milkypink [dot] net

I’ve discussed before why the previous version of the iPod Touch wasn’t enough for me, but I still don’t own one, even though those requirements were met.

Why?

Because the Touch really ought to have a camera.

The more I think about this, the more it makes sense. Not only are companies sticking mp3 players into everything (including even tasers), but cameras are becoming ubiquitous. It’s true that smartphone companies need to make non-camera versions for people who work in high security clearance jobs, but every phone has the option to have one. Most computers and netbooks have built-in webcams, admittedly frequently pretty poor quality ones, but that’s beside the point.

Cameras are everywhere.
Including, as of Sept ’09, the Nano, which Apple introduced to a lot of confusion. Even saying it’s a Flip Mino competitor seems like a stretch to me.
Surely this is an affront to the more advanced Touch, which actually has the ability to utilize a camera in interesting ways via apps.
Why would a higher-end product get short shifted, while the entry-to-mid-level product stands out as actually getting an upgrade?

Theory one immediately brings one to think of another very similar Apple device, the iPhone.
To many, the Touch is just steps away from being an iPhone without the contract. Indeed, the insides are quite similar, minus the obvious difference of cellular capability and storage.
But the iPhone has a camera, and the Touch does not.
With the addition of a mic and speaker, the Touch inches closer and closer to being the contract-free iPhone many are wanting.
Why would Apple want to keep these two devices separate?
True, the iPhone is a pricier device, but most of the money spent on it actually goes to the carrier, not Apple (unless they are paying far more to Apple than I’m thinking). Would they really lose out so much?

Theory two popped up days before the announcement.
There was an issue getting the camera to fit/function properly. But why would there be such a late delay? Surely they would have worked out things much earlier, having planned the release date far in advance.
But technological mishaps are not always predictable, or easy to fix, so while a bit of a stretch, it’s plausible. And this rumor arrived just in time to make people feel very disappointed about the Touch receiving little to no improvements over the previous generation. The Nano getting a camera was just rubbing salt in the wounds.

Will the Touch get a camera in the next iteration?
I certainly hope so.
Do I need a camera in my mp3 player?
No, but the Touch is more than just an mp3 player – it is the gateway to hours of entertainment fueled by both music & movies as well as games & other apps.

I won’t buy a Touch until a camera is added (or, I suppose, my Gen5 iPod bites the dust hard – it’s chugging along, still) because I feel that if I do, Apple will finally add one right afterwards.
Tech is always advancing, so having the “newest stuff” as a condition only lasts about a month or less.. unless you have a lot of cash to burn (and I would note that such a method of spending is largely a waste), but when you can see an improvement coming (such as the storage upgrade), it is better to wait for it than to buy now and regret it later.

I look forward to the day when I can write up a review for an iPod Touch with a camera ♥

Please make it happen, Apple!

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My Sephora order – the fiberwig duo set, Shiseido’s mascara base, and a set of three Sephora lip glosses as my chosen free birthday gift XD

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Doing more planning for August, using my trusty Bilingual Tokyo Atlas. The Kyoto/Osaka one is sadly not quite as helpful…

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Keys to my new car~~ a black Ford Focus tentatively named 桜夜 (Sakuya).

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I got tired of using my brown table as background so I tried the next laziest thing – my planner XD; Sparkly star jewelry ftw!

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Been reading this – Maskerade by Terry Pratchett (<3 Discworld!)

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One of my most favorite nail colors ever – Cherry Crush by Revlon. The nail polish itself is pretty nice quality, too – very opaque and doesn’t chip easily (esp. if you use a topcoat).

Today (the 20th) was a shopping day. There’s no denying it.

See, I went to the mall for dinner (mmm Uno’s :9). But there was a 25 minute wait, so I thought I’d go poke around Claire’s for a bit.

It was empty when I arrived, so I leisurely looked around and eventually settled on a crown keychain (for my car keys!)

and a pink x black polkadot cosmetics case because my Liz Lisa one is too small to hold all of my stuff….

(compared with my rose Liz Lisa cosmetics case)

and all of a sudden the store was full of parents trying to get their two year olds’ ears pierced! (@_@)
so it took me an extra 5-10 minutes just to check out. which led me to grab two sparkly rose hair clips by the register.

Thus accomplished, I headed back to Uno’s, slightly worried that they’d already called for me and I was gone (u_u; )
Dinner was buffalo chicken quesedillas (:9!) and some pounded-flat-and-breaded chicken thing with a heavily dressed salad on top (next time I’d get dressing on the side, I <3 balsamic vinaigrette but not when my greens are drowning in it, thanks)

After dinner the mall was still open for another hour, so naturally I didn't want to waste this valuable time~
First was WetSeal. I don't normally buy much in person there, but I did find some awesome accessories - namely a sparklysparkly key necklace,

pretty large jewel hinge bracelet,

and three pairs of stud earrings including one set of pink sakura-like earrings!! so pretty~~ the website image doesn’t do them any justice at all!

(shinyshiny~ <3)

Still not out of time, I browsed MAC to check out some eyeshadow shades (Pink Venus is <3!), and then walked by bebe and saw...
a black quilted heart purse.
I couldn't pass by. I had to see it.
It was huge! and the last one, apparently. She offered to call another store to see if they had the white but it was white x gold and the black was x silver.
I thought about it. looked in the mirror. checked out the construction (pretty solid!)
and thought about it.
and said....

yes! <3

bebe’s shopping bag. keys for size comparison. there is no pornography inside the bag, sorry. (although thinking about it, if you buy sketchy stuff, you tend to hide it in plain bags, anyway…)

the polka dot tissue paper was too cute! there were HEARTS! <3 <3 <3

it’s a pretty large bag! <3

this was how it was displayed in the window – it holds its shape very well <3

inside – there’s two pockets (one for stuff, one for phone) and a zipper pocket.

zipper pull, might add something to this~

rationally speaking the black won’t get dirty as fast, goes with everything, etc. etc.
I’m still naturally drawn to white bags but realistically I don’t have many nice black ones to use! at least not a large one. I went from having all black stuff to almost none now XD; so I guess it’s a good decision.
and it’s cute!

so after that I went home.

but my shopping wasn’t over yet.
I went to check some things out on wetseal.com, and found some cute belts that are very similar to the white one I bought from Liz Lisa over the summer… and a light pink cardigan… and some light pink rose clips.. and a couple camisoles… and this really cute ivory ruffled jacket.
On the up side, ebates will give me 3% cash back on the purchase, and my credit card gives me 1% on all purchases. Plus I found a code for free shipping :D (I love the internet, srsly <3)

but! not done yet!

I’ve been stalking this lasercut acrylic jewelry shop on etsy for a while and even though I can’t get my custom necklace yet, I bought a couple of the preset designs to try out the quality – the crown (in mirror pink) and kawaii ribbon (in bubblegum pink). I was tempted to get the diamond earrings too, but I thought that was enough for a first purchase.

So finally, I’m done.

Well, as long as I don’t buy almost anything else this month I’m fine… XD

Uwa~ looks like I’ve really been neglecting this blog!
Somehow my life has been kind of busy lately so I kept putting off updating and now it’s been 2 weeks!

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the three faces of (Nendoroid) Mio~ (I’ve got a review of her coming up soon!)

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my newly prettified monitor stand! Kona’s アホ毛 is blocking Haruhi XD; Yes, those are the Suzumiya Haruhi Pinky:st girls (although I swapped Tsuruya’s long green hair for some cute brown curls). Kona, Kagamin and Haruhi are all pointing at me, reminding me to stay on task! (well, it doesn’t always work, but. XD;; )

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This… might also have contributed to my not blogging (^^;;; ) Dragonica Online, an MMORPG that’s cute and I’d been following for a while before it opened… and then Shirayuki died on me and I was using Ai XD; But! I’m able to play now (I’ll explain later) and it’s pretty entertaining. I have a lv20 warrior girl and I’m debating changing classes or trying to see if the “hidden” classes really exist…

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Edible chalk! also known as off-brand Tums. I’ve been ordered to take them, along with another pill I think I took a photo of later. V. colorful, right? Fruit flavored XD Kind of tastes like smarties… if they were made out of chalk.

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Tiny cupcake~ one of my birthday ones! Well, technically it was made to be a seasonal (Valentine’s) cupcake, but.

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Another missed package! But this time I didn’t even know it was coming! And the tracking # was written wrong on the paper so I couldn’t request redelivery (-_-; ) It was full of Japanese snacks :9 well, mostly おっとっと XD;

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Somehow ginger ale (in particular, Canada Dry) has become my soda of choice at home. (I always get coke/pepsi while at restaurants… I don’t think they tend to have ginger ale) The redesigned cans are pretty~

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I haven’t been eating a lot of candy recently, but when I saw this at the grocery store I decided I had to try it. (Because I love pb <3) It's pretty similar to normal Reese's, just with 2x the pb. Not bad.

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The base of the doll-sized dressform I bought while out XD Unfortunately I don’t really have a lot of extra outfits for Aryanna so I don’t have anything to put on it at the moment… XD;;

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Aryanna’s new wig! (Well, one of two) Yes, it is really that light. It’s much lighter than the color seemed in the photos… oh well. But the wig itself is very cool! it has two clip-on extension curls <3 <3

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おっとっと!~ They are v. similar to goldfish in the sense that they’re light, airy, crunchy snacks that are shaped like things that live in water. Only おっとっと is 10000x more tasty and the alternate flavors are also nice.

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Chinese New Year was on Valentine’s Day this year. Well, red for both, I guess XD;

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An adorable Marie notebook I bought at Narita airport before leaving Japan last time XD So cute! Came with stickers, too~

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The screwdriver Sony sent me to remove/replace my hdd with. The handle is long and skinny, which is good for removing screws on laptops. It’s also slightly magnetized <3 I get to keep it <3

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And finally, Yui arrived today! Her box is pink! ♥ (Mio’s was blue! hee hee~ { if you don’t get why that’s good, just ignore it~ }) I love that she has TWO v-pose hands… うふふふ～

Okay! More posts will be forthcoming! Promise!

but first…
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A photo from my massive sales shoot that didn’t get used. (I love that top but it’s just too small to wear comfortably.)

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and this photo brings me to what I want to talk about…

to-do lists. todo lists. grammatically correct or not, they’re the only reason I remember to do anything I meant to do hours or days ago. I have a pretty short attention span (that only seems to be getting worse) and so what I do is largely dictated by whatever pops into my head at the moment.
It’s a great way to waste time (I should know) but not so great if I actually want to get anything productive done. I mean, that actually makes sense to be doing when I’m doing it. I’m a professional procrastinator – want me to do the dishes? Tell me I have to sort through laundry. Whatever I’m supposed to be doing, almost anything else seems more appealing. Which, when it comes down to it, substituting chores for other chores seems like a strange diversion tactic.

But that’s not the point. (See? distractions…)

What I mean is, how do you know what, and how much, to put on your to-do list?
A lot of varied tasks that you might get to at least some, if not most of them?
A short list that you’ll definitely complete, but is somehow lacking in substance?
A bunch of long-term goals you’re never quite sure you’ve finished?

I tend to subscribe to philosophy #1. I have to limit the physical size of my list, otherwise I’ll just end up making lists all day…

Ideally, of course, you’d make a concise list of exactly what you need to get done and all of it is technically feasible for that timeframe. I know all about breaking down large goals into smaller, more easily quantified tasks, but sometimes even that much seems like too much effort XD; So I’ll have a mixed bag kind of list.

I recently bought a (somewhat silly) girly to-do pad, that includes columns for “To Do”, “Calls”, “Errands” and “Misc” – the category above is my “Misc”; it has tended to contain longer-term tasks that are not essential to daily life (like this blog. Sorry, but until someone is paying me to do this it’s way down on the priority list XD;) I’ve found that having to categorize what I’m thinking of doing helps me sort out things I should be doing rather than things I’d either like to be doing, or think would be nice to get done.
I still end up with a lot of overarching megatasks though. (Surprisingly “clean up x room” is not as simple as it sounds on paper.)

In addition, I have a skinny vertically oriented Muji-brand notepad that I have been trying to use for small, daily tasks (i.e. “wash dishes”, “clean makeup brushes”) although occasionally I’ll slip up and add things that really belong on the big sheet of paper.

I’d been pretty good about making/reviewing my lists for a while, and then for some reason stopped in the past few days.
It was a really noticeable change. I have no idea what I accomplished, or whether I even accomplished anything (aside from what I did today, I suppose)! Thankfully I continued to monitor my vitamin use in my desk calendar or I would have had no idea whether I’d taken any of those, either! (And the iron supplement is the most scary of the bunch – easy to overdo and icky consequences. I’d rather skip a day than take two by accident by far.)

It’s funny because the desk calendar was a completely on-a-whim purchase. It was pink, and cheap, and looked pretty decent, so I said “eh, why not.” and I’ve actually been using it a lot to track daily stuff like the vitamins, and my 365 photo progress (checkmarks for having taken photos :D). I occasionally go into compulsive buying fits over stationery stuff so it’s less surprising that I bought it (I will photograph my collection some time…) and more surprising that I’m actually using these things rather than storing them away.

I can’t quite seem to get in the habit of writing something like a blog entry every day, however. My life is just not that interesting XD

So I’ve fallen behind again on posting these, but like before, I have been taking them, so. Here we go!
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I finally remembered that the light in the ceiling has not one, but two bulbs… and one of them had burned out. I was wondering why it was so dark in here… Upon removing the cover, I was greeted with something I found more amusing than the rest of you will likely find it XD;; “LISTED TSUN CHAN LAMPHOLDER”



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I got these a while ago, from the new Sanrio store in the mall. They were taped to my bag as a freebie, and at the time (not looking closely) I thought it was supposed to have barrettes or something on it, and that they had simply fallen off. Later, when I actually read the text (I know, shocking right?!) I discovered that they are bookmarks!



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So as you might know, I’ve been tweaking layout stuff here (and completing the arduous task of switching over to wordpress) so in the interest of not just poking at things and seeing what happens I thought I’d look at stuff on w3.org for a bit. Get re-acquainted. (I haven’t done any from-scratch stuff in years.) Oh, and Mio’s just there because she’s cute XD;



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Yesterday I was kind of tired so I just picked a random thing again (wait, aren’t most of these random?).