judyonthenet

I’ve noticed from my hit counters that my “Drawn to Life” post is, aside from the main page, the most popular page on my website. It wasn’t until I took a closer look at Google Analytics to see why. The page gets a lot of referrals from Google’s image search, so I did a little image Googling myself and discovered this:

Apparently when you search for “Drawn to Life”, my page is like the 7th hit. What’s funny is that, if your browser causes Google images to align pictures in rows of six, my picture comes up right underneath the first hit, which is the exact same picture except not nude. What’s really funny is that this first hit comes from Christian gaming website called “Family Friendly Gaming“. Awesome.

Today was the last day of voting for The Bloggies, some award thingy for blogs. As a user of Bloglines, I did one of those research study interviews with their R&D. (I signed up as a joke, since Kelvin used to work at Ask… I didn’t think I’d actually be selected as an interviewee! Ah well, it was interesting, and I got free monies!) One of the things they asked me was “What makes a good blog?” I gave them an answer, but now that I think about it some more, I’m not really sure. So I checked out a few of these nominated blogs that other people seem to like.

I thought blogs had to have some sort of purpose to be popular (like knitting or gaming or something), but that doesn’t seem to be the case. People can just talk about themselves, and somehow their blogs generate enough money for them to not have to work anymore (i.e. Dooce does so well, even the blogger’s husband doesn’t have to work anymore!). Also, it seems to me that there’s like 20 bajillion Mommy blogs (not surprisingly, a lot of them stay-at-home Moms), and 90% of these mommies are snarky and vulgar. (Now that I think about it, they kinda remind me of Susie…) I’m curious if I’ll eventually turn into one of these people when I have kids, as some of the more popular ones began before they had kids. But I don’t have kids right now, so I’m pretty meh on these blogs. However, I did find Sarcastic Mom to be cute and entertaining, especially with her abundance of silly pictures. I didn’t like Ashley’s Closet, but her drama with an internet troll was hilarious. (I’ve come to the conclusion that trolls look exactly how they act on the internet.) As for Redneck Mommy, I’m just envious that she’s hot.

There were a couple other blogs that caught my eye. So Very Alone is a very plain-looking blog, and it’s written by a loner who just talks about how lonely he is. It has no pictures and is incredibly well-written; I’ve already read all his posts since he started in November. Though he seems extreme in his anti-socialness, I find him somewhat relatable. And he doesn’t seek pity, nor do I feel sorry for him. I kind of wonder if he’s for real, but it’s an entertaining read nonetheless. I also wonder if his writing will change with the increase of traffic he’s getting. Another blog I liked was Local Girl’s day in pictures. The blogger draws her blog posts instead of writing about them, and we all know pictures are better than words :P I imagine drawing daily helps a lot with her art skills and creativity.

It’s neat to see how all these personal blogs can become so popular simply because they write about their lives so well. My life isn’t getting any more entertaining, so I guess I have to work on this “better writing” crap…

New thing I learned today: BMW stands for Bavarian Motor Works.

A couple weekends ago, I celebrated another year of my existence. Throughout the weekend, I received many birthday wishes from several friends who somehow remembered or found out about it, even though I can only think of maybe three people I’ve actually celebrated my birthday with since high school. I really appreciate everybody who spent time with me or contacted me, so thanks guys :)

(Click through for a rambling about that weekend.)
(more…)

I found out a few months ago on Gizmodo that more Metal Gear Solid Kubricks were coming out end of 2007. For those that don’t know, Kubrick is a line of toys from Japanese toy company Medicom Toy Inc. that are figures that look like Lego dudes, but their toys are limited edition, collectible, and aimed towards adults. They have random figures for all sorts of stuff, like Halo, Daft Punk, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Aliens, just to name a few. They previously released figures for Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3, and I never got these since I got into MGS after MGS3. These figures are very pricey on eBay, so I made sure to get my order in for the 20th Anniversary figures as soon as they popped up on Play-Asia.

The box shows that there are five different figures you can get: Solid Snake from MGS1, “Ninja” or basically Gray Fox from MGS1, Naked Snake from MGS3, (Old) Solid Snake from MGS4, and Raiden from MGS4. The boxes are random; you can’t tell which figure you get until you open box. I consider Snake to be at his peak hotness in MGS1, so I really wanted the MGS1 Snake. I decided to order 5 figures, hoping at least one would be MGS1 Snake and hoping I wouldn’t get too many duplicates. The assortment rate for the MGS1 Snake is 16.6%, so the chances that all five weren’t MGS1 is like ~40%, right? I first saw the figures on NCSX for $8.50 each, but Play-Asia had them on their website for 60 cents cheaper. I added a Toad stuffed doll (cuz he’s just too freaking adorable) for filler and basically got free shipping with an $8 off $50 holiday coupon.

Very lucky for me, I got my order the Friday I was leaving for Taiwan. I could check out which toys I got before I left, and I didn’t have to worry about them being stuck on my porch for two and a half weeks (unlike what happened to a tripod I ordered from Amazon… ARGH, stupid UPS and Fedex). I opened up the first box, and I was really confused with what I got. It sorta looked like the Solid Snake I wanted, but it was clear. Did I get a defective toy? No, there’s little lines drawn on it, so it must be purposely clear. There was no description on the box of such a figure, so I went to teh intarwebz and found out I apparently got a chase figure. Clear Solid Snake has an assortment rate of 1 in 48, while there’s an even rare Clear Ninja that’s 1 in 96. So I got some rare figure in my first box. (Yay!) But it’s still not the Solid Snake I wanted. (Boo!)

Of course, time to open the next four boxes. I ended up getting a Naked Snake, a Raiden, a Ninja, and… another Naked Snake. Drat, I was so close to not getting duplicates! I’m glad I got Raiden, as I like Raiden. I’m not a fan of the Ninja, though it’s the rarest of the common figures (12.5% as opposed to the 25% of Raiden and Old Snake, the two most common. Naked Snake is 20.8%). So I didn’t get an old Snake or the Solid Snake I wanted.

But that’s okay, because I was able to find them in Taiwan! There’s this awesome toy boutique called Monster Taipei that’s in the same mall I got my qipao. They sell all sorts of collectible figures from all around, and they have quite an extensive collection in their store. They had unopened MGS Kubricks, but they also sold opened ones. I bought an Old Snake for 280NT (cost of a unopened box) and a Solid Snake for 350NT (~$11) + 10% off from some sale they were having. Aside from Clear Ninja, I’ve got all the figures now, plus an extra Naked Snake.

I love these figures! They’re so cute (awww, look at the widdle mullet!) and detailed. Most of the figures have tiny holsters to stick their tiny weapons in. Like Lego people, these figures can be taken apart fairly easily, and parts are interchangeable. The arms and legs have more degrees of motion than your average Lego guy, though I think this decreases the toy’s ability to stay together. I’m constantly twisting Raiden’s arm off. Nothing has broke yet, despite their tiny weapons and me tearing their bodies apart. The faces are nicely detailed, down to Old Snake’s wrinkles and math-teacher mustache.

They’re not perfect though. Raiden’s sheaths are removable from its belt, but on my figure, one of the sheaths constantly falls off, which is annoying. The little knob for the sheath that sticks it to belt is weak or something. My Raiden’s mask also has some speck on it that I think is just stray ink from manufacturing. The front part of his mask also falls off pretty easily. *sigh* Poor gimpy Raiden. Also, it’d be nice if all the figures’ weapons could be easily held; most of the weapons don’t have cylindrically-shaped handles to fit the figures’ cylindrically-shaped grips. Of course, these are just nitpicks.

Snake? SNAAAAAAaaaaaake!!!

These figures were more readily available in December, but it seems like places are starting to run out of stock. Play-Asia no longer has them, but NCSX still seems to have stock. If you have a local import video-game or toy store, that’s probably a good place to check. And of course, you can also get raped on eBay.

If you find these in a brick & mortar store and you either want to get or avoid Raiden, here’s a tidbit to help you out. Most of the figures come in little baggies, and that’s their only packaging in the box. Raiden has more fragile facegear and weapons, so to prevent breakage, he’s completely encased in plastic inside of the box. If you shake the box and hear something bouncing around, it’s not Raiden, as Raiden hardly moves because of the plastic.

New thing I learned today: A “tool” is a toy industry term for a part of a figure. For example, a Kubrick figure has nine tools (a head, a torso, two arms, two hands, hips, and two legs).

Previously: The Selection

Just like the Monday before, Kelvin and I found ourselves at Sophia Ritz, and this time we were here to look over our final, processed pictures. My mom didn’t make the trip, since everything had already been paid off last visit, and looking at processed pictures shouldn’t take too long anyway. It was noon, and it was pouring outside, so I’m sure any brides taking photos that day (there were a couple) probably weren’t too happy. Walking in, I noticed the same Australian couple from all the previous days was already there, looking at their own photos. One of the Sophia Ritz ladies at the counter seated us at the desk in front of them and loaded our processed pictures into the same program as before. She told us to look at each picture and make note of any further changes we’d like.

Immediately with the first picture, we noticed drastic changes had been done. Even though we very, VERY specifically said to not mess with my eyes too much, in almost every photo my smaller right eye was the exact same size as my left eye. Because my right eye is smaller and lower than my left eye, the Photoshop artist enlarged my eye, which made it slightly blurrier than the left eye, and moved it up higher, drastically changing my face. It looked ridiculous. They also did things like drastically skinny my arms and my face, and I usually wouldn’t mind this, but I looked like a twig in some of the pictures! The artist also photoshopped one of Kelvin’s favorite pictures that had a fuzzy look to it. This didn’t make any sense; her changes were obvious because the changed areas lost its fuzzyness and stuck out. We were most pieved about the eyes though, since we had very specifically told them not to do that. Almost every picture was marked off because of the eyes.

There were some other things that the artist missed. In one of the foggy pictures, there’s some random junk in the background (like a satellite dish or trash bin or something), and it wasn’t edited out. In one of the evening gown pictures, the powder all over Kelvin’s suit was very apparent. Because we can’t write Chinese, I waited for one of the ladies to come over so I could tell her all these changes. However, they were taking a long time (I don’t know where they went or what they were doing); the Australian couple was waiting for them as well. Kelvin decided to make little sketches on the note paper illustrating the changes we want, simply because he was bored. As we waited, there was a lady in the hallway by the restroom, yelling at 7 or 8 other people lined up against the wall. It looked they were in trouble, but more probable was that they were new hires in training.

Check out the right eye modification.
This is one of our final pictures, so this
is after we asked her a
second time to chill on the eyes.

Eventually, a lady did come over. I can’t remember if she went to the Australian couple first or if another lady helped them, but they were done fairly quickly, asking only for a couple additional changes. Meanwhile, we complained to the lady helping us about how unsatisfied we were with the modifications, as it almost made every single picture unacceptable. We needed a lot of changes, but we didn’t know how to write them down, so the lady rushed upstairs to grab the girl photoshopping our photos. (I wonder if the fifth floor is just a bunch of graphics peons huddled in front of computers in the dark.)

A petite, casually dressed came downstairs and spoke with us. While there was a language barrier between us and Photoshop girl, we were able to convey our issues with the pictures. We pointed out how my eye looks totally unnatural in a lot of the photos and how, as a result, my face in the pictures looks unlike how it is in real life. (I’m sure seeing my face in person helped. :P) We also asked her to calm down on the fat trimming, and we pointed out the garbage and powder we wanted removed from the photos. Kelvin also told her to do zero photoshopping on his beloved fuzzy picture. Photoshop girl nodded and said she got all that. The counter lady asked if she needed to write anything down, and the girl confidently said she didn’t. They had a short discussion about when all this new processing would be done by. The girl seemed to want more time, but the counter lady me told us to come back at 7PM. I was bummed we had to come back an extra time, but we had to this. We accepted this arrangement and left to figure out what to do until 7PM.

After eating lunch at the MacDonald’s a couple doors down from Sophia Ritz and watching National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets (surprisingly decent adventure flick) at Vie Show Cinemas by Taipei 101, we were back at Sophia Ritz. This time, Miss Guo was here, so she showed us to a desk so we can look at pictures again. The second time around was MUCH better. While there were still some modifications, I didn’t look unnatural or abnormal (at least in mine and Kelvin’s eyes) in the pictures anymore. My eyes were kept in its uneven state, though my right eye was still ever-so-slightly enlarged in a few of the pictures. (Miss Guo: “I know your eyes are uneven, but I felt slight changes were okay in some of the pictures since it seemed more exaggerated than how you look in person.”) The garbage in background had been removed from the foggy picture, and I wasn’t as anorexic-looking in my pictures anymore.

The pictures still weren’t perfect, though. While the Photoshop girl had been pretty good about remembering all the changes we asked for, she had forgotten to edit out the powder on Kelvin’s suit. And while I did ask her to calm down on the fat trimming, she left one of the photos as-is from the original, and my arm looked like a freaking slab of meat. Kelvin said it was fine, but I was self-conscious enough about it to request the arm to be shaved down just a teeny-weeny bit. We told these new changes to Miss Guo, and she told us to wait a bit. She went over to a phone, called upstairs, and told Photoshop girl what we wanted to done. Not too much longer later, she finished her photoshopping, and Miss Guo showed us our pictures one last time. We approved them, half cuz we were finally okay with them and half cuz we were sick of being there (again). Also, upon seeing all the pictures again since the Friday before, one of the pictures had significantly grown on me, so I switched it to be one of the thank-you cards. It was still okay to make changes to all the selections made on Friday.

As another example of the photoshopping, here are the unprocessed (with all the changes marked) and then processed (final picture) photos for the one picture that grew a lot on me. I didn’t like it that much before, but I think it’s one of my favorites now. (It’s probably because of all the processing.) I now kind of wish we had made this our giant portrait (as opposed to the other boring pose). Even though Kelvin’s face isn’t the clearest and it looks like he’s going to eat my forehead, this picture looks more intimate and interesting to me now.

In the end, Photoshop girl did a decent job. Looking between processed and unprocessed pictures, she removed any specks or artifacts in the images. She cropped out or photoshopped out background edges or outside objects sticking into the pictures. I was pretty impressed with her removal of the garbage in the foggy picture; the foliage originally blocked by those objects looked unmodified. Obviously, we thought some of her original edits looked unnatural, but it’s probably because we’re biased on those points. (I’m sensitive about my eyes, and Kelvin’s sensitive about preserving my facial features.) We are generally happy with the way the final pictures look. Though they were some major changes, they don’t look odd or out-of-place, especially to folks besides Kelvin and me that don’t know what the originals look like. While it’s not as important to Kelvin and me, I think the photoshopping was worth it. They said they can edit anything (except teeth… for some reason, they said they can’t/won’t edit teeth), and I buy that.

After double-checking all our selections we made on Friday, Miss Guo said all our goods should be available next Monday (yes, one more trip), so she told us to drop by the studio anytime after 2:30PM the following Monday. We were leaving for America the Tuesday after that, so Miss Guo went upstairs to get us a burned CD with all 30 of our processed images. That way, we could still show all our relatives our photos, even though we didn’t have the albums. I thought this was very nice. We bid Miss Guo farewell and finished our evening at Sophia Ritz.

If you want to check out the pictures we selected, you can look at the processed pictures here and the unprocessed pictures here.

Next: The Final Product

I was thinking about ranting about all this photoshopping stuff, but I’ll save that for another post, another day.

While I generally visit Taiwan every year or two, there was a special occasion for going back this time around… my grandpa turned 80! Despite his age and having respiratory issues and having lung surgery, my grandpa is still fit as a fiddle and rides every morning to the local fishing hole. So Taipei citizens better keep their guard up for an octogenarian with a fishing pole on a moped.

Aside from Grandpa’s birthday party in the evening, we didn’t do much during our first Saturday in Taiwan. We had fairly okay beef noodles at some random place, and we spent a bit of the afternoon doing laundry. My grandparents’ washing machine is totally ancient and barely functional, so we lug our laundry to the nearby laundromat to get clean clothes. The good thing about doing laundry this way is having the luxury of having your clothes machine-dried, since I don’t think I know anybody who actually has their own dryer in Taiwan.

Grandpa’s birthday dinner was basically the official gathering where everybody in the family gets together. (There’s always one of these whenever my mom or I visit.) My “Bakery Uncle” (the older one of my mom’s two younger brothers and the one she’s closest with) and his wife and son came up from Puli, which is in central Taiwan. Usually we go down and visit them, but there was no time on this visit with all the engagement photos stuff. Their daughter, Sandy, goes to school in Taipei, and she’s also the one that visited us over the summer. My grandparents got a ride to the restaurant with my “Doctor Uncle” (the younger one of my mom’s two younger brothers) and his two daughters. (His wife arrived at the restaurant later.) Uncle Teacher and his two girls met with the rest of us, and we all walked over to the restaurant.

The restaurant we went to was a fairly nice, typical Chinese family style place. I don’t remember what it’s called, but it’s near the Houshanpi metro stop. We had a small banquet room reserved, and there were two large tables with lazy susans in the room. Somebody mentioned that, since I’m older now, I get to sit at the table with all the adults. (I’m the oldest of my generation, like my mom is the oldest of hers… and my grandpa is the oldest of his.) Apparently, this was some sort of joke, because Kelvin and I had to sit at the table with all my cousins. Yes, the kiddie table. That’s fine, cuz they’re more fun than my uncles anyway :P I just wish I had more things to say to my cousins. Like… more Chinese words. They range from ages 10 to 22, but I didn’t know what to say to any of them. I did, however, make the awesome discovery that pretty much all my cousins (the exception being the boy cousin) watches America’s Next Top Model.

Food eventually started coming out, and it was, um, strange food. Well, not that strange, but it was like 90% seafood. And it was prepared all weird. Kelvin and I aren’t fans of seafood, let alone weird seafood. One of the first dishes was shredded lobster with TONS of mayo-like sauce all over it. Then there was a duck or chicken that was black-colored. And then there was the deep-fried mystery meat, which we later discovered to be frog. (I was told by a cousin that it indeed does taste like chicken.) There were some deep-fried crab-balls and steamed dumplings that were okay, so I ate those. Some sort of steamed white fish came out, and I ate quite of bit of that, since I actually like fish. Around this time, there were eight or so dishes on the table. I thought we were winding down, but we had only reached halfway. There was a kind of “dinner intermission” before we were bombarded with more weird food.

The highlight of second half of dinner was probably the ridiculously huge seafood hot pot. It was tall, steaming piece of metal with soup bowling on it. They also brought a plate of noodles (as long as my smallest cousin!) mixed with seafood, baby bok choy (yum!) prettily presented and drenched in seafood and mushroom juices (blech), and some other things I didn’t eat. Kelvin and I munched on the few things we felt were tolerable, while cousins went at all the stuff full-force. They did pretty well, considering their sizes and the quantity of food. For dessert, we were given a giant bowl of some kind of cold, sweet soup, some fried pastry with red bean in the middle, and iced fruit.

I get the impression that we had a lot of nice food, but Kelvin and I were just too westernized to appreciate any of it. It makes me think back to when I was talking about substitutions to our wedding banquet menu. We basically can’t have any of our favorite dishes on the menu because my mom said our food choices were too “poor”. Like “poor” as in we’re not showing off our wealth enough (purpose of the banquet) by having a lot of exotic food that none of my friends will eat. *sigh* I can’t help that Kelvin and I don’t like seafood and like poor people food!

With dinner winding down, we busted out the cakes my grandparents had ordered from a trendy bakery chain in Taiwan called 85°. There were two cakes because it was also my Doctor Uncle’s birthday (or it was around the same time, at least); he turned 50! Man, my family’s getting old. The kids table was in charge of busting out the chocolate cake, while the adults took out some white strawberry cake. Both cakes looked pretty and yummy. My grandpa’s candles were lit on the white cake, while my uncle’s candles (he didn’t want to light them or have a separate song for himself) sat on the chocolate cake. The chocolate cake was eventually sliced and distributed, while the strawberry cake was saved for later. I don’t remember much about the cake, except that it was delicious.

My uncles took care of the bill while the waitresses boxed the ridiculous amount of leftovers. My Doctor Uncle drove my grandparents and all the leftovers back to their home, while everybody else walked back. I’m sure my grandparents will be living off the leftovers for months to come.

New thing I learned today: A person who is 80-something years old is called an octogenarian.