X-Evolutionist: Hobbies

Finally! Pictures of me and my hubby!

Mon, 21 May 2007 18:27:17 GMT

I've finally decided to post pictures of me and my hubby. Here we are:

OK, just kidding. I went to the Become an M&M website and created the beautiful works of art on the Character Creator page. It's fun and easy to do.

My hair is more wavy than that, though. They don't have a lot of hair styles to pick from.

At least they have my favorite shoes! I can't believe they had my favorite shoes as an option! I wear my pink Birki sandals all day, every day. And, my hubby wears black athletic shoes every day, too. So, all and all, these pictures are pretty accurate!

Wanna play? Go here: Become an M&M

"Lost" first show of the season is tonight!

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 18:23:51 GMT

I can't wait!

http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/

Pictures of my crocheted animals!

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 16:09:55 GMT

Well, once I realized I was a "middle aged lady" I thought I had better make it official and learn to knit and crochet. Here's a picture of a few of my crocheting successes. The koala bear was the first crocheted toy I ever made! I was really proud of myself. I bought a beginning crocheting book, and this pattern was in the book. Not bad for a first-timer, huh?

If you would like to make the koala bear, here's a link to the book I used: I Can't Believe I'm Crocheting! If you want to make the elephant or monkey, here's a link to the book I used: Noah's Ark For Baby

I also learned to knit socks. All my life, I thought knitting socks was an unattainable skill. It looked just too dang complicated. But, like I said, once I realized I was a middle aged lady, I thought it was now or never. I surfed the internet and found a place with easy instructions. Hurray for me!

In case you, too, want to learn to knit socks, here is the site where I learned to knit socks: The Essence of Socks. Good luck! If I can do it, you can do it, too!

My Favorite Classical Music!

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 23:42:07 GMT

Bach's Brandenburg Concertos

Bach's Toccata and Fugue

Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring

Beethoven's The Ninth Symphony

Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 "Moonlight"

Beethoven's Fur Elise

Copland's Rodeo

Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 "From The New World"

Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue

Grieg's Piano Concerto

Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1

Handel's Messiah

Holst's The Planets

Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2

Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition

Mussorgsky's Night On Bald Mountain

Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije Suite

Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2

Rossini's Thieving Magpie

Satie's Trois Gymnopedies

Stravinsky's Rite of Spring

Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture

Vivaldi's The Four Seasons

I'm playing with animated gifs again.

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 14:48:05 GMT

Hi Everybody!

Last month or so we (finally) bought a digital camera. We found out after we bought it that it can take short movies. I was just trying an experiment. I wanted to try to make a movie of my waterfall into an animated gif. It worked, sorta. (If anybody knows a better way, I'd love to hear it.

Here's what I did:

I paused a few separate frames of the movie.

I captured each frame with shift/print screen.

I pasted each frame into paint, cropped it, and saved as a gif.

I then made the frames into an animated gif using Unfreez.

The Unfreez gif animator is a free software. You can download it from Mark Slack's (Little Fish) space here: http://spaces.msn.com/markslack/. It is on a list called Space Tools. Here's his tutorial for how to use this software:

http://spaces.msn.com/markslack/blog/cns!27F804AF658456B6!1421.entry

I've made a few other animated gifs. I've posted about them in this blog in the category "Hobbies" if you'd like to see what a rank amateur can do with this great software.

An animated gif of our waterfall

Here's a better picture of the waterfall gif. It lost some resolution being pasted in the blog and resized.

(Please leave comments to me in my Guestbook. Thank you!)

"Casablanca" named greatest movie script!!

Sat, 08 Apr 2006 21:29:38 GMT

I just came across this news story:

http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/va/20060407/114444825000.html

My favorite movie of all time was chosen to be first on the list of the 101 Greatest screenplays!

Quote:

'Casablanca' named greatest movie script
Friday April 7 3:17 PM ET

Round up the usual suspects: The Writers Guild of America has named "Casablanca" as No. 1 on its first list of the "101 Greatest Screenplays."

The screenplay for the wartime tale of courage and cynicism starring Humphrey Bogart was written by Howard Koch and brothers Julius and Philip Epstein.

It was followed on the list by the screenplay for "The Godfather," written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola; "Chinatown," written by Robert Towne; "Citizen Kane," by Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles; and "All About Eve" by Joseph Mankiewicz.

Rounding out the top 10 were 'Annie Hall," by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman; "Sunset Boulevard" by the writing team of Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder and D.M. Marshman Jr.; Paddy Chayefsky's "Network"; Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond's "Some Like It Hot"; and Coppola and Puzo's "The Godfather Part II"

Three writers -- Allen, Coppola and Wilder -- had four films on the list, while three others had three: William Goldman, John Huston and Charlie Kaufman.

The list was announced by the Writers Guild on Thursday night.

The list was chosen by Guild members from more than 1,400 nominated screenplay.

End quote

I've been telling everybody that Casablanca was the best movie of all time!!

I'm jonesing for a digital camera.

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:41:34 GMT

We had such a beautiful snowfall yesterday that I was really wanting to take a picture of our fishpond and the waterfall with snow all around. It was a winter wonderland in Spring! (There are pictures of our fishpond right after we built it last year in my photo album. We have since added some bushes around it)

The snow is all melted already. (Weather changes quickly in Oklahoma!) It was so beautiful!

We don't have a camera, but we've been wanting one. They were very expensive the last time I looked.

I don't buy many "toys" because we have to be thrifty, but I sure would have liked having one. I asked Roadpup for recommendations. He's a photographer, and an all round nice guy. Here's his space:

http://spaces.msn.com/roadpupsdoghouse/

He has a lot of his photographs in his photo album. If you visit his space, tell him X sent you. His recommendations to me are in my guestbook if you'd like to see them.

Rainy day play

Sat, 18 Mar 2006 22:35:52 GMT

Since it is raining, I've had to play inside games. I've been playing with the gr44 animator.

(available here: http://spaces.msn.com/markslack/)

I'm probably using it all wrong, but here's what I've been doing: My mother sent me a picture she liked:

and asked me to animate it. I made a few different bmps for the parts of an image I wanted. I loaded them as layers. Then I used "save as single frame" as I manipulated the dealies around. Finally I put the gifs I saved in the un FREEz 2.1 (see link above) to get this.

I'm having fun with this!

Check this out!

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 15:34:23 GMT

I just found this page on another space: (http://spaces.msn.com/leenetworx/) It is amazing!

http://blueballfixed.ytmnd.com/

I did "view source" and it is just an animated gif repeated across and down the page. But it is still amazing!

I've been trying to learn how to do animated gifs and I've done a few simple ones. This is WAY out of my league!

Oh, man! This is just too much fun!

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 21:09:02 GMT

I copied and edited the master for the dinosaur banner that luvvbuzz (http://spaces.msn.com/luvvbuzz/) made for me and I made this guy:

I'm having so much fun I can't stand it!

Another of my continuing series of animated gif attempts.

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 17:40:53 GMT

I just finished this one. If you squint, this sort of looks like there is water running in my fishpond:

Am I having fun or what?

Presenting my first halfway decent animated gif!!

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 21:17:15 GMT

I hang out in this forum quite often:

http://groups.msn.com/HackMSNSpaces/messages.msnw

You can learn a lot of interesting tidbits about how to do things on MSN Spaces and also other computer stuff besides.

Today I saw this post:

http://groups.msn.com/HackMSNSpaces/howdoi.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=1181&LastModified=4675563868420200344

The poster let us know that he put a link on his space about free software for doing animated gifs.

He put a link on his space here:

http://spaces.msn.com/markslack/

So, anyway, I tried doing an animated gif. I started out very slow. This was my first try, just two pictures of Rufus playing with a pen:

Then I did a stick man doing some odd looking jumping jacks to get the hang of the process:

I just finished this, my third attempt at an animated gif.

The Flower Cycle,

By X

Thanks Little Fish, Big Pond for all the fun!!

Legal stuff: Please use the software at your own risk. I cannot be responsible for undesireable outcomes.

Meet my new puppy!

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 00:27:09 GMT

Meet my new puppy! Her name is Violet. She does tricks. Play with her and see.

Anybody watch "Lost" last night?

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 17:10:29 GMT

I am seriously addicted to the television show Lost. There is never a dull moment on that show!

Are there any other fans here?

4 8 15 16 23 42

Execute!

Yep, I have a serious addiction to this show. There are worse things to be addicted to, I guess.

My Favorite Movies!

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 03:38:11 GMT

12 Angry Men (1957)

The African Queen (1951)

Cinema Paradiso (1989)

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Blazing Saddles (1974)

Brazil (1985)

Casablanca (1942)

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Children of the Paradise (Enfants du paradis, Les) (1945)

A Christmas Story (1983)

Citizen Kane (1941)

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Duck Soup (1933)

Fargo (1996)

The Fisher King (1991)

Gaslight (1944)

Grapes of Wrath, The (1940)

Guys and Dolls (1955)

Harold and Maude (1971)

Harvey (1950)

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967)

I Was a Male War Bride (1949)

Independence Day (1996)

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)

Key Largo (1948)

King of Hearts (Le Roi de coeur)(1966)

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Matrix, The (1999)

Meet John Doe (1941)

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

Mr. Holland's Opus (1995)

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

Of Mice and Men (1939)

Out of Rosenheim (Bagdad Café)(1987)

Paint Your Wagon (1969)

Philadelphia Story, The (1940)

Postino, Il (1994)

Producers, The (1968)

Psycho (1960)

Rear Window (1954)

Rope (1948)

Singin' in the Rain (1952)

Sleuth (1972)

All About Eve (1950)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Spartacus (1960)

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Vertigo (1958)

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

You Can't Take It with You (1938)

My crochet successes!

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 23:15:30 GMT

These are the results of finally learning how to crochet. The koala bear was my first crocheted toy. I was so proud! It was in the book where I learned how to crochet.

These toys live at my mother's house.