You know, people like me. Oh fuck yes.
No one should have a tiny laptop as their primary laptop. Having another lightweight laptop so they can do work on the subway is crazy, but if you’re gonna be stuck on there for hours, understandable. I guess. Then there’s me. I saw it, the display model was pink (adorable!) and wanted it for that. Then I decided I deserved it because I had been accepted into second-year Law.
I look down on people who do things like that sometimes. You should too. Judge me, I dare you.
It’d also be far more convenient (efficient?) to put notes straight to the computer (my handwriting is hideous), and I hate having to carry my heavy laptop around campus in a bag that screams “MUG ME”. My reasoning still sucks, I know. I don’t care. This laptop is freaking cute.
the acer aspire one
The pros:
- It’s so wonderful to pick up. Like. An actual joy to. It’s a hobby for me. Kind of my favourite part about owning this laptop is just picking it up. Lifting the lid. Closing it.
- You’d also think the keyboard would be tricky to use – it is, but only at first, and it’s a lot better than the Asus EEE PC’s.
- I love how I can take this with me without people knowing I even have a laptop with me. This is quite reassuring to little old paranoid me. Even if I did lose it, it wouldn’t have all those important things on it and it didn’t cost as much as a normal laptop either.
- Windows XP is uber retro.
The cons:
- The keyboard is white, and made of something which will attract dirt very easily. It doesn’t look easy to clean, either.
- The white around the screen is somewhat odd-looking.
- The webcam sucks. Very laggy, very blurry, with horrible resolution. For a laptop like this, it’s not even necessary
- To conserve space, the right/left buttons are on either side of the touchpad. I find it quite awkward, but nothing I can’t get used to.
my baby is cuter than yours
And as far as baby laptops go, the Acer Aspire One > Asus EEE PC, design-wise (although the latter has a better name). The Toshiba and the HP versions are even better, but don’t come in pink. Black? The hell is this?
baby vs my normal laptop.
My normal laptop is a special edition (because it’s white) HP dv6000 named Virgil – I adore it, by the way. It suddenly looks huge when I go to use it after playing with the baby. A 15.4″ screen mysteriously becomes impressive. I do like my old laptop more though, which is good since I’d feel bad if I wanted to abandon it. I do somehow think “How can they spread a keyboard out this far? It’s craaaazy!”. The little one had a small keyboard which wasn’t as awkward as you’d expect.
The Acer has no optical disk drive, but you don’t need one for a secondary laptop. It’s also worth saying that I have a bias against Acers. That every one I’ve come across has been slow and ugly. Not so here, and not because the pink distracts me. It’s a gorgeous portable typewriter – that’s all it needs to be.
As I said in my new New Year’s resolutions, this blog has no direction. Sort of. What things do I like? What do I like writing about? I thought. I came to decisions – and nothing too drastic happened, just enough to write about.
MUSIC, MOVIES, BOOKS – THINGS I HAVE OPINIONS ON.
I am a superficial opinionated twat and I like writing down what I think. Like how I hated Into The Wild because I can’t get past how much his sister cared about him (emphasised by how this character narrated the entire movie), but he didn’t care. He left, and didn’t think of her. What a prick. I also wasn’t paying attention to that movie a lot of the time, so I could be wrong. ;D
At any rate, things like this turn into reviews, and it’s inevitable that they’ll always be springing up here.
THE INTERNET AND GEEKERY
I like blogs. I like what goes on behind the scenes, as I guess other blog owners do. I like reading about tiny computers, useless gadgets, what CSS can do, and how much IE8 sucks. It does too – it’s going to ruin my life.
There’s no way anyone should come to panda-duh for an authoritative opinion, mind you, but I still want to babble about it anyway. Aaahahaha.
LULZ (JRock and JPop)
I love when they dress up and try to sing, occasionally finding fantastic bands, the drama, the insane fans… It’s a goldmine of hilarity. ♥ I especially love crying because Gackt won’t ever come to New Zealand, that no one around me knows who he is, and just think I’m weird for owning Chanel Platinum Egoiste – a man’s perfume. ;_;
UNIVERSITY
There are so many things I notice from this that I can’t not want to write about. Even after a year, it’s still a novelty.
FAAASHIOOON
And if you knew me, this would be hilarious – I’m utterly hopeless at putting outfits together. It’s a matter of top, jeans, and then me being late for a lecture. I’ve been paying more attention to this faaashiooon thing lately, though in more of a “OH GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING” sort of way.
As much as I like looking at shiny things, I’d never post about how trendy purple is (and then including a picture of all sorts of purple things omg), and how I added a belt to an outfit. It’s lame. No, I like laughing at people trying to be trendy and failing. The post I made about ugly clothes was a lot of fun.
I learned things from it, which I’ve only just realised when I recently looked at these sites I had years ago.
I miss being so obsessed about something. What happened to that? Being involved in the anime fandom was more embarrassing then than it is now (although I am compelled to say I wrote no dodgy fanfiction, mind you), but it is less likely anyone will find out about it now. Still, if I was talking to me as a fifteen year old, I’d just say, “It’s what you like – rock it”.
It’s kinda hilarious that I’d surround myself with kiddy anime while my friends played with dramaahh. Sort of sad. You wouldn’t know that from the sites I ran. Luckily, I was happy when I wasn’t considering what a recluse I was (lol~). Besides, being sad is what my friends did for fun and, therefore, not for me.
Sure I don’t need to hide in fandom now; the real world’s pretty good with me now. But that’s not the point.
Because most of all, that enthusiasm made me a good writer. The fansites I owned were fantastic. I thought I’d cringe at them years later when I was making them. Only at the memory do I, but then I look at them, and think something like, “THESE ARE AWESOME”. One more than the rest, because most of my love went into it. As a result, it was more popular.
That’s I’ve learned from all those fansites: enthusiasm counts more than everything else. If you love what you’re doing, it’ll show and people will love it. Don’t worry about anything else (although a fast loading, easy to read site helps too).
Here’s my conclusion: it’s led me to thinking that panda-duh needs a revamp. I need to know what I like now. What I love to write about. And then write about those a lot more. Visitors aside, I want something I can be proud of years later like I am of those anime sites. Cheers.
Never mind that we are halfway through February. Self-improvement can’t wait for 2010.
Jump into photos
I’ve noticed that if you’re prepared for photos, you look better in them. Also when looking at photos, and seeing that I’m not in many makes me (foolishly) think that I was somehow left out. Never mind that I was right there, and a lot of the time was the one taking the photos.
Figure out what I’m doing with panda-duh
At the moment I’m posting more, but noticing that THERE IS NO VISION. It’s definitely on a better path than it was a year ago – it was a lot more “WHAT AM I DOINNGG?” than I am now. We’ve fallen out of the boat, we’re treading water okay, now we just need a strategy to get to shore. In other words, I want to avoid panda-duh getting too random. Figure out what I’m going to write about. What’s my thing.
Get back into JRock fandom
I fell out of this because at university the only internet I had was free wireless at the university, and my paranoia led me to think that my internet was probably being monitored. If you’re a JRock fan outside of Japan, I guess you could assume why that’d get to me aha. I like still JRock, mostly because it’s a bizarre little world of celebrities that never fails to bring the lulz. I’m not quite as worried about people watching my internet habits this year. Besides, there’s always YouTube.
Eat out less
Last year I did this a lot, heheheh. Living in the city for the first time, I discovered that when you crave Burger King you can just get it. I don’t know how often I did this, and I don’t regret it seeing as I went down a dress size last year. I just need to save money.
Check the price tag before you buy things
Be really cheap. Last year I bought a skirt from Portmans. It was $120. I didn’t know until I bought it, but at that moment I realised I had really been a spoiled kid for not paying attention to things like this. My parents often warned me that once I’d left home I couldn’t afford to live like I did at home. Too true.
Run more. sort of
I was that kid in high school that was uncoordinated and couldn’t run. A month ago I decided to run. For kicks. I don’t know what I was thinking. This time a month ago I couldn’t run more than 200m. Now I can run 1.9km. Which may not impress youuu, but feels good man.
Don’t freak out about Law
I hear second-years have to go down to the courts (as in, REAL COURTS, what is this?!) and having to speak on behalf of an imaginary fellow. It’s terrifying. At the moment I’m coping by pretending it’s not happening.
stay in dunedin next summer
And Becka, if you’re looking back on past entries (like this one), and thinking “Last summer can’t have been that boring at home!“. Well. Don’t. Trust me, future!Becka, stay in Dunedin. Do it. And get a job then, too. 
No layouts I’ve been making this summer were doing it for me – they lacked something. So I thought, what are my favourite layouts on the internet? What do I like most about them? I found a few common elements, so behold (or as the ancient Romans said, “ecce!’) the results:
- Dark text on white.
- 12px Arial, with serif fonts for titles.
- When the background for things in the sidebar is just slightly different than the background of the page itself.
- KAWAAAII~♥ The sites that look like they’ve been taken over by pixelled emoticons (preferably the animated ASCII kind, ooh yeah). My inner child is a thirteen year old girl but alas, I’ve grown out of using emoticons.
They’re so cute…
- Pink. If something comes in pink, it always looks best in pink. I’ve been trying to restrain myself from using it in layouts, since maybe I’m becoming too obsessed with pink… by why not embrace it?
- Dotted lines and polka dots. Aaahaha.
…Promise that’s the last of the emoticons.
- Tag clouds, especially if it reveals unhealthy obsessions. Sadly I can’t do this with FanUpdate, and sorting that out was quite tricky (stop laughing…). WordPress? Rather more daunting.
- When Flickr is incorporated into the header. It’s colourful. It changes all the time. If only I didn’t hate uploading photos to the internet. Haha.
- Pretty photos and illustrations in blog posts.
Next was incorporating as many of these as I could with… my own style… without blatantly copying any layouts… and here we are. Easy.