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azuriteLike when I was in Japan, now that the semester and a full workload has started, I'm back to cherishing my weekends the way a man parched of thirst cherishes the single droplet of water he can get on his tongue. Nonetheless, I get to the weekends hoping to relax, and I only find myself bombarded with more things to do. I keep telling myself "I need to help out" (in the case of Baba and Grandpa) or "I can't quit" (in the case of school), but sometimes I just feel like staying in bed ALL DAY LONG. (And then of course, I feel miserable after the fact, for all the things I missed).
Anyway, starting yesterday my computer started acting strangely because of my "overload" of fonts. Well, I only had something like 700 fonts on the system (when the OSX documentation says it can handle up to 7000!), but Photoshop just wasn't reading them. So I decided to go through Font Book and weed out the invalid fonts (those missing Font Name Tables), of which I found 67. The important ones (esp. the ones I've hunted for or paid for) were intact though, but then Firefox (which was already acting weird, smashing words together and causing them to overlap sometimes) and Firefox (which had previously been acting weird but apparently stopped when I switched the default fonts) suddenly had NO text anywhere.
So I had to take all the fonts I'd put in the trash can and go through them one by one, to make sure none of them were fonts used by the system or the applications. Then I weeded out the duplicate installations, disabled and removed them, closed font book, emptied the trash, and was able to reopen both Thunderbird and Firefox without any problems.
But encoding is still apparently an issue with Firefox; in Safari, Japanese characters show up just fine in the default Western (ISO-Latin-1) encoding, but with that same/equivalent encoding in Firefox (ISO-8859-1), I get random characters. I'm worried that it's because I deleted some Japanese font on my computer, but I doubt it-- I doubly made sure that all the fonts that I deleted were trouble fonts, not system fonts. What's even more irritating is the lack of a singular encoding for Japanese/other Asian languages and accented characters, like é and ó and such. So I could see José Cuarón, but not ラブとエロス. And I know I didn't (and COULDN'T) have deleted those fonts, I just 'accidentally' disabled them. A Spotlight search revealed their location and I re-added them to Font Book, but before I would drag them over or double-click on the files and nothing would happen or change. Now that I have installed them again (and can see them in Font Book and noticed the change in Cocoa applications like this one), I hope my font woes will be over with.
There's nothing worse than stressing about the things you normally love. I love fonts. I love video games. But my computer was driving me batty, and I still haven't found my PS2 Memory Card! I've almost completely cleaned my room, too. It wasn't just hidden amongst the piles of things I had unpacked from Japan or from my mom's boxes; unless it somehow got mixed up in things that I put away, or is still lost under something in the rec room, I don't know what to do.
Sure, it might be fun to just buy a new memory card and start everything fresh again... but honestly, I had made SO much progress with the games I had on there. To name a few that I can remember:
Final Fantasy X - I finally was inside Sin! But I hadn't beaten the game yet, because I wanted to try getting the Ultimate Weapons. I remember getting past Seymour Flux and finding out Auron's secret, but that was as far as I remember getting.
Final Fantasy X-2 - I'd already beaten this game once with a 98% completion (I didn't beat the Den of Woe or the Via Infinitio on my first run-through), and I wanted my second game to either be the 100% completion or the "get tons of accessories" game, with a possible third play-through being the 100% Perfect Game. This is the one I'm most sore about possibly losing, because I had John (back in Japan) help me shove Tobli into the elevator during that one Chapter where you can get the Enterprise accessory... and that's SO damn hard! Yes, I know the greatest feeling of accomplishment is for something you've done yourself, but I tried SO HARD to do that, and I couldn't. John said he could, so I let him-- and he did! I treated him to dinner for that, and to throw all that all away would make me so sad.
I was also playing this game on International + Last Mission, because I'd never want to get to the final dungeon in LM without having accessories like the Iron Duke.
Katamari Damacy - In the original, I think I'd gotten up to Make A Star 7 or something, but I had something like 68 total constellations. Then I moved on to Katamari Damacy 2 (aka We ♥ Katamari) and managed to find a lot of "lost cousins" and reveal much of the King's sordid history, but there were various levels I hadn't beaten completely (like the Origami one).
Yu-Gi-Oh Duelists of the Roses - I'm actually not too bummed about this one. Over a year ago I'd accidentally overwritten my winning game file when trying to play "the next side" so I could eventually unlock the special Duel Masters and Deck Creation modes. Whenever I tried to play again, I always lost miserably to someone in the beginning. So I wouldn't mind a fresh start with this game.
Overall, I'd say I wouldn't be horribly upset if it were gone-- I mean, I could have a lot of fun replaying some the games over again. It's great when a game has "replay value," but I don't think my situation is what game designers and publishers have in mind when they say a game has "great replay value." So if it really did get down to it, I might buy a USB adapter for my memory card so I could just download some saves for FFX and FFX-2 (maybe not ILM, even though I think that was the one I got Enterprise in), and hopefully backup my saves, too. I don't know, does anyone know of a place where I can get:
* a new memory card (preferably a larger one, like a multi-card-in-one, or a pair of Memory Cards at once)
* a USB-to-Memory Card adapter
* free savefiles for FFX and FFX-2?
Last night Elliott came over and we ended up spending most of the night watching Food Network or the Tyra Banks show (it was the episode I'd wanted to watch, even though I stumbled on it totally by accident-- the episode about her supposed horrendous weight-gain. For the record, I thought that particular picture was just a bad angle, the same way plenty of people get their pictures taken where their face looks bleached out, their hair looks mussed up, their teeth have something in it, red eye, etc).
And hey, here's something you may not have known about me! My BMI is 19.5, which is just one point above the bottom line for the healthy weight for adults of my height. If I were 18.4 or under, I would be considered underweight, but I don't know how many pounds would calculate my BMI that far down. And frankly, I don't care. I happen to like my figure very much, even though occasionally I think my butt's just a bit TOO curvy or my thighs look a bit like bowling pins.
I spent much of my childhood being ostracized for being such a featherweight, even though I couldn't help it. I had -and still have, though it's a bit different- a high metabolism, so even when I eat junky food (and I don't make a habit of it, because it gives me a stomachache), it just goes RIGHT through me. I don't gain weight the way other people might. And I know for other people, it works differently. Different people have different standards of beauty.
But I honestly don't think there should be a differing standard of what is "healthy." Healthy (for me, anyway) means having muscle tone, not being at high risk for simple things like bruises, having healthy skin and hair, a full face -none of those sunken in eye-bags or cheekbones, thankyouverymuch!- and having strong bones, too. I'd also say a lot of what you can't see plays a big role --is your heart healthy, your liver, your lungs, your stomach? I don't care if you're a freakin' vegan president of PETA: if you smoke, you're stupid. You're not pretty, and you're not healthy. PERIOD.
Here's another Mer fact: I'm 5'0", and I weigh 100 lbs. The first time I hit triple-digits in my weight, I was overjoyed. I spent years hearing my friends whine that they wanted to get "down" to 104 or 120 or something. These were friends of mine that were slightly taller than me (anywhere from 5"-8" at the tallest) and whom I considered very healthy looking. Sure, none of us could probably make it as supermodels, but who the hell cares? I think self-esteem and confidence makes you a hell of a lot more attractive than being able to fit into Size 0 pants. I never wanted to tell my friends "I wish I COULD gain weight," because they'd always been so jealous of my "trim" figure. But I never had any special secret, and in fact, I probably have a lousy diet when you look at other people my size.
Oh, and by the way it's not that fun being skinny and small! I can hardly find clothing in my size because of my stature. I'm lucky I have the hips and chest I do (and I do consider "curves" as being part of a woman; whoever thinks women should be stick-straight should stare at men instead. Even then, I know plenty of men with DELICIOUSLY toned arms, thighs, butts, and even calves!), because otherwise I'd have to get almost everything I own altered.
I don't like the idea that America caters toward increasingly larger sizes (and by "increasingly larger" I don't mean Size 16, which was Marilyn Monroe's size-- I mean things like 5XL or Size 28 or something). That's UNHEALTHY. I look at the plus-size models for Lane Bryant and other stores, and I think "Wow, those women really are beautiful!" They don't look obese or ill to me at all. But they look as good as they do because they are well-proportioned, and that's something few models can lay claim to. It's not "pretty" if you have someone with a nice face and neck only to have bony shoulders, bony arms, a visible rib-cage, hibs that jut out, and feet that could stab someone.
So when the media got up in arms over Tyra Banks' weight gain, I was laughing along with her. She showed other shots from that same modeling shoot, and she looked fantastic in some of them, and had a few cringe-worthy angles. But it happens to everyone, even former supermodels. And I personally think Tyra is still hot. I don't like her current hair color, but she's still hot, and I admire her a lot.
I honestly have to say, I have MUCH less respect for anorexic and bulimic people (and those that convince themselves that they are "healthy" eating the way they do, assuming they eat at all) than those people who are overweight or obese. At least with many overweight and/or obese people, they really can't help it. I've been extremely skinny my whole life, and accused of being anorexic, but I never HAVE BEEN. My doctors nor my parents have never sat down with me and said "Mer, we need to talk about eating disorders." Other people's perception of what is "fat" or "skinny" or "pretty" or "ugly" gets so skewed by their environment and the media. Yes, family plays a big part too. But how often is someone "anorexic without helping it?" I've never been. It's a conscious decision to eat the way you do (or not eat), to binge and purge, or to feel you're fat when your family, your doctor, and health statistics all say you're not. But if people are overweight, it can be because they have a thyroid disorder. Maybe it runs in their family's genes. Maybe they have a slow metabolism. So many other things can contribute to why a person can be overweight to the point of being unhealthy, but what could possibly be true in the reverse (being so underweight that it's unhealthy, due to circumstancs beyond your control)? And these days, "overweight" is acceptable to the degree that people can be overweight and still healthy. There's no way to be obese OR anorexic and be healthy.
I think it's very important that girls get a good image of what can be sexy- there's not a single standard anymore, nor should there ever have been. Whether I end up becoming a teacher, a mother, a magazine editor, or something else (or all of the above!) then I will make sure to encourage a healthy, positive body image and self-esteem and confidence. That's not to say I would encourage UNHEALTHY eating, like I'd let my kid run wild and eat junk food all the time, but I wouldn't let them listen to idiots who would say "Eew, you don't look pretty because of _____!"
What a bunch of B.S. Tyra Banks kicks ASS. And I hope that as the woman in charge of America's Next Top Model, she'll encourage the generations that are following in her footsteps to realize their dreams and be self-confident. It takes a lot of strength to go on national TV and go for your dream-- but if you can walk away gracefully, you have just as much going for you as the winner who gets the big prize. Further, anyone that goes into modeling must know it can't and doesn't last forever. Staying skinny isn't the way to keep the jobs-- if you stop getting jobs, it's the sign that you're not what they're looking for anymore. That's not a bad thing-- it happens everywhere, to everyone.
Anyway, starting yesterday my computer started acting strangely because of my "overload" of fonts. Well, I only had something like 700 fonts on the system (when the OSX documentation says it can handle up to 7000!), but Photoshop just wasn't reading them. So I decided to go through Font Book and weed out the invalid fonts (those missing Font Name Tables), of which I found 67. The important ones (esp. the ones I've hunted for or paid for) were intact though, but then Firefox (which was already acting weird, smashing words together and causing them to overlap sometimes) and Firefox (which had previously been acting weird but apparently stopped when I switched the default fonts) suddenly had NO text anywhere.
So I had to take all the fonts I'd put in the trash can and go through them one by one, to make sure none of them were fonts used by the system or the applications. Then I weeded out the duplicate installations, disabled and removed them, closed font book, emptied the trash, and was able to reopen both Thunderbird and Firefox without any problems.
But encoding is still apparently an issue with Firefox; in Safari, Japanese characters show up just fine in the default Western (ISO-Latin-1) encoding, but with that same/equivalent encoding in Firefox (ISO-8859-1), I get random characters. I'm worried that it's because I deleted some Japanese font on my computer, but I doubt it-- I doubly made sure that all the fonts that I deleted were trouble fonts, not system fonts. What's even more irritating is the lack of a singular encoding for Japanese/other Asian languages and accented characters, like é and ó and such. So I could see José Cuarón, but not ラブとエロス. And I know I didn't (and COULDN'T) have deleted those fonts, I just 'accidentally' disabled them. A Spotlight search revealed their location and I re-added them to Font Book, but before I would drag them over or double-click on the files and nothing would happen or change. Now that I have installed them again (and can see them in Font Book and noticed the change in Cocoa applications like this one), I hope my font woes will be over with.
There's nothing worse than stressing about the things you normally love. I love fonts. I love video games. But my computer was driving me batty, and I still haven't found my PS2 Memory Card! I've almost completely cleaned my room, too. It wasn't just hidden amongst the piles of things I had unpacked from Japan or from my mom's boxes; unless it somehow got mixed up in things that I put away, or is still lost under something in the rec room, I don't know what to do.
Sure, it might be fun to just buy a new memory card and start everything fresh again... but honestly, I had made SO much progress with the games I had on there. To name a few that I can remember:
Final Fantasy X - I finally was inside Sin! But I hadn't beaten the game yet, because I wanted to try getting the Ultimate Weapons. I remember getting past Seymour Flux and finding out Auron's secret, but that was as far as I remember getting.
Final Fantasy X-2 - I'd already beaten this game once with a 98% completion (I didn't beat the Den of Woe or the Via Infinitio on my first run-through), and I wanted my second game to either be the 100% completion or the "get tons of accessories" game, with a possible third play-through being the 100% Perfect Game. This is the one I'm most sore about possibly losing, because I had John (back in Japan) help me shove Tobli into the elevator during that one Chapter where you can get the Enterprise accessory... and that's SO damn hard! Yes, I know the greatest feeling of accomplishment is for something you've done yourself, but I tried SO HARD to do that, and I couldn't. John said he could, so I let him-- and he did! I treated him to dinner for that, and to throw all that all away would make me so sad.
I was also playing this game on International + Last Mission, because I'd never want to get to the final dungeon in LM without having accessories like the Iron Duke.
Katamari Damacy - In the original, I think I'd gotten up to Make A Star 7 or something, but I had something like 68 total constellations. Then I moved on to Katamari Damacy 2 (aka We ♥ Katamari) and managed to find a lot of "lost cousins" and reveal much of the King's sordid history, but there were various levels I hadn't beaten completely (like the Origami one).
Yu-Gi-Oh Duelists of the Roses - I'm actually not too bummed about this one. Over a year ago I'd accidentally overwritten my winning game file when trying to play "the next side" so I could eventually unlock the special Duel Masters and Deck Creation modes. Whenever I tried to play again, I always lost miserably to someone in the beginning. So I wouldn't mind a fresh start with this game.
Overall, I'd say I wouldn't be horribly upset if it were gone-- I mean, I could have a lot of fun replaying some the games over again. It's great when a game has "replay value," but I don't think my situation is what game designers and publishers have in mind when they say a game has "great replay value." So if it really did get down to it, I might buy a USB adapter for my memory card so I could just download some saves for FFX and FFX-2 (maybe not ILM, even though I think that was the one I got Enterprise in), and hopefully backup my saves, too. I don't know, does anyone know of a place where I can get:
* a new memory card (preferably a larger one, like a multi-card-in-one, or a pair of Memory Cards at once)
* a USB-to-Memory Card adapter
* free savefiles for FFX and FFX-2?
Last night Elliott came over and we ended up spending most of the night watching Food Network or the Tyra Banks show (it was the episode I'd wanted to watch, even though I stumbled on it totally by accident-- the episode about her supposed horrendous weight-gain. For the record, I thought that particular picture was just a bad angle, the same way plenty of people get their pictures taken where their face looks bleached out, their hair looks mussed up, their teeth have something in it, red eye, etc).
And hey, here's something you may not have known about me! My BMI is 19.5, which is just one point above the bottom line for the healthy weight for adults of my height. If I were 18.4 or under, I would be considered underweight, but I don't know how many pounds would calculate my BMI that far down. And frankly, I don't care. I happen to like my figure very much, even though occasionally I think my butt's just a bit TOO curvy or my thighs look a bit like bowling pins.
I spent much of my childhood being ostracized for being such a featherweight, even though I couldn't help it. I had -and still have, though it's a bit different- a high metabolism, so even when I eat junky food (and I don't make a habit of it, because it gives me a stomachache), it just goes RIGHT through me. I don't gain weight the way other people might. And I know for other people, it works differently. Different people have different standards of beauty.
But I honestly don't think there should be a differing standard of what is "healthy." Healthy (for me, anyway) means having muscle tone, not being at high risk for simple things like bruises, having healthy skin and hair, a full face -none of those sunken in eye-bags or cheekbones, thankyouverymuch!- and having strong bones, too. I'd also say a lot of what you can't see plays a big role --is your heart healthy, your liver, your lungs, your stomach? I don't care if you're a freakin' vegan president of PETA: if you smoke, you're stupid. You're not pretty, and you're not healthy. PERIOD.
Here's another Mer fact: I'm 5'0", and I weigh 100 lbs. The first time I hit triple-digits in my weight, I was overjoyed. I spent years hearing my friends whine that they wanted to get "down" to 104 or 120 or something. These were friends of mine that were slightly taller than me (anywhere from 5"-8" at the tallest) and whom I considered very healthy looking. Sure, none of us could probably make it as supermodels, but who the hell cares? I think self-esteem and confidence makes you a hell of a lot more attractive than being able to fit into Size 0 pants. I never wanted to tell my friends "I wish I COULD gain weight," because they'd always been so jealous of my "trim" figure. But I never had any special secret, and in fact, I probably have a lousy diet when you look at other people my size.
Oh, and by the way it's not that fun being skinny and small! I can hardly find clothing in my size because of my stature. I'm lucky I have the hips and chest I do (and I do consider "curves" as being part of a woman; whoever thinks women should be stick-straight should stare at men instead. Even then, I know plenty of men with DELICIOUSLY toned arms, thighs, butts, and even calves!), because otherwise I'd have to get almost everything I own altered.
I don't like the idea that America caters toward increasingly larger sizes (and by "increasingly larger" I don't mean Size 16, which was Marilyn Monroe's size-- I mean things like 5XL or Size 28 or something). That's UNHEALTHY. I look at the plus-size models for Lane Bryant and other stores, and I think "Wow, those women really are beautiful!" They don't look obese or ill to me at all. But they look as good as they do because they are well-proportioned, and that's something few models can lay claim to. It's not "pretty" if you have someone with a nice face and neck only to have bony shoulders, bony arms, a visible rib-cage, hibs that jut out, and feet that could stab someone.
So when the media got up in arms over Tyra Banks' weight gain, I was laughing along with her. She showed other shots from that same modeling shoot, and she looked fantastic in some of them, and had a few cringe-worthy angles. But it happens to everyone, even former supermodels. And I personally think Tyra is still hot. I don't like her current hair color, but she's still hot, and I admire her a lot.
I honestly have to say, I have MUCH less respect for anorexic and bulimic people (and those that convince themselves that they are "healthy" eating the way they do, assuming they eat at all) than those people who are overweight or obese. At least with many overweight and/or obese people, they really can't help it. I've been extremely skinny my whole life, and accused of being anorexic, but I never HAVE BEEN. My doctors nor my parents have never sat down with me and said "Mer, we need to talk about eating disorders." Other people's perception of what is "fat" or "skinny" or "pretty" or "ugly" gets so skewed by their environment and the media. Yes, family plays a big part too. But how often is someone "anorexic without helping it?" I've never been. It's a conscious decision to eat the way you do (or not eat), to binge and purge, or to feel you're fat when your family, your doctor, and health statistics all say you're not. But if people are overweight, it can be because they have a thyroid disorder. Maybe it runs in their family's genes. Maybe they have a slow metabolism. So many other things can contribute to why a person can be overweight to the point of being unhealthy, but what could possibly be true in the reverse (being so underweight that it's unhealthy, due to circumstancs beyond your control)? And these days, "overweight" is acceptable to the degree that people can be overweight and still healthy. There's no way to be obese OR anorexic and be healthy.
I think it's very important that girls get a good image of what can be sexy- there's not a single standard anymore, nor should there ever have been. Whether I end up becoming a teacher, a mother, a magazine editor, or something else (or all of the above!) then I will make sure to encourage a healthy, positive body image and self-esteem and confidence. That's not to say I would encourage UNHEALTHY eating, like I'd let my kid run wild and eat junk food all the time, but I wouldn't let them listen to idiots who would say "Eew, you don't look pretty because of _____!"
What a bunch of B.S. Tyra Banks kicks ASS. And I hope that as the woman in charge of America's Next Top Model, she'll encourage the generations that are following in her footsteps to realize their dreams and be self-confident. It takes a lot of strength to go on national TV and go for your dream-- but if you can walk away gracefully, you have just as much going for you as the winner who gets the big prize. Further, anyone that goes into modeling must know it can't and doesn't last forever. Staying skinny isn't the way to keep the jobs-- if you stop getting jobs, it's the sign that you're not what they're looking for anymore. That's not a bad thing-- it happens everywhere, to everyone.
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