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Ooooo!

This from a thunderstorm two nights ago. We only got rain. Photo from Stonehenge Dronescapes (interesting YouTube channel at the link. Seems to be mostly crop circles). Do check out the color version on Twitter.

I post that picture because I’m just too gosh-darned nice to post the picture Uncle B took of the giant rat dead on the kitchen floor. He was a chungus. Did I tell you he ate half of a 10-kilo bag of dry cat food? Yeah.

At least he had the courtesy to die in the open. I’m sitting stewing in a choking miasma of his fallen comrades. Comrats. Somewhere in the walls and cabinets of this house there are truly awful things.

Thank god it’s warm enough to open the windows and doors.

May 17, 2022 — 7:00 pm
Comments: 3

Condescending bastards


I got this message when I fired up the Kindle app on my new phone today.

It got under my skin, it did.

I’m a Kindle addict, though. Well, a reading-on-screen addict. I’ve completely lost patience with paper books. I was trying to read one the other day and I kept catching myself glancing at the bottom of the right-hand page to check the time.

And you have to hold paper books. Like, with your hands. I can prop a phone or tablet on a pillow and melt into the furniture like the lazy slug I am.

But I’ve got to get one of those eye-tracking things so I can turn the page without moving.

May 16, 2022 — 6:52 pm
Comments: 15

Ending the week on a chicken

Playing with my new phone camera. I did tell you I got a new phone for my birfday, yes?

I stuck with Motorola because I liked my old one and I figured it would have a shorter learning curve. Yes, sort of. Android has the weirdest insistence on tinkering with basic navigation in each new version. And taking away important features.

Like, this version makes it hard to customize the various alert noises. You can change ringtones easily enough, but the rest of the apps seem to do their own thing. I do not like this.

So I downloaded an app that lets me customize sounds, but now I get the default system sound PLUS my custom sound.

It gets better. The app I downloaded will let me assign text to notifications, so my email alert is ’email’ and my twitter alert is ‘twitter’, etc. But I didn’t like the robot lady voice. There was a knob to pitch tune it, so I tuned it all the way down to RASPY LIPLESS GOBLIN voice.

A bajillion times a day (I get a lot of spam), a baritone hobgoblin goes ‘bing-bong***EMAIL***’ or ‘woot-woot***WHATSAPP***’ and it’s cracking me up.

Have a good Friday the 13th and rest of the week, y’all!

May 13, 2022 — 6:59 pm
Comments: 8

Wounded warrior

Fat cat went lame a few days ago. Very lame in his left rear leg. One of our cats was very similarly afflicted a few years ago and the vet said it was just a sprain and sent us home with some kitty ibuprofen.

So I ignored it, hoping he would get better on his own. But no. By this afternoon, he was looking into Uncle B’s eyes and making a high-pitched keening noise.

This time, the vet poked around and decided he’d been bitten on the ankle, probably by a rat. I mean, it was still just antibiotics and pain meds and wait, but I’m glad we took him.

We is having a rat problem. Oh yes we is. I’ve actually seen the buggers – always a bad sign. I’m like the johnny appleseed of rat poison right now. Stoaty Poisonseed.

Comes next the stinking dead rats.

May 12, 2022 — 4:47 pm
Comments: 16

An assault on my dignity…

Pull quote from this article.

Uncle B and I sat down to write our wills today – no particular reason, we’ve been meaning to do it for ages. We had a real lawyer send us the questionnaire and everything.

THE TEMPLATE WAS IN COMIC SANS!!!

I’m not having my last will and testament codified in Comic Bloody Sans.

I’m far from a font snob (boy, I’ve known a few) but Comic Sans is the world’s #1 running font joke. It’s not even a good comic book font. It was created to communicate the words of a cartoon dog from Microsoft Bob. Remember Microsoft Bob?

Also, the document formatting was atrocious. I rejiggered the whole thing and set it in Times New Roman like a normal person.

Now I just have to decide what I want done with my earthly remains…

May 11, 2022 — 7:19 pm
Comments: 6

This guy

Real name: Phil Heckels. Local Sussex artist. Describes himself as “rubbish” and has made quite a penny from it. You give him a photo of your pet, he gives you a guaranteed shit portrait in return.

Eh. You gotta have a gimmick. Most of his work seems to be for charity.

I didn’t think he was all that funny – until I saw his pictures next to the photos he drew them from.

Whenever you sit down to draw, you are confronted with a series of what we call “picture problems”. How do I position multiple figures so they look natural? How am I going to deal with this weird angle? How do I move the viewer’s eye where it needs to go? Ach, perspective!

It’s even worse when you work from photos. There are always “what the heck am I looking at?” picture problems working from photos.

But von Wolfwinkle says, “I can do this!” and lets rip with the boneheadedest solution to all his picture problems. Click a few to see what I mean.

May 10, 2022 — 7:29 pm
Comments: 6

Didja miss me?

I hope you enjoyed our little Wordle interlude. I thought about extending it another week, but I was afraid it might be getting stale.

Yes. This is what I did in my time off: Half Life Alyx. It was the third major Half Life title and the first VR title for Valve.

It was spectacular.

I’m playing it through a second time beginning today, listening to the developer commentary. They spent two years play-testing the opening scene, which is walking from a balcony though an apartment. Nothing happens. But they knew it would be many people’s first experience of VR, so some would spend a lot of time picking stuff up and playing with it (yes I did).

And still they had to convey lots right away about the atmosphere, the city, the backstory, the mission, the scale of the world. Among other things, it was supposed to make me understand when the game takes place (between Half Life 1 and 2). I didn’t pick up on it until the commentary. A hard thing to do, teach things to a weasel.

They made some fantastic choices. Like, to reload your pistol, you have to thumb a button to eject the empty magazine, reach behind your head to grab a full one, jam it in the magazine well and rack the slide. While running away from headcrab zombies. At the beginning of the game, play-testers panic and fumble and die so much they wanted to simplify it, but people loved it. It you feel like you’re doing a real thing. And you get better.

It’s a shame there aren’t more fabulously wealthy AAA game companies that can afford to spend two years on a few minutes of exposition.

p.s. The weather in the real world was lovely. I sat in the sun a lot.

May 9, 2022 — 7:03 pm
Comments: 3

Today’s word is a random word

And I don’t know what it is!

May 6, 2022 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 13

Awww…

May 5, 2022 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 8

Little stiff this morning

May 4, 2022 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 10