Wonderful work

So guess what I did for my work today?

I translated over 4,000 words from English into 18 other languages. In just one day! How did I do it? With a little bit of help from Google. ^_^

The things you can do with internet tools today is simply fantastic! Rather than hire several human translators to do such an enormous and time consuming job, we did it on our own, for FREE, and within a few hours!

All we had to do was make use of the GOOGLETRANSLATE function in Google Spreadsheets.

Usage: =GOOGLETRANSLATE(cell number,"from this language","to that language")

Example: =GOOGLETRANSLATE(A1,"en","fr") translates English into French

Take a look at the result!

Not only that, but we also translated over 2,000 sentences from popular children's books into all those different languages!

Now what makes this new skill of ours so incredibly exciting, besides proving how easy and awesome such a feat is? Well, all those words and sentences are a big part of our Reading Game on the site my sister, dad and I have been working on, Fun4Baby.com. I'm not sure right now how we'll manage to put them in, but with all this translation work, we have the potential to go international with our site! Parents all over the world could be teaching their children to read in their own language, not just in English!

So yeah, that's what I did today. ^_^

My Little Avatar!

Maybe you noticed that I have a brand new profile picture? (No? Well I'm sure you're noticing it now! Hehehe)

Even though I don't have much reason to be, I've always been a little nervous about saying it... I'm a big fan of the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I identify myself as a "brony". *blush* So yeah, when the new season starts, you will more than likely hear my thoughts about it here.

So a couple of weeks ago, my twin sister Annette (who is a slightly bigger brony than I am) discovered this online tool that allows you to design your own MLP OC (original character). With it, she created a completely unique pony to represent herself, our younger brother Adam, and me.

When I saw the pony she designed for me, I literally squee'd with delight!

Just look at her! She's sooooo cute! Her pink coat, her mane, her thick wavy tail, her freckles. She even gave me wings! My sister made me a freaking Pegasus pony!!! XD That is a Magenta if ever I saw one!

I can hardly describe what I felt when I first saw this picture, but it was like a shot of pure happiness. I know she isn't real, but I felt as if I were actually meeting myself from an alternate pony dimension. That's how spot-on I think Annette's design is. I couldn't possibly have designed my own pony better. ^_^

I don't think she'll mind if I post her other pony designs here.

This is what Annette would look like in pony form. She gave us similar tails and freckles so we could still be kinda twins. ^,^ It is obvious, though, that she's a different kind of pony, but that kind of makes sense with her personality, I guess. As an Earth pony, she would have her feet firmly on the ground, while my head is often in the clouds in my flights of fantasy. Lol.

The last one she made was of Adam, who is almost 17 already! His birthday is coming up pretty soon...

After seeing the ponies that Annette created, I decided to go on my own OC designing spree!

I based this handsome stallion on my boyfriend, Jerome. His favorite color is yellow, and I gave him wings so both our ponies could fly together. (In my imagination, of course.)

One of my other favorite cartoon shows is Steven Universe, so I decided to make pony versions of them for fun! (I made all the Crystal Gems alicorns, because of course they're that powerful! Steven is too young to have any powers, but who knows? He could be hiding a little horn in his thick, puffy mane, or wings under that cloak of his. ^,~)

Steven!

Pearl!

Amethyst!

Garnet!

No no no, please. You don't have to thank me for making you all look awesome. You are quite welcome. ^_~

Why did I return?

Like I said in my last post, I don't care anymore that I don't have a big audience. In fact, I returned to blogging just so I could write for myself and one other special person who encouraged me to blog again in the first place. He's dusted off his old blog recently, so why shouldn't I do the same? ^_~

I want to thank you, JN, for inspiring me to come back. You've always been the one Blogger friend I cared about most. If it weren't for you, I probably never would have returned. Perhaps I would have attempted to start a brand new blog from scratch, but it wouldn't have been the same...

Anyway, this blog is in part dedicated to you. Most of my posts will be purely for me (maybe like 70%-75%), but the rest will be with you in mind. I'm so excited for you to read my posts, for me to read your posts, and for both of us to have fun conversations in our respective comment sections!

I know it will never be the same as when we blogged together years ago. Still, I'm eager to return to the virtual world in which we first became best friends. ^,^

The Return of Magenta

It's been a really long time since I've written a post here. I haven't thought about blogging in ages...

Maybe it's because I knew I barely had any readers to speak of, and I wished I had more people reading my writings. I'd decided the whole blogging thing was dumb, that if hardly anyone was going to read about me, then why bother writing online? So I gave it up.

Now that it's been a couple of years, I've become a much different person. I've gotten a little older and wiser (hopefully! ^,^), I've learned a lot of things about myself, and I feel like I have much to share.

I don't care if I don't have an audience. In fact, it's a lot better this way. I want to make myself free to post about anything I want here without worrying who's going to read it.

So yeah, consider this blog now a one-stop shop for slice-of-life posts, book/movie/tv/music rants and reviews, samples of my writing, boyfriend stories, and just about anything else. It's all gonna be riiiiiight here. ^_^

Wow, I have so much I want to talk about right now! Look forward to a few posts in quick succession! ^_~