shuumai: February 2008

People Whisperer

I credit the Dog Whisperer for demonstrating how to become pack leader by being calm and assertive. It works on thieves as well, or so it seems.

Monday I noticed that my son's bike was stolen. Amazingly, Tuesday I saw it locked in town. I sent my son to call for the police while I guarded the bike. Three guys and a girl came over. I "talked" with them about "our" bike. Eventually the "new owner" just unlocked it for me. I thanked him. The end.

Now I just need to get my bikini.com towel back. Why would someone take my towel? Come awn.

魚雷になってる

やった！　ちょっと泳げる。I did the front crawl for 8 whole metres with breathing. My son was already doing some type of swimming action last week in Lanzarote. At least I've caught up. hehe

Update: Today, ２００８年２月２７日、I did a 16m front crawl. (The pool is only 16m.) One day I will be ready for the big pool! One day.

Update: ２００８年３月１０日、I did an approximation of the breaststroke with breathing. My instructor told me to inhale earlier in the stroke and it helped. I also think doing the butterfly surfing drill helped. I think the butterfly might be an easier stroke overall (for me), but I lack the experience to speak with authority. :-p

Update: ２００８年３月１９日、butterfly stroke practice today. I got over-the-surface recovery going somewhat. I really like this stroke. It's similar to the way I used to propel myself on a tube; dolphin kick and simultaneous arm movement. The only differences are the undulation and working breathing in there somewhere. heh

Update: ２００８年３月２７日、I swam the big-people pool! I managed to survive the "short course"(25m pool) twice today and once two days ago. I used the front crawl. None of the other strokes are working effectively for me yet.

Chinese State Circus

We just saw the Chinese State Circus.　素晴らしかった! I wouldn't doubt that they can direct their chi underneath themselves and use it like anti-gravity. Amazing stuff.

The most recent theatre visit is always my son's favorite. heh

Lanzarote

Last night we returned from a trip to Lanzarote. Lanzarote is one of the Canary Islands, owned by Spain, off the coast of Africa.

The photo is of our first daylight view from our hotel room

balcony. I think the island in the distance is Fuerteventura. (Don't ask me how to pronounce that!)

Mars Man-bag

This man was spotted by the Mars rover. He is apparently carrying the very stylish Astro Handbag^TM that protects its valuable contents from 100% of harmful cosmic radiation. Available in shimmering silver and glittering gold from a NASA store near you.

(Picture taken in Timanfaya National Park.)

界王拳 DS Theme

悟飯 DS Theme

ベジータ DS Theme

It took me a while to figure out how to get these images to work on the R4 DS card. The trick to getting it to work [in my case] is this directory structure which is cAsE sEnSiTiVe. (I don't know if it matters that I made _SYSTEM_ a hidden directory.)

./_SYSTEM_/THEMES/THEME01/

The images are called, in order, LOGO.BMP, ICONS.BMP, BCKGRD_1.BMP, and BCKGRD_2.BMP.

I just cropped and sized the top image. The lower image I created using the original layout as a template. Each image must be 256x192 pixels, 24-bit color, and saved as BMP. The icons are 70x70 pixels.

There can be up to 12 themes. Press the "select" button to switch between themes. If any theme image is missing, the kernel will load a default image.