I've been super crazy busy at work - like so busy that I am sick and worked from home all day on Friday because I had too much stuff to do! coughing and coughing all day... I'm SUCH a drama queen!!

thanks to trust your style for asking about the bike mishap - I'm totally fine, just a couple of bumps and scrapes.





VACATION!!!

So husband and I are getting ready for a REAL vacation. We will be heading to Tokyo in about 8 weeks. I cannot WAIT! I've only ever been on business and have never had enough time to do everything I wanted to.

I want to just wander around - I want to be able to visit Nippori and meander about. I'm considering moving to Japan one day and I want to see more what everyday life is like.

Asking for trouble has good shopping guide of Tokyo but it's a little lacking addresses, etc. Husband has a GPS map tagged with anime shops all over Japan that he prepped for our first trip. Please note we are super geeks so this link downloads a map that is good for your GPS or google maps only.

I love Japan if only for the oddity - Battle undies...

Check out the ii-ni-kore blog for shots of daily life in Japan as well as design and food info.


Some other side notes....

I have unintentionally found tons and tons of wedding stuff on the web - those crafty DIY wedding folks have some really good ideas and tutorials that don't necessarily have to just be for weddings.

Here are a few good links:

DIY stamp designs from leaves & software - highly recommend looking at the rest of this blog for more goodies.

Clip Art - 50k of images for non-commercial use

I-D-I-Y - tons of crafty goodies

Art stuffs:

Sketchy Font

Paper Source's envelope sizes - .pdf download

Design:

Design Piracy act sucks and blows - send a message to your congress person here. Find out more about the piracy act on fashion incubator

Oh yes!!!

And on the bike front - Husband has written an article about folding bike design. I think everyone should read it. :)

I snuck a photo of him while playing photo shoot assistant:


I have been waiting WEEKS for him to finish the article so I could post that photo :)

hmmm - so far I have managed to:

- throw myself over the handle bars of my bike trying to learn how to properly jump a curb
- spend 3 hours at a hospital - only for them to tell me nothing is broken (good news - but the wait, OI!)
- cut out more stickers for my post below
- enter a bunch of blog give aways (go check out sew mama sew)
- as soon as hubby gets up, we're off to Bicycle Kitchen again - gotta see if they have a spoke cutter and to donate left over bike parts.
- head over to Little Tokyo to pick up our subscriptions from kinokuniya book store.

OH YES - THANK YOU FOR SIGNING UP FOR THE FEED!!

She's about 2" wide and about 3" tall.

I added a new tutorial category to the blog today and had to go through and republish a bunch of old posts with new categories.

WEll - I realized I never posted part 2 of a "how fabric is made" article awhile back.

Here's Part 2 of Rick Cohan on Making Fabric

very interesting indeed!

I am going to show you a simple way to evenly embellish something you've sewn. I use this technique on wrist cuffs primarily, but you could use it on any cloth item.

What you need:

* A finished piece of fabric sewn on a sewing machine
* Beads
* Thread
* sewing needle

What to do:

- Thread your needle and knot the end.

- Look at line of stitches you made with your sewing machine (at the hem or at the finishing seam.

- Pick up your piece and decide how far apart your want your beads. This will most likely depend on your stitch length, but I usually space mine fairly close together, about 3 stitches apart.



- You will be working on the front (visible portion) of your piece.

- Start at the underside and push the needle up through the fabric at the beginning of a stitch

- Put a bead on your needle and push the needle back through the fabric at the end of the stitch you started in

- Count down the number of stitches you previously determined and repeat until you have finished that seam line.

- Decide if more of the seams need the same treatment until you feel you are done!

Here is how the beading ends up looking on a wrist cuff:

I'm not going to bother comparing the T-mobile G phone to any other smart phones because I feel that a comparison is a waste of your reading time. The only comparison I would be able to make is between the G1 and a Blackberry, not an iphone or a Windows mobile since I do not have hands on experience with either one of those phones.

Here's the short version:

I love it as much, if not more, than a Blackberry.

The long version:

Screen



The screen is just big enough for me to read an average webpage. Text displays well at a good readable size and is not fuzzy. Zooming in to get a bigger version is really simple too - a touch based magnifying glass appears whenever you move around on screen in an application.

The pictures are clear and the desktop is nicely arranged and configurable by the user.

You do need a screen protector, though. I got a pretty stout one - the invisible shield. It works well and doesn't interfere with the touch screen capabilities.

My only complaint is that sometimes the touch screen is a little slow to respond, but I think that has to do with how cold my hands generally are. The colder your hands, the more difficult it is to get the screen to react.

Keyboard



The keyboard is a little small - I have fairly big hands for a woman, though totally proportional for someone my size and height. The bottom section of the phone where the roller ball and buttons are located does stick out from the phone but it is easy to type around.

I love that the keys have a click to them - you know for sure that you have pressed a button. The developer has smartly given you some pretty standard web and email keys like @, €, £, /.

Camera

The camera is not great. It takes pictures but is slow to focus and has a distinctly blue tinge. The blue could be taken out with some playing around in Photoshop but that sort of defeats the purpose of taking a picture with your camera phone. It takes decent pictures if you ignore the blue. It works well enough for better than average facebook or twitter update pictures but don't expect works of art.



Applications



I smoothly integrated my google apps for domains in place of gmail. However - your phone is locked to gmail if you log in the first time with it, so you need to choose before hand if you want to do apps for domains or gmail.



The calendar is fabulous - I have not had such easy calendar sharing in any other application. I allow a gmail or apps for domains user to see my calendar and it just shows up. Husband and I are linked up this way, so he sees all my appointments and I see all of his. It cuts out a lot of confusion when trying to plan the weekend or evening.

IM is great if you are using google talk but AIM and Yahoo suck the battery dry in a few hours of use. I recommend carrying your charger if AIM is your favorite IM client.

Overall the interface is familiar if you have used any smart phone and any google application. You will understand how it works intuitively.

Some big complaints I have are that there is no spell checker or integrated note pad though. While note pads are available in the app store, I can't find a decent spell checker.

The android marketplace has a ton of free or low cost applications for download to make your phone even more customizable. Some of the same apps are also available for iphone.

I personally like:

* Fbook - direct facebook interface
* Abook - book reader
* World Clock - customizable app that will show you city times (VERY helpful for my job)
* YellowBook - phone book app based on your location
* Mahjong - everyone needs a game :)
* Compare Anywhere and Shop Savy - barcode scanner shopping programs. (Scan the barcode and your handheld searches online for better prices)

I also have the constitution, a calculator and few other weirdo apps (like bubblewrap - all it is is a screen with fake bubble wrap).

I will say - while I can't compare the devices - more than one person has told me or my husband that they ditched their iphone for a G1.

Love this phone

So I finally got around to burning a feed for the site. Check it out down near the bottom. I already have one person signed up.

If you use another reader there are still the links at teh bottom to the Atom and RSS versions. as well.

G1 review coming soon... for real this time.

My office closed early today for the Memorial Day Holiday on Monday so I have a tiny bit of time left to spare today and thought I would post.

This week's adventure in the civic center of LA wasn't a total loss. I got drawing out of it.



and here's what the scene looked like in real life - see the trees off to the left? Those are the ones in the drawing (just in case you can't tell...)



Comments?

I'm stuck - my selection panel was not released yesterday evening so I had to report again today.

I am stuck in the court house all day as part of my civic duty.

anyone want to share their horror stories?

I've been here since 7:30 this morning and it's SUPER boring. But I at least thought to bring my laptop.



Met a lovely crafter in the ladies room after orientation. Chloe Nil - see her stuff on etsy.

3:30 PM update - got picked for a jury selection panel but I have to shake my head at the listen comprehension of my fellow Los Angeleans. wow - for real - it's amazing.