Vasili's blog

The real world seriously needs to catch up with the internet.

vasilios@another-perferct-world.org (Vasili) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:41:28 EST

This last Tuesday, I was sitting in physics reading the chapters in my English book that were due probably a week ago. I hear to my right, the seniors and juniors in my class talking about FML. Now, everyone I know through the internet has known about FML for God knows how long. It's so old that's it's boring. So says Clem.

I personally don't visit FML, MyLifeIsAverage, or texts from last night monthly, let alone weekly, or even daily. The only time I'll actually be at the site is if someone sends me a link to one of the sites to read an entry. Other than that, I don't go there very often.

Back to the group of kids in my physics class. I didn't really hear all the conversation, but I knew that one of them was telling the rest about how he found this new site - FML. I'm hoping that another person in that group knew about it, because it would be scary to me if none of them knew about it. They probably found it hilarious (like I did), but within a week they'll be onto another site.

This got me thinking. How long does it take for a person who isn't connected to the internet (Facebook, MySpace, and the likes don't count) to find out about trends online? Most people know the word "Twitter", but many of them don't know what it is. Just yesterday my dad asked me what Twitter is. If I said, "it's a micro-blogging sorta website where you get to follow people and they follow you," it might have creeped him out.

I wonder when I'll be hearing, "Hey, have you heard of a site called texts from last night?!" in physics. I won't be shocked if it takes them a couple months to catch onto something that has pasted in the e-world.

P.S. - While typing this, I am munching on a muffin from my second batch of pumpkin muffins. This time I took pictures so I can write a little entry about how delicious they are, and that you should make them. Hopefully that will be up later this week. Knowing me, it will take a month.

Oh right, I have a website.

vasilios@another-perferct-world.org (Vasili) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:12:41 EDT

Hello, duove.com, long time no see? I haven't forgotten about you or my faithful readers!

I really haven't forgotten about my website, or my blog for that fact. The thing is, I just have so many projects going on right now (both online and offline). You should already know, if you read my last blog (WHICH WAS OVER A MONTH AGO), that school takes up about 80% of my time. And that's not including the seven plus hours I spend there.

I haven't completely "disappeared" from the internet. If you're a member of Snark, ThemeForest, or follow me on Twitter, you will know that I do ~~complain~~ talk about my life and stuff on the internet. I've really been trying to work on my CMS so this blog can be converted to that. With that switch will come (hopefully) less maintenance, a new layout (done!), and some more interesting blog entries.

Yeah, so there's my life. It's super awesome and you know you're jealous of it. If I'm not trying to cram in coding time or working on the mountain loads of homework I get, I'm usually in my kitchen distracting myself with delicious foods, most of which are desserts. Today I'll be making some pumpkin muffins. I'll try and get some good pictures of the process/final product and that will hopefully turn into a blog post for tomorrow or Tuesday. I'll also be baking some meyer lemon and fresh cranberries if I find non-expensive cranberries at the store today.

Overdue Blog Post

vasilios@another-perferct-world.org (Vasili) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:01:33 EDT

The reason I haven't blogged in over a month is because nothing really interesting happened in my life and/or I couldn't think of an interesting topic. My life has pretty much been overtaken by school and school related activities. The time I do get to jump on the computer isn't that often.

If I do get that chance for a couple hours of time on the computer, I'll spend it either in Espresso or Photoshop. I'm usually working on the new layout (which I totally love) which will go up eventually, or on my soon to be CMS. It gets too confusing trying to work with three sets of basically the same code!

That being said, my school life (LOL, did I really just say that?) has gotten so much better. It's 200x better than what it was. I now have betters teachers and a free first period. That first period is almost always spent in my AP teacher's room doing homework or just sitting there talking with him or someone in the room. Everything is getting better, we're just getting a lot more homework which is excepted. ;)

If this post isn't random enough, here are a couple things I really want to get but don't want to spend my money on because I want my 17" MBP so bad.

This Threadless shirt as well as this one
This shirt from Rahzo
A new fleece sweatshirt
All of these books.

Yup. That would set me back quite a bit.

The true behind this entry was so that I could show you I was still alive, but had nothing good to blog about.

The "Secret Ingredient" in My Chocolate Pudding

vasilios@another-perferct-world.org (Vasili) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:16:41 EDT

After discovering smitten kitchen, I went through the archives of recipes to find one that I really wanted to try, and that didn't require me to buy/use too many tools or ingredients. I decided to make the best chocolate pudding which seemed really easy and I only needed to buy the chocolate and whole milk.

The recipe says to heat the mixture over a double boiler for 15 to 20 minutes. Now, I don't know about you, but what I call a double boiler is a heat-proof bowl on top of a pot with some water in it. That's pretty much what I've seen every Food Network person using as a "double boiler". I swear as heck aren't going to go out and spend $40+ on a pot-inside-a-pot.

After I stirred/whisked the mixture of cornstarch, sugar, salt, and milk for 17 minutes, I thought I'd let it go to the 20 minutes mark. At 20 minutes, it was still watery. I was thinking, "great, now I'm going to have chocolate soup instead of pudding."

I then changed the pot of water I was using to something bigger so the bowl would sit lower to the water (therefore receiving more heat). After another 10 minutes of stirring and still the same watery mixture sitting in front of me, I decided (after my mother kept telling me to do this) that I should just put the mixture straight into the pot and stir that.

Five minutes later and the mixture was thickening like it should have been 15 minutes ago. Another 15 minutes of stirring and it was finally time to take it off the heat, add the vanilla, and pop it into the fridge. As I was going to put the vanilla away, I hit the pepper grinder into the bowl of chocolaty goodness. I had to pull the stupid thing out of the 100+ degree bowl of chocolate and then rinse it off. I then had to take the pepper out of the bowl before it sunk.

This chocolate pudding recipe took me 50 minutes to finish, not including the time it took to add and remove my "secret ingredient". It was supposed to take me 20 minutes tops. However, the little bit of pudding I tasted, tasted REALLY good. I might have to try this once more (seeing as how I still have 6oz of chocolate left) if this batch comes out tasting the same, if not better, than what I tasted.

Why You Should Never Come to My School

vasilios@another-perferct-world.org (Vasili) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:13:36 EDT

Alright, so I started school yesterday. These have probably been the worst first two days I've had in a couple years. Now, before you get any further, let me just tell you that this entry will be a lot of my venting. So if you don't want to read all that just skip down to the last paragraph.

I'll start with the first day because that's what sent me off with the "I'm never going to like this school again" attitude. My first period class is AP Euro with this teacher who we will call Mr. C. Now, Mr. C likes to make fun of everyone. He had called one kid a alcoholic and another a drug addict. This was fine on the first day and I laughed. Next period was Spanish with my teacher who WON'T SPEAK ENGLISH TO US. I swear I'm going to die in that class.

After that is physics with juniors and a couple seniors, followed by my lonesome gym class. Now here comes the worst period of the day...

LUNCH. There's a new system at my school in which you have to scan your school ID and then have someone check your schedule so that they know you have lunch that period. Also, they check to see if you're in the correct house (we're divided into north and south houses). This is complete BS because why do you need to rip friends apart? It's not like we're doing anything wrong.

So my friend an I decided to eat outside in the courtyard instead of waiting in the 20 minutes line. We go out there and are about to eat when one of the hall monitors tells us that "only seniors" are allowed to eat outside. That just sent me right over the top. HOW CAN YOU LIMIT A SPECIFIC GROUP OF PEOPLE TO BE ALLOWED TO EAT OUTSIDE?! I'm sorry but that's the stupidest thing I've heard from my school in a long time.

I proceeded to my other classes, one of which was studio in photography which I have with Hannah. The class should be entitled "How to edit photos on the computer using Photoshop". I decided to drop the class and take a free period because I probably knew more about how to use Photoshop (thanks Psdtuts!) than the teacher does.

Alright, I'll fast forward through the rest of my day and skip to first period today. It sucked. More. than. lunch. So my teacher, Mr. C., decided it was my day to be called rude things. Now, up to this point no one was called another with a "curse" word. The worst was Nazi, but that's not as bad, IMO, as to what he called me. He pronounces my name incorrectly, and I turn around to tell him how it's pronounced, and he responds with, "I'm going to call you douchebag." The person who sat behind me said I had this pissed face on, and I'm pretty sure I did. I don't give a crap if you "make fun of people", calling me a douchebag on the second day of school makes me hate you. It's uncalled for, distasteful, and a lot of other things.

TL;DR? The main things to get from this venting, rambling, and ranting entry is that I dropped photography for a free period, lunch is a waste of time, my AP teacher is a (insert whatever word you feel is appropriate), and I'm getting new classes tomorrow. >:|

School in Two Days

vasilios@another-perferct-world.org (Vasili) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 11:28:56 EDT

Here I am, finally blogging about something on my blog which I said I would blog 3-4 times a week (LOL). I hope you aren't sick of "back to school" entries because here comes another!

I go back to school in two days, aka Tuesday. I have mixed feelings about going back. Last year at this time I had wished that summer would never end and that I'm going to die when I go to school. Then, at the end of this past school year I couldn't wait to be a sophomore and take my awesome classes. However, because my school has the best scheduling system ever (note the sarcasm), I wasn't able to take two of the classes that I knew I wanted to. Instead I was suck with an AP and Spanish teacher I didn't want, along with a class I had originally dropped.

Oh, and did I mention that we now have NINE PERIODS. My stupid school district keeps changing things. First they make us go in a half hour earlier. Then they make more periods and have reduce the time we have to get from class A to class B. Usually this isn't a bad thing, but when you're school is as big as mine, it gets kinda annoying not being able to talk to your friends in the halfway.

The one thing I know I'm excited about is being able to use my Moleskine planner.

Alright, I'll be done with my rant for now. However, like I said before, my feelings are mixed about going back to school. It's going to be nice to get out of the house (and away from my family), but then again, I have to do homework. Seeing as how I'll be taking two AP classes (my choice, mind you) I'll have even less time on the computer. See, if I only had my MacBook Pro, I could be doing my homework in my room on the computer... *sigh*

If you're going back to school/college, what are your feelings about going back?

Julie & Julia

vasilios@another-perferct-world.org (Vasili) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:51:32 EDT

While my brothers and father are at the beach being burned by the sun, my mother and I went to see Julie & Julia. I've been wanting to see this movie for a while because it looked really good — and it was.

If you don't know, Julie & Julia is about a woman, Julie, who works in a cubical in NYC talking to people about their 9/11 tragedies. She absolutely hates it at work, and finds herself escaping when she goes home and cooks. Most of the time it's from Joy of Cooking (I have that cookbook!) or Mastering The Art of French Cooking. Julie then decides to create a blog and dive into a project in which she cooks all the way through Julia Child's cookbook in one year.

There's also "another story", but it's from Julia Child's era and life. It just shows how the two woman grow and are pretty similar. I won't say anymore because it would ruin the movie. Spend your $8 and go watch it!

But, of course, my movie experience can't be perfect; there's always something to destroy it. This time it was the stupid girls who sat behind me and my mom. Apparently one of the girl's phones rang AND SHE ANSWERS IT. Now, my phone went off twice (on vibrate) because I received text messages, but I didn't flip open my phone to check it. So for about 3 minutes she's just talking. And it's not that quiet. She's lucky that she turned it off, otherwise I would have probably screamed at her. If she really had to take the call, please step outside so the rest of us don't need to hear you talk.

Have you seen Julie & Julia yet? If not, what other movies have you seen lately, and did you enjoy it/them? Finally, what are some of your bad movie experiences, like mine with the stupid girl on her phone?

Bokeh Wallpaper

vasilios@another-perferct-world.org (Vasili) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:33:48 EDT

I don't know exactly how long I was working on this wallpaper, but I know it was more than an hour. I just kept playing around with the layers styles, colors, and other items I could add to it. It originally started out as just a turquoise background with some highlights at the top and a couple bokeh dots.

The wallpaper's original size is 1680x1050 but can be resized and cropped to fit your monitor size. I drew inspiration from the new Envato design, Chris Spooner's latest tutorial, and this amazing PSDtuts+ tutorial.

I'd love to see some of your desktops with this as the wallpaper. Hope you enjoy!

Fixing Your iTouch's Wifi the Hard Way

vasilios@another-perferct-world.org (Vasili) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 11:30:58 EDT

So yesterday my wireless internet, also known as Wifi, stopped working. This isn't the first time that this happened. My router will usually drop the signal ever couple months. It's usually a quick unplug/plug back in to get it started again. However, this time it just wasn't cooperating with me...

After unplugging the router and leaving it like that for about five minutes, I plugged it back in to see if that would fix my iPod like it normally does. Nope. That didn't do it. At this time I knew that my iMac wasn't getting the Wifi, but what I didn't know was that the unplugging fixed the Wifi for everything besides my iPod. It took me about an hour to figure this out, so I suffered on my PC. Well, not suffered, because it was actually pretty quick. I did try to use exposé once, though.

After that, I switched back to my iMac, and forgot about my iPod. I had a break from technology by going over to my friend's house for about two hours. We tried to set up my Wii at their house, but the television that they have doesn't have the three colored plugs so we couldn't really use it. When I got home I thought that the Wifi would be nice to me and turn back on, but that wasn't the case.

Today, I read on Apple that you may need to reset the internet settings. I tried that, but no luck. The article that I was reading also said I might have to restore my iPod to factory settings. It wasn't the first time I had to do this, and I think the first time was also because of the internet. It took about 10 minutes to restore itself, even though iTunes said it would take up to an hour. When I went to download Tweetie and iStat I wasn't 100% sure I could just get them for free, even though I had already bought them. Thankfully they just downloaded for free after I got a dialog box saying that I had bought them and can download them again for free.

It took about 15 minutes for me to finally get internet on my iPod because I got sidetracked playing with 1Password. I didn't want to go look up the WEP key every time I needed it so it's now saved on my computer. I'm not sure if I want to buy the app, or the iPod version, but it looks very nice.

So there you have it. If you're iPod Touch (mine was a first generation with 3.0 firmware) ever doesn't pickup the Wifi in your house and you've tried resetting the settings on your router, try restoring your iPod. You can backup your iPod before hand, but I didn't because I don't have that many things on it to begin with. Just an email account, two home bookmarks, and like four Safari bookmarks.

Server Change

vasilios@another-perferct-world.org (Vasili) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 02:26:24 EDT

This past week I changed my hosting account with Holdfire to a custom reseller instead of a custom shared. It was a little rough in the beginning, but I got everything worked out without 24 hours of ordering the new account. That's why I love Holdfire so much, they're support is awesome! Plus they're plans are super cheap and plenty of resources.

I'm now hosted on this server called dharma with 1GB of space (I'll upgrade if I need to, but I'm only using ~50MB of space right now) and 25GB of bandwidth which is way more than enough for my site. I also get this very fancy control panel like thing (called WHM) that controls all of the accounts in it. It originally didn't have the correct options for it, but Jordan (the mastermind behind Holdfire) fixed that quickly.

The reason I changed over to this new plan was because another-perfect-world.org is expiring in December and I didn't like how all of my add-on domains, subdomains, emails, databases, etc were through this domain I didn't even use any more. With this resell account if I ever buy more domains, I'll be able to keep them all in a separate cPanel configuration. The bottom line was I'm a total organization freak and like my sites separate.

In other non-related news, the scrolling wheel on my mighty mouse won't scroll vertically. Back to the apple store I go for my third...