Buying books for my nieces and nephew (correction: *grand* nieces and *grand* nephew), I'm never quite sure what is age-appropriate for them. Is this book too advanced? Is it not advanced enough?

Is it ok to give a just-turned-9-year old a graphic novelization of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (I bought it since she said she likes Star Wars*, which just tickles me pink because I've always been a Star Wars fan (though not so much any more really)), when the movie was rated PG-13, and the very beginning of the novel (like the movie) has Kylo Ren and stormtroopers massacring a village full of people? I just don't know.

*It came up in reference to a baby Yoda doll and a Millenium Falcon LED lamp, which are quite different things than books...

Update:
This page suggests checking the Amazon page for a book as it may display a suggested age range and grade level.
For the book in question, the Amazon page states "Reading age: 9 years and up".

Neat auditory illusion.

Shepard tone (Wikipedia, with example sound clip)
Another Example sound loop (Twitter)
The sound illusion that makes Dunkirk so intense (YouTube)

--- THX ---

Unwrapped: THX "Deep Note"

YouTube clips! The sound makes me SMILE ))))))))))))))))))))))!!!!!!!!!!!
THX Deep Note - original uncompressed audio
THX theme, but it keeps rising
THX Deep Note EXTENDED VERSION (37 minutes)
THX Certified Test 800% Slower

And more in the related clips. I want to check them all out but have to save them for another day (or night).

So. I've still got cards to do, even if I don't compose a letter to go with it. Or at the very minimum, one card, because I already did the envelope for that one, and my mom signed it already.

And then the xmas tree, because if I don't get it up before xmas, it won't feel right putting it up afterwards. There's a toddler in the house; my niece and her daughter are staying with me again (at least part-time, anyway), so I think it would be nice for them too to have a tree up.

Oh, and 2 things to research and order. After ordering my mom a laptop as a xmas gift, I was so pleased at having gotten it done in a single evening (not counting the trip to Best Buy to look at some laptops in person), that I thought I could handle asking my niece and nephew what they would like as gifts too, rather than resorting only to a hodge-podge gift box routine this year.

But hey, at least I am on vacation as of today. I have an out-of-town trip on Sunday, so that leaves me about 2.5 days to get things done before xmas eve. Although the ordering of those other 2 gifts can wait I think; no need to have them in hand by xmas.

omg, and then there's still Star Wars to go see...

I've seen SW:The Last Jedi a second time, and have added some updates (tagged in italics) to my review post (many spoilers).

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I've finished putting hex fencing all around the bottom of Qiao's fence, to keep the dogs from digging out. I'm not convinced it will stop them, but it should slow them down. I'm almost finished putting small-mesh fencing all along the top of Qiao's fence, to keep the small dog from climbing out.

It's been very cold here these last days (below freezing), though not nearly as cold as in other places. I've found that as long as it is dry and not windy, I can work outside without the cold bothering me. My warm hooded winter jacket, along with my headband/earmuffs and fleece or flannel-lined pants, keep me quite warm. The worst part is that my nose is incessantly runny in cold weather. I have to blow my nose every few minutes, which leads to the skin around my nose getting dry and chapped. This year I've been applying lotion and creme to the skin, which has helped a lot. Not much cracked skin so far, and hardly even any blood in my snot.

For that matter, this was the first year I can recall not having any allergies during Fall and Winter. I'm not sure why.

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Qiao's internet went out shortly before midnight on New Year's Eve, and was out for over 2 days - AT&T finally got it working again this morning. I hate that when that happens, there's no place to check to find out what caused the problem, and what the current status is, and how long it will really take to get fixed. The automated phone message you get when calling customer support just says there's an outage affecting the area that should be fixed in 24 hours (but it wasn't).

When there are power outages, SCE&G is so much better in that regard. You can call an automated number to report the problem, and you can find out how many people are affected by the outage, and how long the remaining estimated repair time is. You can even choose to get a call-back to notify you when the power has been restored.

They keep showing that car commercial on TV. The one that starts out with the music sounding like a Star Wars trailer. It feels like sacrilege to me. Apparently this isn't a new thing - there have been other car commercials in the past with Star Wars themes. But I don't remember seeing them, or if I did, they must not have bothered me as much.

Hmm, nope, I haven't seen this one before now. I rather like that one, and it has a funny part too.
On the other hand, this one is even WORSE than the one being shown on TV now. HOW DARE THEY! grrr.

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I found a grocery store that sells Accent (MSG). All the reviews say it makes "flavor come out" and "makes things taste better". But so far, it doesn't seem that way to me. I tried it on my pasta instead of salt, and ::blech::. Maybe it tastes better when it's added during cooking, or along with other flavors.

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At work, I noticed a bug in one of the file search utilities I use. I was searching some large XML files for certain element names to verify that all the expected nodes were there, but the count was coming up short in some of the files. The files didn't have line breaks. When I used another tool to add line breaks after each node, and then searched them again, the counts came out correct. So it seems like the utility has a problem searching large files without line breaks.

I thought I would submit a bug report along with a sample file to demonstrate the problem. I stayed late after work to create such a file. I didn't want to submit the original XML file as it had some company-specific things in it. So I started by doing a replace-all to change all instances of one element name to a string of plus signs of the same length. With the file like that, the count of the plus-signs-string still comes out wrong.

Then I did a regex replace-all, to convert *all* other characters in the file to minus signs. That way, the final file still has the same size, and the search string is still in all the same positions as in the original file.

But weirdly, after doing that, the count comes out correct. Even without having added line breaks. So that thwarted me. Tomorrow I may try again, this time not converting the less-than and greater-than characters.

Along the way, I found out that Notepad++ doesn't perform well when using regex to replace nearly all characters in a 10MB sized file. The one time it succeeded at the task, it took 10 minutes to complete. Several other times it locked up or crashed. Then I downloaded UltraEdit, which was able to do the same task in about a minute, maybe less.

I've installed the replacement touchpad for my oven. No more error codes, and the buttons all work. Yay.

Qiao and I went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens this evening, in 3-D. I forgot that my mom wanted to go with us, so I may end up going again.
( A few impressions of the movie (Spoilers!)... )

( A few impressions on rewatching this movie... )

It's about time I watch some of the special features - at least the deleted scenes - on these discs. That I haven't yet watched them all is a reflection of my lack of interest in the movies since episodes 2 & 3 came out. It is why I didn't care enough to go see Episode VII on the opening day. I'm a different person now than when the original SW/ESB/RoTJ movies came out. If I saw them now again for the first time, they'd probably not affect me nearly as much as they did when I was a kid.

Now I can go watch Ep. 7. I'm sure I'll like seeing the original characters again. But I doubt I'll care much for the plot. Some new heroes, some new foes, a bunch of fighting that's supposed to be exciting. Ho hum. We shall see.

We've got the Star Wars movies on both DVD and Blu-Ray discs. I'm watching episode II.

Our Blu-Ray player is connected to our HD TV via an HDMI cable.
Our DVD player / surround sound system has what looks like a proprietary output cable which connects to the surround sound speakers.

The TV's "audio out" jack is connected to the sound system's red/white AUX input jacks. This lets us play the TV sound thru the surround sound speakers. But apparently this only allows use of the front speakers, not the rear speakers?? Is that right?

The video quality is much better using the Blu-Ray player than the DVDs. But the audio sounds sub-par to me as there's no sound from the rear speakers.

The audio sounds better to me using the DVD player.

Oh me oh my, what to do, what to do? I don't want to settle for anything less than the best when watching Star Wars. So now I'm trying to play both discs at the same time, watching the video from the BluRay player and listening to the audio from the DVD player... but I have to get them exactly in sync... and anytime I pause, I have to press both pause buttons at exactly the same time... which would work better if I were pressing the right buttons...

Oh, yay. Apparently when I press both correct buttons at the same time, either "Play" or "Pause", neither works! They must be interfering with each other. I guess that will cut down on the number of times I decide to pause the movie. The double-play is working, however!

What ISIS really wants - interesting article. I hadn't known that ISIS had declared a caliphate, or even the implications thereof.

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R2D2 and Darth Vader shower heads - Of all the things, shower heads? Personally I wouldn't want R2D2 or Darth Vader streaming water down on me, in the shower or anywhere else.

Wow. If you do a search on "custom lightsabers", there are a bunch of places selling them nowadays. Pretty fancy ones, too.

I suppose the proper thing to do would be to build one myself, though. One wonder, if I were to build myself a lightsaber, what features would I want to include... hmmm.

Heheh. I wonder if George Lucas and his special effects team ever thought that 30 years down the road, fans would be building their own lightsabers complete with sound effects and customizable colors. The one significant element still missing though, is a light blade that can really cut through things... which if it were available, would make it a weapon too dangerous to toy around with.

Hmmm. It would look pretty awesome if you had a double-bladed one, and used it like a bo while performing some martial arts kata. Considering that the blades aren't in fact dangerous to touch, there's no reason not to grab and hold them too. I bet there must be videos of something like that out there already. ::does a search:: Yep, there ya go. Unfortunately, no sound effects on that one though.