Journal Entry Number One

The Altoids Case

I got some more work done on the Altoids tin today. The square is now clearly visible from the other side, and the hole should be done in a few days at the latest. Pretty soon, I will have my own Altoids case for my new Creative Zen Micro player! Yay. (I still haven't finished the mints that were in the tin, haha. Following some sort of symmetry, they are now in the pouch that was bundled with the player. They are dark chocolate covered mints, and are pretty good, if pricey.)

We looked everywhere in SM North for those Altoids. They're not sold in the Hypermarket, or the candy section at the department store, or at the Pick & Mix stalls in the main building, or either of the Watson's outlets, or at the drugstore near the supermarket. We found them at last at the candy stall that used to be near Goldilocks, but is now at the Block near... Fully Booked? (Shoddy memory. I can't even remember for sure which floor it was on.)

In any case, we've been carving out a hole for the headphone jack to fit through since then. Using an exacto knife. It's going okay, but there are lots of scratches around the hole itself. We hope that they can be sanded away.

The carving out has actually been sort of fun. It takes a lot of your attention, but it's rather simple. And it's going to be pretty satisfying once the hole is finished. Makes me want to take up a craft, almost. (Knitting? Making chain mail?)

At least the foam inlay is done, and fits snugly without needing to be glued to the tin or anything. (Yay thanks Jeanne.) Hats off to the first person who thought of making a Zen Micro case out of an Altoids tin. But, really, the dimensions of the thing are quite suspicious, as if tailor made to fit into the mint tin. Can't wait for the case to be done.



Someone's Birthday

It's someone's birthday today. I think Ate Anne's. There was cake and I partook of it and I hadn't even greeted her yet. Shame on me. *sobs*

Also I don't know how old she is exactly. Thirty-something, to be sure. Also I am not a hundred percent sure that it's her birthday, but the evidence is overwhelming, i.e., there's birthday cake and I'm pretty sure no one else is having a birthday today. Haha.



LaTex

I encoded another problem set in LaTex [wiki] today. I really like how neat the documents look, once they're done. (Hint: It puts MathType, or Microsoft's Equation Editor, to shame.) But it does take quite some time to encode things; I'm far from an expert yet, and I've only used it for a few problem set solutions and such.

It's got a few things going for it, though. One, it's pretty neat, and I like seeing the final solutions laid out so prettily. Two, if I begin to use it regularly, I'd have digital copies of my solutions, which could prove invaluable someday. (Not the fact that they're digital, especially, but the fact that they're problems that I've already solved. Being digital just makes them easier to keep track of, I suppose.) And three, it's probably going to be what I write my thesis on, so it'd be good to get comfortable with it already.



Journalling

I'm not used to it, I find. I sound too chatty to myself. Why am I telling you these things, anyway?