I am the Kat that Walks By Itself

So I've been battling with Terraforming Mars again, prompted by Anne Reardon talking about Food On Mars (including how difficult it would be to grow). After an entire afternoon and evening of losing over and over again -- clearly I'd forgotten what methods were needed to win the solo game -- I tried again a few days later, and managed to get through after a couple of fails. And then again, this evening, more play, and managed to succeed.

So what's the trick? Well... no trick, really. You do need a certain amount of luck, or one is doomed to failure. (Or, as I kept on muttering to myself, "We're all gonna die.")

( Read more... )

So, as referenced here my outgoing email stopped working due to my ISP is declaring me "unauthorised" to send email via their mail server.

    550 Relay Denied - Unauthorized

The strange thing is that I'm still receiving email, I just can't send it.

( Read more... )

This sucks. This sucks dead bunnies. I am pissed off.

Ann: Happy birthday! This is for you. I made it.
Betty: You programmed the replicator?
Ann: No, I made it. With my hands. And tools. And yarn. I replicated the yarn.
Betty: But why make it when you can replicate it?
Ann: You can't.
Betty: It's made out of some sort of exotic matter? I thought you replicated the yarn?
Ann: You can replicate the yarn, but you can't replicate the scarf. It's unique. Because I made it.
Betty: You... made it.
Ann: It's an ancient craft called "knitting". You use these tools called "knitting needles". And scissors and a "sewing needle". And of course the yarn.
Betty: But it must have taken you an hour to make!
Ann: Try a hundred hours.
Betty: But... why? Why spend all that time?
Ann: Because I made something unique. Never before in the history of the universe, has this exact scarf existed. Of course, if you scan it and share the data, it won't be unique any more. But at least, right now, it's unique. And I made it. With my own hands.
Betty: ...
Ann: Plus I enjoy the process. It's soothing. Kind of like meditating. Only you actually have something at the end.
Betty: Oh, it's for your mental health?
Ann: Not exactly...

You want t-shirts and mugs with MY fabulous art on them? Or beautiful prints of said art? Come right this way, to https://fluid-visions.com/ and/or to https://www.redbubble.com/people/kerravonsen/

These two print-on-demand shops are slightly different; the Redbubble shop is the older shop; while I am in the process of moving everything to fluid-visions.com I will keep the Redbubble shop there until the move is complete. The items available in each shop are not identical, since they are manufactured by two different companies -- Redbubble for the Redbubble shop, and Printful for the fluid-visions.com shop. Both of them ship from your local country, so fear not. If you live in the USA or Europe, you're covered. If you live in Australia, you may be better off with Redbubble, because Printful has fewer manufacturers here.

Have solved my android playlist problem! What problem? The problem that I want to be able to create .m3u playlists on my computer, copy them over to my phone, and play that playlist on my phone. But, hey, all these music players that CLAIM to support playlists only mean that you can create playlists by manually adding one song at a time, inside the app. What a waste of my time!

But I found a simple music app "Little Music Player" which understands .m3u playlists. I do have to convert the playlists so that they point to the files as they are on the android device rather than on my computer, but that's easily scriptable. Which I did.

This problem moved to the top of my to-do list because of another problem: my new bluetooth device which plugs into my stereo system to make it bluetooth enabled, so that I can send music to it via bluetooth. Which I thought I would do via my computer. But it doesn't work. Oh, the computer thinks that it's connected, and the bluetooth device beeps correctly to indicate that it's connected... but no sound comes out. On the other hand, my phone connects to the bluetooth device with no trouble.

Hence, wanting my existing playlists to be able to be played on my phone, so that they can be played on the BIG SPEAKERS of my stereo system instead of the tiny speakers which are on my computer and/or phone.

So yay!

Knit-Ho!

(to the tune of Heigh-Ho(+))

We knit knit knit knit knit knit knit
With yarn the whole day through
To knit knit knit knit knit knit knit
Is what we like to do
It ain't no trick to make stuff quick
If you knit knit knit with a needle or a pick(++)
All the time, all the time
And your work will turn out fine!

We knit knit knit knit knit knit knit
From early morn to night
We knit knit knit knit knit knit knit
Up everything in sight
We knit up mittens by the score
A thousand beanies, sometimes more,
But we don't know what we're knitting for
We knit knit knit-a-knit knit

Knit-ho! Knit-ho!
It's off to knit we go!

(+) Heigh Ho!
(++) Loom-knitting uses a pick-tool.

Due to mastodon.au currently being down, I was looking around on mastodon.art, which I'm not as active on. And I started looking at the admin announcements. And about three or four announcements back, they say a few things about the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). They explain in a non-hysterical way that the name GIMP was not chosen innocently -- the creators of the program admit that it was due to the word "gimp" used in "Pulp Fiction" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP#cite_note-8). Therefore they would have known that the word was a slur, and they have been told repeatedly that it was a slur and have not changed the name.

IMHO, I'm all for giving people the benefit of the doubt (e.g. Coon Cheese was named after Mr. Coon who invented the specific process for that cheese, and therefore I am certain that they did not intend for it to be racist) but if somebody knew from the get-go that the name they were using was an insult, and went ahead with it anyway, that's a problem. Perhaps they considered it a kind of self-depreciating humour -- that they felt their program to be such a humble offering that it was a cripple, but many people have not taken it that way.

So... I'm going to be changing all references that I can when I'm talking about the Gnu Image Manipulation Program. In the future, I'll refer to it as GnuIMP. I'm not going to even attempt to change past posts, that's too difficult to track down and alter, but at least I'll be changing my wording from now on.

Yes, it's a small thing, but it is easily done, so why shouldn't I be courteous if it doesn't cost me much?

I had always wondered why they had chosen such an odd name for the program, but I had assumed that it was inadvertent.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there are two special categories of character for whom the normal rules do not apply. I don't know if this also applies to the Marvel comics, but I've certainly seen it in the movies. I call them the "Favoured" and the "Disfavoured" characters.

A Favoured character can do no wrong.

I don't mean that they don't do anything wrong, I mean that the wrong things (or mistakes) they do are dismissed, ignored, rationalised, or made out to be good things.

A Disfavoured character can do no right.

It isn't that they never do anything right, but every single wrong thing (or mistake) they have ever done is thrown in their faces forever, and the right things they do are dismissed, ignored, rationalised, or made out to be bad things. They are everyone's favourite scapegoat, also.

( Signs of a Favoured Character )

When you have a Favoured character interacting with a Disfavoured character, because of these biases, every Favoured character comes across as a flaming hypocrite. Which means that the writers who are desperately trying to enforce the view that their Favoured characters are spotless heroes, have done the exact opposite of what they intended. Ooops.

I would even go so far as to say that out of Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Thor, and Loki, the only mature, responsible adult is... Tony Stark. He's the only one of the four who actually takes responsibility for his actions, and not only for his actions, but for his inaction. Steve Rogers seems to think that because he meant well, he can't be blamed for the harm he caused. Thor has a similar attitude. Guess what? Tony Stark meant well, too; he meant to protect American soldiers. And what does he do when he discovers that harm came of it? He tries to make amends. Steve Rogers doesn't. Thor doesn't. Loki is a wild mixture of blaming other people for his problems, trying to fix his mistakes, and trying to fix other people's mistakes, badly. Interestingly enough, both Tony Stark and Loki were betrayed by people they considered family. But Tony had support (Yinsen, Pepper) and Loki had absolutely nobody.

Hello, I am alive. I have been neglecting y'all terribly. My apologies for that. I haven't been keeping up with Dreamwidth at ALL. And then I popped in today and saw that so much I had missed out on, and re-realising that you're fascinating people and I have been doing myself a disservice by not keeping up with what y'all are doing.

So I must needs put Dreamwidth reading higher on my priority list. I've been hanging around mostly on Mastodon of late. I've been greatly enjoying following knitting and crochet posts there, and I've been doing a lot more knitting and crochet too. kerravonsen at mastodon.au is who I am there.

So what have y'all been doing that I missed out on? And, hey, are there things you'd like me to post about?

HEY I HAVE A NEW SHOP!

Set up with WordPress and WooCommerce, and a few other plugins. It is very basic, and I have no intention of making it anything fancy. This is purely so that PEOPLE LIKE YOU can get prints of my work, if you want. (Plus a few mugs and bits of clothing. But mainly prints.)

And here's the first print available there: "Abyssal Life 2".

In the stygian depths of the ocean, there is life, clustering around the hot and chemical-rich volcanic vents.

Fluid art. Digital art edited in GIMP.

Prints: Abyssal Life 2

( image behind cut )