Feline Narcotic Water

Tiki was not impressed with the water quality in her water fountain.

What happened was that Tiki knocked her catnip pillow into the water and the water turned colour because of the catnip in the pillow. That pillow is super gross too because it is covered in the saliva of probably half a dozen cats...

Tiki didn't drink the water, but she's not that crazy about catnip. Wonder if other cats would've liked it though...

Happy Birthday Tiki!

It was Tiki's 2nd birthday yesterday! I made this video of her from the many clips that I've taken of her...

Included in the video is Tiki playing fetch with a ball, jumping super high, running up a door, falling off a table, playing with toy mice, spiking a ball, drinking out of a glass, fighting with other cats (and me), drinking out of a glass, and being dressed up in different costumes.

Smells like poop

I just found a dried up piece of cat poop on the floor in the middle of my room. That explains why my room smelled like poop a few days ago. It really smelled like poop and it was bad. At the time, I couldn't find the source and I didn't think it was Tiki because I know that she took a poop in the litter box that morning and it didn't smell the same. I thought maybe b/c it was windy that the bathroom vents were flowing the wrong way.

My worry now is that the poop I found was a broken off piece and I still don't know where the rest of it is. Also, how did it get to the middle of my room?...

Shape Collage

Some collages of Tiki made using Shape Collage

Shape Collage is the latest side project that I've been working on. It is an automatic photo collage making program that can make collages in different shapes. Just look at the collages above and at the end of the post to see what it can do. There are a lot more examples on the Shape Collage web page.

It's really easy to make a collage. You can make one with just 2 mouse clicks and in as little as a couple seconds! It's quite customizable as well, as you can change the shape to really, anything you want. You can even draw your own shape! You can also customize the border, background, etc.

Arranging photos into a collage

The photos are automatically placed in the desired shape of the collage using a machine learning algorithm that I came up with that is simple, but fast and effective. Basically what it does is put the photos on a page and jiggle them around so they are arranged nicely. This is a much harder problem than you may think. My readers with some knowledge of computer science will be familiar with NP problems. My algorithm isn't perfect, but it does a pretty good job most of the time. If you're really anal about it, you can save the collage as a Photoshop PSD and edit the collage in Photoshop if you don't like the automatic placement of the photos.

I started working on this project b/c I read a paper that automatically created a photo collage and thought that it was really cool, especially since it took me so long to make my Californian photo collage. Since they didn't actually release a program or their source code, I decided to just implement their approach, but it was overly complicated and rather slow - it took several minutes to create a collage with just 30 photos. So, I tried something simpler that was much faster - my program can easily create a collage with thousands of photos. Then I realized that my algorithm didn't have to only create rectangular collages and could also create collages in different shapes, something that I had never seen before, and so Shape Collage was created!

Anyways, check it out and let me know what you think! It's available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and anything that supports Java.

Snowboarding snowman collage

Volleyball collage

The fight for my room

Knowing that I'm back, Mi-Mi decided to come up to my room to pay me a visit. She sniffed around for a while not noticing Tiki hiding in the corner quietly growling. Then, the fight for my room began with Mi-Mi attacking Tiki. Then there was screaming and claws and growls and hisses. Not play fighting at all. Mi-Mi moves surprisingly fast for a 17 year old cat! I ended the fight by carrying Tiki away and Mi-Mi ran.

Things unfortunately, are basically picking up where they left off in January. Tiki is staking claim to my room because she sticks close to me and this is where she spent most of her time last time. Mi-Mi is attempting to regain her territory, which had been hers for 16 years. Sharing is not an option. Mi-Mi doesn't share. Mi-Mi doesn't like any other animals and Tiki doesn't like cats that are not friendly to her.

I'm not sure what to do. I can't really stop this unless I keep my door closed, but then Tiki would have no where to go or eat (Mi-Mi has been sleeping in the family room and eats downstairs). At least that would also solve the problem I've been having with Mi-Mi marking her territory, i.e. peeing, on my bed. I think I need Tiggy to act as a mediator, since he was friendly to Tiki last time and Mi-Mi is scared of him.

Inefficient travelling

I loved how I was sitting at the gate waiting for my plane almost twice as long as the actual flight. I got to the airport almost 2 hours early because I had Tiki with me. Then, I found out that my flight was delayed by 2.5 hours (the incoming flight from New Brunswick was delayed due to weather). I ended up sitting at the gate for 4+ hours for a flight that was only 2.25 hours. Factor in the 45 min. it took to get to the airport (stalled car on the Gardiner backed up traffic for miles) and then home from the airport and the efficiency of flying is rather low.

Tiki did well on the flight despite being stuck in the carrier for 8 hours. She's only explored the upstairs a bit so far and still hasn't used the litter box or eaten anything. She's pretty calm and relaxed now just lying on my bed. Tiggy has shown interest in her, but is not impressed by her presence. He'll come around just like he did last time. The puppies are rather antsy. I only saw them in their cages. Toby was not impressed and started barking at me. Yoshi was just excited. I shut the lights and they quieted down. I didn't want to wake every one up. I'll play with them tomorrow and maybe introduce Tiki to the dog species.

10 years of digital cameras

July 1, 1998. Me and Mittens (in my sister's room)

I was randomly going through some old photos today and realized that I got my first digital camera (the AGFA Photowise camera) just over 10 years ago! (I was an early adopter)

The photo above was one of the first pics I took with the digital camera. Gotta love the longish hair with the part in the middle, the old school Timex watch, Mittens at the youthful age of 7, and the Friends backdrop.

Random sustenance shopping blurbs

44lbs of cat litter that I carried while rollerblading

My brand new shopping cart that I can use instead of being a mule on wheels

Lugging a 44lbs (4 pounds was free!) bag of cat litter while rollerblading is pretty tiring. The people at the pet store looked at me funny as I rolled away carrying the stupidly large bag. The funny thing is that now I know what it feels like to carry 44lbs of stuff while rollerblading and I've definitely carried a lot more than that before.

Side note: I use organic, non-clay based, clumping, flushable cat litter now.

I typically procrastinate grocery shopping and will go only when I have to. This means every 2-3 weeks and I'll spend $100 - $150... and carry it all by hand by myself! I go prepared. I bring a large duffle bag and a backpack! I tell you, that's way heavier than 44lbs. 44lbs is a walk in the park compared to carrying groceries. When I go grocery shopping, the first thing that I think about when I see a product is not the price or it's healthiness, but rather, it's weight and size.

But no more! I finally bought one of those shopping carts from Chinatown! You know, the ones that the old women push, but I got the large, manly size. I've been thinking of getting one for a while, but just have been too lazy to do so. I tell you, it's amazing! Of course, the first thing I do is buy a 18lbs bag of rice and a bunch of groceries from Chinatown. Now, I can go grocery shopping without thinking about whether I can carry it back or not :). People look at you funny when you are rollerblading and pushing a shopping cart though. I had one guy in my apartment building audibly laughing.

In my shopping in Chinatown, I made some interesting observations:

• If you're shopping for a shopping cart, they speak to you in English


• If you randomly stop at a fruit stand and quietly pick mangoes, they speak to you in English to tell you to pay inside


• In the Chinatown TD Canada Trust, despite all their Chinese signs, Chinese tellers, and Chinese customers, they speak to you in English by default. I think the only non-Asian in that building was the security guard.


• If you buy esoteric dried food products, such as 茶魚 (tea fish), from a small shop where they only have signs in Chinese, they speak to you in Cantonese


• If you ask for Chinese vegetables (菜心) from the guy that grabs them and puts them in a bag, they speak to you in Cantonese


• If you're reaching to the top of the shelves for a whole box of instant noodles, and there are 2 boxes above the one that you can reach, they ask you in Cantonese if they can help


• If you're staring at the multitude of options for rice for 5 minutes, they speak to you in some language I don't understand (Mandarin?), and you reply in English

Long distance online shopping

The Furminator

New watch

I'm not sure how this happened, but Debbie has become my long distance online shopping buddy. First it was VistaPrint, then I bought the Furminator and a new watch off of Ebay. So far they've all been good purchases and good deals, so I'm not complaining per se, just noting this strange trend.

Furminator retail price: $34.95
Ebay price: $16.99 (+$6.95 shipping)

Watch retail price: $175
Ebay price: $69.95 (+$12.95 shipping)

No taxes on either! (both were shipped as a "gift" worth $20 or $25)

Debbie recommended the Furminator to me since she had one and it removes the dead undercoat like crazy on her cat. Watch the videos on the website. It's pretty amazing.

She also has this very peculiar hobby of collecting watches and for some reason or another was sending me links to ebay listings of watches that she was interested in bidding on. That got me thinking that I wanted a new watch, a thought further spurred by the dying of the battery on my old watch, which I replaced anyways because I can't go a day without a watch, otherwise I feel stupid looking at my wrist several times a day and just seeing a freckle instead of the time.

I am now also recommending VistaPrint, the Furminator (see zip lock bag of fur above), and buying watches on Ebay. Stupid Debbie...

Sorry boys, you've lost your chance

Shaved leg for the anesthesia

Stitches

Zoomed in stitches

Sorry tomcats, you've lost your chance with Tiki. I did as Bob Barker preached and spayed her. She stayed overnight at the vet on Monday, leaving my apartment strangely empty. Tiki was very happy to be home and is doing very well. I was hoping that she'd have a cone b/c it's hilarious when pets have them, but this vet only gives them out if they see them biting or licking the stitches. The stitches come off in a week.

With the removal of her ovaries and uterus, not only does this prevent pregnancies, but it also stops her from going into heat, which I'm told is not a pretty sight. Spaying also eliminates a certain kind of cancer (as long as the spaying is done before the first heat). I'm told that I have to watch her weight more carefully though as spayed cats are more prone to becoming overweight. Tiki's still quite active, much more so than I remember Mi-Mi or Tiggy being, which is good. For the most part, it's not an annoying active lifestyle, aside from her knocking stuff off my desk, bookshelf, and white/bulletin board. She's well behaved as she's non-destructive, non-violent, and listens to her Mommy.

Kitten on a plane!

Tiki in her carrier in the airplane cabin

Tiki's about to go on her first flight!

Tiki is ready for take-off...

...asleep

So about a week and a half ago, I took Tiki onto the plane with me to Winnipeg. She flew in the cabin with me in her carrier under the seat in front of me. Her ticket was $50 each way. We were sitting in a specially designated seat in that if the cabin lost air pressure, there would be an extra oxygen mask (in addition to the 3 for the 3 seats in the row) that come down from the ceiling that reached all the way down to the floor! I think aside from that, the only thing special about our seat (window seat, closer to the back) was that there was enough space for her carrier (as opposed to the middle seat where there is usually a box in the way for the tv screen stuff I think. We flew WestJet b/c Air Canada don't allow pets in the cabin anymore (they stopped last year I think).

Tiki was great during the flight. She didn't make a sound and didn't try and get out of her carrier. She just slept the whole time, curled up in a ball. I think she was just scared, so she went into a defensive position and just kept wishing that the nightmare would end :p. I periodically pet her, but I wasn't allowed to take her out of the carrier and I was told to keep her carrier on the ground after I tried to put her carrier on my lap.

The weirdest thing about the trip was that I had to take her out of the carrier when I went through security since they had to scan the carrier and it would've have been a good idea for her to be in it when that happened :p. It was kinda strange walking through the metal detector holding a kitten! I didn't have her on leash, so I had to just hope that she wouldn't struggle and jump out of my arms. Again, I think she was just scared, so she was basically a stuffed animal and didn't move. Luckily, we didn't beep, so we didn't have to endure any additional scrutiny.

Tiki's doing great here now. She likes the extra space to roam around, but still mostly follows me around. She's made my room her home base, much to Mi-Mi's chagrin, as it was previously her main sleeping quarters while I am here. Tiki and Tiggy get along quite well now, it took a few days, but they're fine together now. No unforced cuddling yet, but they still have another week and a half or so to work that out. Mi-Mi does not like the new addition at all and Tiki growls and hisses at her in return. The girls fight over me :p

Oh, and I'm up at 4am b/c I'm waiting for my laundry to finish since Mi-Mi peed on my bed again, just like old times... Fortunately, my pillow was spared this time.

Cat play dates and Catbook

Tiki had her first cat play date today! It was with Stella, a big brown tabby, owned by my friend Anne on the 2nd floor. I want to expose Tiki to other people and cats so that she's comfortable around them and it's important to do so at a young age. Plus, if it works out well, then she'll have another cat to play with :). The play date didn't go so well. Stella was scared, much bigger than Tiki, but scared, which is understandable b/c she was in a new place with new smells, and there was another cat here. Tiki was pretty scared as well, but managed to calm down. There was hissing from both cats and Stella growled a bit, but at least no claws were thrown. Next time, Tiki and I will go down to visit her place, and Stella should be more comfortable.

I discovered Catbook today and it's the best thing since well, facebook :). Catbook is an application in facebook that lets cats make their own profiles. They post their own profile picture, information, and they get their own friends, wall, mini-feed, etc., just like facebook! I made... err... I mean Tiki, Mittens, and Tigger made their own profiles on Catbook today :).

What's with cats and buckwheat?

Tiki at the top of my closet

...sitting on my bag of buckwheat,
which she would later spill all over my closet and floor

If they're not peeing on it, they're spilling it all over my closet and floor. I had an extra bag of buckwheat from my pillow (they come too full, so you're supposed to empty some out to fit you) and she decided to play with it today and rip a hole in it. If you see brown stuff on me, feel free to flick the buckwheat off me. I know that I'm going to be finding this stuff everywhere for a couple weeks.

Why I haven't been blogging

Hint: It starts with "L" and rhymes with "crazy"

I had a backlog of posts that I wanted to post and I didn't want to post new posts until I had posted these posts for fear that if I didn't post them, I'd never get around to posting them and they really needed to be posted, so due to my laziness and this posting mentality, all posting of posts was halted, and now to catch up, I'm posting a single post that summarizes all the posts that I wanted to post, and because of the diversity of topics in this post, I think there are more labels on this post than any other post that I've posted before. Post.

I have however, been keeping my delicious and picasaweb up to date, and those are always good if you want to check up on what I've been up to.

Here are the posts that you missed from the last 3 months or so:

iCat

• iCat backwards is taci, but iKitty, or iKit, for short, backwards is Tiki!


• I got her off of Craig's List and she's much cuter than your cat, dog, hamster, mouse, budgie, fish, snake, chinchilla, emu, baby, etc. :)

I've literally posted hundreds of photos of Tiki (737 as of this posting). I upload new pics as I download them from my camera (about weekly or bi-weekly).

Volleyball

Toronto Warriors 9-man Volleyball (San Francisco tournament pictures: here and here)


Coed Volleyball Intramurals


Men's Volleyball Intramurals

FaceDown

A program I made to download photos from facebook

Tribal Wars

I have a lot more free time since quitting this game

New TV show obsessions

(I didn't find this funny until I realized that Colbert was a fake character, at first, I just thought he was an idiot)




(I liked the video game)

Toilet Training.... my cat

Hint: it ends in a stand-off between a cat refusing to use the toilet and me fearing that she'll use my pillow as her new litter box

I've been tying garbage bags and shoelaces wrong this whole time

I recently discovered that knots are really cool (and useful!) I collected my findings on the most useful knots into a single illustrated document.


Real-life practical uses for the taut-line hitch, timber hitch, clove hitch, buntline hitch, sheet bend, and others

Happy 2nd (Real) Blogoversary!

I totally forgot about this (Oct. 14). Maybe I'll do a special post over the holidays about my blog, not that I've written too much here since the 3rd Blogoversary...