kerravonsen | Entries tagged with fail

Sit down and pull up a chair, I'm about to give a rant. I can't remember if I've ranted about this subject before, but I'm about to do so now.

This rant is brought to you by a few comments on a YouTube video which... well, the video was looking at blood-glucose levels as related to things like breakfast and drinking coffee. That was fine, the original video was sufficiently qualified in its statements and was interesting. But then someone in the comments mentioned they were diabetic and immediately some well-meaning person replied "Look into resistance training".

No. Just no.

It doesn't matter how helpful a person intends to be, all unasked-for advice is unhelpful. Why? Because it isn't advice, it is criticism. It says "Why haven't you done whatever-it-is?" It says "Your problems are easily solved and therefore trivial". It says "You are stupid/ignorant/lazy because you haven't fixed it already with this simple solution". It says "Your suffering is your own fault."

These pieces of medical advice are always given by people who are not qualified in medicine. Medical professionals know better than to give advice when they don't know the details of the condition. Especially not advice to random people on the internet that they've never met. And even non-medically speaking, anyone who is an expert in something (and I speak as a computer expert, okay?), anyone who is good at solving problems, they aren't going to toss out suggestions without asking questions first. Because the more you know about a field, the more you are aware that things that may seem similar on the surface can be quite different from each other once you know a few more details. A one-word description of the problem doesn't cut it.

And yet some people jump in as soon as they hear the words "diabetes" or "obesity" or "sleep apnoea" or "insomnia" or....

Who do you think you are, random advice-giver? Who are you to tell me what to do? You know-nothing ignoramus, you don't know a thing about me, what gives you the idea that you can solve my problems? I did not ask for your patronising condescension, you useless busy-body! If I'd wanted advice, I would have explicitly asked for it.

Don't be that person. Next time you feel the urge to pass on something you read in a magazine, or something that worked for you but might not work for everybody... take a deep breath and ask yourself, "Did this person actually ask for advice, or did they just mention their state of being?"

Current Mood: cranky
Crossposts: https://kerravonsen.livejournal.com/1190499.html

Right now I am writing this blog post, but just before now I was frogging my, um... 10th maybe... attempt to needle-knit. I am a crocheter. I can crochet. I can hook-knit with a crochet hook. But I thought I'd try learning needle-knitting because all the needle-knitters look at me funny whenever I mention hook-knitting. And because it would be easier to learn fancy stitches because nobody makes hook-knitting tutorials beyond the plain knit-and-purl. So I have watched multiple videos on knitting-for-crocheters and on Contininental Knitting (because Continental-style knitting is easier for crocheters to grok). And I bought a set of interchangeable needles from Ebay, because I thought value-for-money.

So.
( Read more... )

I know all the knitters in the audience will say "it's easy!" but you probably all learned it at your grandmother's knee. My grandmother wasn't a knitter, she was a mad-keen gardener, and so was my mother. So I was not able to learn from them. My sister can knit, but she lives in another state, so opportunities for face-to-face knitting-learning are few.

(sigh)

Current Mood: frustrated
Crossposts: https://kerravonsen.livejournal.com/1122903.html

ABC iView have taken down all the current season of Doctor Who before I had a chance to see the most recent episode. Like, it was available for less than 24 hours! They usually leave things up for a week or more! WHAT!

I suppose it was because it was the last episode of the season, but it's still NOT FAIR!

ETA: It was apparently a bug, not a deliberate action. The bug is now fixed. Whew!

Current Mood: annoyed
Crossposts: https://kerravonsen.livejournal.com/1118728.html

020 Shellac Cells?

This week I tried to make "shellac cells" (or "shellac lacing") following the method used by Annemarie Ridderhof here ( https://youtu.be/JUz97lBoOKI ) and here ( https://youtu.be/o10Z-_hnwJU ). Not having any encaustic wax, I tried doing it on bare wood. And I tried... and I tried... and I tried... and I tried...

The wood (actual wood, not MDF) was laser-cut 25mm (1 inch) disks purchased from here: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Timber-Wood-Base-Disk-Circle-Shape-3mm-Thick-10mm-to-100mm-Diameter-Earrings/222738298555
The shellac was made up from shellac flakes ( https://www.bunnings.com.au/feast-watson-250g-shellac-flakes_p1567019 ) bought from Bunnings a few years ago. Freshly dissolved in methylated spirits. No problems in dissolving it, there were no lumps or anything like that.

I am feeling very disheartened about this fail.

Current Mood: depressed
Crossposts: https://kerravonsen.livejournal.com/1100547.html

Well, I just spent... a fair amount of time... ah, it is half past midnight... so about 2 1/2 hours... deconstructing all but three of the broaches and pendants I had made with glass cabochons and fluid-art sheets, because they were deteriorating. Some were going cloudy, and some were crazed with air-bubbles. (sigh) ( Read more... )

Current Mood: melancholy
Crossposts: https://kerravonsen.livejournal.com/1097778.html

It looks as if my relatively newly acquired scanner is utter crap. Yes, I've had it for months, but I haven't used it all that often... and now it looks as if it was always crappy, comparing the result I'm getting this evening with scans that I did in January (when I first got the scanner). Blast!

The crappiness consists of these "stripey" artefacts in the preview and the scan, as if the light was shaded by blinds and giving it these shadows. I have no idea what would be causing it, but it's there in all my scans. The reason I didn't pay attention to it before was because, when I was scanning my Snape necklace in January, I was more concerned that I wasn't getting the Labradorite right, so I fell back on taking photographs. The stripes happened in the scan of my spiral necklace too, but I didn't realize it wasn't just in the preview until recently when I looked at that image again (because I wanted a picture of a Spiral-6-in-1 weave).

But this means that the scanner is UTTERLY USELESS to me, since the only thing I use it for is to take pictures of my jewellery. My old HP Scanjet 5p was perfect for that, until, after um, twenty years (!) it developed a yellow stripe down one side. Obviously HP don't build them like they used to (the new scanner is a HP as well).

Crap. Crap. Crap.

Taking photographs is much more hassle. With scanning, I could (in the past) get good results whether it was day or night - and it was much more likely to be night when I finished a work and wanted to scan it. With photographs, no matter how hard I try, the only really good results happen if I take photos in daylight, outside, on a sunny day. Which doesn't happen that often.

Bother. Botheration. Botherectomy!

Current Mood: frustrated
Crossposts: http://kerravonsen.livejournal.com/1063300.html

Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 12:45:12 +1100
To: donate@wikimedia.org
Subject: Problems donating

To Whom It May Concern,

I have, in the past, donated money to support wikipedia.

However, this:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/23/wikipedia-bans-editors-from-gender-related-articles-amid-gamergate-controversy
http://internet.gawker.com/wikipedia-purged-a-group-of-feminist-editors-because-of-1681463331

is the last straw.

Until you fix wikipedia's systemic bias against women, you will not get another penny from me. Before you say "we are not responsible" -- you are, because you are *financing* this toxic atmosphere. The buck stops with you.

Kathryn Andersen

Current Mood: angry
Crossposts: http://kerravonsen.livejournal.com/1020438.html

Well, it looks as if I'm in trouble, since the organizer of the

sshg_promptfest sent me a note saying that she would not accept any prompts that someone else had seen, which means that every single one of the prompts I was asking about in my previous post have been disqualified.

So I have nothing at all.

I think I'm going to cry.
And there's no point in participating in the fest either, so I won't be.

ETA: Please don't get cross at the organizer, the rules were clear, I'd just forgotten about that bit. I had clearly violated the rules by making a PUBLIC post with my prompts in it. There's nothing to be done, it was my own stupid fault.

And, hey, maybe it's not a bad time to take a bit of a break.