Here is a photo that my uncle took when him and my aunt traveled around the United States. I love how the lights shine in the photo… so dreamy. Like usual, you can click on the photo to see it full-size.
Ciao, Shavonne.
Reliving summer
Photography
If fantasy were reality
Hi guys! I’ve missed a few daily post challenges, so here is my way of getting up to speed.
August 30th, 2011, The Daily Post question is: If you could be part of any fictional universe, what would it be? Why?
I used to dream of being in the Myst Series universe when I was young and first played the game in 2001. Myst Uru is where you can travel to any world imaginable using ‘linking books’, which after being touched will take you to wherever is described in the book itself. The possibilities of where you could go, what you could see and do, are endless.
Now onto sharing a photo recently sent to me…
Here’s a photo of a species of white peacock my uncle took in America. Really beautiful bird. You can click the image to see it full-size.
Also, recently I got Rosetta Stone! The goal is to learn French really well. It would be neat to speak/write in another language fluently… Plus, if I ever go to Europe, It’d be a great help. Occasionally in the future you might see me blogging in french too, for practice.
Ciao,
Shavonne
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Up
On August 26th, 2011, The Daily Post Photo Challenge theme is: Up.
Click on any of the images to see them full size.
Looking up the stairs to where my cat is hanging out.
Hundreds of plant seeds were in the air the day I took this picture, continuing a delicate late-summer journey up into the cloudless sky. This one remained, caught by a thin strand of cobweb.
25 °C/77 °F, outside today. Not a cloud in the sky. I laid down on the front lawn using the grass as a cushion for this shot. The single tree in our front yard makes for an OK sunshade.
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Back to the daily grind, making up words, & thoughts on lying.
School has started up again, and I’ve finally found time to write a blog post. My plan was to write a post a day, but realistically, that’s been next to impossible. Over the summer I’ve been on vacation, and unable to use a computer. I attempted to write a post on my iPod at some point, but scrapped that idea after I had some trouble getting WordPress to even work. So, for now, I’ll be catching up on The Daily Post challenges that I’ve missed.
On August 25th, 2011, The Daily Post challenge is to make up a word, and its definition.
The word I came up with was schröcat, which means, “a cat that appears dead, but is alive.”.
The first part of the word, “Schrö”, comes from the paradox known as Schrödinger’s cat, which describes a scenario where a cat is either alive or dead, depending on an earlier random event. And the last part of the word, “cat“, is pretty self-explanatory.
So there you have it.
On August 26th, 2011, The Daily Post question is… When is it ok to lie? To strangers? To friends? To family? To yourself?
This question is a hard one to answer. It’s very open-ended, and general. Depending on the situation, I think it may be okay to lie. Or, maybe not. For strangers, a lot of people, myself included, tend to bend the truth more often than we care to realize. For me, it’s mostly when I want to make what I’m saying more unique, so I ‘change it up’. I try to not do this if there’s a chance I may get to know them better, avoiding any of those awkward ‘um-you-didn’t-really-do-that-did-you?’ situations, but sometimes it’s so hard. For the most part, I think they’re harmless, maybe even a little entertaining. No harm in stirring up a little interest, right?
I find it a bit harder to lie to friends. They know me, and any lie told is risking losing their trust, or making you look like an idiot. The only time I really lie is to embellish some details from time to time, or omitting something that they don’t need to know. To me, secrets are important. I never feel the need to share something with someone “just because.” I find that often you’ll regret it later. I’m not the type to lie to spare a friend’s feelings, but I won’t tell you what I really think freely.
My immediate family are the ones I find it difficult to tell the truth to. Growing up, saying what was on my mind, or how I really felt about something almost always went wrong. I’d end up upsetting them, or getting into shit over something unimportant. I guess now I find it difficult to communicate honestly with my family because of that. Their inability to talk things out in a mature way, and stay reasonable about some subjects doesn’t help either. I do lie to them quite often, and don’t intend to change that, seeing as the truth rarely benefits me. It’s sad, but they have lost the right to my trust and honesty.
I’ll catch up on more challenges and questions in future posts!
Ciao,
Shavonne
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Thinking about nothing.
Today’s The Daily Post challenge: try to think about nothing. What happens?
I’m entertained fairly easily, but I need constant entertainment if I want to stay happy. When I tried to empty my mind from all thoughts, and think about nothing, I found myself thinking about an old meditation technique. Breathe in blue, breath out red. Point is, that’s not thinking about nothing, that is still something. The more I try to clear my mind completely, the more my imagination kicks into overdrive.
It almosts feels impossible for me to think of nothing. I’m much happier letting myself wander around whichever thought comes my way without any resistance…
Almost everyday, I go jogging around a mountain, to this gorgeous view. It makes all my effort absolutely worth it. My iPod took this photo, hence the horrid quality. I was able to “fix it up” a smidge using Photoshop.
Even if this place is a desert, the hills get pretty green in the in the summer, and the sky always turns really beautiful during sunset. It was very, very windy on the mountain, which probably didn’t help the blur with the iPod trying to fly out of my hands.
Ciao, Shavonne
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5 more days until Cedar Point!
5 more days… Absolutely cannot wait. Cedar Point is one of the most famous amusement parks in the world. It is the only amusement park with four roller coasters that are taller than 200 feet. Also, it has more rides (75) than any other and has been named the “Best Amusement Park in the World” by Amusement Today for the past thirteen years. Looks like it’s going to be an amazing end for my summer.
Reddit is my new favorite site. If you haven’t heard of it already, it’s a pretty popular website that covers pretty much every topic you might be interested in. Reddit is broken down into different areas that you can explore. You have to look at it to understand what I’m saying. It won’t disappoint. Particularly if you want browse a site better than Failblog and Memebase, or want to read interesting things about people and the world that you didn’t know about before.
Click on the photo above to look at the comments and discussion about it on Reddit. I love hail storms, they’re a lot of fun when it’s the small harmless kind. This one looks like it was slightly more intense.
Bored of using the usual smileys? 🙂 Wikipedia has an interesting article on all the emotions different areas of the world, and internet, use. My favorites are the Eastern ones.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
– Flipping over a table.
|￣￣|
＿☆☆☆＿
（ ´_⊃｀）
– Stereotypical American Character
（ ﾟДﾟ）
– Surprise/Loudmouthed
（‐＾▽＾‐）オーホッホ
– Chuckle
☜(⌒▽⌒)☞
– Angel
(*⌒▽⌒*)
– Happy
There are dozens more too! Here is the article. Enjoy!
Comments and discussion on Reddit are found here.
Ciao,
Shavonne
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July Memories
For the first part of July, I traveled with my family to La Loche, Saskatchewan. Under the porch at the house we were staying at, my brother and I found an adorable litter of puppies. The puppies’ mother barely acknowledged their presence. The puppy in the picture above was the weakest of the litter, and my favorite. He was an absolute sweetheart. His personality really began to show at the end of our stay.
My brother took the shot above. The first image is the original, and the second is the one I’ve touched up. I took out the reddish tint, and then evened out my skin tone, and smoothed my skin. Finally I touched up the eyebrows subtlety. It’s so cute how we got the photo at the exact moment the puppy decided to yawn.
Here I am combing the beach for shells at Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal. The day was overcast, windy, and not so warm. I’m hoping August brings nicer weather for Canada.
The first shot again had a slight red tinge, so I removed that. I also evened out my hair, slimmed down my shirt, and tucked in the sides of my shorts that were slightly sticking out. I then finished off with the location in the top right corner.
As always, click on the photos to see the full, much more clear version. More photos and edits coming soon!
Ciao,
Shavonne
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Listen To Your Heart.
Learning the piano for the song, Listen To Your Heart, by D.H.T. A beautiful song, I remember listening to it on the radio when I was little. And it’s fairly easy to play. Should be fun to learn.
On another note, check out the song Fast Lane by Bad Meets Evil (Eminem and Royce Da 5″9). I am in love with it, can’t wait for their album, “Hell: The Sequel” to drop on June 14, 2011. What Eminem album isn’t crammed with phenomenal hip-hop?
I am also still planning on making a video tutorial on editing people in Photoshop. I think first I’ll focus on one about making layer masks, since that was the most difficult part of Photoshop for me to get a grip on.
On a completely different note, I have had problems with my sinuses for months now, and finally got time to book a doctor’s appointment.
Upon seeing the doctor, I found out I have post-nasal drip, or PND. PND is commonly caused by allergies, and gives tickle in the back of my throat. Or on days that it’s worse, a feeling that my throat is swollen. It usually leads to other things, like constant tiredness and throat infections. Which explains why I’ve had a few run-ins now with strep throat. So I went out and got some x-rays and blood tests done. I loathe needles. It’s funny how it works really. It’s not the actual needle that’s the scary part, but the fact that they make me faint is. Even the idea of fainting is enough to make me faint sometimes. I feel like I’ve went through a lot of effort just for all of this. The ironic part is that I used to laugh at people who seemed to complain about their allergies. Looks like the joke is on me now.
Finally I got another appointment booked for June 2. Hurrah! What a breakthrough! Right? Wrong. Just found out my parent cancelled the appointment. Okay… I’m feeling like their first priority is not my health.
So frustrating.
On top of that, the cute guy that lives right by me, that I chat with quite often on the city bus, just told me he likes men.
Ciao, Shavonne
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Another dance song? NO. PLEASE.
557 songs on my iPod, and still counting. I’m looking for some new ones, feel free to let me know some of your favorites. At the moment, some of my favorite Canadian artists are Classified and Chris Raw. They have some amazing hip-hop songs, and are very talented. Give them a listen if you love real hip-hop. Also, check out this website and vote for Chris Raw if you enjoy his music. Currently, he is #2 out of thousands of unsigned artists. His music is free, and every voter gets a free t-shirt. Another great thing about the website is you can take a look at tons of other unsigned artists, and get amazing music that no one else has. Underground music is always interesting.
The #1 song now in iTunes (Canada) is Give Me Everything by Pitbull, feat. Ne-Yo, Afrojack & Nayer. It pushed Rolling in the Deep by ADELE to #2. That’s sad. Give Me Everything is generic, uncreative, and really does nothing for the dance genre. Sorry Pitbull and Ne-Yo (Who the heck is Nayer?), but this is definitely not one of your best. It feels like you were trying to capitalize on how popular dance songs are right now by churning out one that sounds just like the others.
I have to manually accept each comment that’s posted on this blog. So sorry if it takes a day or so for them to get up. I keep forgetting to check…
I’d like for an upcoming post to feature a Photoshop tutorial, complete with a video. There isn’t very many good ones out there on some topics, and if there is, it’s either unnecessarily complicated, or hard to understand. Maybe I’ll make a YouTube account as well, we’ll see. Could be fun.
Ciao,
Shavonne
First Here, then There 