renaissance poisson

i was picking my teeth, staring at the package of toothpicks, when a sudden urge overcame me. ( see the picture and maybe weep )

other than that, i've been really productive, almost like a normal person: i did seven loads of laundry (one at a time, since the landlords were so kind as to be gone this weekend, just in time for laundry day). i vacuumed the living room and my futon, and swept bathroom and kitchen. walked the dog several times. continued to clean, clean, clean my computer files (torrents and other zipped and rar'ed files now pared down to the point where i can actually store uncompressed temp files for an entire 2-layer DVD on that drive preparatory to burning).

and in my copious free time i've been learning more photoshop. when i start with a piece of software, i often get all excited about it, and learn how to operate it very quickly. that does, however, also mean that i hit a learning plateau at a point where i know well enough how to do things, but i don't really do them in the most efficient or elegant way. and there is always more software to pick up and learn, and so i stagnate on a lot of older stuff. i've decided to remedy that, and have started to read the fine manual for photoshop in greater detail.

here's one trick that i feel extra stupid for not knowing: when selecting with the marquee tool, one can hold down the space bar to move the selection while one's still at it, and the action will shift to moving. let go of the space bar and one's back and can continue to widen or narrow the selection. this is especially handy when trying to make a reasonably precise circular selection where it's not obvious where the starting point should be. it can be a bit tough to manage when one's selecting a circle from the centre on out (left hand: alt-shift, right hand: click-drag, where is my third hand to press the space bar?), but i'm getting better at it already. and it really is much nicer than to add to the selection afterwards.

japanese ones. very, very cool site, with google maps so one can see the relationship to the landscape; historical info, and pictures.

via metafilter.

i am starting to like metafilter. it doesn't do threading, but it has the bare bones of a sequencer (it shows how many new comments since last time i refreshed, and it can immediately plop me down on the new ones), and i can see all the comments a specific poster has made (something which LJ sorely, sorely lacks). it's still a far cry from usenet, but it doesn't suck quite as much as most weblog software.