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Friday, February 10th, 2012 09:08 pm
Here is a link to some of that hypnotic Hungarian string music.  The video is an hour and a half long.
edit: have another one -- a whole raft of violinists paying tribute to one who just died.  Catch the cute kid with a stick and pretend bow at the beginning.

On another front, I have total laryngitis -- no voice at all, and no real warning: I was suddenly hoarse in the afternoon yesterday, but not extremely, and then I woke up with nothing. I can't really work with no voice, so here I have been all day, messing around with an embarrassing little Sims project -- trying to make the art nouveaulicious build set not suck.  It is clearly not finished: the edges are much rougher than EA's artists usually do, and the texture is nothing at all.  Obviously, it was a concept sketch and when EA decided they were done with the SIms 2, they yanked the project away from the people who were working on it and slapped the thing on the store page and people paid good money for it.  It's promising.  I don't have the skills to smooth out the mesh but I can retexture the things so they actually look like more than a jigsaw stencil.  maybe.  If you could see my desktop now, you would see this garish rectangle of awkward swirls of lime green, magenta, periwinkle blue, red, and ashes of roses -- justfive colors that would be distinct enough that I could use the magic wand selection tool and always get the right field.  This is a template for a layer that will have different colors of inlaid woods or paints, depending.  I traced the general outline from the object texture, but that was not immediately successful as the original texture had very little actual molding or shading to it.  It was like a flat piece of plywood, really.  Which means that the swirlies I put into the texture will look like crap if I don't figure out how to sculpt it all.  I think I have a trick to do that, involving the find-edges thing and then using the edges to make highlights and shadows on a different layer from the color part of the texture. But I also think there will be a lot of intermediate stages of suck.
For one thing, I can't smooth the blobs of color for the template, so therefore the curves are really difficult and tend to be hideous.  And not in the good way. 

Another thing is that there are five pieces to this: one-tile door and arch, two-tile door and arch, and a one-tile window.  I have started with the one-tile door. They do not share a common texture, and the swrily bits behave differently on each piece, so they will be happy if they go together at all by the time they are finished.

Also, the young doctor's go-to-city-hall marriage has turned into a Disney princess wedding with oranges.  Prague has a way of doing that to you, I guess.  At least the young folk are having fun.
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Monday, April 11th, 2011 07:13 am
I did some research on getting a new job this weekend but otherwise I spent the whole weekend making tiny little graphic renditions of Constructivist fabrics and dishware for the Sims. I am serious. I did not leave the house. I blew off all my plans and I stayed up too late. Apparentlyu, all told, I have made 185 files in this vein (odf which I will be discarding some because they're too dumb for words).

I did write . . . about fifty words.

I also did one load of dishes and folded some laundry.

And read about ten hours of amateur fiction online while I waited for things to load and that.
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Friday, December 10th, 2010 11:14 am
This is a followup to this post in which I agonized over how to respond to a peculiarly offensive post in a Sims forum.  I ended up cutting and pasting the trial response I added to that post in one of the endless edits I made that night.

(realizing much later I should have proofread but what the hell).

Here's the response (I still wish I knew how to format those block quote lines in livejournal):

Uhh... Sorry? o_O If it makes you feel any better I'm part Cherokee. It's just a fictional character though, nothing to be even slightly offended. And for the record (I'm not being rude or trying to be) I did not search Native American tattoo, I did in fact search wolf tattoo or even simply wolf and tattoo seperately and did not find what I was looking for. You're kinda making it sound like I think ALL Cherokee natives are this way, lol. By the way, I know the history of Cherokee and other Native Americans, I've done my research. But again, what I am searching for is totally for something fictional and within my own interest. I apologize for making myself seem 'ignorant'. Honestly, the link you gave is what I was looking for. I probably should have posted Native American-esque clothing or some such. I was unsure how to properly post this request anyway considering Native American/Indian/Cherokee seems... not too accurate. I'll keep in mind to be more clear about what I want in the future. I can kinda see your point but even though you explained I just can't see how any offense - even mildly - could have been taken to my post or descriptions.

Also, the picture came from deviantart. Someone had made that picture with a program, it is not a sim. >__>; I was just curious if anything similar existed for sims at all and it was also not for the guy but for another sim that is female. There's some story behind my sims, these are for reference. I plan to write a novel of the idea in my head.

(I really do hope my tone of text does not sound harsh, bitchy, mean, or rude. I'm just trying to clear the air here, lol.)


 
I'm not answering.  I did my job, and I just don't see how it is any further my responsibility to educate this child.  She did, in fact, clear the air for me: she told me she's as bad as my more pessimistic assessment rather than as good as my more optimistic assessment. 

For those of you playing: the "part Cherokee" square: the fake apology square: the "only fictional" square: the patently false claim to having "done the research:" and I don't think there is a square for this, but when she said "honestly the link you gave is what I was looking for?"  Here's the link I posted: not the one I intended to post, which was this.  In any case, not what she said she was looking for.  (can you even see that second thing if you haven't registered at Blacky's?  If you can't, the first thing on the page is a handsome rendition of porcupine-quill chest armor in two versions, followed by three beaded headbands and some beaded leggings. So, the only thing she said in her second post I can whole heartedly agree to is that "considering Native American/Indian/Cherokee seems... not too accurate."

On another front, I'm home sick today and my house stinks.
 
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Wednesday, December 8th, 2010 06:38 pm
Warning: really offensive "racial" ideas in a Sims context.  Especially in the linked bit, but the quote is bad enough.

In a Sims forum I read and post to, I saw this request:


(how do you get those lines on the side of a block quote that show it is in fact a block quote and not your own words?  I would hate to have anybody think I wrote this stuff)


I have a Cherokee sim that I'm trying to show off but before I go to fully create him I need a few things first.

I need a wolf tattoo or at least some tattooed skin (he's a light caramel brown in pigment) but his family is very close to the wolf spirits so I thought a wolf tattoo would be sexy. xD I also need some feathers and winter-style clothing. Unless he's inside he wears a lot of layers.

Also, if anyone knows where I can find clothes in this style, that would help a WHOLE bunch!
http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/078/e/f/Native_Girl_by_Dragonfly3D.jpg

I've already scoped out all of Modthesims. I don't think I'll find much else there unless there isn't something listed under the Native American/Indian criteria that matches what I'm looking for. ._.; (It happens~)

 
I just don't know how to begin with so much worngness.  I am assuming that the person is young and naive as so many of these people are.  But she (probably she) has both the responsibility and the right to do better than this. 

I want tio start out by saying that I don't want to tell people not to make "ethnic" sims at all: I think that's not the desirable outcome.  People should feel free to make Sims in colors and with historical or contemporary backgrounds of different cultures.  But beyond that, oh my, is there anything in this that is not completely, flabbergastingly, overwhelmingly wrong?

Should I start from the geometrical top, with the idea that there's something wild-animal-like about the Cherokee, who have an exquisitelcy civilized and siophisticated history and culture? -- or start at the ideological bottom. with the more basic wrongness of equating Native people with some kind of sexy animalistic mystical crap?  Or should I take it piece by piece, addressing all the little wrong ideas and using them to come to a more general description of how offensive this kind of exoticism is?

And oh my dog, if you click on that link, prepare yourself against deeply appalled rage.

I don't trust myself to deal with this without discussing it beforehand.  I am not out to create a huge scene: I want this thing to stop, preferably because the kid who's doing it comes to understand what's wrong with it and figures out a more healthy way to deal with her fantasies.

edit: I figured out a preliminary response:

Maybe the reason you're not finding what you're looking for is that what you're looking for doesn't have much to do with Native Americans, either historically or in contemporary culture and life, and even more especially Cherokees.  At Blacky's Zoo you can find some kind of stereotyped Plains Indians outfits of the 1880's, but that's not what you're looking for either.  The Cherokee aren't  a Plains nation anyway.  They are an exiled Southeastern nation: before they were force-marched to Oklahoma, they had an elaborate, modern kingdom of about the size of a small European country, with developed gold mines, railroads, and printing presses (it's pretty explicit that the reason for the destruction of their country was the gold mines).  Once they arrived in Oklahoma, they participated in the same kind of farming and ranching economy as the white and black settlers in the area.  Their clothing has been more or less "regular American" for so long that  "dressing like a Cherokee" has no meaning at all.

Theclothing in the picure you link to looks like nothing more or less than a stripper's costume -- and there's nothing really wrong with a stripper's costume -- so maybe that's a clue to what you should be searching for. As for the wolf tattoo, search for wolf tattoo, not for Native American tattoo: there are a lot of tattoos out there, and I bet you could find one that's like what you're thinking of.

I was going to be really, really offended, by the way, at the assumptions and implicit racism in what you posted, but I peeled away the language you used and at the core of it there's a sweet little silly fantasy, if you free it from racist labeling: sexy man, with beautiful honey colored-skin and silly skimpy clothing with gaudy decorations (I love gaudy myself), with mystical tattoos -- what's not to love?  Except for the wording: you should  be aware that you're describing your fantasy Sim in extremely inaccurate and potentially very offensive ways.



So what do you think?  Educational enough?  Helpful enough?  Firm enough?  Not too mealy-mouthed?  You should know that this particular forum is not the home of very sophisticated people and it purports to be politically neutral but we all know what neutral really means whether anybody means it to or not.  Also, is it counter-productive to use modifiers like "potentially very offensive" when I mean "downright extemely offensive" just in order to keep the person from going baliistically defensive?

By the way, I have been editing this every thirty seconds for the last fifteen minutes.  Sorry for what that's probably doing to your flist, but I want to say what I really mean, especially since I have reason to believe this will be read by people who don't have a history with me or a reason to cut me slack (hell yes I want to make a decent first impression).

Interim final edit: okay, I'm going to go with the response I wrote and hope for the best.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010 08:26 pm
So last night was Live Music Night at folk dancing. It went well: the music was great, I got really sweaty, it felt good.'


However.

I was going to take a treat. People bring thigns to eat to Live Music Night. Usually sweets. Ellie brought "Mexican wedding cookies" (known to some of us as walnut balls, or possibly as Those (insert ethnicity) Christmas Cookies). I thought about makign sesame candy adn decided it's too messy for the occasion. Then I was going to make a pumpkin bread because I have cooked pumpkin. But I really really liked the dinosaur kale ("there's really something called dinosaur kale? Why?" Emma asked) and pea quiche thing I made the week before for my lunches. It's maybe more of a timbale or (Spanish) tortilla, or maybe like a breadless strata, I don't know: no crust, and the egg part is firm so you can eat it out of hand. So I figured I would make one out of what I had to hand. Which was cauliflower. So, cauliflower strata.

But . . . two and a half hours, and my always-slow oven had still not finished preheating and I thought I might smell gas. So I turned it off and determined to call PG&E in the morning after I got home from Dog Beach Saturday (except it was field not beach because the tide was so high there was no beach, which happens every so often, more likely around the full moon which it is about now). But as I was gathering my strength to start this task, I thought . . . I've had the stove for twenty years and it never worked right . . . I have four hundred dollars cash in my pocket from selling my telescopes to a nice guy from El Cerrito who wants to show his kids and his friend's cub scouts the wonders of the stars . . . I could get a new stove.

So, a new stove is coming Friday. It's the cheapest one at Sears that I could stand, and it was still over five hundred dollars after taxes. It's weird lookign, too. Who decided it was a good idea to put a black front and back on a stove with a white top and sides? What were they thinking? Do customers come in in droves demanding piebald cooking appliances? "Hey, we can't decide between white and black, so why don't we just split the difference?" Or what? There was no black one, it cost more for an all-white stove and I thought that since the nice fellow had insisted on black appliances, the black and white stove would look a little less weird anyway, so I'm getting a patchwork stove. Though it looks pretty damned weird.

I kind of thought that selling the telescopes was going to allow me to pay off my lawyer this month, but maybe-smelling gas kind of put that consideration first. And no, I can't do two things in one month.

one another front: Frank intends to go to the winter ball again this year. What's special about it: "We're going to the ball."

on yet another front: Neighborhood 99 is doing a literary lot design contest. Take any kind of house or community venue from any literary source and illustrate it with the Sims.

I was going to do Huckleberry Finn's raft and island, but I decided instead . . . Gregor Samsa's apartment from Metamorphosis. Without cockroach, but with narration.
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Saturday, November 7th, 2009 01:09 am
XKCD says it best again. It's all the comfort you get, really.

You just are, and then you aren't: the best you can do is to give whatever you're made of to whoever else comes up with you and after you.

It's been a flashback day, and I do mean flashbacks. I no longer wonder what it's like for trauma victims. My own sorrow is nothing like as bad as it gets, but there it is. Somebody was talking about the sudden death of the nephew of one of out mutual coworkers, and I was hearing Ted's last words and seeing the events play out. It wasn't as vivid as people describe it, but it was unshakeable, though I could continue with the conversation and take care of babies. Then later it was a book we were reading to the threes and fours (I spend an hour and a half or two hours in preschool most days), about mothers and fathers and what they do for their children. Somewhere between the daddy teaching the child to read the orah and the daddy teaching the child to use an abacus I lost it. And lastly -- every folkdance night this happens at least once, though Ted would never have gone folkdancing with me (he would go to the Greek festival and eat leukomathes and watch me dance, though): there's some couple my age or generally older, content, dancing together, having those little conversations you can only have with a bonded life mate, and it hits me like a hammer. The guy who's in early dementia (I think) gets me most often because he's gushing about how lovely and sweet his life is now with grandchildren and his dear mother-in-law and yearly trips with his wife to his home country -- it's not just or rational but it pisses me off that we don't get that. It was hitting me harder tonight, I think because of the earlier episodes, but it didn't detract from the night. I don't know why, but I can be practically falling on the floor from it one second and the next be drawn back in to the scene around me. I should be grateful for that. I am.

____

On a less-whiny note, I'm actually improving at folk dancing. I'm sitting out fewer of them, tripping over myself less, and catching on earlier in the dance. Some of this is the careful application of coffee (which I generally avoid because I'm excessively sensitive to caffeine), and some of it is practice, and some of it is understanding what's going on when I can't seem to move right (ending up on the wrong foot almost consistently is an indication of a thing or two going on besides random error).

One of the things that's going on is that I seem to process large-motor instructions slowly, whether their spoken or demonstrated. So by the time my foot understands that it is the left foot and the left foot is supposed to be up in the air, it's time for the right foot to be there. When begin to learn the dance, I overcompensate and rush into things. This is less of a problem when the dances aren't being taught -- late in the evening, or on live music nights -- as I am not trrying to learn the steps actually, I'm just trying to go in the right direction and not bump into anybody. I have a fear of wrecking somebody else's dance experience with my klutziness. When I'm pretty sure I can't do that, I dance much better.

The problem with the coffee is that if I judge the dose wrong it's one o'clock in the morning and I'm still thinking of reasons I shouldn't go to bed now.

For example, shouldn't I recolor all the fences in the Sims game with my chosen fourteen stucco colors? Tonight? I've got a head start . . .

Oh, and we're doing Urban Watch on Sunday. I don't know why we're testing the Soquel Creek storm drains right now, after the rainy season has started, but I'm happy for the opportunity.
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Thursday, May 28th, 2009 11:14 pm
I have a jillion things to do, including paying old bills. I was waiting to get new checks for the life insurance account: I got them, wrote two checks, and now I;ve lost the checkbook.

So what do I do?

Do I call and get more checks and work out who to pay out of the other (dwindling) account?

I spend two days making images of old worn-out linoleum floors for the Sims. And that's without actually converting any of the images to game objects, yet.

Money has become my monster.

But I don't regret the money I've spent: it's all money that will last, and make it possible for me to get by on much less later. Well, except for that thing and that thing, but those things are things that will make our lives much better.
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Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 08:51 am
And if you have even a dormant account at TSR, you should know that they have admitted to a security breach of such a magnitude that apparently someone is using the identity of Thomas, the owner, to access the passwords of members there and exploit them elsewhere in a mailicious way. Your vulnerability is if you use the same passwords in multiple places, and who doesn't? It's hard to remember multiple passwords. If you have a password at TSR that is the same as a password anywhere else, change the other password, not the TSR one: the supposed breach happened at least three months ago.

There's some suspicion, actually, that it's not necessarily an external breach, but that there is a loose cannon within TSR. There have been several malicious events over the last few months that point to TSR. But Thomas has been saying that these are not coming from him, though IP logs and other evidence do point to him. (hence, he admitted to the security breach)

Anyway, I'm sitting here thinking of all the passwords I have to change today.

In other news, I planted a brassica bucket yesterday! A wine barrel with seeds of rapini, chinese kale, baby bok choy, and dinosaur kale.

I love chard and spinach, but once you have leaf miners in your yard, apparently, it's curtains for the goosefoots.
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Thursday, January 1st, 2009 04:42 pm
So when I say storage shed for rent, what comes to mind?  Something aluminum with a regular sized door, right?

What I have is a solid steel miniature ship container complete with a loop on top for a cargo hook.  I didn't trim the neighbor's bottlebrush enough so the shed had to be dropped in the driveway and pushed.  It kicked up dirt as it went and it didn't go all the way back so now it's in the open gateway and you can barely squeeze by it so Saturday when we're suppose to take crud out of the basement and put it in the dumpster we will be in a pickle.  Did I also say that my driveway is just over ten feet wide, and when I asked the lady how wide the truck is, she told me its wheelbase?  And I didn't think that through.  Because of course a truck with an eight foot wheelbase is not eight feet wide.

This noontime Emma and I dug out the dirt around the base of the shed so there will be airflow under it.  Then we went and worked on bagging up the trash and boxing up the keepables from my room and we did that for about an hour and when Emma left I was too tired to go on and there's so much to do before Zac starts work and I don't know how I'm going to do it with my energy level the way it is.  So now it's getting cold and I have to spend as m,uch time as I can this evening up there.

The dumpster's arriving tomorrow and that will be a relief because I don't have to wonder where the trash goes "in the meantime" anymore.

I'm thinking about machinima.  I don't know what to say: just I keep thinking about it: how you break down a scene differently if you're going to make realistic animations of it, compared to when you're going to write it.  How the setting changes if you have to cram a camera into it, even if it's a virtual one.  None of the people I've been reading do what I think I would do, which is to have different versions of the rooms in question to avoid the problems associated with the cut-away walls view in the Sims. 

Here's a famous Sims 2 machinima maker (look at "Sk8er Boy").  Here's  "Barbie Girl."  They aren't all music videos.  I have seen some nice dramas, but the ones I can find tonight are mostly prologs with no further chapters (I know this isn't all there are).

Anyway, it's interesting.

The backyard is wide open, so the dog can't come and go as she pleases, so I feel I ought to give her more walks.  I have something really painfully annying going on with my hips -- Zak says it's the piriformis muscle and gave me exercises and said I should walk it out, which is much easier said than done.  So we've been doing short, short walks, which satisfies nobody.

Going to bed by 9:30 tonight!

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Thursday, October 20th, 2005 04:14 pm
November first I'll open up Bella and Chain, which is the epistolary blog novel object I've been working on in the background. Here's the structure, as I understand it:

At the Crystal Egg website (no linkities for you right now as there's nothing there for this yet) the material will be organized into fairly almost conventional chapter structures with linkages around so that you can read it in different ways, while there will be four blogs running at the same time with the same material (that is, you can read Bella's blog as a blog, or as a part of a chapter). This means if you come in at the middle you don't have to scroll back to the beginning and read up the page to catch up -- you can go read from a table of contents just like a regular book.

I'm going to be doing some graphics with this too. I'm still working out how to deploy them best in terms of dramatic effect and bandwidth.

It's a just for fun story and I hope it's fun.

Oh, and one more thing. Unlike everything else I've ever written, I'm really unsure of large chunks of plot. In other words -- new medium, no net.

in other fronts, I have been playing Sims 2 and I feel really guilty about it.