yea, it is risen

My website lives! You can all once again visit my behemoth of a flash portfolio. It's developed a couple glitches since it was last deployed, but hopefully I'll have them worked out soon. I even bought my own domain name, www.jftesser.com. I actually have a web address of a reasonable length. I'm becoming such an adult.

This weekend's journeys into the internet yielded some interesting finds. I discovered netlabels (actually *free* and downloadable creative commons music). My favorites so far are from my mean magpie. Have a listen. Hurrah for lo-fi experimental. Also in the land of free is the film Four Eyed Monsters. I know this is old news, but it's a good movie so watch it (again) anyway.

They're now working on a net neutrality documentary. I hope they don't get trampled by horses or stoned to death by poker chips.

Save the Internet | Rock the Vote

And here's a shout out to my friend who works on this very cool blog. Because you know being endorsed by me means you've made it.

Oh. And my plant is still alive.

plant watch, day 1

I have decided to take responsibility of a living thing. Daring, I know, but I'm starting slowly, with a plant. Not just any plant, of course, but an aerial: one of those pretty parasitic things that sit on branches and slowly suck the life out of trees. I'm hoping its somewhat evil nature will help it last a little longer in my care than its more considerate brethren. I've been meaning to buy myself flowers for about a month now, and, while I could have just dried the flowers and kept them in a vase, buying an actual plant attached to some dirt would be a better solution.



I'll try to keep you updated on its health. Theoretically, it just needs to be misted twice a week. I don't have a mister so I'm hoping flicking water at it will work just as well. I'm sure this is going to work out great.

On a side note, why do I always have to type in the garbled prove-you're-not-a-computer numbers twice? I can't be doing it wrong every first try. Blogger needs to fix itself.

round food is the devil

I ate sooooooooooooooo much today. And almost all of it was round. I have bunches of cute zoloft rocks in my tummy. I need to get this under control. But, oh, the deliciousness of Asian junk food. I realized, yesterday, that as I live in NY, there just might be some boba lying about the place somewhere. So, as I mentioned in my last post, I asked yelp and, lo, it provided me with several bobalicious options in my vicinity. I chose TKettle which, I was happy to find, used actual tea and a good amount of tapioca, although maybe a bit too much ice. That was to be lunch.


And it might have stopped there, and been perfectly fine, if not for the fact that a little bit of Asian junk food lead me to think about more Asian junk food. So, after trekking back to my apartment, asking yelp about Asian convenience stores, discovering there was one half a block from the boba place (oh, that I had an iPhone) and returning to 3rd Ave, I entered M2M, possibly the most dangerous food emporium I have ever set foot in. They had bao. Lots of bao. Pork bao and chicken bao and veggie bao and red bean bao. And a tiny, cute microwaveable steamer for $7. No more waiting 10 mins for my buns to steam. Oh no. Now I can nuke them in under 2.

Of course, M2M is a whole store and offers non-bao related yumminess. Like seaweed salad for less than $4 (my one concession to non-roundness today) and all those delicious Japanese candies. Sadly, they do not have the yogurt flavored starburst-esque chewy things I love so much. I wonder if I'll ever see them again. *tear*

I brought this feast home and slowly consumed 7 bao (ok, at least they were the tiny kind) the seaweed salad, my enormous boba, and some of the lovely spherical truffles I got from Vosges for Valentine's Day. Which has lead to my current state of watching Korean romantic comedies while patting my bloated stomach. Oh, truly, I live a life of glamour.

On a more positive note, I've finally found a grocery store I actually want to shop at that contains foods I'll actual cook. Ahem. Well, microwave. And tomorrow's a holiday so there's still a chance to redeem this weekend.

ode to brunch

Ok, not an actual ode. I'm not so good at poetry. But brunch is definitely my new favorite activity. Today's was shrimp and avocado eggs benedict over yuca hash browns with a mimosa. Oh so yummy. And much cheaper than dinner. There are quite a few advantages to living in the East Village but so far my favorite has to be all the restaurants that serve brunch. And the fact that they all have yelp reviews. Yelp really is amazingly useful for finding things. It's found me thai food, eggs benedict, zippers, yarn, and boba so far. I really should contribute some reviews to it myself. I'm really bad at actually participating in the things I use. But it's something I really, as a responsible user of the internet, should too. I should probably update my blog regularly too.

Since this post seems to be devolving into randomness, I'll add that I went to Century 21 again today (oh, the designer cheapness, downfall of my wallet) and got some amazing green/black/tan leather boots for $12.99. You should all go to Century 21 and buy things. Even if you don't live in NY. Just get on a plane. You'll make up for it with the money you save shopping there. Just take a look at their reciepts. It lists all the items you've bought and then, on the bottom in big numbers, the amount of money you've saved. According to my receipt, I saved $121.01 today. It's too bad I already threw it out. I think I should start saving them and make some sort of art piece. I think they say something interesting and complex about the American system of consumption. Hehe.

treasures from the internet

Here's a quick review of the stuff I've dug up from bowels of google in the recent past:

Homeland Security Advisory Tower - Oh, Tom Ridge, I'm embarrassed you were my state's governor. At least some awesome public art got made out of it.

We Make Money Not Art - Yeah, I know I should have been reading this for years now. But I've finally got it bookmarked now.

Pre-Fab at MoMA - That friction-fit house project of Larry's just keeps going and going....I'll be there as soon as it opens.

PC Album Art Screen Saver - Now all you PC users can enjoy staring at your album art slowly flip over for hours and hours

Mandolux Wallpaper - This is some really excellent photography in nearly every resolution to fit even the oddest of desktops.

The Farnsworth Invention - A really good play which, sadly, has very little to do with reality. Oh well. Go guy from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

del.icio.us + Safari - Finally, a button for posting to del.icio.us. I can finally stop using Firefox.

Lego! - Makes me wish I'd brought my collection with when I moved.

NYC Subway for Google Earth - Makes Google Earth useful for those of us who enjoy public transportation.

HousingMaps - A super convenient way to find an apartment.

Subtle Safety - I bet this thing would be great for opening packages.

craft day

I've managed to con my roommates into making a new project with me each weekend. It started with one of them asking me to teach him how to sew. So, out I came with my sewing machine and we made a lovely red maloo knockoff laptop sleeve. It's way cooler than the one I made myself a few months ago. Alas, I may actually have more laptop cases than purses. I just can't justify making myself another. We got to go to Mood Fabrics (of Project Runway fame) to buy supplies. Man, oh, man could I spend my whole paycheck there.





Since I learned to knit last December (although not purl) our next project was to make this really cool scarf thingy. I just finished mine today. Apologies for the clashing shirt.



I'm pushing for some modular origami next.

i'm a winner!

No, really, I am. My zipper bag instructable won first prize in the Homemade for the Holidays contest. So congrats to myself. I've been making lots of these things and, obviously, giving them away as presents. Well, most of them. I may have kept three for myself. You can take a look at them on my instructables page or just scroll on down.

nostalgia

While looking through an old photo album of my mother's before the holidays I found this amazing photo of myself in my all time favorite halloween costume, a blue crayon. I think I'm either 5 or 6 in the picture. My mother and the woman who babysat me would spend days sewing me a halloween costume each year. I've been a dragon, a tiger, Pocahontas, and Miss Havisham (though at the time I did think I was a bride), but none of those compares with my blue crayon.



Discussing this glorious example for my childhood weirdness with a friend led to the unearthing of the following photo of my long lost ninja turtle bed tent. As you can see, I was a great admirer of Miss Havisham's style as child.



I spent hours inside this thing counting all the Donatello's, Michelangelo's, Leonardo's, and Rapheal's. The tent was semi-transparent and there was some really amazing light inside it when my room light was turned on. While I'm on the subject of strange things I loved as a kid, I ought to include my 4th grade presentation on time travel. I actually researched this out and made all sorts of little explanatory animations in hypercard. The original file is, sadly, lost to the gods of floppy disks, but I managed to find a hard copy and make some scans:

well, the title of this blog does have the word redux in it

So, it seems I've only updated this blog once since moving to NY. It's not that I haven't had ideas for posts. Or, honestly, time to write them. I just, er, haven't. But I am now! Prepare yourself for all the stuff I've done in the last 6 or so weeks, coming to you in a shotgun blast of posts.