Can I just say that Spring time makes me ridiculously happy? Cause it does! Portland is still rainy sometimes but we had a few days of clear skys and warm weather and the weather guy says it’s supposed to be nice like that again in a few days. I’m really looking forward to nice weather. Rain is nice and all but I miss the sunshine. I wish I could get a tan up here!

But yea, spring! Believe it or not I actually love bright colors. All the flowers and trees (and yes my allergies will start acting up and then I’ll hate Spring, but that hasn’t happened yet!) and cute clothes! I need to set my sewing machine up somewhere so I can make a ton of skirts and buy a bunch of footless tights and more flats. I found some really cute patterns that I think I can manage (sewing in a straight line isn’t as easy as it sounds ) Spring also makes me kind of crafty. I need to go buy supplies!

In other news, things on all my sites and most sites in the KSF Bloglomerate may be a little wonky for the next week or so; we’re moving servers and that is going to be a huge headache and things *will* go wrong, so don’t be surprised.

That is all!

So, I’m getting ready to move this weekend. I still have a lot of packing to do… I hate packing. I’ve bribed some friends with pizza and beer to help me move my stuff. I’ve bribed another friend with more pizza to help me paint the walls back to the boring off-white color they were when I got there. I’ve secured a killer vacuum cleaner to rescue my rug that my grandma gave me, and will be renting a super steam cleaner to get the carpet back in passable condition so I don’t have to pay to have it replaced. My plan of attack is to finish packing this week, move the stuff on Saturday (and by “move my stuff” i mean “drive the truck and let the boys load/unload”) during the day, unpack the important stuff Saturday night, and paint the walls and clean the carpet Sunday.

I hate moving. I’m kind of excited though. Xoie will have a friend to play with, since my friend that we’re moving in with has a dog, too. I think having more places to go will help calm her down, as well as running and playing more. Pod is going to bring his computer over to my house so that we can get a little more spread of where we spend our time, cause I’m *always* at his house, and I would really like to spend more time at home, but still spend time with him. We haven’t been playing EQ a whole lot, cause we’ve been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead, which is totally awesome. If you’re on Steam, add me as your friend. lifelessmind. I’d link to my profile but I can’t find the URL while I’m at work cause anything fun is surfblocked.

I had to take back the super sweet 3.16 dual core processor I bought. Turns out my motherboard only supports 65nm processors. So I already bought a new power supply, and got a video card sent to me, and if I bought a new motherboard to go with my new processor I’d need new RAM cause mine is slow, and I’d need a case, and at that point I built a whole new computer and that just wasn’t in my budget I did pick up a 2.2 dual core, which is the best 65nm I can still find at this point.. which, yea, is still better than the 1.8 I had in there, but not NEARLY as exciting as the E8600. Cest la vie. I’m excited for my new video card My friend Shawn says the video card will do me more good than the processor anyway, so the combination of the two is pretty good I’d say.

I’ve also been doing a lot of designing/coding lately. I’ve started (and scrapped) a good 4 or 5 layouts for this site already. I’ve got the main page (mostly) coded for the one I think I’ll be keeping. Here’s a sneak peak of it. Don’t bother clicking any links; none of them work yet. If you have any feedback, let me know. I always like hearing other peoples ideas. I’m also starting a new project. Domain has been bought… but I’ve also scrapped 2 or 3 layouts for that one. I don’t want to get too much into specifics until the site is up, but it was inspired by this random freak-out I had over the weekend. While Kat Scratch Fever mostly is about the NOW of my life, this new project will give a little more insight about my past. I’ll let you know when it’s up and running.

Oh, and I got a new tattoo. I suppose technically it’s 2 tattoos (that technicality meant I had to fill out the paperwork twice! that, and I split it up into two sessions cause we ran out of time the first day). I just got the second one last night and it’s crazy swollen and red still. The left one hurt more than the right one. Probably because I’m right handed so the muscles in my right arm are stronger and more used to abuse. Anyway I don’t have pictures of both of them together yet, but they look the same, just mirror images. Pictures on my Flickr. Go look, leave comments!

That’s all for now.

Yes yes, I’ve been MIA for a little while. *shrug* Real life and all.

So… update. Hmmmmmmmmm. Well.. I was in LA for a few days for a family emergency, my car broke down on the way back and cost $1000 to fix, the Xoie is being a booger face but I love her anyway, I’ve been playing lots of Rock Band and some D&D, I found myself a cute boy who, thus far, has proven himself to be a genuinely nice guy, I got an iPod touch that is currently glued to my hands, and… you know, stuff.

I refuse to apoligze for not blogging more often, and I never understood people who made posts about thinking about closing their blogs. In case anybody hasn’t noticed… if I don’t feel like blogging, I just don’t blog. But, I am still alive. Just in case anybody was wondering.

Oh yeah, and today, one of my pictures made it into Explore on Flickr. This is only my 3rd one to ever be in there. Behold!

I Think We Killed Her - (aka I Think I Might Be A Cylon, aka 073)

So, I’ve been doing a lot of knitting lately. Nothing spectacular, since I’m just learning and all, but it’s been fun so far Except for the whole “having to buy yarn and needles in a million sizes” part, that kind of sucks heh. I have this scarf that I’ve been working on forEVER it seems, I think one day that will be done. I’m also working on these very basic wrist warmers. I just started knitting in the round, so I chose that pattern because it’s pretty easy. I’m going to make some nicer ones when I finish, though I must say… it’s really hard to motivate myself to knit the things when it’s 100 degrees outside haha.

So I found a few patterns that I am going to modify to fit Momoko, since I’ve got one of those coming in the mail. I made a top but I think it came out too wide. It’s hard to knit for something that isn’t right in front of you! Also, teeny tiny hats are hard.

I did finish this little Nano Warmer though! Heh. That yarn that I used is rather elastic-y so I needed to knit up something quick and easy to get used to the yarn. I just need to sew a button on it.

So! Any other knitters out there in my Blogosphere? Or crocheters? If you’re on Ravelry, add me to your friends!

I have seen the light and I am never going back.

Let’s briefly talk about what they both are. I’m sure you have an idea but I’m gonna throw it out there anyway. The RAW format is not really standardized, but in a nutshell, it’s minimally processed data from an image sensor, such as the one in a camera. It’s something like a digital photo negative… it contains the information needed to make an image. Then there’s a JPEG, which is more like the final printed picture. It’s an image that you can look at. A final product, persay.

Many cameras (well, maybe not the point-and-shoots so much, but most of the digital SLRs) give you the option to shoot in JPEG, RAW, or both in some cases. I admit, I shot in JPEG for a long time. But for people that edit their photos (much like how film photographers used different methods when developing their film for different effects), RAW is the way to go. Allow me to show you some visual examples.

Here’s a flower photo I took today.

It’s a decent picture, but a little boring and the colors don’t look nearly as vibrant or natural as they actually are. So, I spruced up the RAW file a bit.

Now that’s better. Yay better! But, just for curiosity’s sake.. let’s see what happens if I apply the same exact changes to a JPEG version of the original image that I applied to the RAW version of it.

Yes. Not so good, right? That’s because RAW files store more information than a JPEG. The RAW file doesn’t have a set white balance, and it hasn’t had saturation or contrast levels forced on it, or anything like that, so it can be changed in ways that a JPEG can’t, because the JPEG only kept the information that was visible at the time, instead of the information that could have been used to make adjustments. RAW is also 16 bit data as opposed to 8 bit, so it has 65,536 levels to work with instead of just 256 like the JPEG. It’s a little hard to explain what the difference is between the information.. but basically, there are not nearly as many things set in stone in a RAW file, so you have more control over the editing.

Another good example is in how you can edit the exposure. Today when I was out shooting, I had forgotten to adjust the manual settings on my camera when I went outside after shooting inside. This, of course, led to a painfully over exposed picture. Had I only been shooting in JPEG, the image would have been ruined forever, because you just can’t turn a white blur into something that makes sense. The RAW image however, stored more information about what the image looked like before it crossed the line to overexposed. So I was able to pop the image into Lightroom and turn the exposure down to rescue it. Allow me to show you what happened when I took the overexposed image and edited the RAW, and the JPEG versions of it.

So as you can see, there are many benefits to shooting in RAW. The only downside is that they take longer to write, and they are large files. They also require special software to read them. Lightroom is a great program for it. If you don’t do any post-processing on your photos, then it won’t be worth it to shoot in RAW. But if you do… try it out. I think you’ll like the amount of control you get with a RAW file over the JPEG.