Babby’s first edit
I made my first Wikipedia edit! I was reading an article, and I ran up against a small, uncontroversial and obviously wrong statement and, in a fit of righteous rage, I hit the little ‘edit’ button in the upper right corner and changed that bad mama-jama. Just like that.
Huh. It was weirdly satisfying.
I was going to share it with you guys, but because I’ve never made an edit before, it uses my IP address in place of my name. We don’t use a VPN.
Which brings me to this question: do you? We’ve talked about buying into a VPN for ages. Not so much for privacy reasons as having an IP from an EU country can be awkward. For example, a certain number of US sites block EU visitors because of our stupid privacy laws.
Would love to hear recommendations if you have any.
December 13, 2018 — 9:16 pm
Comments: 12
Grandma? That you…?
I follow several of the ladies from my Wednesday morning drawing class. It makes it easier to coordinate models and stuff.
It also means I now get a small flood of status updates like the above.
You know what? I like it. After all the toxic hoo-ha on the internet, grandma jokes are downright refreshing.
Then I remember — these ladies aren’t my grandmas, they’re my peer group now.
December 12, 2018 — 9:37 pm
Comments: 6
pronouns
The thing above was in the official footer of an email I received yesterday from someone at a British University. You will note that the word ‘pronouns’ is a link. Like goes here.
From the article:
The table below provides examples of gender pronouns from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual Resource Center at UC Davis
I decided to spare you the effort (I’m nice like that) and look them all up for you.
Co/cos/coself. Gender neutral. I couldn’t find the origin. Same for en/ens/enself. While ey/em/eir appear to be one of the Spivak pronouns. Hit the link if you care.
He and she are for filthy cis degenerates and they is plural and if you use it singular I will REE unto the hills.
Xie/hir/hirself and ze/zir/zirself also generic and without origin, listed as among of the most common. Which probably means they aren’t special enough any more. Yo/yo/yoself is a made up gender-neutral pronoun dreamed up by students in Baltimore or this New Age religion.
There are, of course, dozens of others. As many of the related articles point out, people have been trying to come up with gender-neutral pronouns for English since at least the 19th C. And as I’d like to point out, they all died out, didn’t they? Because they sound stoopit.
It was fun explaining this to my boss.
December 11, 2018 — 5:15 pm
Comments: 14
That’s okay then
This was the easiest computer crash I’ve ever had. Well, other than the three weeks it took me to pick out a new one and get it here.
I had pretty good backups, which helped. Including a list of account passwords that is fairly up to date.
Even better, though — my old hard drive isn’t dead. Popped into an enclosure (with a little help from Uncle B) and I’m able to access all my old data.
The only question mark was the most important bit of all — Photoshop. You can’t just move it from one disk to another. I have a fair and legal copy that lives on a DVD. Serial number and everything. The problem is, it’s an upgrade version and it wanted the serial number of my previous version.
I thought I was stuffed. My Adobe account didn’t have any of my serial numbers listed (I’m beyond positive I registered everything; they must have had a purge in the last decade). I was sure Adobe — who desperately wants to get everyone onto the cloud version — would tell me to pound sand.
They didn’t. A very nice Indian lady talked me through by way of the chat dingus and emailed me a brand new full-featured serial number. I’m stunned, honestly. All hail Adobe. Oddly, that makes me less reluctant to climb onto the cloud somehow.
Anyway, enough about my new computer. That’s boring. From now on, I promise you totally other boring things!
December 10, 2018 — 6:47 pm
Comments: 8
IT’S HERE….!!!
My god — you people are HUGE!
…on my fancy new 27″ monitor…
They quietly upgraded my free 3-5 day shipping to 24 hours. Which makes sense, when you think about it. The longer the thing is on the truck, the more likely it is to get damaged – and they’d be on the hook.
It is slick. It is fine. It is fast. I paid extra for components that featured “quiet” in the description and I can barely hear it run. (My old machine sounded like a 747 taking off).
Now begins the days and days of downloading and setting up my comfy old apps.
Excuse me.
p.s. New Dead Pool tomorrow. Bring your big ol’ selves along at 6 WBT.
December 6, 2018 — 7:37 pm
Comments: 21
Dispatched…
GIMME MY STUFF! GIMME! GIMME IT!!!
Ahem. My computer is on the way. I don’t have an ETA yet. It’s not actually in the tracking system for another couple of hours.
And it’s 3-5 day shipping, so we’re looking at next week.
I’m’onna come out of my skin.
December 5, 2018 — 8:07 pm
Comments: 13
A farewell to balls
Booboo’s last meal. BEFORE THE CHOP. I take him in tomorrow before work but he has to fast starting now so he doesn’t chuck Friskies on the operating table.
If you’re thinking, “that boy has the most preposterous tail I’ve ever seen…” then, really, I have to wonder about your levels of empathy here.
Oh. Right. Empathy. Ric Fan did indeed win the Dead Pool with Harry Leslie Smith, days before GHW Bush joined the Hall of Presidents upstairs. That means New Dead Pool Friday.
Sorry I’ve been crap at communicating. This phone thing is getting me down. New computer due a week from today, if they don’t let me down.
December 3, 2018 — 8:52 pm
Comments: 10
Cockerels: a novel approach
Click the picture for a funny video. I hope. I can’t actually play videos on this machine, so I’m typing in stuff and hoping it works.
I have a feeling this event had something to do with the Year of the Rooster.
Snagged it from LiveLeak via Twitter. I don’t go to Twitter much. It is a crazy place. It makes otherwise not crazy people become crazy.
I have a theory about that. For addictive substances, there’s a relationship between how fast a drug hits you and how addictive it is. The faster the delivery, the deeper the hook.
I think it’s the pace of Twitter that gets people. You tweet something, you get an instant return. Good or bad, it’s fast.
It is the crack cocaine of social media.
Anyway. Week Two of Me Without a Proper Computer draws to a close. If all goes to schedule, one week to go.
Have a good weekend, and don’t let the cockerels peck!
November 30, 2018 — 9:38 pm
Comments: 8
War wounds
Behold, my peck marks! No, seriously, that’s what those four faint dots (and a bit of bruise!) are.
I wasn’t sure myself. I thought I just had a few insect bites go bad or something. I didn’t think that little squirt could really leave a mark, but I saw it with my own eyes.
The faint one at the very top? I watched that happen. It’s not a peck. It’s a pinch. He gets a little bit of skin in his beak and clamps. It’s like a tiny blood blister.
That whole “Christmas Dinner” thing isn’t going to work, though. Dude’s a bantam. Under those feathers, he’s not much more than a pigeon, pinchy beak or not.
November 29, 2018 — 9:20 pm
Comments: 10
Here it comes…!
Over the weekend, I read everything I could find about Photoshop and what it likes to eat (works best with Intel, prefers processor speed to multiple cores…like that) and spec’ed the best machine I thought I could stretch to afford. It was a little hurty, but I believe in buying the best machine you possibly can in the hopes it will serve you longer.
Got to the checkout and…VAT had not been included.
They’re not supposed to do that for non-commercial clients. ‘Round these parts, VAT is 20%. If you think that isn’t a giant lead weight on the economy, I’m here to slap you around the ears with an inflated pig’s bladder.
Yes, I bought it anyway. Had it been anything less important to me, I would have dialed it back. A lot. Like, 20% worth, at least.
Current ETA is Monday the 10th (hey, after all that, I wasn’t going to pay for an expedited build). Oh, I also got a big ol’ monitor to replace the one that died a couple of months ago.
Stand by — you guys are about to get huge, sharp, colorful and super fast!
p.s. Stole the illustration from…somewhere.
November 26, 2018 — 8:11 pm
Comments: 8