iMovie is a nice chunk of technology and I approve of it. I am definitely, but definitely, not cut out to be a film editor. Or director. Maybe a storyboard artist, but if so then I need to get a lot faster with my pencils.
I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that it lets me record voiceover audio, which means that all the trouble I went to in recording mpg files of me narrating was unnecessary, but hey. The MacBook Pro has quite a snazzy little mic. Had to screw around a lot with the ducking levels and am still not happy with it, but eh, it's at least coherent and you can understand it, and the pics are reasonably good-looking.
Enjoyed watching bits of the Rally For Sanity yesterday online. Christ, I can remember when 28.8 was FAST INTERNET. Did I really do online chat with graphics back in those days? It's hard to believe, but I remember having lots of conversations with a chap calling himself Methodin Madness, in a chat room consisting of a (bad) CGI beach/deck/promenade, in the persona of a white-haired black-eyed woman who went by something utterly abysmal like "Aevanis."
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Looks like it'll be the BS Tower. I've just recorded a bunch of clips of me narrating. Question: Can I extract the sound files from the .mpg and use that?
God, I wish I knew everything already. Decided agin Summerland due to having to request a huge horrible number of copyright permissions from the guy who's done the biggest investigation into the concept so far. BS Tower I can do with mostly my own pix and hope that basic fair-use will cover the rest.
God, I wish I knew everything already. Decided agin Summerland due to having to request a huge horrible number of copyright permissions from the guy who's done the biggest investigation into the concept so far. BS Tower I can do with mostly my own pix and hope that basic fair-use will cover the rest.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
tweet this
Cate and I are PARTNERS! for the looking-at-forms-of-electronic-publishing project, and we're working with Twitter. I've had a couple of twitter accounts over the past year or so, and just started up one for Jean-Paul Marat to accompany my Joseph Bazalgette twitter. I have one of my own now, though, @alientaxpayer.
Cate's idea is to use Twitter as an actual real-time interactive literary tool to create a story, or a narrative, or a conversation--not just between us two students but with as many people as we can get to join in. It's kind of the 2010 equivalent of those stories where you take the sentence the previous person wrote and write your sentence in response/continuation.
Cate's idea is to use Twitter as an actual real-time interactive literary tool to create a story, or a narrative, or a conversation--not just between us two students but with as many people as we can get to join in. It's kind of the 2010 equivalent of those stories where you take the sentence the previous person wrote and write your sentence in response/continuation.
So, videos.
I'm not one of Nature's videographers, and I'm certainly not one of Nature's narrators or on-screen talent. For the most part I think my video project is going to be pretty much entirely a slideshow, maybe with some stock footage, because I know perfectly well I won't be able to get the quality of video I'd find acceptable with my dinky little PowerShot's movie feature--and I don't have access to professional-grade cameras or someone who knows how to use them.
I think I'd like to do either something like a video version of one of my essay entries about the Earhart disappearance/Gantenbrink's door/the search for Andrew Irvine or a little mini-history-lesson on something like the Bromo-Seltzer tower (as a companion piece to the essay on the tower in November's UB Post).
I'd really like to do a tiny documentarylet on the two Pajarito Site accidents, Daghlian and Slotin, or something on the Summerland disaster...wait. Summerland might actually work, on account of I have a lot of the pictures and I know a ton about it based on my research--and I can probably find some really brief news footage of the actual conflagration. Maybe I'll be focusing on that. BS Tower is a good fall-back as I've got some of the work on it done already.
I think I'd like to do either something like a video version of one of my essay entries about the Earhart disappearance/Gantenbrink's door/the search for Andrew Irvine or a little mini-history-lesson on something like the Bromo-Seltzer tower (as a companion piece to the essay on the tower in November's UB Post).
I'd really like to do a tiny documentarylet on the two Pajarito Site accidents, Daghlian and Slotin, or something on the Summerland disaster...wait. Summerland might actually work, on account of I have a lot of the pictures and I know a ton about it based on my research--and I can probably find some really brief news footage of the actual conflagration. Maybe I'll be focusing on that. BS Tower is a good fall-back as I've got some of the work on it done already.
Monday, October 18, 2010
i was a teenage phone psychic
Actually I was a twenty-something phone psychic and it only lasted a week or so because jesus christ was that unbearably depressing. At least with the UB Post horoscopes I don't have to worry about people believing the tripe I come up with.
Oh wait. Yes I do.
A Concerned Reader wrote to me after the inaugural horoscope column to complain about my characterization of Aquarius. I had explained that, contrary to expectations, Aquarians aren't all about crystals and homeotherapy and moxibustion and indigo children and similar, and suggested that if people with this sign wanted to indulge in new-age rubbish they ought to pretend to be Pisces instead, as Pisces are supposed to be bigga-time practitioners of woo.
I'm not entirely sure which is more disturbing, a) that she apparently didn't twig that the entire goddamn column was a send-up of newspaper astrology in the first place, or b) she takes her astrological sign seriously enough to complain when she feels it is misrepresented.
It's harder than you might think to make up horoscopes. They're all basically the same: this (day, week, month) you will find yourself challenged by (some conjunction of planets, stars, etc) in your (career, love life, finances), plus (other conjunction of planets, stars, etc) will give you much-needed support in making decisions about (career, love life, finances) but you could easily be led astray by (conjunction, etc) so you should not make any important decisions while (planet) is (in location). The trouble is making them interesting.
Sigh. Oh, well. At least I have some fun articles in the next issue.
Oh wait. Yes I do.
A Concerned Reader wrote to me after the inaugural horoscope column to complain about my characterization of Aquarius. I had explained that, contrary to expectations, Aquarians aren't all about crystals and homeotherapy and moxibustion and indigo children and similar, and suggested that if people with this sign wanted to indulge in new-age rubbish they ought to pretend to be Pisces instead, as Pisces are supposed to be bigga-time practitioners of woo.
I'm not entirely sure which is more disturbing, a) that she apparently didn't twig that the entire goddamn column was a send-up of newspaper astrology in the first place, or b) she takes her astrological sign seriously enough to complain when she feels it is misrepresented.
It's harder than you might think to make up horoscopes. They're all basically the same: this (day, week, month) you will find yourself challenged by (some conjunction of planets, stars, etc) in your (career, love life, finances), plus (other conjunction of planets, stars, etc) will give you much-needed support in making decisions about (career, love life, finances) but you could easily be led astray by (conjunction, etc) so you should not make any important decisions while (planet) is (in location). The trouble is making them interesting.
Sigh. Oh, well. At least I have some fun articles in the next issue.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
So, food.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a household run by people who had spent their college years in de facto poverty: it meant that both my mother and father had a lot of experience making meals for very little money that would feed them for several days and still taste of something worth eating.
We didn't go by cookbooks, in my house, except for things like sponge pudding or particular baked goods that required exact measurements to turn out right. I learned to cook basic food without needing a recipe, and how much is enough of this herb and that herb to throw into a dish by watching my parents--and by trial and error. Living on my own, cooking is a bit more complicated than it would be for more than one person: ingredients need to be bought in the right proportion and stored until needed, whereas in a household of three or more you don't need to worry about aliquoting your veg or bread or whatever into freezer-ready bits so it won't spoil before you can use it.
I've spent some time looking at cookbooks from the Lurid Vintage era of cookery, and what strikes me most obviously about them is that almost every meat recipe contains sugar. Here's a representative but fictitious example:
Polynesian South-Of-The-Border Cheesy Meat Roast Bake
Mix one pound of ground beef with half a pound of Velveeta (if using real cheese, add half a cup of vegetable oil and three drops of yellow food coloring). Add 1 one-pound can of pineapple tidbits, drained (reserve syrup). Mix in one cup packed brown sugar, half a cup of vinegar, two cloves, one quarter teaspoon of black pepper, and one can sweetened condensed milk. Mix to emulsify.
Grease a pyrex baking dish sufficient to hold the contents and pour in your meat batter. Bake at 350 for 2 hours or until pretty much done. 10 minutes before removing from oven, pour syrup from pineapple bits over meat and replace in oven to glaze. Garnish with radish roses. Your family will love it!
It's most obvious in the dishes made from pig--almost nothing pig-related in the fifties, sixties, or seventies was included in recipes without honey, brown sugar, molasses, more honey, or fruit syrup of some description. It's an interesting sociological point when you think of what you might say today if someone offered you Ham With Nectarines or Piquant Meat Ring (containing half a pound of refined sugar).
Tonight, for example, I had ghetto caprese salad consisting of chopped cherry tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cubes with a dressing of olive oil, salt*, black pepper, and basil. Followed by a chicken breast butterflied and stuffed with tarragon and marjoram and baked with garlic and onion. Neither of these dishes contained any form of sugar other than that included naturally with the tomatoes, and surprisingly enough I did not miss it. Perhaps the era of sweetened meatloaf has passed.
We can hope.
*okay so it was pink himalayan salt but don't judge me, that shit is amazing
We didn't go by cookbooks, in my house, except for things like sponge pudding or particular baked goods that required exact measurements to turn out right. I learned to cook basic food without needing a recipe, and how much is enough of this herb and that herb to throw into a dish by watching my parents--and by trial and error. Living on my own, cooking is a bit more complicated than it would be for more than one person: ingredients need to be bought in the right proportion and stored until needed, whereas in a household of three or more you don't need to worry about aliquoting your veg or bread or whatever into freezer-ready bits so it won't spoil before you can use it.
I've spent some time looking at cookbooks from the Lurid Vintage era of cookery, and what strikes me most obviously about them is that almost every meat recipe contains sugar. Here's a representative but fictitious example:
Polynesian South-Of-The-Border Cheesy Meat Roast Bake
Mix one pound of ground beef with half a pound of Velveeta (if using real cheese, add half a cup of vegetable oil and three drops of yellow food coloring). Add 1 one-pound can of pineapple tidbits, drained (reserve syrup). Mix in one cup packed brown sugar, half a cup of vinegar, two cloves, one quarter teaspoon of black pepper, and one can sweetened condensed milk. Mix to emulsify.
Grease a pyrex baking dish sufficient to hold the contents and pour in your meat batter. Bake at 350 for 2 hours or until pretty much done. 10 minutes before removing from oven, pour syrup from pineapple bits over meat and replace in oven to glaze. Garnish with radish roses. Your family will love it!
It's most obvious in the dishes made from pig--almost nothing pig-related in the fifties, sixties, or seventies was included in recipes without honey, brown sugar, molasses, more honey, or fruit syrup of some description. It's an interesting sociological point when you think of what you might say today if someone offered you Ham With Nectarines or Piquant Meat Ring (containing half a pound of refined sugar).
Tonight, for example, I had ghetto caprese salad consisting of chopped cherry tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cubes with a dressing of olive oil, salt*, black pepper, and basil. Followed by a chicken breast butterflied and stuffed with tarragon and marjoram and baked with garlic and onion. Neither of these dishes contained any form of sugar other than that included naturally with the tomatoes, and surprisingly enough I did not miss it. Perhaps the era of sweetened meatloaf has passed.
We can hope.
*okay so it was pink himalayan salt but don't judge me, that shit is amazing
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
privilege
One thing I've learned over my years of being female, human, and existing in the world is that privilege is seldom actually recognized by the privileged.
Example: [heterosexual white middle-class person] complains about [members of group they don't belong to] being "oversensitive" or just "looking for a reason to cry sexism/racism/classism/whateverism."
Until you have been a member of the group discriminated against, you don't get to state what is and is not prejudice against that group. And I'm not even going to touch male privilege here: it's so utterly endemic and ingrained in our culture that pointing it out is like pointing out that water falls from the sky when it is raining.
You see, privilege is something you don't realize you have if you have it. Here are some rather eye-opening studies of the idea of privilege: Unpacking the Knapsack: White Privilege and Unpacking the Knapsack II: Straight Privilege. And because I know it's a lot of work to click links and read, here's some telling points from each. Can you say this and mean it?
White Privilege
I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.
I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.
If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.
I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.
Straight Privilege
I am not asked to think about why I am straight.
Nobody calls me straight with maliciousness.
I can be open about my sexual orientation without worrying about my job.
I can walk in public with my significant other and not have people double-take or stare.
I can choose to not think politically about my sexual orientation.
Because of my sexual orientation, I do not need to worry that people will harass me.
People don't ask why I made my choice of sexual orientation.
People don't ask why I made my choice to be public about my sexual orientation.
I do not have to fear revealing my sexual orientation to friends or family. It's assumed.
My sexual orientation was never associated with a closet.
People of my gender do not try to convince me to change my sexual orientation.
I don't have to defend my heterosexuality.
I can easily find a religious community that will not exclude me for being heterosexual.
I can be pretty sure that my roomate, hallmates and classmates will be comfortable with my sexual orientation.
If I pick up a magazine, watch TV, or play music, I can be certain my sexual orientation will be represented.
When I talk about my heterosexuality (such as in a joke or talking about my relationships), I will not be accused of pushing my sexual orientation onto others.
I do not have to fear that if my family or friends find out about my sexual orientation there will be economic, emotional, physical or psychological consequences.
I did not grow up with games that attack my sexual orientation (IE fag tag or smear the queer).
I am not accused of being abused, warped or psychologically confused because of my sexual orientation.
I can go home from most meetings, classes, and conversations without feeling excluded, fearful, attacked, isolated, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, stereotyped or feared because of my sexual orientation.
I am never asked to speak for everyone who is heterosexual.
If you're a member of the majority and you don't bother to think about these things, think about them to the point where you actually become aware of your privilege informing everything you do, you do not get to tell any other group of people who do not share your privilege that they are being oversensitive or just need to suck it up and get on with life.
Example: [heterosexual white middle-class person] complains about [members of group they don't belong to] being "oversensitive" or just "looking for a reason to cry sexism/racism/classism/whateverism."
Until you have been a member of the group discriminated against, you don't get to state what is and is not prejudice against that group. And I'm not even going to touch male privilege here: it's so utterly endemic and ingrained in our culture that pointing it out is like pointing out that water falls from the sky when it is raining.
You see, privilege is something you don't realize you have if you have it. Here are some rather eye-opening studies of the idea of privilege: Unpacking the Knapsack: White Privilege and Unpacking the Knapsack II: Straight Privilege. And because I know it's a lot of work to click links and read, here's some telling points from each. Can you say this and mean it?
White Privilege
I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.
I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.
If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.
I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.
Straight Privilege
I am not asked to think about why I am straight.
Nobody calls me straight with maliciousness.
I can be open about my sexual orientation without worrying about my job.
I can walk in public with my significant other and not have people double-take or stare.
I can choose to not think politically about my sexual orientation.
Because of my sexual orientation, I do not need to worry that people will harass me.
People don't ask why I made my choice of sexual orientation.
People don't ask why I made my choice to be public about my sexual orientation.
I do not have to fear revealing my sexual orientation to friends or family. It's assumed.
My sexual orientation was never associated with a closet.
People of my gender do not try to convince me to change my sexual orientation.
I don't have to defend my heterosexuality.
I can easily find a religious community that will not exclude me for being heterosexual.
I can be pretty sure that my roomate, hallmates and classmates will be comfortable with my sexual orientation.
If I pick up a magazine, watch TV, or play music, I can be certain my sexual orientation will be represented.
When I talk about my heterosexuality (such as in a joke or talking about my relationships), I will not be accused of pushing my sexual orientation onto others.
I do not have to fear that if my family or friends find out about my sexual orientation there will be economic, emotional, physical or psychological consequences.
I did not grow up with games that attack my sexual orientation (IE fag tag or smear the queer).
I am not accused of being abused, warped or psychologically confused because of my sexual orientation.
I can go home from most meetings, classes, and conversations without feeling excluded, fearful, attacked, isolated, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, stereotyped or feared because of my sexual orientation.
I am never asked to speak for everyone who is heterosexual.
If you're a member of the majority and you don't bother to think about these things, think about them to the point where you actually become aware of your privilege informing everything you do, you do not get to tell any other group of people who do not share your privilege that they are being oversensitive or just need to suck it up and get on with life.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Done it.
http://home.ubalt.edu/students/UB13J07/unfoundisland.html
I have no idea why it took me so long to realize that I needed the eventual URL in order to make links that linked to something other than my USB drive or my home computer. It's tricky. I'm sure there's a better way to do it than the one I did, which I shall detail in the rewritten paper.
I have no idea why it took me so long to realize that I needed the eventual URL in order to make links that linked to something other than my USB drive or my home computer. It's tricky. I'm sure there's a better way to do it than the one I did, which I shall detail in the rewritten paper.
Welp.
EDIT: Ok, I know what the problem is. Oy. Ignore the stuff below.
I've got all the files for the site uploaded to my H drive, but (surprise of surprises) none of it seems to work. Much of it gives me 404 errors and when you go to the actual URL for my webspace you get the directory folder I created on the H drive to insert all my files into, but you don't get any actual, y'know, FILES.
I've been fighting with this all day and I'm starting to lose stability. At least I have all the files for the site, all the links work when previewed in Firefox, and it doesn't look as awful as I feared it would. Still can't do anything at all with the bg image/image map issue, and there's no adorable little animation on the home page when you hover over any of the links, because--again--they're image maps. And you can't do image maps on a bg image, you have to do them on an inline image, and I do not feel like using Flash to get round this.
All the websites I've found that suggest they know how to get round the issues I've come up against have this adorably coy way of showing you the code: they show you the snippets of CSS, but then when you go to the live example and ask it to show you source code, they don't actually show you their style sheet. Just the HTML. Which does not help.
Looks like I'll be handing in the flash drive. It is just so infuriating not knowing where to start troubleshooting something like this.
There's a very great deal of information in the site. The home page links to 4 main categories, each of which has at least four or five individual content pages, each of which link back to the homepage AND the about AND the bio. If I could just get it running, it'd be less embarrassingly inadequate.
Also there's not a lot of graphics involved. I'm going to hope that the header/footer/link .jpgs count as graphics.
I've got all the files for the site uploaded to my H drive, but (surprise of surprises) none of it seems to work. Much of it gives me 404 errors and when you go to the actual URL for my webspace you get the directory folder I created on the H drive to insert all my files into, but you don't get any actual, y'know, FILES.
I've been fighting with this all day and I'm starting to lose stability. At least I have all the files for the site, all the links work when previewed in Firefox, and it doesn't look as awful as I feared it would. Still can't do anything at all with the bg image/image map issue, and there's no adorable little animation on the home page when you hover over any of the links, because--again--they're image maps. And you can't do image maps on a bg image, you have to do them on an inline image, and I do not feel like using Flash to get round this.
All the websites I've found that suggest they know how to get round the issues I've come up against have this adorably coy way of showing you the code: they show you the snippets of CSS, but then when you go to the live example and ask it to show you source code, they don't actually show you their style sheet. Just the HTML. Which does not help.
Looks like I'll be handing in the flash drive. It is just so infuriating not knowing where to start troubleshooting something like this.
There's a very great deal of information in the site. The home page links to 4 main categories, each of which has at least four or five individual content pages, each of which link back to the homepage AND the about AND the bio. If I could just get it running, it'd be less embarrassingly inadequate.
Also there's not a lot of graphics involved. I'm going to hope that the header/footer/link .jpgs count as graphics.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
public service announcement
There are many little annoying grammar and spelling mistakes people on the internet make over and over again, and for the most part I can skim over them with some concentration and effort. Some of them just jump out and grab the gaze and snag it, unignorable, unmitigated, excruciating. Such as this:
a women
STOP DOING THIS.
Would you write "a men"? No. Because "men" is plural of "man." Just as "women" with an E is plural of "woman" with an A. They are in no way the same thing. They are disparate. They are not synonymous. They are discrete. Ils ne sont pas la meme chose. STOP DOING THIS.
a women
STOP DOING THIS.
Would you write "a men"? No. Because "men" is plural of "man." Just as "women" with an E is plural of "woman" with an A. They are in no way the same thing. They are disparate. They are not synonymous. They are discrete. Ils ne sont pas la meme chose. STOP DOING THIS.
Monday, October 4, 2010
of the day's positives, these
1) got drinks paid for by a charming and cocksure young lad I've spoken to before with whom I had a vivid and interesting conversation touching on, among other things, childfreedom, and was astonished that after bingoing me with "you're so smart you are totally the type of person who should breed" we got on to an honest and interesting discussion in which he did not mansplain to me excessively and did, in fact, agree that he had not thought some aspects of the issue through completely
2) at class, explained my problem with getting bg images to scale in css to both profs, and had both of them get to the point I was on Sunday where we were annoyed enough that it wasn't working to go keep looking for solutions on the internet, so now there's three of us looking for the answer instead of just me. also? this class is the definition of awesome.
3) got books signed by Mark Doty at his reading, <3 <3 <3
4) got home without incident, after Udo's little flailing I DON'T WANT TO GO INTO GEAR ON THE ENTRANCE RAMP TO 295 moment on Sunday afternoon I am paranoid that I am somehow awful enough at driving a manual transmission that I am capable of comprehensively fucking up a clutch without realizing it within three months, so it's nice to get from point A to point B without AAA. It would also be nice to have that lovely fleeting sense of NOT HAVING TO WORRY ABOUT MY CAR back, but not poppy nor mandragora nor all the soothing syrups, etc.
5) ROOF DID NOT LEAK DESPITE RAINS TODAY
6) earlier, landlord caught me on way to class and asked after roof; I said that it looked bone-fucking-dry when I stopped in before class to put on jeans and grab school bag, and he thanked me prettily again for the triple midnight trash-bag offensive, plus volunteered that he'd just put out more anti-rat without me even having to ask him nicely
On the whole, net positive.
2) at class, explained my problem with getting bg images to scale in css to both profs, and had both of them get to the point I was on Sunday where we were annoyed enough that it wasn't working to go keep looking for solutions on the internet, so now there's three of us looking for the answer instead of just me. also? this class is the definition of awesome.
3) got books signed by Mark Doty at his reading, <3 <3 <3
4) got home without incident, after Udo's little flailing I DON'T WANT TO GO INTO GEAR ON THE ENTRANCE RAMP TO 295 moment on Sunday afternoon I am paranoid that I am somehow awful enough at driving a manual transmission that I am capable of comprehensively fucking up a clutch without realizing it within three months, so it's nice to get from point A to point B without AAA. It would also be nice to have that lovely fleeting sense of NOT HAVING TO WORRY ABOUT MY CAR back, but not poppy nor mandragora nor all the soothing syrups, etc.
5) ROOF DID NOT LEAK DESPITE RAINS TODAY
6) earlier, landlord caught me on way to class and asked after roof; I said that it looked bone-fucking-dry when I stopped in before class to put on jeans and grab school bag, and he thanked me prettily again for the triple midnight trash-bag offensive, plus volunteered that he'd just put out more anti-rat without me even having to ask him nicely
On the whole, net positive.
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