Wednesday 27 August 2014

Box opening: FairyLand MiniFee Moe-line Mirwen!

Last week I received my FairyLand MiniFee Moe-line Mirwen! Now, I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but I like BJD's. Ball jointed dolls. They are awesome. They are really detailed dolls with joints, and they can pose wonderfully (or at least, MiniFees do).

I ordered mine on April 22, 2014. It arrived on August 19, 2014. Here's my box opening video!



More pictures soon!

Monday 17 February 2014

Mario-themed Hama/Perler art!

This Saturday I was on a roll when it came to cleaning, and at the end of the day I thought I'd reward myself with some creative crafting. Ironing Hama/Perler beads, in particular.

We have this frame that can hold up to 8 pictures, but we never seem to find enough pictures to put in there. So I thought I'd make something with beads, to fill the frame with. Initially, it was supposed to be something that would be some sort of temporary placeholder. Just to fill the frame with, since seeing something in the frame would definitely be better than seeing nothing framed at all.
But the end result was so awesome, that we decided to keep it like that.

On Saturday, I was ready at midnight. This was the result.


Pretty neat huh?
Unfortunately at first, I didn't have enough light blue beads left to make a background with. But we were going to have lunch on Sunday at my parents and I had some coloured paper stored on my old room, so I thought I might as well just use light blue paper for the background.

So on Sunday, I brought back home a box with coloured paper. When I began cutting the paper to the right size, I found that the Mario, the coin and the question box didn't quite match with the rest of the designs in the frame. So I just remade those. And I must say, the end result was satisfying! 


By using paper instead of beads for the background, it somewhat ended up looking kinda 3-D. It doesn't really show in the picture, but believe me, it does if you stand right in front of it.
And I know that not everything is correct in ratio, but due to the limited space I have in the frames I had to improvise a bit and make some things smaller.

Up next will be finding a frame to put the Space Invaders themed art in. They have been stored in a box for so long, but now I just really need to frame them in. The world needs to see it!

Tuesday 11 February 2014

Tomorrowland ticketing system: what you should keep in mind when trying to get in

Perhaps you've heard about it. Tomorrowland, an amazing music festival in Belgium. Here's a quote taken from Wikipedia:
Tomorrowland is a large electronic music festival held in Belgium. It used to be organized as a joint venture by the original founders, the brothers Beers together with ID&T, subsidiary of SFX Entertainment. The festival takes place in the town of Boom, Belgium (16 kilometers (10 miles) south of Antwerp, 32 kilometers (20 miles) north of Brussels), and has been organized since 2005. It has since become one of the most notable global music festivals.

Last Saturday, the 8th of February, me and Michaël were focused on our computers. We initially didn't plan on ordering tickets for Tomorrowland at all, let alone go there, but a friend of ours was on a vacation and he asked us if we would order four tickets for him and some friends. So we, kind as we are, accepted.

It began around 10:55 in the morning. Michaël had set his alarm so that we wouldn't be too late. We clicked on the link we received in our e-mail (we were pre-registered for weeks first) and then we saw a page saying the ticketing system would open at 11. So we waited. Patiently. I started looking around in the source code, see if I could find anything interesting. While still waiting patiently, ofcourse.

Actually. I wasn't that patiently. I couldn't wait.
I refreshed the page at 11:59. And immediately, I was in a waiting line. It wasn't even 11 o'clock yet! Michaël refreshed the page at exactly 11 o'clock, and he too ended up in the waiting line.

Now here's the fun part. 

While he refreshed just a mere 30 seconds later than me, I got out of the line and into the ticketing system at 11:02 while he didn't get any further than the waiting line. At all.

I managed to purchase four tickets for our friend. At that time I was on Skype with him, and he was sitting somewhere outside on a mountain, in the snow, with his laptop. It was a miracle that he even had internet connection.
While our friend was giving me his credentials and credit card details over a Skype call, Michaël was checking out our lasagne. On his computer, we were still in the waiting line for tickets, so there was no use in just sitting there watching a dull screen.

At about 11:22, I finished ordering the tickets for our friend and he got a confirmation e-mail saying he successfully purchased 4 tickets. He and his friends will be going for the full first weekend; three days of joy and a pass to Dreamville for everyone.
Around noon, we were eating our lasagne while watching a movie. The screen from Michaël his computer was just a turn to the left of us, so we could check it whenever we wanted. And shortly after, the screen gave us a less pleasant message than before.  
"The tickets for Tomorrowland - Belgian sale are sold out."

So sadly, we didn't manage to purchase tickets for our selves. But hey, we didn't originally intend to go to Tomorrowland. We just thought that while we were in the line for the ticketing system, we might as well buy some tickets, since they are so hard to get.
 

So! How should we explain this?

Today I've read that three guys from this blog (it is in Dutch, click here for the English version) had discovered the secret behind the ticketing system, and the key to get in. They noticed that the page refreshed automatically every two minutes, and that it had a response time of 6 seconds.
So, by refreshing their page at exactly 10:57:54, they were automatically first in line! Smart thinking guys, I should have paid more attention to the source code.
Also, to our foreign readers out there, it might be useless to try this technique to get tickets for the global sale this weekend since Paylogic (the company that manages the ticketing system) might change the code in order to prevent people from using this technique.

I would just strongly recommend you all visit that blog, translate it to English, and learn how to inspect the upcoming ticketing system on the evening of Valentines day. ;) Good luck to all of you who still want to purchase a ticket!

On a side note, I might try to obtain another ticket this weekend. Just try, and if I get in, then I guess we'll go to Tomorrowland for a day. I do however need to ask Michaël if he's still up for this. These tickets aren't particularly cheap you know.

Wednesday 29 January 2014

As if I don't have enough hobbies already: Hama/Perler art!

A few months ago, I saw some great 8-bit Hama/Perler art online. So of course I just had to buy those beads so that I could make my own geeky crafts. I mean come on, one cannot have too many hobbies, right?
My boyfriend would often find me ironing these instead of ironing clothing. But hey, the results were nice, so that's a good thing, right?

It all began with small things. Mainly Space Invaders. And tiny Game Boys. And some square things with whatever geeky design fitted, those were supposed to be coasters.
Don't mind the blue one with the smirking face. I gave him that look by accident, but he seems to enjoy it.


Then I kinda got obsessed with Space Invaders. I made tons of them. I just had to make them all. Make ALL the Space Invaders!!
Just imagine how cool it would look to have a huge frame with Space Invaders in it, as if you had the game on your wall... I still want to put them all in a frame.
(Pardon me for the poor quality picture, but it was evening and I wanted to show off my work on Facebook.)



After the bunch of Space Invaders, I made a mix of the Joker and Pacman. Which I thought was kinda cool. I found the design on the internet, just kind of copied it with beads. I also realised too late that this would have looked so much better if I had used purple beads instead of black beads for the background.
Not sure what I might do with this one though (ideas are welcome!).


I also had a short period in which I wanted to make cute things. So I created something based on a cherry tree. It's quite minimalistic and it is a good alternative for when you don't have any pictures of other people (but we will have framed pictures of people soon).
I have another one of this with different colours, but no picture of that one yet.



And lastly, something I was quite proud of, a Zelda heart container! This one is now hanging on the wall  behind our microwave. Brightens up our kitchen a bit. Not that we have a dull kitchen or anything, but we do lack some wall decoration in general.




So, that was about it! I actually have many more Hama/Perler creations, but I don't make pictures of everything I create. Probably because I dislike the quality of most pictures I make. There's a perfectly fine working camera laying around here though. Perhaps I should learn how to use it.

Conclusion: these things are fun as long as you know what you will use them for. Most of the results can be made to fit in a frame, or you could use them for decoration. But other than that, they are mainly just for fun.