. Genius playlists aren’t that useful for me, since it only really works well for songs that are in some iTunes store (international is okay, but other than that). I have around 45GBs of music currently, and this has kept me from upgrading to an iPod touch, despite the lure of apps. I’m not excited about a touch-only screen, I prefer buttons (reason #1 why I don’t own an iPhone), but in the end, apps win out over moving laterally to the Classic.

So I’m waiting. I have serious doubts that Apple will announce a 64GB iPod touch at this keynote. It wasn’t announced last year, just suddenly appeared for sale at the beginning of February. This is probably because it wasn’t a great technical step forward on Apple’s front – they just found a supplier of properly sized 16GB flash chips (the touch uses two flash slots while the iPhone only uses one, halving its storage capacity). I believe 32GB flash is just around the corner (if they aren’t already here!) so I’m holding off, patiently. I can’t wait until 64GB flash exists, however, so once the 64GB iPod Touch comes out, I’m buying it XD