C is for Cookie and confusing

Today Blogger has informed me the the EU requires a notice about the use of cookies being used by Blogger and Google and Google's adsense app. They have very kindly "done this for you" and I suppose that I should trust that it is here some where on the page.

The thing is, I can not see what is says about cookies unless I am in the EU. I write from America so I can't see what it is that I am supposed to be telling you that they told you for me. I don't even know on my layout page where this stupid thing is. I don't even know if I can edit it in the layout page.

I understand that you want to know who is looking you up and bookmarking you for sale to another commercial source. I want to know these things. But with the state of the Internet as it stands today, I just assume that everything has a cookie in it. I think we all do. But I guess, just to cover everyone's asses we must do these things. I understand all of that.

What I don't understand is why, if I am responsible for maintaining the damn thing, can I not find it to verify it's actual existence on my blogs. And why should it only be visible to the EU guests? Stereo typically, Americans are the stupidest people on the planet so shouldn't the Cookie warning be everywhere Americans tend to be?

Why does this have to be so confusing?

Please, friends in the EU and beyond, tell me if you see the Cookie Usage explanation from Google. I for the life of me can not see it at all.

Pause break

Due to a series of unfortunate technical snafus 6° of Geekdom will suspend posting. 'Puter is going in for some routine and non routine maintenance which may or may not involve invasive procedures. So Spammers beware... once this is done, you guys are cut off. And hopefully the weird things that have been happening when I try to post pictures to the blog will cease.

For some insane reason this is the biggest I can get a horizontal picture to post. It should be nearly to the edges considering the size of the original and it is still, to me, barely legible.

So, while I am gone, please check out the other blogs on my blog list to the right. Michelle is doing fascinating things (as always) and the folks at Uppercase (as of this posting) have been to a great little shop in New York that Art Stampers have been drooling over for years.

And if you would, please use the GoFundMe link to help a geek out.




I am not sure what is going to be next to post. A lot of weird things, and by weird I mean Twilight Zoney, have been happening all week. There will certainly be a discussion about the random acts of randomness. And there have been a few foreign flicks I've seen that make me think about the things that we know, that we think we know, that we want to know, about the Universe and how the Universe tries to keep its secrets. At least one of those movies, Agora, was disturbing on a couple of different levels. My Wordgeek wants to know how the events in this movie may have a lasting impact on our language. Kon-Tiki iso ne of those movies that makes you wonder about things too. Mostly: How insane do you have to be to 1. challenge Intellectual Authority (and who gets to decide who is that authority) and 2. how flipping bat shit crazy do you have to be to sail the ocean on a balsa raft for roughly 5,000 miles? I also wonder how you justify not knowing what kind of understanding your crew mates have of the natural world (humpbacks are pretty benign & don't need to be harpooned; and shark blood is still blood and still makes a frenzy) and how do you not know the level of subordination of your mates? Frankly... I never cared for stupid people. But thoughtless people who do not know how to take charge of their faculties annoy me more than the general stupidity of sheeple.

There will be a lot to write about. And I hope there will be much to photograph in the meantime.

Come back in a couple of weeks and we should be up and running again.

Random!

I'm not sold on the background. I think it competes with the banner. But I am having a hard time with the template editor. They took away my ability to change the striping color on the basic edition of this layout and the other ones don't really suit me. It will have to be a work in progress I guess.

But I do love the banner. It seems a bit Halloweeny to me. But maybe that is just the fall colors and the glorious font. Honestly, and I hope I don't jinx this, I am amazed that such an awesome font is on the free menu. Picmonkey is a great site. I think I am in love. I am not ready to commit to an upgrade. Yet. I am still trying to find out how I upgraded Evernote without so much as a by your leave or a credit card. Perhaps a promotional thing after I linked to it from here? I don't know.

But seriously, Evernote and Picmonkey are two places that you have to check out to be able to do your writing and artsy stuff with as little clutter on your hard drive as possible. I would like to work on Evernote on the desktop without internet connection but they only have that option for the W8Touch. I have the basic W8 laptop. And the only thing that Picmonkey really has forgotten is a duplicating button so that when I add my own overlay and get it looking perfect I only have to edit my layer once and then can just essentially rubber stamp the hell out of my project. Seriously though... that is my only complaint. Which is actually more of a suggestion.

Now I just have to figure out how to load real player or media player with songs from the CDs I was given so that I can listen straight fro the computer without worrying about scratching the CDs. I thought I had done so. But yesterday I couldn't access any of the songs. And I might have accidentally removed one whole file of awesome from the disk. God I hope I didn't. That will be a horrible thing to have to confess if I did.

Hold Your Hats! Changes are coming....

I found a tutorial for creating banners on blogger platform. I've made my banner. I am not trying to figure out how to apply it to the blog. But it is coming. Or I will crash the whole thing. Learning to do these techno things by degree is a slow and painful process. But we'll see.

I have a blank blog I am going to test this on and will get back to you later.

New Tech: Evernote

I am not entirely certain any more where I heard about Evernote. But what I heard was impressive. Impressive enough for me to download the thing and start working with it. I do like it a lot. It is a cloud computing service. I thought maybe it was just another writing software.... some things do not stand out as obvious to me in the technical world. And that little bit of info was one such thing.

Evernote and its sister app Skitch work in tandem for you to do some web surfing and reporting so for a blogger it is pretty easy to keep things flowing. Of course while I am learning this other things are going to suffer.... the writing of official posts for one. Catching up on e-mail for two.

Evernote promises to make NaNoWriMo better for me this year. As in easy to keep track of what I am doing or not doing as the case may be.

My only concern, as with anything that has to do with the ease of accessibility on the internet given what we know about the NSA, is security. They say that I can lock up certain files so the things don't get stolen. But well......

I don't trust the government to keep my stuff secret. They are so busy handing over our personal information to their corporate friends, how do I know there isn't a back door into Evernote so that anyone with a vested interest in publishing can steal our material as it is being written? Okay. So maybe that isn't happening right now. But that does not mean that it won't. Marketing companies are already 3 thoughts into my head for knowing what to post on my gmail page for ads. So really..... I do not put it past them to sell us out. And it isn't like anyone has to read each and every entry. We live in a world of tags and tag specific searches so all you have to do is look for the key words of the hottest selling genre and put the NSA to work for a publisher to find the next Sherilynn Kenyon or Danielle Steele. Of course.... that is provided any of us who write really know anything about writing. I've seen some pretty wickedly bad things published lately. Grammar is dead apparently.

But aside from the future perfect dystopia I seem to envision lately, Evernote does look like a gem of a service.

Loving Living in the Future

Again, catching up on some blogs while I am writing out future entries in long form. It isn't a luddite maneuver but a classic delaying technique. It isn't because I don't want to write. I am writing a lot. It is because I am trying to gather material so that I can post regularly, have meaningful articles to share and get my head back into the blogging game. I delay for a purpose this time instead of delay out of fear. HUGE difference. Huge! (Did you read that in Matt Smith's voice? I hope you did. I wrote in in ;) ) At any rate, one of the delays in regular posts is due to a technical issue...

I am way over booked on material for the art blog as I have changed my policy to reflect an understanding about art that should really have been very obvious to me. And that is drawing a lot of attention from this blog. Though perhaps it should not. Still working that out. The other delay is that I found an article in one of those blogs I was catching up on about an app for the Windows Touch (also available in a desktop version) that I have not activated since I got the laptop last Fall. Which reminds me; I need to get a check up.

The app is Evernote. It is similar to Goggledocs in that it is a form of cloud computing. However it is a little easier for me to use and it syncs better across a variety of platforms. Or so the claims go. I like Googledocs. I am just not sure I want a lot in the Clouds. My aspirations are all ready there an we see how well that works for me. What I did not know when I activated the app was that it was cloud computing. I thought that I was adding something to my hard drive. Silly me. I should know better; after all most all that we do is going to be done over the internet and not on hard data storage in a few short years. I guess this is how we are going to live with it.

At any rate Evernote is pretty damn good. And it comes with a fun little partner called skitch which is a separate download/activation. I had hoped that it would let me do my own quick meme kinds of work but I think that I have to have premium service for that. I do like the Skitch/Evernote combo a lot.

So much so that I might consider entering the cloud once the laptop sees the Geek Squad. Something I did with the antivirus software didn't work. So I need to get things cleaned up and then we will be good to go. Which will keep the spammers out of my status updates. But it will also allow me to be a far more prolific writer.

That being said I think that delay in regular posting is worth it. And I will have to make a confession here. One of my worst habits as a writer is buying a notebook(or 4) for every project, stashing the notebook somewhere and losing track of the stash (losing my brain) and thus losing the project. A notebook for every project is a sound organizational concept. Otherwise I would have a billion and a half ideas crammed into a dozen or so notebooks like da Vinci's and it would be as indecipherable. There would be a grocery list along side a materials list written over with a quote from Doctor Who; a random name scribbled in the bottom margin of either a real or imaginary person with no indication of which it would have been; a random rant about politics; a note to myself to tweak a recipe and of course ramblings in German language which is either me trying to get a Matthias Reim lyric out of my head/into my head or testing out an insult to throw at someone all dashed about on pages and pages of sketches.... I'd look like a madwoman. Or..... some art history student in the future would go mad trying to figure out what the hell "Verdammt ich lieb dich ich lieb dich nicht" has to do with a Hungarian needlework flower. The answer would be nothing. But how is that poor student to know? And if I can't decipher my own intentions when I look at those pages a mere 4 months later.... well....

And how do you carry an entire high school career's worth of notebooks to every coffee shop or shady park and not look like a complete idiot? You don't. And the strain on your back and shoulders is just not worth it. That is why, I think, most writers and persons like da Vinci kept to home like hermits on a mountain in Tibet. It's too much bother to cart all that about. Much easier to stay home and scribble away in your hovel amassing stacks and stack of ledgers. Of course it is also very likely that mountain of collected works will topple and crush you to death while 47 cats mill about waiting for the supper that would never come.... but I digress. Again.

Enter Evernote. I love living in the future. Evernote can be an entire high school, college, graduate, post grad and doctorate career's worth of notes all on your laptop because it is stored in this mysterious nebula of information. It promises productivity increases. But first I need to really understand how the whole thing works. Should be a short learning curve. And then Geekdom will be off an running with lots of good content. Or... I will get lots of practice writing.

One word of caution though. Evernote is a cloud service. It does require really good security protection. And you need to keep up on your updates. You can encrypt things so that if you are working on the next big novel, the one that makes JK Rowling uneasy about her position in literary history, you can keep it safe for yourself until it is ready for a publisher. If you don't encrypt it could be a disaster. Evernote warns you of such. And I suggest taking the warning seriously. If spammers can get through a firewall they can sift through the clouds to steal your seeds of genius.

Living in the future takes a little getting used to. And it comes with as many pitfalls as living in the past. In the end though it must all be worth it if it helps us each to realize our potentials.

By ­°

or earning XP one small discovery at a time


A few days ago someone posted a link to a page full of keyboard short cuts for things like ° and ™. You will be seeing these thing a lot more. One reason is that when things are really trademarks the trademark should be there. In this day and age when everyone wants to scream about fair use and attributions it is just good sense. And it is polite. But as far as the ° goes?

It's in the title. And how many times do I complain about weather and the temperature? I should be using that one. Just the simple fact that I don't have to be a coder geek to use the short cuts is nice. It used to be that you had to have a program that would allow such things. Now you just have to have Windows™ and the right platform for blogging and it's a go.

I feel a bit more empowered by this knowledge. ╪ And here is a random sign just because I felt like using "alt + random numbers" with the numbers lock enabled. I have no idea what it is. It is probably a elemental sign.

Of course with my luck it is the sign to end all signs and somehow a random, out of context keyboard short cut used without consideration to its powerful meaning just opened up the last door to hell.... or let Cerberus of his chain. Well.... if Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett were writing my life that is about how it would go. Most likely I've just done something suspicious enough that the NSA is signaling the MiB for a round-up series of Q&A. *waves at the NSA with a toothy, cheesy grin that would ruin any family photo. I don't give a crap any more. They are going to make enemies out of anyone and everyone so why bother to hide the pain in the ass that is my ass?

And in other techo-phobic news: I've replaced my mouse. I had the purple one for a long time then sat it somewhere and have no idea where the hell it is. So I got another one at Big Lots® today. It is red, wireless, speedier than the 30.00 mouse I bought 4 years ago. And it was 13.00 with the batteries included.... even though the package said they weren't.

This mouse is fast.

It's the little things. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps.

Random Adventures About Town

 

 

The Traverse City State Hospital was built in 1911... or established in 1911. The history is almost irrelevant today as I am mainly enthralled by today's adventure. A friend of mine and I went up today to toddle around and take pictures of the patina and decay before the reclamation process makes it all shiny and new again. The place has character in any state of existence, it has a story for almost every resident of our fair city. But today was about the design  and the patterns of life etched across those designs. If anything could stand as a symbol for change this is the place. Since my friend is moving on to other things in her young life it seemed the right way to celebrate her changes.

 

After traveling the exterior footprints of the remaining buildings we arrived back where we started and finished the adventure with a wonderful Italian meal made by authentic Italian transplants here. The various stages of construction flowed from one design aesthetic to the other. Some places bore an Italianate design as is fitting since the developers are Italian. Others had a decidedly Dutch/German/Scandanavian face. In several spots I thought that we were on the grounds of a glorious European castle.... or at least could fake it well for a while.

 

My thoughts kept returning to the Gothic architecture and the things in my art history class that are fading without constant use, my heart kept turning back to the idea that I need to get to Germany. Drawn almost inexplicably, the desire to go does not diminish. And this façade did nothing to ease the desires....

 

For whatever reason this octagonal bay protruding into an almost enclosed courtyard seemed to me the most German face on any of the building. Simple, strong design, clean lines and honestly, one of the best looking of the older buildings and stark in its contrasts just seemed to say Middle Germany. Maybe not middle ages Europe. But Middle Germany. The only thing that is missing here is a couple of swans swimming in a moat or a pond with Willow trees framing the picture. Matthias' Schwanenkönig played in my head while Sarah and I blithely snapped picture after picture.

 

Coming around one corner at the right of this picture we found gables in dire need of restoration but still beautiful in its state of decay...

This reminded me of the canal houses along the rivers and in the ports of just about every country touching the North Sea. I t needs so much care and attention. With its great bones still in tact, and amazingly, with its gingerbread still held aloft, the character and rich tradition of craftsman ship that was once part of our American heritage is evident still. With the weathered textures and crumbling blocks that heritage's European roots show. And knowing that Europe protects and honors its cultural heritage far better than we do here, I think is what made me think of Europe, Germany all night.

As we left we heard parts of an open air concert on the lawn behind Building 50, the State Hospital's most recognized sector. How wonderfully weird it would have been to have had the power to blend all my interests in that moment and have Matthias here on the grounds or put Building 50 in Europe at one of his up coming venues. I would love a time when all of my weird interests could collide in a spectacular revel.

 

Alas... that will have to wait for the dreamscape.

 

I learned a few things about me and my ambitions tonight while talking with Sarah.

I learned about my shortcomings in the skills department. The panoramic setting still escapes me and the composite image about shows me I need to work on those skills.

 

I have plenty of Summer sunlight left to practice.

And plenty of Life to work those ambitions out.

 

But for now I must go to bed. Its' been a long three days and I am overly tired. If I do not dream of dragons, unicorns and rampant lions tonight I will be surprised.

Don't click: Click You're Dead

or a proposal to turn referral spam in on itself.


So what brings you here?
What is a nice guy like you doing on a site like this?

Are you a guy? Did you think I was a guy?

Why do I ask?

My stats are inundated.... we're talking flooding the entire Nile River Delta, the Sphinx getting her paws wet inundated, from a site called the Tao of Badass. Now I'm just this little ole geek girl with the typical geek girl crushes and geek girl interests and geek girl hopes. I am weird even for some of my weird friends, breaking that threshold at a warp factor Scotty can not imagine. I lose people around not very sharp curves on a regular basis and have out geeked enough first dates to know that I will never get a second date if I don't tone it down.

The fact that I have not toned it down tells me that I am looking for a geek guy who can actually get over the hurdle or impress me with the creative alternatives. So far nothing too impressing. However, there is a lot to be frustrated about. And I have mentioned those frustrations here. And that makes me wonder if that is the reason that the Tao of Badass has found me.

It is a site designed to help men get the girl they have in their sites. It's rather glitzy looking. And I wonder if maybe it is from the same guy who likes to tell women what they are doing to chase men off and how to stop. I didn't look too closely at the site's actually contents. The fact that it is at the top of my stats makes me wonder about it being a spam bot. But a google search turned up all kinds of comments on youtube about the actual product eased those concerns.

So the Tao of Badass is a real thing though not on Amazon (or is it?). There are lots of other books that are almost the same but not that one. It makes me wonder if some of my ranting about how idiotic men are on approach brought them here. Perhaps the Tao has found me because of my tips on spotting a fake profile hunter, my rants about the stupid one liners... um. Wait. That might have just been on facebook. At any rate: Some how, for some reason the Tao has found me. And it turns out it really is mostly just a legit looking site that is used to hide referral spam. In other words it is linking to those similar looking books on Amazon but is not a real Amazon product. I'm sure someone will point that out to Amazon. So I will refrain from sounding that Trumpet and just let you guys in on a plot. A rebellion against the spammers. A way to Guy Fawkes the Fawkers.

And here is the thing. This looks like a real product. This guy might think that he has all the answers. So he might actually have some legit reason for being the top URL referrer. HOWEVER!!!! No legitimate traffic is coming to my site from his. So, since this happens so often. Since these kinds of people are so good at deflating our writerly egos. I say we take back the internet. And here is how:

First make sure you have the best anti virus software available to you and that it is updated. Run scans to be sure you are covered. If you are super savvy in tech talk then you can use Ubuntu to run a simulated desk top. I am not that savvy. So I am taking chances with doing things this way. Once you are secure proceed with joyous abandon but cautiously...

My fellow bloggers, open your dashboard and look at your stats. See those weird URLs that make no sense? DON'T CLICK them! Those are definitely spammers. Why bother creating a clever name when the random plinkety plink on the keys will yield an address? You'd think someone could come up with an algorithm to weed those random "poahgjajgpwu0t9hjagpka[     dot com"s.  I mean seriously if it is between a www. and a .com .net .org .co .whatever it should be clear that it is just spam. So DON'T CLICK THE RANDOM PLINKETIES!!!!!!!!!

Now to the rest of those URLs that show you who sends traffic your way. DON'T CLICK those either. CLICK AND YOU'RE DEAD. Instead open another tab then carefully highlight the possibly offensive URL, cut and paste that in the search browser and hit enter. One of two things will happen. The search will show the top search results: either a true fan or a list of people griping about referral spam and those who keep reminding the world DON'T CLICK!

And it is the second of the list that I want to talk about. All those people who keep posting about who the fake referrals are from don't write for their internet health. They write for yours, mine, ours. Referral spam takes the wind out of your sails as a writer/blogger. After days and days of this you wonder if it is worth it. The people who write to warn us of the spammers are fulfilling a civic duty. But they may also be providing us low tech folks who write for fun a way to stick it to the Spam-Man.

Read those blogs. Don't just read the referral spam posts. Read a few others. Follow whom you please. Publicly share their hard work. Leave a comment so that the author knows that you are a real person. Do this for a while. You will find some amazing content. And because there is so much referral spam out there and the "next blog" button is so awkward as to what it thinks is a similar blog to your own, you'd never find these awesome people in a life of Sundays. And when you comment let them know that you found them because the Google search showed them fighting the spammers. Just DON'T CLICK the links. CLICK AND YOU'RE DEAD.

Or hi-jacked. Which is like being dead in cyberspace.

This is the way that I found a pretty cool blogger that I follow on Google+ as well. As a matter of fact I have found a few cool bloggers because searching for the offending URL brought me some really good advice about avoiding spammers. Or a shared frustration and good old fashioned ranty rants.


I hate to think that my foreign visitors are just ghosts in the spam machine. But such is life. Again. Take the good. Take the bad. Then take it out on the spammers by becoming fans of their critics.

And...

DON'T CLICK. CLICK AND YOU'RE DEAD

I need a gif

Look Out Blog-O-Sphere!!!!!!!!

I have learned how to do something new.

Not that long ago in normal time, but eons ago in cyber time, Blogger rolled out its new gadgets, tweaks, layouts, and dashboard that were supposed to make the writing life a wonderful life. And I couldn't see a huge improvement in anything but the photo uploader. Thank you IE8 auto spell check, I know "uploader" isn't a word per se. HOWEVER, since this is 3013 and Google makes whatever rules and fake words it wants to when it wants to it would be nice for you to recognize that and not make me have to manually add Googleisms to the dictionary.... though I see that one will have to of course. Where was I?

Oh right... so while I've been on the other site adding pictures and writing about my art and the adventures inherent in long term storage of said works there have been tons TONS of pictures. And every once in a while I will totally overload the system and give it such conniptions that a musical Scrooge would be embarrassed by the shenanigans. The drop down tool bar for editing photos in the post editor will disappear so that I can not resize anything. Or it will make the picture all blue with its highlights and then the menu for text editing will light up like the Mother Ship in Close Encounters. The underline button turns blue. The Link button turns blue. And I don't know what all it means.

Panic. "OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG I can't loose this photo what the hell did you just do!" New Kirk Me says to New Checkov Me. And I say in theeeeeeeeeeee worst Russian accent ever (no disrespect to Yelchin. I suck. He does not.) "I don know Keptin." And then the feeling of inescapable doom sets in. There will be Romulans at the back door. WU-HAT. THEE. HELL?

The last new thing that I learned how to do made me so giddy with excitement that I almost peed. But I put on the grown up pants and went to tell my room mate only to find that she had been gone for hours. So I was forced to extoll my virtues to the three disinterested cats in the house. I believe at least one is the reincarnated Queen Victoria. She is NEVER amused. But this.... oh this thing that I have learned how to do...

Without having to learn to do HTML coding I now can make any word link to any site that I wish it to link to. Just. Like. Wil. And new to the Google task bar in this editor there is a strike out function, you know, for when I really fuck mess something up but kinda want to own it anyway.

Google has taken a lot of crap lately. And with the whole Snowden NSA thing (I know NSA, silence. From ME! Astounding is it not? Don't worry your pretty little loafers over this one though. I'll get to you people eventually) Google is taking a lot of crap for selling out and shafting those of us who use their products. But really.... you have to take the good with the bad. There's a time you have to go and show you're growing up. Being able to object to a principle while using a product as it was intended, to promote YOURSELF and the hard work that you put into things that you got excited about and made, is a grown up thing to do. Little kids get mad and take their toys home. Adults realize all systems are corrupt and learn to live within the system.

If you conscientiously object to everything then you will not participate in the commerce that is the world we live in. If you do that, if you fail to avail yourself of all the tools possible to make your life easier then you have donned the frock of sub-servitude, agreed to be the butler to Mr. Boddy without a means to be better than you ever were just because you don't like how cozy Google or anyone else is with the Powers That Be.

And that is where the PTB want you. If you don't participate they win. They win because they have beaten you and killed your spirit. They've chased you off of a grid that, if you and people who think like you would stay on and ride like a bronco buster, can be reclaimed in true Matrix fashion. You have to be in the Matrix to beat the Matrix. At least that is what I got out of three movies and a couple of over-buttered-popcorn gut aches.

Google give me great tools. And I love them for that. Google is in bed with the sneaky cheeky bastards in our Government and I'd bury it with a stake of Holly in its heart if it had one. But again... take the good take the bad take them both and those are the facts of our modern life.

Until we change it.

I should be asleep but instead I am rattling sabers at things with sharp teeth. Ah the joys of sleep dep.

Geekdom adds some new tech

Can you really call it new tech? There are no gadgets or sound effects. But  I have added two new gadgets to the side bar.

The first is a Google+ button so that if any of this is terribly interesting you can follow directly from your G+ account. Sounds like I expect a jump in readership, huh? Just want it to be easier than the follow button for those who are streamlined.

The second button is a translate button. You have the entire range of languages' Google translate has at its finger tips. Maybe that will help expand the readership. Maybe not. But maybe it will be easier to understand in your own language for those of you who read regularly from various parts of the world.

And yes, we have a new look. The other was spectacular and stunning but... it was not as readable as I thought it would be and the busy background drowned out the pictures that I did post. So I am hoping to be terribly busy writing and posting again now that everything is settling into something reflective of my own style.

Ä as in Ämazing!!!!

Technology and me have a love hate thing. I only love it when it works the way I think it should work or the way the Science fiction taught us it could work. And I hate it when it works the way that it does in the real world. For instance: Keyboard short cuts.

I have the same bad hand posture that I had in typing class. Being taller than most of my classmates, and thus a tad bit beyond the average used as a standard in determining what "functional" means for 95% of the population, I never fit right at a desk or table with a keyboard. It's kinda like how I don't fit sleeves in 98% of anything because I have monkey arms. I am always about 1.5 inches longer than a sleeve or too broad in the shoulder for the body of the shirt. So most of the time I am sleeveless. For sitting and typing I didn't have many options either. I would prefer to be hunched over my keyboard like Schroder over his piano. But alas... that trick almost never works. So my hands just plunk themselves down instead of float above the keys.

And therein lies the problem. Inevitably the pads of my thumbs hit the touch screen of my laptop mouse pad. And then the creative keyboard shortcuts hijinks ensue. I remember in college I did something that totally wiped out my screen and lost my cursor. The graphics teacher came to my rescue because I totally flipped out. I couldn't fix it. Control Z didn't undo what I had done. I couldn't find the cursor and I lost 16 hours worth of work. he hit a few buttons and it all came back. Apparently I accidentally enlarged the work screen by several hundred percentage points and was looking at a part of the project that was blank. And he never showed me what it was that I did.

So the other day I was typing along, minding my own business, when suddenly every word was underscored in red. Really? How did I just spell 16 words wrong? Oh... but I did spell hat right. Good for me... but "me", "but", "and" were wrong? What? It occurred to me that at one point I had hit a couple keys that I didn't want to. Since I was cognizant of that I played with the keys. And my finger slipped off of the "L" and landed on the colon key. Guess what I got...

ö

I accidentally changed my keyboard into German. I had chosen German as a second language at the set up. But I wasn't sure exactly when that would come into play. And I have since found out that, in so doing, when I load photos from the digital camera that it uses German prompts. Oops. That was trippy trying to figure out how that all works.

The alt+shift combo has to be the best accidental keyboard shortcut ever. Now I have Ümlauts and the ß, and whatever these are ´` and `` ´´ German styled quotes. But sadly I also have German spell check checking my English and capitalizing my cognates even though I don't want them capitalized. And for whatever reason they have done it this way, I have a QWERTZ keyboard instead of QWERTY. But that is okay. I have the umlauts and the es-tset (ß).

I can not tell you how amazing that is. Normally when presented with a name like Grönemeyer, you would spell out the umlaut as "oe". And that apparently offends some people. Or you would do the lazy American thing and forget the e and hope Herr Grönemeyer. Isn't offended. But mostly we just add an extra vowel like they did back in the day at Ellis Island. Matt Groening's ancestors would no longer spell it Gröning, Walter Koenig's ancestors would no longer spell it König. And my Gerbstadt ancestors would no longer spell it Gerbstädte.

I understand the philosophy that "Yer in Amerca now, boy" so you have to do things our way. And when you immigrate you should expect that to happen. You should be prepared for some things to change. From a practical stand point... how would an old fashioned standard typewriter ever been able to handle the grammatical and typographical demands of so many other languages. A typewriter would have been as big as a printing press! And how collectible would they ha.... hmmm...
how collectible would they have been?. I wonder.....

But from a calligraphic stand point it is a tragedy to lose the umlauts and the es-tset (ß). Germany has even changed the standards for print media spelling. So now a word that has had the three S composition is going to be spelled with three S instead of ßs. This happens when Germans build compound words. And they build them all the time, almost will-nilly, because they will let their language change with society. In essence, bowing to outside demand, they are doing away with the ß. So then

du warst meine

Große Liebe 

becomes du warst meine Grosse Liebe.
 
Translated as You were my Greatest Love, without the es-tset, the English mind may wish to read that as something else. English common usage of Gross shows disgust. Unless you are talking in units of measure in manufacturing or purchasing. Then its 12 dozen of something. Which would indeed be a very large or a great sum. With the es-tset in there you shock the English mind a little to break the connection to our own vernacular use. And it is just a pretty letter. It softens an otherwise hard-edged language. It is elegant in its calligraphy and economic in its purpose.

So I guess while the German language society is phasing it out, I am going to phase it in. And here is a wish that the Umlaut never dies!

as they say at moo.... Yay!

As they say in Poltergeist: They're heeeeerrrrre! The new cards from moo.com came in today. I was so excited when I picked them up at the desk that I forgot all about the other errands that I had to run today. And thus I let them charge me more for my room than they should have. And the first thing that I did when I got home was tell you guys about it. I can't even begin to tell you how exciting it is to see this printed. I only ordered 25 cards and 25 postcards for this batch. I think that I need to do some more editing. For one the washes came out way more pink in person than I anticipated. But... because it is Christmas and I wanted to get some colors besides blue and green in here that was okay. Aside from telling you guys what the mistake is I don't think that anybody would be able to tell the difference.  It just looks really Christmassy.

I am so EXCITED I just can't stand it!

 

And this is my first post from the Windows 8 platform... I think. I tried this once before and I don't think that I published the post because I hit the wrong button. So Windows 8 definitely does work very differently from the old platform. And it makes all the things that I am used to doing on other people's platforms, i.e. Blogger, very different as well. I feel a lot more like I am a cat with tape on its paws. Moreso than when I just decided to dive into the techno world 5 years ago. Talking with one of the techie/geek pals at work the other day and he said he feels like he is falling behind. And he would be one of the last people that I would suspect of not being able to keep up. No fears...

 

With each success I am more determined to tackle these technological shifts and forge ahead. Having tangible product in my hand is quite an incentive! I've put together some custom pieces on cafepress.com too. Their editor is pretty amazing... for custom pieces. There has to be a way to share the custom pieces with people who want to buy my stuff in a store setting. Perhaps that will become apparent when I actually fork out the cash for a cafepress.com shop.

 

Well I need to get to making some jeweler. Today we have some beautifully bright natural light to work by. And there is a Christmas party at work the end of this week at which it will debut. I can not believe that it is the end of November already. Yikes! 

 

 

 



resistance is futile

Thanks to Wil's shamelss self promotion I have found an entertaining set of videos produced by NASA. Science Friday is Science everyday! Informative, funny and totally full on geek!!!!! Have a look at the Spitzer Space Center's channel on youtube. I'd like to provide a link but for some reason it isn't showing up.

Anywho... this is awesome. I wonder why it hasn't been picked up by some station like, oh I don't know, SCI-FI channel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean really, Saturday morning TV on SyFy (I die a little each time I have to write that) could use a dose of helpful and educational programming. NASA could use a shot in the arm too. Seems like it would make a great symbiotic relationship.

Science rules!

Matthias Reim makes a case for the iPod

By now everyone at work knows that I am on a German music kick that has nothing to do with using Rammstein to communicate severe displeasure with most of the world. In fact the music kick I am on involves hunting for the songs on a tape I was given in high school. Youtube has been a wonderful reference. The problem is that I don't have the case so I am depending on 25 year old memory to tell me what the song is. Remember how hard Name That Tune was? Now try it in a language that you can read but not speak. Yeah... it's been that easy. But like I said, Youtube is helping.

I started with Herbert Groenemeyer because he and Roland Kaiser are predominate in my memory. The refrains are stuck in my head so they are easy to look up. "Tanzen" and "Kinder on Die Macht", namely. With the way that Youtube works finding other artists isn't hard. If a poster likes one artist then likely the other artists won't be too hard to find. Cue Spider Murphy Gang, Nena, Paola, Purple Shultz, Trio (what? They weren't American?) and a pleasant surprise Geier Sturzflug.

That last one was a great surprise. "Besuchen Sie Europa" didn't show up right away so I waded through the start of a lot of songs to find this one. What fun. It's not really the kind of song that you'd polka to. And no one NO ONE wants to see me try to polka. But golly, Wally, it's fun to dance to!!! The poster who listed the video for that song lead me to an new voice I'd not heard before. Enter Matthias Reim.

I don't really know what I can say about the music since I don't, as I said, speak German so much as read it. So transcribing lyrics for future translation is a little tricky. And there is no way that I could manage it right now anyway. The voice has that kind of resonance that induces a trance and warm fuzzies. Which, generally speaking, is probably why I like foreign music anyway. Without knowing what the song's literal meaning is you can pay attention to the tones and the quality of the voice. Smooth as honey with a little bit of a raspy edge, Matthias Reim is all kinds of Wunderbar! And that was before I got a good look at him.... I'm sunk.

This adventure could not make any clearer what my type of person is. German. And not just any kind of German. Richard Dean Anderson kind of German with the low, thick brow; deeper set eyes; firm, angular jawline; wider, bulbous nose; and the mouth... thin lips and a slightly protruding process above the upper lip with deep vertical smile lines that are longer than mere dimples. You know... good strong German features. And he looks so much like someone I know personally that if they were side by side on a street in Dresden at 40 paces I wouldn't be able to tell them apart. OY! and VEY!

I'm sunk. First because I know I can't have what I want and finding a suitable replacement is harder with people than products. And second I'm sunk because I've sworn that I am not going to go digital. Collecting CDs has been expensive enough. But I have to have some Matthias Reim now. And if I get the iPod to listen to him, then I will need Sprunge and most everything that Roland Kaiser did in addition to all the songs from the tape I have. Even at .99 per song that is going to add up. The other upside is that I can plug in the iPod at work and listen to music static free, not worry about people stealing CDs or scratching the heck out of them. Yes, with my musical tastes the former is hardly a real concern.

Damn Matthias, way to make a case for the iPod. @wilw didn't manage to seduce me to the Dark Side of the Digital era with all the iPod stuff. But you... you have to have a voice and a style that oozes all kinds of come hither.

technofrustration

One day Media Player will open when I download Memories of the Futurecast episodes and then not replay them because they are on the internet at I tunes... even though I have downloaded them already from Wilw's site. Then the next day I download a podcast I have to save it to a folder without the benefit of Media Player for no other reason than....
stars misaligned?
my magic Wesley Crusher fix it thingy is broke?
the computer hates me?
Rodney McKay highjacked my computer to fix a DHD on some forsake our old gods planet?
My 'puter thinks its a Hal9000 and acts like a Commodore 64?
the nanites got out of the lab?
God hates me?
The Fates like laughing at technophobic geeks?
someone on Alpha Ceti left the lights on 15million years ago and it caused anomolies on Earth now? [yeah you get the tenses right when dealing with the fluidity of time/space. I dare you. I double dog dare you!]
My futureself hasn't educated present self on properly setting up media player?
Microsoft is pissed that I'm not using Windows whateverthehellversionexistsinthistime/space?
It is a karmic test for which there is no right/wrong yin/yang answer?
the 'puter doesn't like the feng of my shui?
Somebody's borrogroves are all mimsy?
did someone kill an Enchanted Bunny with a rock? Frelling Moonpie!
what?

WHY CAN'T IT WORK THE SAME WAY EVERY TIME I WANT TO FRAKKING DOWNLOAD A HARMLESS BUT ENTERTAINING PODCAST IN HONOR OF ALL GEEKDOM????????????

Oh wait. It's because Sheldon Cooper is superior to me in always* and Microsoft likes to prove it at every turn. Stupid Moonpie!!!!!

*I do see what I did there and I'm leaving it that way on purpose.

geek love

Have I said, lately, how much I love my new mouse? It's purple. It's smooth and handle great on corners. Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove. Exciting and new.
Till the bloom fades from the rose, any way.

boldly going somewhere

Since the middle of March I've been following Brent Spiner on Twitter. Trekkies know him as Lieutenant Commander Data, a Soong type android serving aboard the Enterprise. At first I was following because I was already following Wil Wheaton. They had a dialog between them that all of us Hollywood outsiders could eavesdrop on. They totally sounded normal and geeky in a famous people way. Spiner had just finished "Man from LaMancha" & auctioning his 500th tweet. Then things got strange.
Wondering how to jump start/restart/reboot his career he put himself into an imaginary world only two steps into the pale beyond the reality that we know. Spiner pulled a Serling and went somewhere dark and desperate that could have been real. After only a few posts I was hooked. I've been obsessively signing into Twitter to see where we were going with him. In turns humorous, poignant and puzzling, Spiner's saga was always captivating with its minimalism. Twitter only allows post of 140 characters at a time. Thus an author must be evocative, making the most of this stringent limit.
Spiner gives us dialog, direction and emotion in each post. For a while it seemed as though he were living the life any actor uncertain of his future and frustrated with his agent would live. Events of his life seemed to unfold with the steady pacing each of us see in our lives, a convincing reality where nothing but everything could happen. After the initial joke about kick starting his career with an unnecessary rehab stint and ping pong with James Woods, days ticked away with the kind of everyman updates we had become accustomed to with Wheaton.
But if you know anything about his life you would have to wonder why there were no more posts about events with his son. And why didn't he mention the home cooked dinner Gates McFadden made for the next Generation family as reported by LeVar Burton? The plot isn't interrupted with his Denver convention experience of last week. If there was ever a doubt that he was writing fiction on Twitter these omissions remove all doubt.
Because his tweets were infrequent, irregular and organic his fiction had the feeling of reality. This might account for the confusion among his followers that manifested in a flurry of replies to Spiner's twitterstream on Sunday. The plot twisted. I started thinking.

What makes this so compelling? What does this experimental medium mean for fiction? And the answer is surprising: the audience. Spiner's readership can do with Twitter something that no audience has been able to do before. That is that they can make the author aware of their thoughts as the story is being written. This medium offers opportunity for critique, commentary and community in realtime. In the past an author had to wait for a story to be published to find out how it is recieved through reviews and placement on the New York Times Bestseller List or the dread booksigning. In the past a book club or the book signing was the only way that the audience connected with each other. This is no longer true.
The audience can critque the work in progress, within seconds of the words being printed. And they do, with color and intensity. For the first time in history the author can "hear" the audience's commentary. The audience can tell the scary movie character not to open the door; or in Spiner's case we were yelling at him to get out while the getting was good. I believe I encouraged him to run for his life. I only hope I neglected to add that the Tasmanian Devil was on the lose. Of course just because the author/actor can hear us doesn't mean they listen any better than the canned actors. But the comments are varied and do go off on tangents. The author got to see what was going through the audiences' mind. Fortunately, our author is used to dealing with strange new worlds and packs a phaser... just in case. The author can also see how and why the audience connects. In this case it is obviously the Star Trek stuff. As this is the first time anyone has written a novel/treatment/script using Twitter (that I know off) it is hard to say exactly how this will all play out.
As for what it means for fiction, I can't say. I fear what it says for performance art is the same thing that VHS movies said to the cinema: everyday is casual Friday. I hope that people going to see live performances of any kind remember that they aren't supposed to interact with the cast on stage and that the place to make friends is not in their seats while they are watching but in the cafe afterwards.
In general this has been a fun ride. As of this post it is not over. There is the conclusion yet. Will he? Won't he? I don't know. All I know is that Earl Stanley Gardner would have thrown the book at the audience instead of the defendents on the witness stand.

Plum delish!

So I got my plum colored mouse. I had to since the whole highlight a ginormous block of text was driving me nuts on my tiny little dufus mouse pad built into the laptop. It really is the most inconvenient thing on the 'puter. I never get enough highlighted to make my rearrangements work. So I bit the bullet and bought the mouse. This thing is great.
I want to write all day tomorrow just so that I can use my mouse. Well... not just so that I can use my mouse. I want to write because I finally figured out what I was going to write. And I went to the stationers today and got all my gear together.
Stationers is just a fancy word for Office Depot, I feel more Conan Doyle using that word instead of the big box name. But anyway... off to nappy land.

Seduction of the technophobe

So, I am cruising through the aisles at Office Max after completing my mission to find packing material to secure [at least in my mind] my possessions with Rube Goldbergian sureity when I see IT. This thing that will suck money from me faster than iTunes, faster than a DVD sale at Best Buy, is, as the marketing gurus have said, the right color, the color that will make people absolutely buy what they don't have the money for.
I don't have 30.00 plus tax to spend on a gadget. But I have a need for it, legitimate, solves an eternal and infernal conundrum and it is... perfect. I am resisting its pull. But as we all know, resistance is futile. The only question now is how long can I resist its ergonomicentricity*, the way it fits my palm perfectly, its size and weight in my hand? How long can I resist its pearlescence... its shimmer... the look that begs to be used? How long can I resist its attempts to seduce me into the techno era with complete and utter surrender...


Okay smart ass I will ask Mr. Owl... sheesh do you people do anything besides what TV?

*ergonomicentricity: adj. new word developed by the author to describe a state of having an intrinsic quality of ergonomic design.