40 results.
Dec26
hi

Am I late for a Xmas post?

by wapy on 26 December 2012 at 16:45

Xmas is the time of reunion and all the family get together! You know what means? Lots of people crammed up in a small place. For several hours. Heck, for two days! Not only I hate being around so many people and with no escape rope, I was also not allowed to do many of the things I kind wanted to do to distract myself.

You know, just sit there and be an adult. Be boring, please.

Ah, the family drama about the tv. Because people absoluctely need to watch the news. Yes, they know what the news are going to be again, but they still really need to watch them, it’s fulcral. And it doesn’t matter if nobody’s paying attention, I don’t get to change the channel for something more… interesting. No. No, you can’t play, you anti-social lady. No, you can’t go to your room, you have to stay here with us and be social. No, you can’t use the laptop. Actually, just give us the laptop so we can watch this totally boring codfish hunt documentary nobody under 40 gives a shit about and so you can’t really touch your own computer for hours… And believe it or not, by the next day, my mom tried to make me feel guilty about not changing the channel to the news, saying that was the reason for my grandparents to have left the house early. Even if the news segment was most likely over by the time they left…

So yeah, tl;dr, xmas is all about stress. At least I had pictionary and the younger crew (the youngest being 18) was able to do something mildly entertaining while waiting for midnight. More drama ensued on Xmas day about TV channels again, but then we got to play the Wii and SuperMario and that was really fun.

Oh, and my cousin brought a Nespresso machine to my place, wonderful! I had tons of coffee and my coffee stock has probably gone to waste by now, because everyone decided they deserved a share. Amazing.

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Nov05
hey_there

Guarda

by wapy on 5 November 2012 at 11:12

I decided to use my three-day weekend for something different and went to Guarda, to pay a visit to my dear friend Rainfreak and meet Midreky (aka Midi)~

Last time, I went there for just two days – arrived on Saturday and left on Sunday. I didn’t have much time for fun adventures, which I definetively wanted to change this time!

First of all, I have to say: if I ever complained about November’s weather, I did not know what I was talking about. I did not know how the first days of November could be cold, I did not know what cold was! Forgive me. After three days, I began to adjust a little and now Oporto actually seems a little warm.

It seems to me that Guarda is filled with niche, thematic places. Our first stop – after a quick lunch at Mc’s – was at a fancy ice cream shop, where I had a crepe with Nutella. Yummy! I was surrounded with awesome peeps and drew a lot!


Fuck yeah, drawing! I didn’t take half of the photos I should have, though…

By the end of the first day, I had already noticed a few things: everybody’s polite, nobody ever speaks loudly, you can safely walk the streets at night, it’s pretty cold, but bearable and funny and everyone has a cute accent too. Interesting details, as you can see.

And I even made a coffee-painting, at a café. There was some football game going on, but nobody was being loud about it, so odd.

Second day was the cupcake day!
I had never had cupcakes and I couldn’t even belive there was this store that did nothing but them and fancy cakes and lots and lots of different kinds of tea. I had ginger tea, which I never had before as well, and I loved it! I had three cups.

The weather was constantly rainy and foggy, but cool nonetheless. I loved the eery, ghostly feel of it. It kinda made me thankful for the existence of warm bedsheets and footwarmers~ The rain was beautiful and everything seemes autumn-ish. The streets are really serene and it feels like you can find a piece of history in every corner. I wish I had more three days to spend there. Either that, or a full month. I can’t picture myself feeling tired of that calmness.

I had less hours to enjoy on Sunday, since I decided to leave that day and not on Monday morning. I still had most of the afternoon to spend, considering I was only to get on the bus by 18:40. I could watch more rain and have waffles at the mall. Funny thing, how the buildings seem to be one with the mountain, they don’t look unnatural. They look like the just sprouted there. The mall was a good example. We did a little shopping, some silly things, took lots of pictures and had tons of hugs. Soon it was time for me to go. How sad!

The trips are long and boring, I could read past half of my book. I though I might get damp by the time I reached Oporto, but the rain stopped before that. Oporto looked the same as ever. It was barely 21:00 when I arrived, I only had to pick the train and finally get home. Goodbye, paradise.

And goodbye paradise indeed. My sister picked me up at the train station and I realised that, although I had spent three wonderful days away from everything, I was going to come back to the same thing that made me depressed in the first place – nothing had changed. My sister was still loudly complaing about mom, about dad, and everything’s so loud and everything’s a drama, everybody was speaking on top of each other and I saw nothing but a slight interest on my trip.

If coming home from vacations is ever hard, this only made it harder. The returning shock was too big.

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Nov04
hmm

Chapters 13, 14 and 15

by wapy on 4 November 2012 at 23:44

I had the best weekend at Guarda, thank you. I was treated like a princess, but then I had to come back home to realize everything’s still the same around here.

It’s suffocating.

But I’m promissing you a better, longer post about this said weekend and I shall tell you about how cold it was over the mountain and I’ll even post some photos. Have no worries.

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Aug27
fuckyeah

My bike is best bike! Bike adventures!

by wapy on 27 August 2012 at 19:49

Buying myself a bike was, most likely, one of the best decisions I ever made.

I have to confess: I haven’t really rode a bike since I was around fourteen. And even then, I have to admit, I didn’t practice that much. You see, I didn’t really learn how to ride a bike when I was small enough not to be afraid of falling… So now I feel a little stressed about mounting it. But the first step towards becoming good at it is to get the material!

My bike is beautiful! I know, I know, it is somewhat pinkish and I’m not a pink person, but this pink doesn’t annoy me. The bike has such a smooth ridance! How can I be worried about pinkiness when my lady here flows like the wind?

But, of course, considering my monumental lack of practice, I was pretty… Scared. Really scared, because I’m the scaredy-cat kind of person! But nothing worthwhile comes easy (why can’t it all be simple like studying?!) and so I had to get it started. But it took me a long time to start! Oh the balance, I has none! Getting my feet on the pedals? Both of them!? And staying on top of the bike without falling? Have you seen those cars? The road is full of them! I can’t make this happen…

Indeed, the first 30 minutes were pretty much dominated by feelings of fear. But I really really wanted to ride my bike, so fear wouldn’t be able to hold me forever: I eventually got the hang of it. I managed to keep both feet on the pedals. I started the ride! I discovered brakes and I made my best to keep in mind that they exist and must be used. I had to start thinking that I was in charge of the steering head, not the opposite. And so, the bike politely let me be in control.

Nevertheless, my legs aren’t exactly used to this effort thing, so the adveture seemed pretty much doomed at first. But, carefully, I made it through and I was able to feel the wind on my hair! So I experimented going up small hills and then down, for pratice. Progress! I’ll be training more tomorrow, I feel like I have to turn this bike into a proper means of transportation as soon as possible.

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Aug24
hey_there

The zombie cake!

by wapy on 24 August 2012 at 21:45

I bought some food coloring the other day and I was just looking for an excuse to use it. Today was the day! And what a better use than a cake with jello? Quick and easy to make. And what a better color to show people it is not a by-product of some component than the oh-so-natural-looking blue?


It was soon clear that, no matter how much blue I added, it wouldn’t get any bluer. But no probs with getting green!


Yeappers, green cake. It looks like it’s got some mint on it, which is not the case (it’s nothing more than your plain eggs and sugar cake, with raspberry jam). I think it actually looks a little zombie-ish, which is pretty neat! Edible zombie at last! So glad the color doens’t alter the flavour.

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Aug18
confus

Aliens

by wapy on 18 August 2012 at 14:57

Oh boy, I don’t even have complaints to write here. Life’s been good.

The theme of today’s lunch were the Assassin’s Creed books. My father has just finished reading them and concluded that they are interesting, with their historical background. He’s also stated Ezio’s far more efficient than Altair ever was.

And I have to agree and disagree: I think Ezio was just better armed and had better friends.

But the books themselves haven’t been as clear on the subject of the “ones who came before” as the games apparently were. Sure, they are named after gods, but are they gods? Where did they come from? Why are they gone/asleep now? They tell us the story of how their civilization ended, but it doesn’t go deep enough so you don’t really get to understand in detail what happened. And much less where they came from! In my dad’s idea, the answer was simple.

Aliens.

Aliens Meme pic

Ancient Aliens aside, in a fantasy book context, the idea of aliens as the ancient gods is a good idea. After all, it’s fantasy! And last time I check, one’s allowed to play a little with variables in fantasy, even if it’s of the historical kind.

But don’t get me wrong. Although I consider the idea pretty nice for fantasy, I disagree if applied to real life. Not only there is no evidence for it, it also seems to rise from the idea what we, as a species, aren’t capable of great feats and lack imagination. So yeah, we don’t know for sure what happened in the dawn of time, but that doesn’t mean we needed external aid in order to get the whole technological civilization started. I personally think we’re pretty good at making stuff up and imagining new things to do!

“But the jump’s too big for such a short time span”. So? The guy who invented the first programable computer is still alive – and we know have laptops and tablets and we’re on the verge of making thinking machines. That’s a pretty good jump for a single generation! Technological evolution, as far as I know, is exponential: from the moment the first cities were born, it was only a matter of time for people to start asking for something even better and making the things better. They had brilliant brains, as much as we do now. Why wouldn’t they be able to do the kickoff?

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Aug17
hi

Spam of Boavista’s Photos

by wapy on 17 August 2012 at 0:31

I’ve been to Oporto today to take care of some unfinished business and since I was there, I decided to use the trip and make something fun as well: taking photos! I ended up on the Boavista area, with good company, which created a lot of photographic opportunities.

Casa da Música was, obvisouly, the first target. You can say whatever you want about her looks, but you gotta admit the girl’s photogenic! You just can’t take a bad picture of her, much like Barney Stinson.


Well, photo calls for photo and when I noticed, I had shoot everything in the area. Translating to lots of trees, buildings and lots of experiments with the camera’s filters and options.


Now for some pretty obligatory tree spam:


Everybody loves tree spam.

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Aug13
blink

Personalizing Fonts

by wapy on 13 August 2012 at 22:59

Tumblr’s like an other dimension to the internet world, however, it brought me to a new experience today.

Better saying, it reminded me of a world I wish I could dive into. Well, fancy-wording aside, I just found some info on how to create a font with my own handwriting.

Ain’t that great? I’ve been passively looking for that (and with passively I mean I haven’t been looking at all). I’ve heard there were no free tools for this porpuse. But maybe the whole paying thing is a thing of the past, because this one is free!

Free and fun, I had to give it a try. The process is actually pretty simple. You go to the website My Script Font and you download their template (alternatively). Then all you have to do is fill it, either manually or digitally and send it back to the site and voilá! a new True Type font for you to use!

But this tool seems to have been made for english keyboards, which you can see by looking at the character sheet: there’s no room for many latin characters I need, like the tilde’d ones. I eventually realised I would be needing some font editing software if I wanted to get those characters. Maybe then I’d have all the relevant characters I need (but let’s keep it real – no way I’ll be drawing the entire character map! I’d hurt my whrist again.

I tried High-Logic‘s Font Creator. But, the monent I wanted to save the changes, I was prompted to get a license. Well, considering I was just experimenting and I don’t think I’ll be using the software often, paying for it seemed a bad idea. Onto the Open Source world it is! I eventually found a stable release of FontForge.

Now, the user interface seems like it just came out of win95 environment, but all of the necessary functions are there. Despite the style, the tools are rather acessible and their use is pretty intuitive. And I don’t have to pay for it and it can save my scribbles into the filetypes I want! What a great new toy I’ve just found. As you can see, I’m not unhappy with this tool. Maybe I’ll even be using it more, who knows?

The scribbles, however, had to be iterated until I managed to get some acceptable results. Apparently, I’m not good at keeping the characters on the same size, even with guidelines. Amazing! I must have done and redone that character map some 10 times until I got some results I wouldn’t be too embarassed to show:

To make this post look like it has a conclusion, for those of you who are ok with experimenting new things and feel like Word doesn’t give you many things to play with, get your hands on these two free tools. Your time won’t be wasted and you’ll be able to make all the personalized fonts you want. Try them, you’ll have some fun.

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