#murf examples

[ai-innova7ions]

Transform Your Projects with Murf AI's Voice Generation Magic!

Discover the transformative power of Murf AI's voice generation magic in this exciting short! This video showcases how AI audio technology is revolutionizing content creation with its incredible AI narration and voiceover capabilities. Explore the future of voiceovers with cutting-edge artificial intelligence that brings digital narration to life.

Murf AI:

Murf AI features advanced speech synthesis and synthetic voices, allowing you to create compelling voice clones and experience voice modulation like never before.

From professional projects to personal endeavors, see how Murf AI can elevate your work with its innovative voice toolkit.

Join us as we delve into Murf examples that highlight the versatility of this voiceover software, and witness the impact of voiceover technology on the industry.

Whether you're a content creator or simply curious about voice cloning AI, this video is a must-watch! Transform your projects today with Murf AI's voice generation magic!

#murfai #digitalvoicetechnology

[pigtailedgirl]

Star Trek Prodigy season 1 down

So i finished.

Still loving it so much. I think season 2 edges it out, especially in terms of finale and build to, but it was absolutely lovely in so many small moments.

I gonna do a re-watch again as whole very shortly. It's a good sign it's a series to concentrate more on and I want to come back to catch more.

Minor quibbles was :

I loved squish Murf and new form is taking some time to warm on. (Though it gave us mustache mirror Murf so...conficted.) I liked a non person type communicating crew member.

The run from about 14 to 17 had great moments, and yet felt, how do you put it? Out of place. Filler. Star Wars more than Star Trek in action focus in parts. The stories were fluffier in the sense they felt it could have been out of any kids genre series. The references and plot beats tied in were exciting but weren't enough to make the episodes carry momentum. Like the backstories were interesting, Pog's and Rok's especially. I don't know if I wanted it though.

The ending with Starfleet getting itself wrecked was dark. Maybe too much. And why would you have built a ship that would blow an entire system if she destructed guys? Poor planning there.

This series has excelled at bringing the idea of hope and joy back of what it could be to be in Starfleet or a space universe. Tell those stories and the sci-fis again. The basics fit this show to a tee. Being a come together of interests and exploration and then using that base to protect and share. Be it others. Be it yourself. Find your passions and your histories and your new adventures.

Boldly, go fast.

Problem is that these kids are the best rep of what to pass on re: Starfleet and they speech it good, they embody it. You see the show for the first in the long line of new knows this message.

When Starfleet is saved by Gwen's speech. By Janeway's about them.

Yet then they also have to contend with tying into a Starfleet in canon who besides Janeway and select aren't living to what they preach. Who are having to be preached at? Who are and are gonna get fucked for it big time. Who are getting schooled by these kids, but should already know better. Always the authority or whole still lets down. And like no! It doesn't have to be. Teach that that can be mended and an example of together too please. Kids need adult models who succeed.

I don't need a knockdown of old Starfleet looming as I see the youth doing it right. It feels conflicting in the wrong way.

More than the Civil War, there can be a contrasting example, and time fuckery of Solom and Solom girl. Loved that.

Kate slayed everything about Janeway all season. The mind switch episode had both actors just kill it.

Rok is my favourite scientist and character again.

The second contact species was a beautiful tribute and point to Star Trek's history and impacts.

And as always, god was Janeway off charts over finding Chakotay and every bit of it was glorious.

That ice episode and the animation on her face when even though she makes the point they are kids, you see her instant track change to okay there is more to it it's kids and gonna not judge as much but then she sees the ship rise up and take off on her, they are taking his fucking ship, and they have it and she doesn't know the why and she's just; My god it's so livid and it's glorious!

Her love of him and coffee. For life. I am so ready to be meta-ing on this for the fall.

WATCH THIS SHOW YO. BOLDLY, GO FAST, YIP YIP.

[joju-but-trek]

Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2, Episode 19: Ouroboros, Part 1

So next episode starts with Andrew Garfield jumping through, right?

Entering the finale, things are certainly escalating. It seems to be organizing around the two main threats of the season and giving them each an episode in the spotlight, which does make sense. It works, and this episode is a good wrap-up of the Ascensia plotline while also giving Gwyn some resolution. 9/10

This episode is all motion. It has to be, and it's well-paced for it. Voyager is handling space combat and half the main crew gets a cool platform fight that reminds me a bit of Phantom Menace. It all looks fantastic, and I love it.

It is interesting that they split everyone up into different strands for the finale. It's good storytelling economy, but after the buildup of how important it was that everyone stay together it does feel weird. That being said, the dynamics do work well. We get high-stakes math in one thread, high-stakes plugging-things-in in another, and high-stakes swordfighting in a third. They're all fun.

I'm glad Gwyn got the moment with Ascensia. We started the season with her on the thread, and just by the nature of what the show had to cover we lost that, but there's a nice wrapup here for it. Thematically, I'm not sure where I fall on Gwyn winning with the power of community and family. It works with the show overall, and I think it works in the moment, but the first time Gwyn and Ascensia dueled this season Gwyn almost won alone and part of me thinks that reestablishing that in front of the Vau N'Kat would have worked. That being said, there's something in them accepting her whether or not she can take Ascensia, so I'm split on that.

While Gwyn was doing character development, Dal was busy trying to plug something in. It was a good self-sacrifice beat for him, and it does support his character arc really nicely. It was also a fun visual of Murf keeping the Drednok busy.

I also like that the time travel is coming together. Ouroboros is a good name for the episode because of how the causal loop works out. Good naming there.

The only thing left is the Loom coming out of a wormhole. It's a good menace for the finale, but it does make me question again how Ascensia captured one. It's also another example of the apocalyptic stakes for basically all of modern Trek. Other people have complained before and care about it more than I do, but it is pretty blatant when space and time are falling apart here. It works here, for this show, in this context, though, so I'm not holding it against the season specifically.

[technonews-biz]

5 best artificial intelligence apps for summer 2024 jobs

Artificial intelligence is bursting into our lives at a breakneck speed. It is literally infiltrating our daily lives, so today we will take a look at the top 5 best apps that are powered by artificial intelligence.

Photoleap by Lightricks - an artificial intelligence based photo editor

Photoleap by Lightricks is a modern photo editor that combines many features and tools, including artificial intelligence. Photoleap fulfills a wide range of needs for both professionals and creative people who want to improve their photo editing experience and take image processing to the next level. With artificial intelligence, many complex and time-consuming aspects of processing that often require professional skills can be greatly facilitated.

The Photoleap app offers users the ability to edit backgrounds, remove unwanted objects, create artistic collages, apply various filters and effects - all within a single platform in a matter of moments. It's worth noting that despite its ease of use and use of artificial intelligence, Photoleap is useful not only for quick editing, but also for creating complex artwork.

Photoleap stands out for its mastery of using artificial intelligence for photo editing. With powerful artificial intelligence features, the app facilitates the creative process by helping users achieve impressive results with minimal effort.

Murf - text-to-speech

Murf is an artificial intelligence-based platform capable of converting printed text into speech. This platform is one of the most popular and impressive AI voice generators on the market and is often used to create AI assistants. Murf allows anyone to convert text to speech, voice and dictate, and is used by a wide range of professionals from teachers to podcasters. Murf's main advantage is its many customization options, which will help you create the most natural voice possible. You'll also be able to choose the dialect or accent you need to make your speech even more authentic.

Murf boasts not only a full-fledged artificial voice studio, but also a built-in video editor for creating videos. There are more than 100 AI voices in 15 languages with the ability to choose the speaker, accent, speech style, tone and emotional coloring. Another important Murf feature is voice replacement, which allows you to record videos without using your own voiceover. Murf's voice can be customized in pitch, speed, and volume, as well as adding pauses, accents, and correcting pronunciation.

Murf's key features:

Extensive library of over 100 artificial intelligence voices in all languages;

Natural and expressive speech;

Ability to input both audio and text;

Full-featured artificial intelligence voice studio;

Customization by tone, accent and dialects.

Jasper

Jasper is widely recognized as the best artificial intelligence writing assistant and leads the market due to its impressive features and quality. First you tell it keywords, which Jasper analyzes and then creates sentences, paragraphs or documents based on the topic and tone of voice. It can create a 1,500-word article almost instantly.

The platform offers more than 50 templates for creating content using artificial intelligence, including blog posts, emails, marketing copy, Facebook ad builder, Google ad builder, meta titles and descriptions, press releases, and more.

Here's an overview of some of Jasper's best features:

Huge number of free fonts and writing styles;

Support for over 25 languages;

Simple and easy to understand interface;

Great for writing long texts (articles, letters, etc.);

Ability to define keywords.

Trint

Trint AI Transcription quickly converts your audio and video files into text, which greatly simplifies your work with them. For example, with this service you can easily turn a two-hour lecture into a text document. Handy tools like tags, highlights, and comments make it easy to work together. You can write a story together and share it with colleagues for quick and easy approval.

Trint can transcribe content in over 30 languages and translate it into over 50, so you can tailor content for a global audience in minutes. Create and edit subtitles for all your videos in an instant, expand your reach and ensure accessibility to all members of your audience.

Speechify

Speechify can convert any text format into natural speech and is somewhat similar to Murf. But that's not all - this web-based platform can take PDFs, emails, documents or articles and turn them into audio that you can not only read but also listen to anywhere. The program also allows you to adjust the playback speed and offers over 30 natural voices to choose from. If you don't have time to read an important article or book, Speechify will let you do it on your way to work or home.

Here are some of Speechify's key features:

Convenient extensions for Chrome or Safari;

Access to over 15 languages;

Over 30 voiceover options;

Ability to scan and convert printed text into speech.

Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing the mobile app market: large corporations and small startups alike are using AI to solve a variety of problems and improve productivity. The rapid proliferation and improvement of AI-enabled apps and platforms emphasizes their indispensable role in various areas of daily and professional life, including voice assistance, education, retail, travel, fintech, dating, and media. The integration of artificial intelligence into mobile applications not only improves the user experience, but also changes the way we interact with technology in various fields, making AI tools increasingly indispensable in everyday life.

[whirligig-girl]

placements of most of mellanoid slime worm OCs that i'm aware of on this chart.

I don't think this was the most effective way to measure slime morphology at least among my OCs (nevermind that, because i'm a lesbian and also a little boring, veeeerrry many of these characters are competing for space in the Girl spot)

For one thing, I wish i had an axis that could make humanoids Weird (like "oh no" weird) without making them pass through a simpler shape at the origin. For another thing, my mellanoid slimes are agender by default, so "girl" would be an offensive descriptor to most of them (and the ones that ARE girls might be offended at me putting them lower on the girl-ohno axis even though, for example, Slamtha (yellow w/ three eyes) is exactly as much of a girl as Guz (green girl, yellow shirt), but Guz's two humanoid parents of three (orange and cyan heads right next to each other) are agender but rank higher. (The red snake-worm is her third parent), and Twizzle Bajeeziz (red face, fuzzy soapy beard) is a boy and not a girl. (Though a part of that is just because i couldn't get every character in their spot and still be a legible character image--probably Slamtha should be higher up and the parents lower down)

I also had to interpret "cube" as "geometric/angular." Slamtha's features are more angular than Guz so she's more cube than her. Though there is of course an actual cube slime there.

The purple slimes are mostly @raydrawsdaly's. The purple monster and whale are both Nexus, as is the kinda pissed off six-eyed woman in the girl section, and the more confused one to the upper left of her. The tiny figures in front of the confused one are Nexus' parent Oghu and sibling Oihre. The sketch of the more feminine one (there's a mermaid tail hidden somewhere in there also) is an alt universe version of Nexus called Utut, who did not become an evil space goddex and instead became like a more or less normal starfleet scientist--but they have the same headmates and thus alternate presentations as Nexus does.

The blue one to the right of Guz is T'oumii Ela'as by James @uss-feynman and is a he/any butch.

The indigo one in the "glob" section is Laqus T. Raen by @uss-sonder and is agender.

Directly below them is James' doodle of a friend of T'oumii's.

The blue and purple ones that are CGI renders are Murf, from Star Trek: Prodigy, the sole example of a canon mellanoid slime worm.

The orange and cyan one is Shmoorp Gacklgleb by @msasterisk.

The silver one in the mess of girls is Visca Limax, character of @something-boring. Another woman that should be higher on the girl mess, like Slamtha, but who has slightly weird anatomy (extra arm, prehensile hair) so has to place lower to indicate that.

Basically i think it's a lot easier to interpret my version of the chart if instead of "girl" it's "humanoid," and we take the actual gender out of the equation... and also if you basically collapse almost everything in the girlmess into a single point. The more I look at the chart the more I'm questioning my decisions--like, Nexus/Utut's design is more detailed than Guz's, so does that mean that they should swap positions on the X axis? Maybe I only ranked Guz closer to the middle because she's my favorite character and I'm biased--but if I keep nitpicking my own chart I'll be up all night.

Despite the weirdness, this was still helpful because it gives me a general idea of what kinds of character designs remain to be done. There's some wide open gaps that are rife with potential character creation.

having a discussion ab slime gender presentation i will return with my findings soon

[beauxjangles]

hi checks smudged writing on hand. do they have cute alien animals in star trek :D

ohhh my god. ohhh my god lily putting my hand on your shoulder looking at you with grateful eyes. they DO !!!!

this one is the most well known; it's from TOS and is really just a dog in a shag rug with a horn and antennae on its head :)

and a tail apparently?

2. this one only really appeared in TAS unfortunately :( it's called a Sehlat and is basically a bear/lion/sabertooth tiger! Spock had one when he was a kid

3. going back on what I said earlier. these are actually the most well-known: tribbles! they appear throught almost all of the series! they're basically just furry little guys :)

4. Murf from Prodigy?

unfortunately we're not presented with a whole lot of "cute" aliens. but there are lots of dogs and cats throughout the franchise! a few examples:

Data's cat Spot from TNG!

Captain Archer's beagle Porthos from Enterprise!

Captain Janeway's Irish Setter Mollie (in a very blurry picture) from Voyager!

Grudge from Discovery!

And Barclay's cat Neelix in Voyager :)

THANK YOU FOR THE ASK !!! much appreciated :] I am always willing to talk about Star Trek; your smudged notes were good!

[sshbpodcast]

Won’t someone think of the children?! A Rok-Tahk Appreciation Post

By Ames

Last week, we covered just why your hosts here at A Star to Steer Her By largely dislike the children characters in classic Star Trek (tl;dr: it’s mostly because they’re written as props instead of people, or so I make my claim). There is one show in the franchise, however, that’s a huge outlier in how its children characters are written, acted, and treated overall as individuals who grow and develop. Obviously, it’s Star Trek: Prodigy. Since basically all of the main characters are children, the show would have failed if it couldn’t make them compelling and relatable to both a young audience and the preestablished fanbase. 

And against the odds, it succeeded like whoa. There’s a reason why the fanbase is in such an uproar right now about Paramount’s avaricious cancellation of the Emmy Award–winning animated underdog (go sign the petition if you haven’t yet!), and that’s that the show is just so surprisingly good. We’re the last group of people who would laud a kid’s show so much, and we absolutely adore it.

Read on below for what Prodigy gets so right when establishing its children characters. Rok-Tahk is the prime example here because a) she’s voiced by Rylee Alazraqui, a legit child voice actress, who NAILS IT, b) she ticks all the boxes for what makes a good child character, and c) she’s just the best. Period. But let me explain anyway…

[images © CBS/Paramount… I guess? For now? Yikes.]

Rok is more than you expect

I think all the kids who made our favorites list in last week’s blogpost have one thing in common: they had some kind of hidden depth to explore. A character having some kind of twist or secret or hidden identity is just a staple of science fiction. We see it in Barash and Taya, who turn out not to be the children they appear to be. We see it in Mezoti, whose dual nature as both a young innocent girl and a Borg drone with the collective experiences of a whole hivemind makes her endlessly fascinating. 

So when this massive rock creature whom we start off being intimidated by turns out to be the sweetest little girl, we’re immediately interested because it subverts our expectations. We’re forced to remind ourselves not to judge someone by how they look on the outside, something Star Trek has been doing since its very conception. And then when we learn even more about her and realize that her jailors put a child in a prison camp, we can’t help but root for her.

Rok is allowed to just be a kid

Sure, Rok is still smarter than your average kid, but she’s smart without being obnoxious like other naturally brainy kid characters I could name. *cough cough Wesley Crusher* As the obvious example, Wes is exhausting as a character because he’s a boy genius who is acutely aware of it and his supernatural smarts force him into situations another kid wouldn’t be in. He isn’t allowed to be a kid because he is first and foremost a child prodigy. 

Rok, on the other hand, is first and foremost a child in the show Prodigy! Her excitement about new encounters is because most encounters to her are just that: new! She plays “Delta Heart Magical Veterinarian” in the holodeck, she loves ice cream, she plays with the cute little creatures on “Dream Catcher” planet, she naturally cares for Murf as though he were her puppy. Rok’s youth informs how she reacts to circumstances in the show and she acts accordingly in ways that aren’t forced, better suited for other characters, or just downright unnecessary. And seeing the universe through the eyes of someone with such a clean slate allows the audience to make their own judgements about the Protostar crew’s circumstances episode by episode.

Rok is a freakin’ alien monster

Prodigy also introduces us to the Brikar, a new alien race of rock monsters. And everyone accepts her without a single word! Now that’s the Star Trek way! From the moment we meet Rok-Tahk, she’s not physically cutified or even feminized, which is frankly refreshing. She’s less humanoid than most creatures we meet, outside of say, the Horta or Murf. It’s also a great use of the CGI-animated medium because live-action shows can’t pull stuff like this off. 

I’m honestly impressed to see any female character, let alone a little girl, portrayed in a way that isn’t that cookie-cutter kind of attractive that we see everywhere. Rok is BIG. Rok is HARD. She’s not feminine or pretty or soft. Her cuteness comes from how she acts, talks, and treats people. And the crew of the Protostar and the Starfleet officers we meet later treat her like they treat everyone else: like a person. The people who run the slave show in “Preludes” pin her as a monster because they don’t/can’t know her. But our other main characters do get to know her and barely even bring up her size! And when they do, Rok subverts it by proclaiming that she doesn't want to be the muscle on the ship, and they go with it. I love that.

Rok has character flaws

Like any person, especially a well-written character in a television program, Rok isn’t perfect. Perfect people make for obscenely boring television (unless it’s a satire or something), and perfect children are just plain not believable and take you out of the story. But Prodigy writers went a few extra steps in developing someone like Rok to have credible flaws for her situation that also informs how she acts, changes, and grows. Rok overthinks and doubts herself constantly because she has anxiety. She’s suffered through traumas, like some of the orphaned boys mentioned in last week’s blog have, and that gives her something to overcome over the course of the season and [hopefully] beyond. 

And, as mentioned above, she’s also really young! She doesn’t have the experience and knowledge yet to save the day every week. She knows she has limitations and when she remembers this, she panics, freezes, and languishes in self doubt. I’m thinking specifically about the turmoil she goes through in the supremely excellent “Time Amok,” in which she is forced to be alone (already terrifying) and also with so much pressure put on her (downright immobilizing!). Audiences can relate to anxiety and stress like this. It doesn’t matter that she’s a kid: we all get what she’s going through and connect with her immediately.

Rok grows throughout the season

You’d think it would be easy to create story arcs that help child characters grow since they’re going to grow up just by virtue of natural development anyway, but it’s harder than you think. Both Jake Sisko and Wesley Crusher get things to do as they get older that build on the foundations for their characters, but they also had several seasons to work with. Rok, in just one season, has her entire world opened up for her because of the nature of the story, and she runs with it!

This is a science fiction show, so of course the characters are going to love science, and watching Rok learn, try new things, occasionally fail, and try again is an excellent entry point into STEM. Just like how a lot of today’s doctors credit watching Dr. McCoy and today’s engineers got their start because they wanted to be like Scotty, and just like how many women and people of color joined the space program specifically because of Nichelle Nichols, I really hope that kids today watching Rok-Tahk and crew are captivated by science in that same way. I would be.

We love you, Rok! We love the other crew members of the Protostar too! We love Star Trek: Prodigy! Check out the other character appreciation posts for Dal R’El, Gwyndala, Jankom Pog, and Zero while you’re here. I know I can speak for not only the other hosts here at A Star to Steer Hey By but for myriad other fans when I seriously hope someone picks up this wonder of a show. We’re really looking forward to seeing more from these amazing child characters, and we’re seriously wishing we get that opportunity. #SaveStarTrekProdigy

[championoftheoppressed]

Thoughts on Star Trek: Prodigy (Season 1A)

I have no idea when the second half of the season will come out, so here’s some thoughts on the first half for now! Short, spoiler free version: I liked it. I really, really liked it. It wasn’t perfect, but none of its flaws ruined the good parts for me. If it keeps up this momentum, it might be my favorite of the newer Trek series (that being Discovery onward).

Spoilers under the cut.

What I Liked

This show is visually spectacular. The colors and the world design are stunning, and some of the set pieces took my breath away on first viewing.

The character designs are so varied and interesting. This show takes full advantage of being animated to give us characters that would never work in live action. Rok-Tahk is an enormous round rock monster! Zero is a cloud that lives in a space suit! Murf is a purple blob! But mixed in there are the more standard humanoid races, with more familiar designs to keep us grounded in the Trek universe. The designs for established races are quickly recognizable while still being tweaked to fit the animation style, and the new races fit right in alongside them.

This show does some really interesting things with the universe and worldbuilding. Stuff like everyone on Tars Lamora being subjugated by not allowing them universal translators, so the many races cannot communicate amongst themselves, or like Dal being raised by a female Ferengi and that simple fact explaining nearly everything about his character.

There are lots of references to past Treks, both big and small. And unlike Lower Decks, which feels like it’s beating you over the head with them, these are usually worked in tastefully and in a way that makes you smile rather than sigh. And I love how this show is framed, following characters unfamiliar with the Federation as they discover it. This lets them reintroduce old ideas in a fresh way.

I like pretty much all of the characters, and feel they serve the story well. Dal is probably the most boring of the bunch, but he has a really good, simple arc that works well, even if it’s one everyone’s seen before. Rok-Tahk is my daughter, I love her so much and want nothing but happiness for her. Murf is adorable. Jankom is pretty funny, and I cannot imagine anyone but Jason Mantzoukas voicing him. Zero is a nice presence and just an interesting character idea (and we love that canon nonbinary rep). Gwyn is a great way to tie the story directly back into the main villain, and she probably has the most satisfying arc of them all. And holo Janeway is of course, magnificent, the perfect mentor for this wayward cast.

Because this is a kid’s show, a lot of the unnecessary gore and dark tone from other new Trek shows isn’t present. The story still explores some dark themes, such as slavery and abandonment and death, but in a way that’s effective and approachable without being quite so visceral about it. Frankly it’s a relief to be able to sit down to a Trek show knowing you won’t abruptly be given a disturbing, gory scene out of nowhere.

I love the way that Janeway and Chakotay are incorporated into the plot. It’s exciting for old fans, but not completely uninteresting for new fans. They also don’t take over the entire show. Even holo-Janeway, who is a major presence, doesn’t completely steal the spotlight.

The mystery is really compelling, and I desperately want to know more about the history of the Protostar. But it’s handled really nicely, in that it’s not the only thing driving the show forward. The characters and plots are still engaging on their own, making the mystery just the icing on the cake.

The Kobayashi Maru scene... holy crap. That’s an example of fanservice done right. Even the older audio samples didn’t bother me all that much, given the context of the holodeck and the real world knowledge of how the scenes were stitched together.

What I Didn’t Like

Honestly, I only have one major complaint about this show. And that is the lip sync. It’s bafflingly bad, and dialogue is often so mismatched that I’m actually distracted. Eventually I just had to justify it to myself that it was a result of the universal translator dubbing over everyone, because otherwise there’s just no excusing it.

Similarly, often times the characters will have very expressive voices, but the animation of the character doesn’t quite match their energy. It’s the worst with Dal, whose voice actor is probably the most expressive of the whole cast. It’ll be clear from the audio that the actor is grinning and nearly jumping around in the VO booth, while onscreen Dal just sort of lifts his arms and smiles. It’s another case of mismatch between voice and screen, and once you notice it, it’s hard to unsee.

[flavorednarry]

example | stormzy | joe | lacey | pgatour | dua | novak | conor | deo | pgatour | rio | bruno | tosh | niall | azim | nick

[wrongpublishing]

BOOK REVIEW: KATHLEEN PALM'S INTO THE GRAY

by Elizabeth Broadbent, Staff Writer.

Into the Gray by Kathleen Palm Spooky House Press Release date: Feb. 14 Buy it: https://a.co/d/6sLfaGg

This is Murf. Murf lived in my children’s bedroom and he was lost. It was very sad. Murf was very sad. But Murf was found. Murf lives in my bedroom now because what idiotic children ignore a sad-eyed sloth?!!! 

Murf is here to demand that you read Kathleen Palm’s Into the Gray.

Yes, my own personal stuffie is appearing in a book review, and that probably seems weird AF. Not for this book. Into the Gray tells a story of the lost: lost stuffies, lost bracelets, but most of all, lost people. Twelve-year-old Ember and her sister Ash have moved to a new town with their two parents—Mom’s holding it together, but Mama’s falling apart. Ash has lost Pink Kitty, her connection to her birthmom. Ember, on the other hand, never knew her birthmom. But she believes, in that magical way that only children can, if she can find Pink Kitty, everything will be okay again. 

When horror-loving Ember tumbles into a gray Nowhere of lost things overseen by creepy-ass Caretaker, she’s sure Pink Kitty is there somewhere. But Nowhere gives her a job to do. And she’s got to do it, or else . . .

Admission: I love novels in kid-voices, and they’re nearly impossible to do right. I might be a sucker for them, but I’m always eyeing new ones slightly askance: I have three kids (swear to God this, like Murf, is relevant) who just turned nine, eleven, and thirteen, and my older two would rather die than say “diddly-darn.” But I choke up when I think of my skinny middle son as Ember: the thought patterns, the connections, the wants and dreams—Palm absolutely nails that innocent, sad tweenager trying so hard to hold it together.

You will want to sweep up these children and hug them forever.   

Testament to how good this novel is: I read it in PDF without proper formatting and the damn thing looked like a narrative poem. It sort of read like one, and that’s a good thing. Palm’s prose is dreamy in an authentically kid-way, which is nigh on impossible. 

Plotwise: it moves fast, and moves well; the puzzle pieces fit in the end, and in an unexpected way that leaves you satisfied with the journey you’ve taken. And that Nowhere? Well, it’s more than nowhere . . . and you understand why. And it’s brilliant. 

Murf agrees. He was lost once, and he says that loss is about more than being gone. It’s about  . . .  *if a stuffie could burst into tears he would, and I just did*. 

Into the Gray is one more example of indie horror presses at their best. God, I love indie horror. Presses like Spooky House are doing the Lord/Satan/choice your deity/I’ll pick Black Tezcatlipoca’s work. They’re plucking stories the big five would never touch—the prose is too pretty, the story’s too inventive, the characters are too queer, etc. What the big five don’t get, and never will: this is what we should be reading. This is what we want to read. Believe me: you want Ember drifting through gray Nowhere in search of Pink Kitty. Palm’s offering something amazing and different, dreamy and profound. Pick it up. 

Instagram: @/kathleen.Palm Twitter: @/kathleenpalm Instagram: @/spookyhousepress Twitter: @/SpookyHousePres

Instagram: @/EABroadbent Twitter: @eabroadbent 

[murfeelee]

Roll up your sleeves; we’re going in!

☽✶•.¸(✶•.¸★¸.•✶´)¸.•✶´☾ ☆«´¨`•°°•´¨`»☆    ☽.¸.•✶(¸.•✶´★`✶•.¸)`✶•.☾

Welcome to Murf’s School of Crap and Crap-Making!

School Motto: Prepare to be tortured! For Science!

Lesson #26: Cram School Edition -- Variations, Contacts, Blushes, oh my!

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#1) REMOVING VARIATIONS

One of the most easily overlooked steps in CC creation is remembering to get rid of the extra variations you don’t need. In TSRW, all you have to do is click the dropdown arrow, to see how many of EA’s variations are gonna eff up your CC if they’re not dealt with right here right now!

To the right is another dropdown arrow. Click it!

You’re gosh darn right I’m sure!

And you’ve just gotten rid of one of them! Now do the same thing for the others, till you’re left with just one, and you can’t delete anymore.

Viola!

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#2) Contacts:

To make contacts, you’ll need EA’s default eyes texture as a reference. It’s found in the FullBuild2.package, wherever your copy of TS3 is installed (usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\GameData\Shared\Packages).

BTW: I NEVER open the Full/Delta packages directly; I always make a copy on the desktop, and use that instead, so nothing goes horrifically wrong.

Open the (copied!) package file with S3PE, and scroll down to either AfFace_o or AmFace_o. Right click, and export the texture as a .dds file.

There’s also another texture you should grab on that list, amFace_d_0x6f853f0e35157e2d, which is pretty helpful, since it’s got a pre-painted (though lesser quality) diffuse sclera.

Close S3PE, and open the texture in Gimp/Photoshop/etc. I’ll be using GIMP. What you want to do is delete all the teeth, eyelashes, tongue textures, so all that’s left is the eyeball.

Then you’ll edit it to your liking--veiny sclera, bigger/smaller irises, vertical/horizontal pupils, whatever! For example, I was able to give my Renji sim much smaller eyes, by rescaling the iris & pupils on the regular default replacement eyes I use, and making them contacts.

FYI: Just be aware that even though you only see one eyeball, whatever changes you make will appear on BOTH eyes--blame EA’s busted UV Map. Gruesims made an awesome heterochromatic eye mod that gives you TWO eyes, that I only recently got around to trying, and it works GREAT!

Once you’ve spent 1000 years in photoshop/Gimp creating the eyes you want, then it’s (finally) time for TSRW. Start a New Project and pick a good Costume Makeup:

Then it is a very simple matter of Importing the eyes you made, and swapping out EA’s.

Save & Export the file, and you’ll find your new contact lenses in Costume Makeup!

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#3) FACE TATTOOS TO BLUSH

OK, so when you open the face tatt in S3PE you’re gonna see a blank texture--don’t panic! That’s just the all-black alpha channel doing it’s thing. Export the .dds.

Here’s where I needed to use Photoshop, cuz whenever I try to open dds textures with all-black alpha channels in GIMP, it shows my texture blank, too. Only in Photoshop can I see the actual RGB channels with no alpha channel in the way--IDKY.

Export it right out as a DXT1 dds with no alpha channel.

Then, you’re gonna need a greyscaled/black and white version for the multiplier, so desaturate the color and boost the contrast (or however you want to go about it) until you end up with a nice black and white image:

Then Delete the black background.

And then you can Export this version out as a DXT5 Interpolated Alpha dds.

You’re done with the texturing now, so go to TSRW to make the blush!

Start a New Project and choose the Multi Blush, since it has more recolorable channels.

Import the white DXt5 in the Face Overlay, and Import the RGB texture in the Mask.

As you can see, I suck, so there’s still some black background left in my Face Overlay that’s effing up the texture. U_U You’ll have to make sure you do better, so that crap doesn’t happen to you. XD

Also! Make sure you only have TWO recolorable channels enabled in the Tint Color sections, not 3 or 4--since your mask only uses RG, not RGB or RGBY.

But yeah, once your blush is as good as it can be, feel free to Save and Export.

And you’re all done!

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I hope all this helps!

Happy Simming!

My Current Conundrum

So I have been working on making some custom CC for my Cheshire Sims. I have been semi-successful but need some advice from more experienced sim creators.

First off I made some accessory tattoos using this tutorial... - I would like to know how to remove the non-edited sock swatches (circled in red) from my CC. - Additionally is there a way to merge these two accessory tattoos into the same group since they are both the same edit of a base game sock?

Second I have made some custom Cheshire eyes but am experiencing issues making them recolorable and there is an issue with the whole sim face being affected by the white intensity of the eyes. I am in need of a good sims3 contact tutorial, any recommendations would be appreciated.

Thirdly I love @murfeelee AMR Cheshire cat tattoo but I would like to convert it to a blush. That way it doesn't require CmarNYC’s core mod and can be tweaked aka have more markings added to it. If you have some free time @murfeelee I would love to have your insight on this matter.

And that's my Current Conundrum. I plan to release three male Cheshire sims as soon as I finish making these mods and the sims. I am excited to share more sims with all of you and I thank those of you who take the time to read my posts and comment on my sim uploads. Thank you all for your support!!

If any of you would like to help me with this CC just leave a message and I can provide you with my CC files/ packages.

~Popcornstar45~

[deep-6-genetics-lab]

How big is a Fahree anyway ?

An average Fahree will stand about 5ft at the shoulder. Examples X X 

On very rare occasions a Fahree will be 6ft at the shoulder. Like Murf and The Pearl, her size is a bit off in that one 

Those Fahree that are stuck in a standing position will stand about 12ft at the top of the head. Example X 

[alice-eco-posting]

Waste

Most of the resources humans use comes from the lithosphere. These resources are metals and rare Earth elements like platinum, gallium, indium, neodymium, and dysprosium. These resources are non-renewable. For example, there is only 13 years left worth of indium at the rate we are using it now.  The triple bottom line is an accounting framework with three parts: social, environmental (or ecological) and financial. Some organizations have adopted the Triple Bottom Line framework to evaluate their performance in a broader perspective to create greater business value.

Permaculture Ethics, Corporate Sustainability & the Triple Bottom-Line: Explained: Triple bottom line, Sustainability, Corporate social responsibility. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/708613322597976687/?autologin=true.

Pollution Control and Conservation of Natural Resources

Every piece of material in a garbage can carries with it large quantities of embedded energy and invisible material resources that were part of its life history. Behind every object are the mining of resources or cutting of trees, the transport of ingredients and components by fossil fuel-burning vehicles, production in factories, more production for packaging, and transport again as the product is distributed. Most of the life cycle of a product remains invisible to us.

Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Life cycle analysis is how to look at the life cycle of products we consume. It’s used to evaluate the environmental impact of a product through its life cycle encompassing extraction and processing of the raw materials, manufacturing, distribution, use, recycling, and final disposal.

Life Cycle Assessment: finding the best approach for your company. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.innovationservices.philips.com/news/life-cycle-assessment-finding-best-approach-company/.

In class, my group looked at the life cycle of tires. 

Life-cycle analysis. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ruconbar.com/about-the-product/life-cycle-analysis/.

This made us look into new ways to use tires after they cannot be used for what they were originally made for. We wanted the life of the tires to be longer in order to reduce environmental impact. Instead of a ‘cradle to grave’ situation, we wanted a ‘cradle to cradle’ situation in which the tire could go from one form of use to another continuously. 

This concept was discussed by William McDonough his TED talk.

Cradle to cradle design: William McDonough. (2007, May 17). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/IoRjz8iTVoo.

The waste management hierarchy is a framework for minimizing waste streams. Pollution prevention and waste reduction are closely related and sometimes managed by the same work group within an organization. The Pollution Prevention(P2) hierarchy is a widely adopted framework for preventing or reducing pollution and waste (US EPA 2013a). Its steps, in descending order of priority, are prevention or reduction, reuse, recycling, treatment, and disposal. The highest priority is to prevent pollution at its source by reducing the amount generated. Following prevention, the next strategy is to reuse, then to recycle. Pollution that cannot be reduced or recycled is treated. As a last resort, pollution is disposed of as safely as possible.

Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Our resources are so depleted because as population increases, the production of goods increases. As the production of goods increases, the production of waste increases. This is why we need to move toward a more circular economy in which we are reducing the amount of waste that is produced. 

Materials collected for recycling are transported to a central material recovery facility, or MRF (pronounced “murf”), where they are sorted. In commingled, or single stream, recy-cling all the MSW material considered recyclable is mixed together. Material is dumped onto conveyor belts where preliminary manual sorting is done. Air blasts separate lightweight plastic containers, which are sorted by type either manually or using infrared spectroscopic scanners. Electromagnets remove ferrous metals such as food cans, and eddy current separa-tors remove aluminum such as beverage cans. Other sorters separate corrugated cardboard, newsprint, and mixed paper.

Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and Practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

[shreddingcompanies-blog]

Why is recycling important?

When you throw things away, you might be really delighted to obtain eliminate it: into the trash it goes, never ever to be seen once again! Regrettably, that's not completion of the tale. The things we throw away need to go somewhere-- generally they go off to be bulldozed underground in a garbage dump or charred in a burner. Land fills could be badly contaminating. They look dreadful, they have an odor, they use up space that can be utilized for far better points, and they often produce poisonous dirt as well as water contamination that could kill fish in our rivers and seas.

One of the worst things about garbage dumps is that they're losing a huge quantity of possibly beneficial product. It takes a great deal of power as well as a lot of resources making points and when we throw those things in a land fill, at the end of their lives, we're additionally biding farewell to all the energy as well as sources they contain. Some authorities like to shed their trash in giant burners rather than burying it in landfills. That absolutely has benefits: it reduces the quantity of waste that has to be buried as well as it could produce valuable energy. However it can likewise produce poisonous air pollution and also burning nearly anything (other than plants that have expanded really just recently) adds to the problem of international warming as well as climate change.

The problem is, we're all in the behavior of tossing stuff away. In the early component of the 20th century, individuals used products a lot more carefully-- especially in The second world war (1939-- 1945), when lots of raw materials remained in brief supply. [2] But in recent years we have actually become an extremely disposable society. We have the tendency to acquire brand-new things instead of aging ones repaired. A great deal of guys make use of disposable razors, for instance, rather than buying multiple-use ones, while a lot of ladies wear disposable nylon stockings. Partly this is to do with the sheer ease of throwaway products. It's also due to the fact that they economical: synthetic plastics, made from petroleum-based materials, became very cost-effective and commonly readily available after the end of The second world war. But that wasteful period in our history is coming to an end.

We're ultimately beginning to realize that our live-now, pay-later way of living is accumulating issues for future generations. Planet is soon mosting likely to be running on empty if we continue as we are. Americans stay in much higher wealth compared to essentially any person else on Earth. Exactly what takes place when individuals in establishing nations such as India as well as China determine they want to live similarly as us? Inning accordance with the ecologists Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and also Seeker Lovins, we would certainly need two Earths to satisfy all their requirements. If everyone on Earth increases their standard of life in the next 40 years, we'll require 12 Earths to please them! [3]

Why should you reuse?

If every person minimized, recycled, and recycled, we can make Planet's resources go a terrible great deal additionally. Recycling saves products, lowers the should garbage dump and incinerate, lower contamination, and also aids to make the atmosphere a lot more attractive. It likewise develops jobs, because recycling points takes a little bit a lot more effort compared to making new points. Reusing does not just save materials: it saves energy also. Production points uses a lot of energy from nuclear power plant-- as well as hungry power plants usually make worldwide warming even worse. We could conserve an unusual amount of energy by reusing. If you reuse a solitary aluminum can you save regarding 95 percent of the power it would require to make a brand new one. [4] That's enough power conserved to power your tv for regarding 3 hrs! [5] You'll frequently hear individuals state that over half the garbage we discard can be recycled. Considering the chart below, you could see that we presently recycle someplace between 30-- 90 percent of the numerous different products we make use of. Simply envision if everyone were reusing a lot of their rubbish: together, we 'd be making an incredible decrease in the quantity of resources and also energy we utilize-- and also doing a great deal of good for the planet.

What are the different ways of recycling?

Tossing points away is a poor behavior; recycling them is a good practice. Recycling isn't really all that difficult: it's merely an issue of changing your behavior. Almost speaking, reusing happens in one of two means. Either your local government authority prepares a door-to-door collection (this is occasionally called curbside recycling) or you take your recycled products along to a neighborhood recycling facility and also position them in different containers.

The crucial difference in between a bag of garbage and also a bag of important, recyclable waste is that the garbage is all blended together and also the recyclable waste is ironed out as well as divided. If you have a curbside reusing plan, you could be provided a recycling box right into which you could position particular kinds of waste (probably steel containers, glass containers, plastics, as well as papers) however not others. When the box is gathered, it might be figured out at the visual. People on the truck will certainly require time to sort through your box as well as placed various products right into different big boxes inside the truck. So, when the truck arrives at the reusing terminal, the waste will certainly currently be sorted.

Conversely, you might see your whole box being tipped right into the vehicle with no kind of sorting. The truck then takes your waste to a various sort of recycling terminal called a MURF, which means Products Recycling Center (MRF), where it is arranged partly manually and also partly by device (this type of recycling is likewise called single-stream or comingled). If you don't have curbside recycling, it helps to iron out your waste and store it in separate bags or boxes before you take it to the recycling center. (For instance, you could rinse food tins and glass containers and keep them in separate plastic bags.).

Cooking area as well as yard waste.

You can recycle as much as half your kitchen as well as garden waste by making your own garden compost-- a rich, crumbly, earthlike material that creates when organic (carbon-based) products biodegrade (are broken down by worms as well as bacteria). Compost is wonderful for utilizing on your yard: it returns nutrients to the soil that help your plants to expand. Making your personal is much cheaper than acquiring compost at a yard facility; it's likewise much better for the environment compared to using peat, which is an endangered environment. Making garden compost, you will certainly need a compost pile or a big container of some kind in your yard or lawn. Composting is clearly much easier if you have a yard compared to if you have a house on the 23rd floor of a skyscraper! However even in cities, some authorities prepare collections of eco-friendly waste and make garden compost at a central area. It can take anything from a couple of months to a year or more for waste to rot down as well as become garden compost. Usually, you need to include an equivalent mixture of "eco-friendlies" (vegetable scraps, dead flowers, lawn cuttings, and more) and "browns" (wrecked cardboard, little twigs, shredded paper, and that example).

Paper and cardboard.

In the very early 1970s, copy machine suppliers obtained scared that we would certainly quit making use of paper and also become a "paperless society." Not much possibility of that! Over 4 decades later on, the problem is that we're producing extra paper than ever before. However fortunately is that we're reusing a lot more as well. Unlike some materials, paper could be recycled just numerous times. That's because it's made from plant fibers that come to be much shorter during paper-making. When they're also short, they no more make respectable paper. In practice, this means some brand-new paper constantly needs to be included throughout the papermaking procedure.

One problem with reusing paper is that not all paper is the same. White office printer paper is made of a lot better raw material compared to the paper towels you'll find in a factory washroom. The greater the quality of paper waste, the better the top quality of recycled items it could be made use of making. So state-of-the-art white paper accumulated from offices could be made use of to make even more top-quality white recycled paper. But a mix of old newspapers, office paper, junk mail, and also cardboard could normally be utilized just to earn lower-grade paper products such as "newspaper" (the low-grade paper on which papers are printed). Corrugated cardboard (which is held together with glue) is more difficult to recycle than the slim cardboard used to package grocery stores.

Waste records are generally covered in ink, which has to be gotten rid of prior to paper could be recycled. Using bleach to de-ink documents could be an ecologically harmful process and it generates poisonous ink wastes that need to be gotten rid of in some way. So, although reusing paper has many benefits, it comes with environmental expenses also.

Steel.

A lot of the metal we throw out in your home comes from food as well as beverage cans and aerosols. Generally food containers are made from steel, which could be melted down and turned into new food containers. Drinks cans are typically thinner and lighter as well as made from light weight aluminum, which could likewise be recycled very easily. Mining light weight aluminum is an extremely energy-intensive and also ecologically harmful procedure. That's why waste aluminum containers have a relatively high worth as well as why recycling them is such a good thing to do.

Timber.

People have been recycling this traditional, lasting material for as long as human background. Waste timber is frequently turned into new wooden items-- such as recycled wood flooring or yard outdoor decking. Old wood railroad sleepers (now extensively changed by concrete) are in some cases used as building timbers in houses as well as gardens. Waste wood could additionally be shredded and stuck with adhesives to earn composite timbers such as laminates. It could additionally be composted or burned as a fuel.

Glass.

Glass is really simple to reuse; waste containers and jars can be thawed down and also utilized again and again. You merely throw old glass into the furnace with the components you're utilizing making brand-new glass. Bottle banks (huge containers where waste glass is accumulated) were the original examples of community recycling in several countries.

Photo: Glass is loaded right into a crusher to compact it prepared for recycling. Image by A. Sanchez, thanks to Defense Images.

Oil.

Waste oil from vehicle as well as automobile engines creates big environmental problems if you tip it down the tubes. It contaminates our rivers and also seas, the wildlife that rely on them, or even the water we drink. If you take your waste oil along to a reusing facility, it not only maintains our rivers clean-- it can also be reprocessed into new items such as heating oil. Waste veggie oils (made by frying food, as an example) could be transformeded into a valuable type of automobile gas called biodiesel.

Plastics.

Of all the various products we throw in the trash, plastics trigger by much the most significant problem. They last a long time in the atmosphere without damaging down-- occasionally as high as 500 years. They're really light and also they float, so plastic litter wanders across the oceans and also washes up on our coastlines, eliminating wildlife and also marking the shoreline. The only trouble is, plastics are fairly tough to reuse. There are many different sort of plastic and they all have to be recycled in a different way. There's a lot plastic concerning that waste plastic product does not have much worth, so it's not constantly financial to collect. Plastic containers additionally have the tendency to be huge and, unless people squash them, promptly fill out reusing containers.

All told, plastics are a little an ecological nightmare-- yet that's all the more reason we need to make an effort to reuse them! Various plastics could be recycled in different methods. Plastic beverages bottles are usually made from a kind of clear plastic called PET DOG (polyethylene terephthalate) and also could be transformeded into such points as fabric insulation (for thermal jackets and also resting bags). Milk containers have the tendency to be made from a thicker, opaque plastic called HDPE (high-density polyethylene) and also can be recycled into more durable products like flower pots and plastic pipes.

Another remedy to the issue might be to use bioplastics, which declare to be extra environmentally friendly.