I am making some
Valentine's words. Already I feel like coloring
everything pink. They are separate and transparent, but
look best on a dark background. As much as I respect
Martin Luthor King Day, I couldn't see doing this with a
"Happy MLK Day" so I jumped on over to the next holiday
- but I do hope all of you have a good holiday tomorrow.
We
have more than one VCR in the house and find that we
almost never use it anymore. We figure that the next
time we are fooling around with cables and cords, we'll
retire one of the VCRs. The cable company's DVR is doing
such a good job - and makes perfect recordings. Of
course, we still want to keep another one around because
we might want to record something to take over to
Grandma's to show her. That's the only big drawback to
DVR -- you can only watch it on the TV where it was
recorded. Maybe something will come out in the future.
Until then, we are keeping at least one VCR.
Today,
the Internet has been up for 10 minutes, down for 10
minutes -- all day. Argh! I wonder what Comcast is
doing. I tried going on dialup -- and found out how
spoiled I am. Dialup was so slow that I could not stand
it today.
At least there are still things I can
do offline like Photoshop. I made an animation from my
avatar as a bat-winged mermaid at the pool. (This is a
nice scene to chat in -- animated fireworks are going on in the
background on the other side of the pool.)
I
took the car in for a regular maintenance oil change and
came out with a $300 bill. I had to have new front
brakes and "resurfaced pads," then wheel-balancing and
several associated things. Did they push something off
on me that I didn't really need? I have no way of
knowing. I can't just rush off for a second opinion
every time I take it in. I called my husband and he said
we were "due" for those things, so I suppose it was all
needed.
But how do we tell when we really need
something or not? I guess there's no way, short of
getting a second opinion. I trust that my car people are
honest, but I can see how a place could get carried away
with telling someone they need things -- big bucks for
them. And it always seems to be the case. There's no
simple oil changes anymore - always something else needs
to done with the car.
Reader's
Digest says that ordinary mushrooms are the top source
of an anti-oxidant. Here's the
link to another article about it. Since I love
mushrooms, I am happy to read this.
Enya and
Madonna have new albums. I absolutely love Madonna's
"Confessions on a Dance Floor" (I hope she makes more
dance music) and I like Enya's "Amarantine." Enya only
has a dozen songs on it and most of them have a kind of
sad tone, but she is good background music on a moody
day.
A friend of mine is using
Skype to make phone calls. It is ridiculously cheap to
make phone calls this way (calling home phone numbers
with his computer). He is paying something like 3
dollars a month for obscene amounts of minutes. I want
to sign up Skype to do this, too, even though I don't
need it - but it is so cool and so cheap. He called my
house and he sounded wonderful.
I finally bought
speakers for my humble little 10 g, third-generation
iPod. I am listening to so many podcasts now, I want to
keep listening to them even during my shower or bath
after I come home walking. (If I have time, baths are
pure heaven.)
I am still making transparent
pictures with my avatars -- I guess the whole thing
fascinates me. There is actually some demand for this in
the avatar chat world I like to inhabit. I might make
personalized pictures of other avatars upon request
there -- maybe charge credits (the money used there). If
you would like to take a peek at this world, just click
on the link --> Avatar
Chatting. You can see a
bunch of avatars right off and design one, if you wish.
This avatar place has something right. It is fascinating
to design your own appearance and dress yourself up to
chat with your friends -- and to chat in exotic scenery
and 3D rooms, too. Lately, we've been doing chats while
ice skating -- only problem is that some folks are
skating too near the thin ice and they fall into the
water . Chatting in the water is not so bad, though your
poor avatar shivers the whole time.
I
guess GIF is not the only transparent format used on the
Internet. Little did I know. I wish I could attend
Photoshop classes -- but I am learning by listening to
Photoshop podcasts and reading and watching Ochan, a
friend who does wonders with it.
It's funny, but
this graphic does not look transparent in the preview
for this page as I work on it, but the web interprets
PNG files as transparent, not just GIF - a simple thing
I never realized. Someday I will be a Photoshop brain -
ha!
I can do gymnastics in the
avatar world, but I'm still trying to figure out
how to make a glowing transparent image in Photoshop. So
far, I can make a transparent image, but I can not make
it glow like a friend does with his images. The one on
the left is mine. When I am working with it, it has a
yellow aura, but the aura disappears when saved as a
transparent GIF.
The image on the right is my
friend's - in PNG format. See how it glows? I've tried
saving in the format he uses but my own image loses her
glow. It's interesting with his image, though - In
Firefox, it is transparent. In Internet Explorer, it has
a gray background ... where's a
Photoshop guru when I need one?
I
have never posted my detailed French Toast recipe, so
here it is, a family favorite although there are other
good ways to make French Toast that I use, too - such as
just dipping some regular sliced bread into an egg/milk
batter and frying it in a pan, then spreading a little
cream cheese on the hot bread and sprinkling cinnamon
and powdered sugar over it all.
French Toast
1
loaf of French Bread, day old is best
4 large eggs
1 & 1/2 cups milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon flour
2 tablespoons of butter
(optional -- cinnamon, powdered
sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla - if you prefer it sweet.)
Slice French bread into 1 inch
thick slices. Place in a greased 13 by 9 inch pan. In
another bowl, mix the eggs, milk, flour and salt, beat well
and pour over the bread. Cover and let sit in refrigerator
overnight.
Uncover, slice the butter on
top and bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes until
puffed and golden brown.
My husband eats French Toast
like eggs - with salt and butter and does not want anything
sweet to touch it. I, on the other hand, prefer them with
vanilla, cinnamon and powdered sugar sprinkled on top.
Digg.com had this link to a
fun site,
Games 2 Web. You can plya all kinds of games here or copy
the code and add one to your own page. Here's a little
one below. (Sorry for the sound on my main page
until this game scrolls over next week.)