September 04, 2006
Sentiments of School
There is something in the air. Something that for the last week has caused me pain and frustration. And I'm not talking about allergies.
I was gone for seven weeks in Africa, and while I was away so many things changed. Trees grew more leaves, the sun changed on the horizon, it got much warmer, and there is a new smell in the air. At first I thought it was just that it smelled like summer, but I had left in July, so it had already been summer. Then I thought maybe it was fall, but it isn't quite late enought to be "fall" yet. Then I realized that it smells like the first day of school.
And the reason this is causing me such pain and frustration? It's not the first day of school for me anymore. It's like a pavlovion response: the feel, the look, and the smell of this season just screams to me, "It's time for another year! Time to go get new art supplies and books and clothes! Time to see friends who have been gone all summer! Time to decorate your bare dorm walls and walk with your roommate to the caf for lunch!" But there is no new dorm room, no reason to buy new clothes, no more flex points and meal plans for the caf. I wake up to daydreams about new gum erasers, huge pads of newsprint, soft new paintbrushes, clean white studio walls, field trips to Ace and the Getty and UCLA, a backpack heavy with fresh notebooks and binders that still smell of new plastic, and much more.
Most people certainly don't feel this way about their school upon graduating, but I do. And I want more than anything to prolong the happiness and learning and experience of going to Biola. Why am I so sentimental?!
Posted by libbystokes at 08:54 AM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2006
Graduation Reflections
Graduation is tomorrow. I'm not quite sure what to feel about it. I guess it's cool that I have finished college, but mostly I feel sad to leave it all. I have really enjoyed my time at Biola and will miss everything. I feel like I will lose people and memories.
For all of you who have already completed this rite of passage, I wish I would have stayed better connected to you and better maintained the support of friendship as you moved into new, scary, independant-type things. And for all of you who graduate in the next year(s), here is my advice as you finish school:
-Take lots of pictures. You don't have to get them printed and make all those silly scrapbooks, just take them and save them, and look through them every now and then. Carry your camera with you everywhere. Remember happy times, snap goofy pictures of your friends. Don't worry about what people will think if you pull out your camera to take a picture of your favorite teacher, or that one tree on campus that you always liked--just do it.
-Do something crazy that you never have done (ok, now this is assuming you are like me and never take risks or do anything that could get you in trouble...). Go climb up on the roof of the cafeteria and throw paper airplanes. Leave your mark. Maybe even get caught and pay a fine. Your parents will understand, it's not like you're doing drugs...
-Know that it will end. But don't be so caught up in what it will be like not to be in school that you forget how great school really is.
-Homework is under-rated. How will you get anything done unless it is due? Plus, structure is an important habit.
-Dorm-life is the most unusual thing ever-- take advantage of how many people are around you and don't be surprised at the quietness of living with only a few people once you move out.
-Cafeteria food is really ok, and it's easy-- you try making a variety of delicious meals for 2000 people for one week and then let me know how you feel. Eat your vegetables-- they are expensive in real life.
-Go to chapel at least a couple of times your last semester. I know you don't have to, but just go.
-As with any new phase of life, give yourself a period to grieve the one you are leaving. When you graduated high school you promised some people you that would stay in touch, but you didn't. That will happen again and it's ok. But you don't have to be lonely, you have to be deliberate. Even if it isn't a permanent thing, make plans to see people on a regular basis. As you grow into your new situation, you can slowly ease yourself out of the old one. Don't let your sentiments bog you down. That's what the pictures were for-- look at them and laugh and smile and maybe cry, but leave room for new traditions and friends.
Ok, now granted I'm not even officially graduated, just take this as a reflection of the last couple of years and the expectation for the next couple.
-Libby
Posted by libbystokes at 12:02 PM | Comments (1)
February 04, 2006
Baja pronto
I'll be in here one of these days to report a little on the trip I just took to Baja. First I have to finish my assignments for the Baja class, then I can sit down and write a nice little reflection-- pictures and everything. Until then, just sit tight.
Posted by libbystokes at 08:02 PM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2004
Kink oh's
I am going to kinkos! Oh libby you'll love kinkos, everybody says.
So I go to kinkos. In fullerton. They are open 24 hours. Must be a cool place. I walk in and go to the desk. I am thinking, ok, I've never done the whole kinkos thing, so I'll ask. I tell the guy I need to make some color print-outs. Is there a way to do it myself? What size? Big. It's $10/square foot. Um, no.
So I look at the measurements I have, say that two 11 x 17's will work for the box. how do I do it myself? Oh, he says, I failed to mention our color printers aren't working today.
So I had just spent 15 minutes explaining what I needed to a guy who didn't tell me from the start he couldn't help me. AHHHH!
Where's the nearest kinkos, I say. Brea.
I go to Brea. The first guy I go to is kind of spastic. I think maybe he has a mental disorder. He doesn't know a thing about computers. Their version of illustrator is too old. I try opening it in acrobat, it works, but it's pretty hard to see on the 10 year old flickering tube screen giving me a migraine. I miss the 27 inch flat screens in the lab, I think to myself. Now what. Go ask alex, he can help. Alex puts me at a different computer. A mac, i can handle this. He leaves and says he'll be back in a minute. A minute takes 25. I stand up and walk to the desk. He meets me there, oh, sorry It slipped my mind, i forgot I was helping you. no joke, this guy is too preoccupied taking some chick's passport picture he cant remember he is working. He finally helps me. It works. I nice girl takes my credit card. I hate kinkos.
-Lib
Posted by libbystokes at 07:13 PM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2004
One more try...
So I will assume that the comment made about not fullfilling the assignment applied to me... so here is a new version...
It ends kind of lame, but I had to put in a mask-- Grrr.
-Lib
Posted by libbystokes at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2004
Flash, Bang, Boom
Here is my first official flash animation. It's kind of weird, but hey. I like it.
Check it out:
If it isn't showing up, try going here to see it, but I doubt it will work if this one doesn't...
-Lib
Posted by libbystokes at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2004
Superhero
Yay for flash!
Here is my first ever flash animation: (You need flash 7)
Once it's open, you might have to right click it and press play for it to go. I will have to figure that out also.
I tried putting it right in the entry but I couldn't figure that out. We'll work on that later.
-Lib
Posted by libbystokes at 09:42 PM | Comments (1)
November 04, 2004
Ping pong wrong
Yeah, "ping" isn't working so well... I will try it again and see what happens.
Here are my links again:
reading is good
aliens are bad
kids are adorable
missiles are scary
-Libby
Posted by libbystokes at 06:41 PM | Comments (0)
November 03, 2004
Websites and animation stuff...
Wow, it's amazing how many cool things you can find just surfing the net. I know that seems really tacky-- like, "i'm surfing the net." But really. I typed "flash animation site" into yahoo and found a ton of stuff by exploring deep into some of the results.
Like this AMAZING site. Woh, web design, flash, movies, woh. I never have wanted to make moving design so badly. I LOVE the third video under motion design, but I haven't watched them all (IE kept not responding after each vid... grrr).
Okay, so animations you say... I really liked this one. And this one too. And this one is just plain cute. This, ok now this has some bad language, but it's sort of funny. Not really great animation, just funny. That's all I can really find right now. There's also this funny interactive animation thing called fly guy. Funny.
Now let's try this ping thing.
-Libby
Posted by libbystokes at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2004
Background!!
Thanks to Ms. Jen, I finally got the background in. This is what I had to do:
It wasn't working to put the background-image and all it's attributes in the linked css file, so I put background="./images/pic.gif" right in the body tag of the main index and then in the head tag (also in the main index) I put a start and end style tag with background-attachment: fixed. That seemed to work. Oh, and I don't know if this had anything to do with it, but the example I used had ./ in from of the image source and so I put that and it worked.
Thanks for those references Ms. Jen. Now the only problem is that I used that same trick above in all the indexes for category page, individual entry page, and date-based entry page, but those pages still don't show the bakcground. Grrr. Any suggestions?
--Libby
Posted by libbystokes at 12:08 PM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2004
Total Choice What?
So I have trying for the last week to refine my site style what not, blah blah. But, when I make any changes, I can't see them for at least 12 hours. So all I can do is change a couple of things, and come back at midnight. I hate that.
I emailed totalchoicehosting to find out what's up, and this is all they said:
"Hello,
Network problem seems to be the case or else it would not allow you to update anything. Do get back to us if the problem is persisting. I will look into it.
Please let me know if I could be of any further assistance
----------------------------------------------------------
Regards,
Jacob Vergis
Technical Support"
So yeah, i'm still having the problem, but i'm so sure Mr. Jacob Vergis is going to rework the network just for me. The problem must be on our end.
-Libby
Posted by libbystokes at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2004
Tutorials
While looking for help in order to get my tiling background to show up, I came across the the W3Schools website. It is chalk-full of helpful tutorials and good examples. It's like the CSS pocket reference only for everything website related-- i.e. HTML, CSS, Javascripting. Anyway, I still haven't figured out how to make the tiling background image show up, but this was neat nonetheless.
-Libby
Posted by libbystokes at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2004
Being sick is no fun
I finally got in to the health center. I have some problem in my ear that is causing me to feel really dizzy all the time. They gave me some motion sickness meds to help with the dizziness and some drops for my ear. The only problem is this: listen to what some of the side affects are for the motion sickenss medication:
Some people may experience dizziness, blurred vision or drowsiness from this medication.
Right. That sounds *good*. Could I really be taking medicine that enhances my problem? Dang.
So I'm off to some museum in fullerton. Yay for G.A.P.
-Libby
Posted by libbystokes at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2004
Ms. Jen
Ms. Jen is a cool teacher. She is kind of crazy and random and makes fun noises when she imitates other people talking. She has purple in her hair. She is a great Web Design teacher. She has a blog-- it's fun and she puts lots of random pictures that she takes on it. I like her little dog scruffy-- Cute!!
Let me just say how darn satisfying it is to figure things out. I love the rewards of being patient and persistent. Jen makes us figure things out on our own. Thanks Ms. Jen. I mean, look at this! I set this all up and figured it out (with help, of course) and it's just so cool.
-Lib
Posted by libbystokes at 12:42 AM | Comments (0)
October 14, 2004
Hello Weblog!
Finally! I got it working! Now for some style....
This might take a while. But how awesome is it anyway?
Posted by libbystokes at 10:41 PM | Comments (0)