piranha: two happy stick figures bumping hips (making art together)
i mean, why do we even have a field for it? DW, not being beholden to advertisers, certainly doesn't need to know that about us?

i would guess one reason is that many people want that marker. i recall on some bulletin boards people even wanted little blue and pink icons (*gah*!) so gender was more instantly recognizeable.

are there any other reasons? there probably are and my brain is just not fully online right now. do enlighten me, if you can.

(the userpic is meant for something entirely different, but never worked for that, and it struck me how oddly it fit my observation about BBs.)
piranha: red origami crane (Default)
i was picking my teeth, staring at the package of toothpicks, when a sudden urge overcame me. see the picture and maybe weep )

other than that, i've been really productive, almost like a normal person: i did seven loads of laundry (one at a time, since the landlords were so kind as to be gone this weekend, just in time for laundry day). i vacuumed the living room and my futon, and swept bathroom and kitchen. walked the dog several times. continued to clean, clean, clean my computer files (torrents and other zipped and rar'ed files now pared down to the point where i can actually store uncompressed temp files for an entire 2-layer DVD on that drive preparatory to burning).

and in my copious free time i've been learning more photoshop. when i start with a piece of software, i often get all excited about it, and learn how to operate it very quickly. that does, however, also mean that i hit a learning plateau at a point where i know well enough how to do things, but i don't really do them in the most efficient or elegant way. and there is always more software to pick up and learn, and so i stagnate on a lot of older stuff. i've decided to remedy that, and have started to read the fine manual for photoshop in greater detail.

here's one trick that i feel extra stupid for not knowing: when selecting with the marquee tool, one can hold down the space bar to move the selection while one's still at it, and the action will shift to moving. let go of the space bar and one's back and can continue to widen or narrow the selection. this is especially handy when trying to make a reasonably precise circular selection where it's not obvious where the starting point should be. it can be a bit tough to manage when one's selecting a circle from the centre on out (left hand: alt-shift, right hand: click-drag, where is my third hand to press the space bar?), but i'm getting better at it already. and it really is much nicer than to add to the selection afterwards.
piranha: red origami crane (Default)
i've let the paramour go for a walk by zirself, even though the weather was nice, and i could have used the walk, and would have undoubtedly enjoyed it. but i've been playing all day with tcp/ip traffic control, my firewall, and bittorrent.

i can see why so many people bitch about bittorrent, and never get theirs working well. it's rather complicated, with several factors all affecting not only whether, but also how well bittorrent will work. i am glad i am a geek with some inkling of networking.

i wonder if i could actually write a handholding document for complete non-geeks. *urk*. not going to give in to that temptation just now; but i want to write down what i had to do and why. which i'll do under this cut. )


i love our cats. i always have company in my room; at least one of them tries to lay down on my wacom pad (but will settle on the other side, snuggled against my left arm if prodded), and bacchus usually curls up under the workbench.
piranha: red origami crane (Default)
japanese ones. very, very cool site, with google maps so one can see the relationship to the landscape; historical info, and pictures.

via metafilter.

i am starting to like metafilter. it doesn't do threading, but it has the bare bones of a sequencer (it shows how many new comments since last time i refreshed, and it can immediately plop me down on the new ones), and i can see all the comments a specific poster has made (something which LJ sorely, sorely lacks). it's still a far cry from usenet, but it doesn't suck quite as much as most weblog software.
piranha: red origami crane (Default)
[livejournal.com profile] misia wrote an interesting post with her experiences of femme turf. [now alas locked; sorry.]

hm. i am an anti-femme (not as in hating femmes, but more like an anti-hero :), and knitting stores have IMO changed a lot over the last 30 years, to become more general geek space than pure femme turf. such geek space can be found anywhere, and butch spaces certainly have loads of it -- hardware stores, tool shops, fishing tackle sections at canadian tire, do-it-yourself shipyard facilities all fall into that category. wherever we share passionate hobbies with other people, i suspect. SF conventions are wonderful geek space, so are lots of virtual places on the net.

geek space has a lot in common with what misia describes as femme turf: there's helpful communication between total strangers, there's knowledge-sharing, asking even the most basic questions is ok, show-and-tell is common.

what it doesn't have is the sort of behaviour that makes me uncomfortable in femme space: strongly proffered advice without being asked, and a large amount of solicitation, for example. i've also not actually noticed that there is enough distance when it comes to my aura of "i am just browsing and don't want help, unless i look around for it", which is usually respected in geek space, but always violated in femme space, though people will back off if i clearly reject help. and there definitely is also less physical distance, which is possibly the largest reason for me not liking femme space (and my desire for physical space isn't driven by fear of malice; i am just not into random touch).

i've lately been spending a lot of time in aromatherapy and natural health stores, and that's an interesting space -- it's not as femme-dominated as cosmetics counters in department stores, because it has herb geeks in it too. it still makes me itchy (no pun intended), but that's probably more because of the high new-age content, not because of the femme contingent.

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renaissance poisson

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