#(the font size is really tiny on so many of my screenshots it makes them look horrible when posted ugh)

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

No. Please. A century I have known naught but sorrow; rage. A century have I been Ketheric's captive. Release me. I beg you.

A bit that I find really heartbreaking happens if you try to leave the dialogue with Aylin in her Shadowfell prison, after you've convinced her you're not a Sharran. This is mere seconds after she was smirking at you with:

She sounds genuinely afraid that you, the only person in over a hundred years who isn't there to ritualistically kill her or torment her in some unthinkable way, are about to abandon her. In sheer contrast to all the brave posturing and proud defiance she was demonstrating not moments before, all the blustering and insisting that she, immortal, will simply outlast all of you, that this affects her not a bit and is in fact nothing in the grand scope of her life (which we later see is actually rather painfully untrue).

[haevnlii]

how i make scripts aesthetic on google docs (on pc) <33

Part One - Images

! Due to Tumblr's 30 image limit, I'll have to make this in parts. This one revolves around how I sort pictures to make them look aesthetic or just more organised in my script. + I'm not the best at organising tutorials sometimes but I'm trying to not make this confusing <//3

Ignore any typos and errors, thankyou. If you need me to re-explain anything, please feel free to ask. I feel like I haven't explained properly but, idk what else to do, lol :,)

Page isn't broken, to avoid messing up the way images are organised.

— ◦◦◦

What do I use?

Other than Google Docs (obviously), — Fontspace | A background remover [my mains: 1, 2] | Pinterest/WeHeartIt/Google search, and other sources for pretty pictures, pngs, etc. 🤍🌙

bundling images

Using the different text wrapping options, I found that it helped a lot more to "bundle" images together, so that things look prettier + more organised.

! example

This is pretty simple, honestly; Fontspace provides font text as pictures, transparent bg and not, — so organising the text from it will fall under the tut for this bit.

^ These are the text wrapping options. The first one is the default and limits text placement/movement, the other four allow you to move text where-ever on the document (especially if print view is off) but each do different things.

In order of settings, examples (press images to see properly):

! tip : If you're bundling images that "overlap" too much, make sure to crop at least one (or however many needed) past its actual size so that it won't be a pain in the ass moving them later on.

- You may also use "behind text" for one of them, if it helps, so that it's easier to select the images, this also applies to using image over text (examples in each image).

what I mean:

Using these features, I'll—as per the aesthetic of my script—sort things accordingly. Get creative with the way you're doing this, and keep experimenting 'till you're able to make stuff look the way you want, lol.

"BuT DaRLIng wHaT Do I dO wItH ThIS iNFo??!?!?" bitch idk find an aesthetic 💀💀

like those 2016 fashion sticker books or smthn, idk- whatever u like-

Going into the aesthetics more ;; I usually pick diff aesthetics for each script and refuse to script until I find a pretty one LMFOAOAO- But I especially go for inspiration from (Korean?) bullet journal aesthetics which include lots of image bundling and customised tables.

Why korean ones specifically? Idk the difference, but using "Korean" as a keyword gets the stuff I'm looking for. 💀 But I also search for little pngs I want to add to my script; and if it's a false transparent png or has any background, I use my background removers to make it an actual transparent png.

And, sometimes, I like to search for colours then use my snip tool to screenshot them really thin, like those brown-beige borders you see in all my posts, then use them in my script like highlighter lines, like-

That's pretty much it, really.

! examples from two of my scripts

Fontspace fonts apply as well. One thing about Fontspace is that, you can change the colour of the text ;; as well as the background.

The brown colour is the text's colour, the blue one is the background's colour. You can of course choose to have no background, but it's there as an option.

I don't know of any features where you can save a colour but that's maybe me being dumb ;; but what I do is set a certain colour (i.e. blue) then use the colour adjustment in google docs to change it to black, red, or whatever over colours r in the script.

i.e.:

Anyways I'm p close to the image limit, so that's it for this post.

I hope this makes sense bc explaining this was harder than I thought. 💀💀 Once again I can clear anything up if needed

! tips

Keywords you can use for tiny decorations, are "clipart", "[aethetic name] clipart transparent png", "[aesthetic name] sticker png transparent", etc.

You can have a look at the aesthetics wiki for ideas for your script

Fotor is what I use to crop images into different shapes, and it is how I got the circle/heart shaped pictures in my documents ^-^*

...I'll add more when I remember them.

next up ··· customising tables ✿

[cyclesprefectpress]

[image description: a proof of a font of handset type for letterpress printing, displaying every letter, symbol, and special character in the font. it's called "Sixteenth Century Roman," 24 pt., and is a rough-edged serif font with a deliberately worn look. end description.]

hello hello i am return from a deep dive into several reference materials that assumed a little bit more knowledge about how Medieval Latin works than i actually have, but, it was all exTREMEly inch resting to me. i am absolutely not a historian but here we are, a speedrun of my pinballing around trying to ensure that I know what the fuck im storing in my type corridor:

so 16th Cent. Roman, i already knew, was a font Paul Duensing designed based on this incomplete set of old Italian punches he acquired (punches, the first step of old school typecasting, where you carve the relief letter shape into the end of a stick of steel, and you uuuh punch that into the copper matrix, which is then the negative mould-shape you use to cast multiple copies of the lead sorts with hot metal; surviving punches are precious artifacts not the least because they are. they’re hand-carved!! often by the type designer themselves. historical and also wildly cool craftsmanship). these punches were all beat up and probably water damaged, fucky and rough-edged, so he re-did and filled in the gaps in the alphabet with similarly styled letters of his own. very cool. an extremely nerdy lil passion project of a typecaster in the 1960s, very typical of type people. we all find a Thing to obsess over, and sometimes it's reviving an incomplete set of punches from the 1500s that you found in, idk, it's usually a bucket in somebody's basement.

anyway it's got a bunch of ligatures and the long s, sure sure sure, but WHAT are all these gibberish characters with tildas and lines thru the stems of ps and qs and such—

Duensing's full font is in Mac McGrew's specimen book, great, i have that, except McGrew's book has complete proofs and a little bit of history for each font but doesn't always cover what each symbol in a unique alphabet is for, and i knew just enough about Latin to guess that they were abbreviations but not what each of them stood for. a little bit of searching got me this far, which is to say, "Abbreviation in Medieval Latin Paleography," a translation of an Italian essay on the subject from 1929. It is prefaced by the translators with gems like: "Take a foreign language, write it in an unfamiliar script, abbreviating every third word, and you have the compound puzzle that is the medieval Latin manuscript." Scribes writing in medieval Latin just tossed out letters they didn't care to deal with, constantly, and had stand-in special characters and abbreviations for syllables/words/particles and there were intuitive rules but way too many variations in time and place and person to make a reasonably-sized, static lexicon. amazing. hope all u paleographers are having fun over there.

the essay has a great big glossary of truncations and abbreviations and so on which clearly cover most of the figures in Duensing's font:

[image description: screenshots of the essay, with various symbols and the Latin syllables they abbreviated. an m with a bar over it, ex., stood in for men or mun. end description.]

ok! BUT this q with a little swoop off the end kept bugging me!! for all these dead-use symbols this essay is using handwritten samples, obviously, and there's clearly variation in execution and also typographers take liberties, and i just thought, sure my piece of type looks a lot like the quod here but it does link the staff to the swoop where the handwritten sample doesn't, and it could just as well be a fanciful ligature for qn which apparently can stand in for quando, and i have no idea which is a more common-use syllable likely to be cast in the font if you're only going to pick your top 14, and i just like to be sure about things.

SO. i went to double-check with Johnson’s Typographia. Johnson made like a thousand pages of printing manuals set in tiny tiny type in the 1820s which are rad as hell and tell you all sorts of things about how to run a shop and build your own press and cast type and going rates for work and employment and also, the alphabets/type case layout for whatever language or symbol set you might have to set type in, when handsetting type was mostly the only way to get stuff printed—English, Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, musical notation, astronomical signs, aaaand it’s got a section for "Marks & characters used in the Domesday Book & other ancient records.”

[image description: a photo of a page of the manual, with similar but not always identical symbols for abbreviated use. many of these abbreviations are described as "a Domesday contraction." end description.]

and WHAT is a Domesday contraction, WELL, it's a contraction specifically from/prevalent in the Domesday book, a deeply boring and historically important tome about property distribution in England. It’s literally a survey. who owned what, in 1086. presumably mind-numbing. enormous, handwritten in Medieval Latin, EXTREMELY cool, go look at some images of it at least, very important to historians, economists, linguists, and a complete pain in the ass to set in type when that technology became available, having to cast any significant proportion of these variant characters in an alphabet. Johnson says, (in 1824) “It is an improvement of latter years only*, to have type cast to resemble the abbreviations used in the more ancient manuscripts; they being formerly rudely imitated, either from a common fount, or else were cut in wood for the purposes of any particular work.” wow that sucks. but in 1773 the government really wanted to be able to reproduce the Domesday Book in type, so a couple people tried to cut a set of punches for Domesday abbreviations and Joseph Jackson got it done and it only took 10 years to print an edited version of the manuscript. and then apparently all the type was destroyed in a fire in 1808. WOW that sucks.

but the point is, Johnson has a great big glossary of characters as they were translated into type in the making of the printed Domesday Book, and the Domesday punches were used or refrenced in the printing of other medieval latin works, which consequences a degree of standardization in the abbreviations used in those versions of the text that handwritten manuscripts never had or needed.

notably the Domesday quod looks even more different from my piece of type here which was pretty annoying, so what are the chances this thing is a quando, and anyway that's when my sister texted me back with better computer skills and a different search engine and found me a perfect match on the first try. it’s a quod. this National Diet Library digital exhibition has several different sample fonts, both black letter and roman, with quite consistent letter forms, if not choices about which abbreviations to bother casting.

*I don’t……exactly know what he means by this, since Gutenberg and contemporaries absolutely did cast many Medieval Latin abbreviations for their fonts nearly 400 years before this. His dismissal of “from a common fount” might be fair, since i think what he means by it is that you’d have a generic set of abbreviation characters which you would have to use in conjunction with whatever font was the main body of your text, and it’s messy to mix things that weren’t designed specifically to match. he may just mean that it’s new for his contemporary foundries to be casting all these expanded alphabets of abbreviations; Gutenberg didn’t have foundries to buy from and made his own type. he could include as many characters as he had the patience for. maybe Johnson is just a guy from the 1800s that didn’t have the internet and i shouldn’t jump down his throat for not knowing something. idk!! i have homework.

anyway that was my Friday!! feel free to correct me and/or suggest further reading if early typecasting is your Thing or. again. you just have better googling than me.

[literaryeagle]

For my seventieth Evangelion book review, here is EVANGELION Millennials 2, published by Poplar Sha. This is a new mook (magazine-book hybrid) that came out just a few weeks ago, and as you can probably guess by the title, it is a sequel to the first EVANGELION Millennials (which I covered back in my sixty-sixth review). So this is another mook that is focused on fashion, which is why the cover art in the above image shows Tentative Name: Rei Ayanami wearing a hoodie over her plugsuit. Wow, she looks super stylish like that!

Of course, this publication has new looks for the other pilots as well. Check out this illustration of Asuka, Shinji, Rei, Kaworu, and Mari:

The pilots are wearing clothes from the RADIO EVA brand. Even the bandanna tied around Kaworu's right ankle is from RADIO EVA! By the way, this mook is not available in English or French (although there are a few little bits of English text here and there), but there are plenty of full color pictures. There are also some extra special goodies… more on that later. Keep reading for the rest of the book review, plus a few more pictures!

After the Table of Contents, this mook starts with a recap of the first three installments in the Evangelion New Theatrical Edition (AKA the “Rebuild” movies). This recap mainly consists of several pages of screenshots, accompanied by brief story descriptions and quotes from the movies. There are also a few trivia questions about the dialogue, plus some pics of the Eva pilots in their plugsuits.

The next section is the MAI YONEYAMA Drawn Illustration Collection, which showcases art that Mai Yoneyama has done for the RADIO EVA clothing brand, including the first two images shown in this review. And yes, the cute cover picture of Asuka and Shinji from the first EVANGELION Millennials is also in here!

This is followed by the EVANGELION GOODS 2020 section, which starts with a catalog of new stuff from RADIO EVA. As I explained in my review of the first EVANGELION Millennials, the RADIO EVA brand specializes in everyday wear, and many of their garments tend to reference Evangelion in a subtle way. For example, here is a dress that has flowers on one arm, with the Spear of Longinus embroidered among the flowers:

Usually I find that RADIO EVA's clothes are a bit too plain for my tastes, however I have to admit that dress is kind of cute. Good job, RADIO EVA!

For those who don't need subtlety and would rather express their love for Evangelion in a more overt way, RADIO EVA has a few things for that as well. For example, one of the items shown below is a tote bag that has a Mai Yoneyama illustration of the Eva pilots:

In the above image, the two items underneath the tote bag are subtle ones again. The first is a simple purple hair tie that says "NERV" (the purple color is supposed to represent Evangelion Unit-01), and the other is a red key ring (the color represents Asuka). Oh, and for those who prefer more character merchandise, at the bottom of that page is a figurine of Rei wearing RADIO EVA clothes.

Moving on, the next part of this mook is a catalog of some items from the Evangelion Store, including a mug and a T-shirt bearing the name of the next movie, Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0 Thrice Upon a Time. After that, there is the OFFICIAL SHOP GUIDE section with pictures and info about various Evangelion shops in Japan. The stores are described in both Japanese and English, to make things easier for tourists... once it's safe to travel again, I guess. Sigh.

Next is the EVANGELION NEWS section, which covers some Eva-related merchandise, events, and exhibits. For example, one of the exhibits is a huge Evangelion Unit-01 in a pool of LCL, located in Kyoto. This Eva is so big that you can pose for a photo standing in the palm of her hand!

After the NEWS, there is a page promoting the Eva Extra mobile app, and then an advertisement for the Evangelion Battlefields mobile game. Here is the Evangelion Battlefields ad:

And finally, on the back cover of the mook, you can see poster art for the upcoming movie Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0 Thrice Upon a Time. Yay! Sure, you've probably seen this image online already, but it's nice to actually own a physical copy! The picture shows Shinji standing on train tracks. Here it is:

Yes, Shinji is there. He's standing in the distance, so he's very tiny in that picture. As for the film's release date, as you've most likely heard by now the movie was originally supposed to come out a few months ago (June 2020), but unfortunately it had to be delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So the Japanese text at the bottom of the poster simply says "Kinjitsu Koukai" (Coming Soon). Sorry, folks. I know that's disappointing for many people, however it's understandable that safety should come first. Until then, I hope you all stay healthy and safe, so when the movie does come out we can get excited together!  (EDIT, March 2021: The movie's new release date is March 8, 2021!)

Anyway, that's it for the mook itself, which is only 35 pages long. But wait, we’re not done yet! As I mentioned before, some extra special goodies are included. The first item is a white T-shirt that says "The Beast", courtesy of RADIO EVA:

If you're wondering why "The Beast" is written backwards, it's because of Mari's words "Invert mode. Backdoor code... 'The Beast'!". So the designer was inspired by the words invert and back, get it? Well, that and I'm pretty sure the font is a reference to The Beatles. I would make a joke about playing the Evangelion movies backwards to listen for hidden messages, except that actually works in the Evangelion 2.0 movie, during the scene when the Dummy System is activated inside Unit-01! Seriously, it's creepy.

Anyway, getting back to the T-shirt, it's one size only, but of course people come in different shapes and sizes. So in case you're concerned about the fit, I have translated the shirt's measurements as stated in the mook...

Length: approximately 70 cm

Width: approximately 52 cm

Shoulder Width: approximately 46 cm

Sleeve Length: approximately 21 cm

Sleeve Width: approximately 19 cm

I hope that helps! Moving on, the second bonus item is a RADIO EVA sacoche (pouch) with a cross-body strap. It can carry small items, such as a wallet and/or mobile phone. Check it out:

In case it's not clear in the above photo, the pattern on the sacoche consists of Evangelion heads. Here's a closer look at the pattern, so you can see it better:

Overall, I think the best thing about EVANGELION Millennials 2 is Mai Yoneyama's illustrations. She has a good eye for detail, and I think she draws some great poses as well. However, most of RADIO EVA's clothes aren't really to my taste, so when it comes to fashion-related publications I prefer Mode EVANGELION and Mode EVANGELION2. That's just my personal opinion, though. If you love RADIO EVA, you'll probably find this mook a lot more interesting than I did. And that's cool! There are plenty of brands that make garments inspired by Evangelion, so it's nice that they cater to different preferences.

So if this mook (or the included goodies!) looks interesting to you, then please support the artists by purchasing it if you can! Check if your favorite source for buying Japanese books has it, and if not then ask them if they can order it for you. ^_^

Well, that’s it for my seventieth Evangelion book review. I have plenty more Evangelion books to discuss, so keep checking my blog for new reviews!

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S4 Ep8: Magic Mai

So fun fact, I was out of town around this Thanksgiving and I grabbed a laptop from my Dad’s stack of machinery he’s sort of collected over the years and lo and behold--he put Linux on it.

Like I dunno if you all can relate to this problem, but everything he touches turns into Linux and he’s trying to live this Windows free/Mac free lifestyle, and I get it, I’m friends with so many vegetarians, but like I hate this laptop. I'm using Gimp to make these screenshots...So I can re-do them later in Photoshop because...it just doesn’t feel right to put Papyrus on this computer. It already has Linux. This poor machine has suffered enough. Long story short, this’ll be a small update because right clicking on linux is ass.

Also, because I was on a laptop and realized how small my blog is for the first time--I don’t have control over the size of pictures in text posts, tumblr does, and in this particular theme it’s not allowing me to change the size, and so do me a favor. Click ctrl and + at the same time a couple times (I’m assuming most of you are on firefox). There. the pictures are the right size now. If you hated that, you can click ctrl and - but like lets be real, my font is occasionally...tiny.

Anyway, we start discussing this episode on the confusing legs of the last one, where Mai is evil now, and it’s really not entirely clear if she’s possessed or if she’s just always been this way, or if she just FEELS like it.

And that’s all this episode is about, start to finish--is this Mai’s choice or was this not Mai’s choice? The answer is the same as it would be for a normal person: it’s complicated. Maybe it’s everybody’s choice. Maybe it was because no one did anything that Mai went completely haywire? Maybe it was because Mai hid how she was feeling so no one had any idea she needed help? Or, overall, maybe Mai is kind of a toxic person and wanted to be this way? Especially while she’s on children’s cartoon card drugs?

(read more under the cut)

So to start off, a weird thing happened at the beginning of this episode. After about 4 seasons, someone finally mentioned this:

How many seasons has Yugi been talking to himself? Like, out loud. In front of everyone and Kaiba? This whole time, right? Like Valon just dashed my headcanon where I figured Yugi was smart enough to think his thoughts instead of speak his thoughts. He’s just not that smart, unfortunately.

Meanwhile, Mai has managed to attract this other (teenager?) guy and like...to go worse than Joey so quickly is kind of shocking. Mai just seems embarrassed by the amount of very young boys in love with her. And she’s not even a cougar about it, she doesn’t really seem to want this to happen but it keeps on happening.

And although he is essentially the card form of a drug pusher, Valon has this soft spot for a girl I guess to give him some sort of redeemable flaw. However, she only wears tube tops and minis and spends like hundreds of dollars on her hair, so it doesn’t really make him seem any less shallow, tbh.

PS I’m surprised, that unlike all the other characters on Yugioh, I can’t just type in Valon’s name into Google and get his age and weight. No idea what his age is, and if you know, feel free to tell me but he just seems...exactly the same age as Joey. He seems very 17. Maybe it’s the obsession with motorcycles and children’s playing cards? Maybe it’s his big ol childlike eyes? He just seems young and niave like how a teenager who just fell in love with a very angry older woman would.

Joey tries to remind everyone, multiple times, that this game is the worst idea ever since it requires one of them to super die, but Mai is on card drugs so I don't know why they bothered. Also, why is Joey still surprised by this after 4 seasons of this?

Yo it’s S4 and Mai witnesses magic non-stop but still has basically no idea how it works. She really did say “I have no soul” and it was like...I’m 90% certain she literally thinks she has no soul right now. Which I guess, statistically speaking, is rare to actually have a still intact soul after hanging out with the main villain, with the way this show typically goes.

Meanwhile, last episode it really sounded like Duke Devlin was driving to Pegasus’ company building. It really sounded like he would have gone directly there, since Weevil and Rex told him that Yugi was going to Pegasus.

Remember that Duke Devlin works for Pegasus and probably has his own parking spot.

So where did he go instead?

You know how there’s only one gas station in the entirety of America?

I can’t believe it blew up.

Y’all what is the red splotch in the middle of the pile ps? That is legitimately a pile of blood, right? I didn’t shop that in. There’s just a red puddle in this kid’s show.

Y’all what is that? Like was there a scene with a red handkerchief that I missed? Is that a red handkerchief?

But to move past the mysterious pool of blood that confirms those bikers are so hella dead, I have no idea why Duke was here, I have no idea how he got the tip off that Yugi visited this place, but then he turned around and went back to SF so like...I guess he’ll arrive 3 days from now because again, they are in Arizona. They keep telling me this is right outside SF but like--Mesas. There’s Mesas.

And then this happened.

That one guy on the writing staff who just stans Seto Kaiba so hard got into the drawing room, I see.

PS someone had to pose for this shot for them to draw this shot from this angle.

Meanwhile, lets see why Mai turned evil. Ah, because it is Yugioh, the biggest reason is that she has no friends (probably because she’s got the most acidic personality known to man) and isn’t card popular enough and got super bitter and jealous.

Speaking as an artist who is online, I can understand the frustration here. Sometimes (99% of the time) you work really hard and no one cares and you get like 2 notes. And honestly, why should they? Like, why do you do it in the first place?

Mai echoes a lot of the issues of Seto last season, where she wants so badly to be the absolute best to prove herself to the ghosts of her past who really don’t care any more.

But, since Mai was in a coma when Seto got through all of that, I guess she never got the memo and still seems stuck on just wanting to be the best with no other reason than “to be the best” which again, sounds so much like art school problems. This is everyone who has ever had an interest in animation. We all go through that phase.

Generally we don’t take peoples souls as a reaction to that type of discouragement, but then Mai made sure to mention in almost a foot note that she did spend like an entire season and a half trapped in Marik's shadow realm. And that kind of effed her up in a really big way.

Thanks, Marik.

Really feels like Marik should be dealing with this problem--really feels like maybe Marik is the only person that we can actually point to and say “Oh yeah, that guy is to blame for Mai right now” And he is the only person that Mai does not actively go out and try to kill.

And I’ll have you know I just deleted like a 15 K word rant about the difference between character assassination and your character just--evolving into a jackass, and how it’s OK to have your character change into a jackass, especially after trauma. I felt this need to really have to defend this ancient writing technique that people have been using since about as long as stories have been around.

Then I remembered “Oh yeah, I’m just making this point because a few number of very loud idiots on the internet want to have very lukewarm hot-takes about popular characters solely because they enjoy baiting people on twitter into getting into week-long arguments that don’t go anywhere.” and I just...let it go. I let it just...go into the ether. Ah. The peace that comes when you already know you’re right.

But anyway, back to Yugioh, which thankfully doesn’t take a stance on this nuanced subject, and only presents this very serious problem without actually offering a solution (because there isn’t a one fit’s all solution to falling off the deep end and getting into drugs and murder), Mai decides to just go and blame this decision she made on anyone else. Because, why take responsibility for your actions, when you can pin it on people who were on the other side of the freakin planet when it happened?

Like, I just want to remind y’all that she was in ATLANTIS.

I wonder how good the cell reception is in ATLANTIS.

I just...Mai is like in her mid twenties maybe thirty’s. She’s so arbitrarily old that she plays Yugi’s Mom in the video game spinoff where they’re reincarnations of medieval times. That’s how old she is.

Imagine if you made some epically BAD decisions because you were jealous of some teenager’s success and didn’t want to be weak anymore, and then you confronted those teens, and said “This is all your fault.”

Imagine looking someone as dysfunctional as Joey Wheeler and telling him “You made me like this” because lollllllll

And I present this as a joke but like basically this happens all freakin time. We’ve all had a friend like Mai. Past tense of course, because it’s really hard to keep a friend like Mai for very long. (One of my friend’s who went Mai destroyed my apartment one summer and then literally blamed it on me for going to California for 2 months and leaving her unattended.) But like...don’t let Mai’s do it to you. They can get better, but only if it’s their choice, really. You can’t force them to save themselves.

But, as Mai was finally ready to give up cards and probably improve her quality of life by a huge degree, unfortunately, she got sucked right back into the trap.

Bro note: being a serial murderer cultist is basically working at McDonald's in this universe so maybe this wasn’t even that weird?

But that aside, this is alllllmost like a dark version of “Mai got into an abusive relationship to fill the void in her heart” except she’s not even really dating this guy? Like she hates this guy? He’s just kinda there?

Y’all I really can’t tell if Valon is in an abusive relationship with Mai who is using him for power or if she’s in an abusive relationship with him because he only wants her pretty face and wants to kill Joey because Joey liked her once--and maybe it’s both? Maybe both of these people are just...really bad for each other?

Overall Joey is kind of tossed into this not-a-love-triangle and I’m like

“Hey show? show? Am I supposed to....were any these people ever dating? Is there supposed to be an implied history? Am I supposed to get attached to this?” because I mean...the only character who was able to get some actual physical romance on this show was Pegasus when he macked the ghost of his dead wife because, again, Pegasus is the freakin king of this entire show. Of course HE can do it.

But have this show clarify what the hell is happening between Valon and Mai? I’m gonna take a bet that we will never get to see it beyond Valon being like “Ain’t she a beaut!” Like Steve Irwin talking to an alligator, and Mai just pretending he doesn’t exist. Yugioh romances are so completely one way every single time. If something more than that happens, I’ll be

shook.

Anyway, as all the children on the show keep repeating over and over again, they haven’t had any contact with Mai since she left the freakin country and they went back to High School.

And so someone threatens to kill himself, as is Yugioh tradition, and someone else barks at him to NOT kill himself, as is also tradition, and they decide to play real cards next episode.

This whole entire episode, PS, Joey went out of his way to just...not play cards. that was this whole episode. Way to draw out a card game over three episodes, I guess.

Anyway if you want to read these from the start you can do so by clicking the link here

[siirensung]

Hello :) My name is Dani and first of all let me tell you that I LOVE your writing. I literally sit and read how you interact with others for HOURS and seeing you and a couple of the people you write with gave me the inspiration to create an indie blog for my bb Reyes. That being said, I've never had an indie rp before but I've figured the basics with the rules, verses, etc. Could you please give me some suggestions on how to approach people or get this thing started? I'd thank you forever

asldkfh that’s so sweet of you omg what the fuck

HELL YEAH OKIE DOKIE first thing first: the best way to learn how to indie rp is just to follow a bunch of people and sort of pick and choose the different techniques you like to resemble. that what i did. i came from a long experience of closed group rping with no formatting, and just sort of floated with the indie trends that came and out, and kept the ones i like. i’m gonna tell you how I consider indie rping, which isn’t law or bible or anything, but this is what i look for when i’m looking to follow people!

first, the technical shit

RULES. i’m gonna go over things you say you already know, because there are some. hidden things that people sort of silently expect. in your rules, you must have your name/alias, your pronouns, your age (the terms ‘minor’ or ‘18+’ are sufficient, you don’t need to give your exact age but you NEED to tell people if you’re a minor or not), and your triggers (again, no detail necessary, just tell us what we should tag for you). these are the necessities and the rest is up to you. make your rules clear and concise, and on the short side. it helps to bold important things so people can skim and find them easily. personally, i like seeing people’s shipping policies. bc i’m a shipping slut. are you single ship? multiship? do you prefer not to ship? are you exclusive?

SELECTIVITY. on that note. let people know about your selectivity. do you want to play with anyone who follows you? do you only want to play with mutual followers (people you follow who follow you back)? i, as well as (almost) everyone i follow, are mutuals only. don’t feel guilty if you want to follow this route, and don’t let people talk you into playing with people you don’t want to play with. this blog is yours and your time is yours. spend it how you choose.

EXCLUSIVITY. along the same vein, let people know about your policy on exclusivity – which basically means that there are certain blogs of characters and theirs is the only blog of that character with whom you will play. this is entirely up to you. personally, i don’t do it and i never will. but be sure to let people know if you do! make sure to be honest. make sure you’re comfortable with your rules.

then, the aesthetic shit

REPRESENTATION. the first glance. the first eye contact. generally, this is the mobile preview. have a cool looking mobile banner! it attracts the eye! you don’t need to be a photoshop god for this, either. minimalism is in. a dark screenshot of your character that blends in with the color of your mobile background is hella neat. make sure the color is eye-friendly. black, white, cream, soft tones. if a mobile preview is lime green or shocking blue, i won’t give it a second look. My Eyes, They Bleed. then make sure you have SOMEWHERE on your mobile preview the bare minimum of your blog’s explanation. it doesn’t need to be long. in fact, i tend to like short ones. minimalism, man. for example, mine: ‘multimuse rp blog: dragon age and mass effect canon and ocs’. i’m saying what this blog is: an rp blog. i’m saying what KIND of rp blog: a multimuse. what fandoms i cater to: dragon age and mass effect. what characters you expect to find here: canon and ocs. sometimes people will put their name, too. (also, warn people if you have an autoplay. just write ‘ap’ or ‘autoplay’. people know.)

REPRESENTATION PART 2. piggybacking on all that: promos. gotta have a promo. this is how people find you, and how you can spread the word about your cool new blog. (tag it with the audiences you want to attract. such as: mass effect rp, mass effect roleplay, bioware rp, bioware roleplay, star wars rp, etc etc. the mass effect fandom isn’t all that huge. consider expanding with crossovers to other space fandoms, such as star wars and star trek. we’re buddies.) it can be as simple as the icon promo trend, where you have a horizontal line of icons of your character followed by ‘like/reblog if you’re interested in playing with (character name)! written by (your name).’ it can be that chill. sometimes it can be dramatic. just make sure it’s tasteful. try to avoid gaudy. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS (this is my pet peeve) INCLUDE YOUR CHARACTER’S NAME AND THE FANDOM NAME. i die inside every time i have no idea who this promo is for.

THEME. the second glance. your blog’s handshake. first – and sometimes last – impression. same rules as the preview and the promo, make it tasteful or make it minimalist. make it easy to follow. if you’re not confident in your aesthetic or ps skills, the white blogs with a simple pic of your character in the sidebar is in right now. leave it open to interpretation. theme-hunter is where i get all my themes, for the most part. if you want some cool theme suggestions, let me know! you may end up interested in html through theme aesthetic and wANTING IT TO BE PERFECT. like me. hehe. anywho – you’ll see a lot of Hyper Aesthetic Themes. try not to get worried about them. the most important thing is that your links to your rules, verses, dossier (if you have one), and ask are clear. the writing is easy to read.

also, the replying shit

FORMATTING. okay so formatting is a Minefield right now. personally, i really enjoy formatting! my formatting trick is: twenty spaces before each paragraph to simulate tabs, bolding quotation marks and putting a space between the marks and the dialogue, ( doing this to parentheses and quite frankly using Way too many parentheses ), BOLDING AND CAPSING emotive words or phrases, italicizing things for emphasis, using small font (and sometimes tiny font). but DON’T overdo it. still, the point is legibility. it’s your choice to use formatting at all. i like it a lot, it helps me Feel the writing and reply. it’s also your choice to use small or tiny font, but… i’ma be honest. i really really do prefer when people use small or tiny font. people are pushing back against tiny font bc it can be really hard to read, so i tend to just use small font (unless my partner uses tiny font). to small font (on pc): select all the text, ctrl shift minus sign. to use tiny font: use small font, then ctrl comma. 

ICONNING. again, another minefield. as we speak, rp icons are getting smaller and smaller. my icons at 80x80 with a 2px border, and i often times use a psd. if you get your icons from somewhere, credit that place. i frequently make my own, but not always. as a personal favor, don’t go smaller than 75px… the icons… they’re shrinking…

SPEED. go at your own speed! i cannot stress the importance of this. i’m currently suffering from depression and some Shit, so i may be on the dash a lot, but my reply speed is frequently outstripped by passing snails. don’t write if you’re not feeling it. don’t feel pressured to do it. personally, the majority of the fun of rping is plotting with your partner and obsessing over your character. people love to see people enthusiastic about their kid. that’s why they followed you. bc they love your kid, too. if you have a thread you’re not feeling, be honest! TALK TO YOUR PARTNER.

COMMUNICATION. on that note! get to know your rp partners. love them. cherish them. tell them they’re wonderful. tell them when you’re not feeling a thread. don’t suffer in silence. drop threads. treat yoself. also, follow ALL THE PEOPLE. they may not follow you back. don’t tug at them if they don’t. follow people and make sure you have examples of your writing on your page, even if it’s just a long headcanon or drabble. like a cover letter. 

WRITING. third person. i think i can be pretty confident about this: only third person. i use present tense for the most part, but present or past tense. sometimes there are oneliners (replies that are usually just dialogue, maybe with a lil but of narrative for actions, usually spur of the moment and dropped after the moment is gone). there are short paras (generally 1-3 paragraphs of varying sizes). there are long paras (4-6 paras, usually for plotting). there are Novella (6+ for the Intense Future Tolkiens i can’t do this i’m a dr seuss). 

TAGGING. can be pretty simple. as a multi, i have too many characters to have thorough tagging systems. a lot of people have different tags for like. aesthetic, musing, visage, headcanons, etc. mine is simple. each character has an in character thread tag: * ｡✧ ━ ⦅ character: scott. ⦆. also, a musing tag: * ｡✧ ━ ⦅ musing: scott. ⦆. a headcanon tag: * ｡✧ ━ ⦅ headcanon: scott. ⦆. sometimes a ship tag: * ｡✧ ━ ⦅ scott & liam: just frame the halves and call them brothers. ⦆. and you MUST have an out of character tag, where it’s just you talking, and you must tag every post of just you talking with it: * ｡✧ ━ ⦅ out of character. ⦆. it must be clear. you can make them fancy and pretty like this. i like them. it’s not necessary. also: tag any triggers. important. search your partners’ rules for their triggers. if someone asks you to tag a trigger, do it without a second thought.

lastly, the important shit

HAVE FUN! we’re all here for the same reason. we love mass effect. WE LOVE SPACE. there will always be aggression and elitism and hurt feelings in the indie rp community. always. try not to let it bring you down. play nice. kindergarten rules. enjoy!

let me know if you have more questions/want more detail!

don’t reblog this

[hub-pub-bub]

Our love of libraries is well-documented. Did we mention we feel the same way about librarians? We’re working on a dating app to connect our two core user demographics: INTJs and librarians. It’s called Stackitect, and it’s coming in 2019! Copyright, copyright, copyright. (Copyright law works just like triple talaq, yes?)

We love going to the library in person. Entering a library feels like taking an Adderall. (Again, I assume. I’m lame.) My ass gets FOCUSED! It’s the perfect place to work, read, research, study, and learn. And whatever you’re doing, librarians can be incredibly helpful. They are friendly, knowledgable, and waging a quiet war to protect us from fascism.

But sometimes it’s tricky to physically get to your library. Maybe the parking situation is rough, or the hours overlap with your work schedule, or a trip requires a long series of bus rides. Maybe you find the librarians too distractingly sexy. I’m not here to judge.

Have no fear! In recent years, libraries have made incredible strides into the dense and unmappable jungle that is the internet. There’s a slew of new and constantly-improving apps that allow you to instantly rent and return free audiobooks and ebooks. Including graphic novels! And movies!

As you well know, the only thing we love more than librarians is free shit. Here are some of the top apps. Please go download them immediately.

Free audiobooks and ebooks offered through your local library

OverdriveFor Android, iOS, and Kindle

The most widely used free lending app is Overdrive. It’s the one I use. And it’s great, for a variety of reasons.

Both audiobooks and ebooks are available through Overdrive. I can add multiple library cards, and the system includes affiliate branches in my search results. If I reserve something with a waiting list, I get an email the moment it arrives—and I can set it to automatically check me out and begin downloading. All my books are collected together in a neat little visual shelf. Plus it gives me a lot of control; I can adjust everything from ebook font size and style to audiobook playback speed.

Returns are processed automatically, which is HUGE! This means that there’s no late fines or nagging reminders. (Bless libraries with fine limits because I am both a bookworm and a procrastinator.) Fines have long been viewed as a necessary “stick” to compel timely returns, but recent thinking has shifted. Fines can undercut a public library’s core mission. A $3 fine is nothing to middle class adults, but it can be an insurmountable barrier to a child of low-income parents. In some areas, the accumulation of tiny fines triggered the revocation of borrowing privileges for one in three patrons! They’re a source of inappropriate shame, and a petty reason to block access to learning.

Sorry, had to hit my SJW rant quota. Minimum one per article. Part of our Terms of Service agreement.

Overdrive’s selection depends on your library. For me, it’s fantastic, but I often have to wait a few days or weeks for an in-demand book. It lets you know how far down you are on the waiting list. Usually I’ll be first in line on a single copy, or seventh in line on two copies. There are exceptions, though… I ain’t getting the audiobook version of Fire and Fury until sometime around 2041. Tokyo’s gonna be Neo-Tokyo by then!

LibbyFor Android, iOS, and Kindle

Libby is from the same people who make Overdrive. Overdrive’s interface is fine but not great. It does the job. Libby ostensibly provides the exact same app, just with a cleaner, friendlier interface.

Personally, I don’t find it to be a meaningful improvement. And Libby lacks some of the functionality of Overdrive. For example, Overdrive syncs across multiple devices, while Libby only works with one. And it oversells its book recommendation tool; I look forward to seeing it improve in future years.

Hoopla & Freading

For Android, iOS, and Kindle

Hoopla and Freading are the #2 and #3 most widely-supported lending apps for public libraries. Unfortunately, both of the public libraries I frequent are Overdrive libraries, so I can’t try them out myself. That said, they should do the same job as Overdrive.

Looking at screenshots leads me to believe that Hoopla may have the best interface design. But I’ve also heard that it doesn’t have a waitlist feature, which seems like a deal-killer for people who want to read bestsellers. I’d love to hear from any users of these apps in the comments below!

Free audiobooks and ebooks, no library access necessary

Prime Reading from AmazonFor Android, iOS, and Kindle

I don’t own a Kindle, which is Amazon’s proprietary ereader. I kinda want one though, so if any sugar parents and/or Amazon representatives are reading, feel free to hook me up. Piggy has one, and as a publishing professional she guiltily admits that she adores this Amazon product. Stone the blasphemer.

Luckily, you don’t need a Kindle to access Amazon’s library. If you already have an Amazon Prime subscription, you have access to Prime Reading.

Unlike Overdrive or Libby, their library is fixed. And… it isn’t great. There’s a lot of pulpy genre stuff and self-published novels of questionable quality. I cannot recommend getting Amazon Prime just for the library. It isn’t worth it. But if you already have Prime for other, better reasons, definitely check it out!

Project GutenbergBrowser-based, but downloadable onto other devices

Project Gutenberg is a beautifully shoestring, low-tech offering. They produce free ebook versions of public domain classics. If you’re a high school/college student, an English language learner, or just love smelling salts as a plot contrivance, please check out their offerings! Everybody from Aesop to Shakespeare to Dickens is here.

… Just don’t read the Dickens. Charles Dickens is Alexandre Dumas with all the fucks wrung out. #hottake

You can download them and load them into Apple’s iBooks app. Yeah, that orange icon gathering dust on page seven of your apps!  Once there, they’re pretty easy to use, but loading them in can be a pain. Although Google told me that Apple told TechCrunch that he’s working on revamping that app right now. Those male dominated companies sure do love gossip!

I will say that the quality control isn’t great. I really appreciate good ebook design, and PG just doesn’t seem to have the funds to make that happen. So it’s hit or miss, but again, it’s totally free. And it’s the only one on this list (so far) that doesn’t require any kind of fancy device, library card, or attached subscription.

LibrivoxBrowser-based, but downloadable onto other devices

Librivox is essentially the audiobook version of Project Gutenberg. Users create their own recordings of public domain works and offer them for as free downloads to other users. You can download them onto devices, burn them onto CDs (if your car, like mine, ain’t hep to that MP3 jazz). They’ve recently done a site overhaul and it looks great. It’s easy to download the books you want to listen to, or volunteer to become a reader yourself. Some readers are much better than others, so like Project Gutenberg, it can be a bit of a crapshoot. But at least it’s a free crapshoot!

And please, do not get me started on the whole “audiobooks aren’t books” thing. Audiobooks fill an incredibly important role in making literature accessible. Do not come onto our blog trying to serve that snobby bowl of nonsense. Same goes for ebooks! I was once excoriated by a rude Old at an airport for burying my face in my phone. “If you have to talk to someone, just pick up the phone and call them” she muttered. Well, lady, not that it’s any of your business, but I was reading Thomas Hardy. And that guy lets everybody go to voicemail. Minjabiznas.

This list is incomplete! There are many other, smaller apps out there that my library doesn’t support (yet), so if you have experience with another, please tell us about them in the comments below!

PS: If you don’t know how the whole library thing works, thats okay. You can find your local library here. Visit their website for information on how to join. You usually have to go in-person once to get your card, and some require proof of residency (like a utility bill) or some kind of ID. But others are very relaxed, and allow you to sign up online, or start downloading today and agree to come in sometime within the next six months to formalize your account. You can do it!

[differentpenguinnightmare-blog]

Dude, Deter Testing. Assessing. Lawyers. Assessing Updates.

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It is actually a malfunction from social communication, actually, because social networks pitches on its own as the elevation of social communication. http://unmodedeviesain.fr/nutriloss-avis-prix-foru-effets-secondaire-acheter-site-officel-amazon-pharmacie/ can observe why Sony settled on the 5mbps requirement - that ensures that PlayStation Today operates on more web hookups - but at least we would like to see a scalable bandwidth possibility, therefore those along with much better hookups could receive a better knowledge. This is exactly what social media performs absolute best-- sharing that which you are actually experiencing, whether it is actually the program you're seeing, the post you merely review, heck, the breakfast you only purchased. You may now develop MEGA-sized Robots up to 10,000 PROCESSOR and also take them into Custom-made Video games along with Play vs AI setting. Juxtaposed through this is actually GeForce Currently, by far as well as away the most very most scientifically state-of-the-art cloud streaming unit on the market place at this moment - brilliant in its own niche, however along with a rather limited games option based on mainly outdated headlines, a dependence on a high-end net connection for absolute best outcomes, as well as an encouraging 'acquire cloud/get digital' service design that could work, but just if enough authors approve it. As an example, prior to this testimonial I was using the strongly related to Objective Advancement's Little Snitch to monitor outbound connections and Intego Virus Barrier to catch malware - considering that my work possesses me living on the Internet in a broad surging style. If achieved, they will reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service - providing the Compensation tools to ensure fair game, equally they did when telephone solution became the key means of interaction. Like each one of Microsoft's current uses, Web Traveler has lots of toolbars.

[luxus4me]

David Walsh Blog http://j.mp/2hkHzYG

If you’ve read this blog over the past months, you’ll know that Cloudinary offers an amazing array of functionality, whether it be imagery, video, and even audio. I wanted to highlight ten of my favorite features and tricks when transforming your media on Cloudinary!

Outline Effect

I’ve always appreciated transparent PNGs but adding CSS borders to PNG images still shows a squared outline around the image and not just its contents. I always wondered if there was a clever way to add a border around just the visible image contents but Cloudinary beat me to it with the outline effect. Here’s a simple example of a single outline:

http://j.mp/2f5wZnQ

Here’s a more advanced example, using several outlines:

http://j.mp/2hkHzYG

What an excellent effect — I’d love to know the science behind this feat!

Color Mapping and Replacement

Have you ever had an image that’s almost perfect but you’d like to adjust one color set? Cloudinary allows you to do color replacement with a very simple to use API:

e_replace_color:[TO_COLOR RGBA] (auto predominant color, color similarity threshold=50) e.g., e_replace_color:orange, e_replace_color:aa7812

e_replace_color:[TO_COLOR RGBA]:[THRESHOLD] e.g., e_replace_color:orange:90

e_replace_color:[TO_COLOR RGBA]:[THRESHOLD]:[FROM_COLOR] e.g., r_replace_color:orange:50:green

Here’s a really nice example of this API in action:

Adding e_replace_color:pink replaces the predominant blue color with pink!

Displace Effect

The pixels in the image are displaced according to the intensity of the pixels in another specified image (a gradient map specified with the overlay parameter). The stronger the intensity of each pixel in the gradient map, the bigger the displacement of the corresponding pixel in the base image. The amount of displacement in the horizontal and vertical directions is controlled by using the ‘x’ and ‘y’ parameters respectively.

This allows you to intelligently place on image over another image (think product personalization) with little effort:

.../upload/w_180,h_194/c_pad,h_2.0,w_1.0/l_radial_ipdlli,e_displace,y_-10/e_trim/u_glass,x_26,y_-25/sample_ivxrks.jpg

Image Distortion

Image distortion is an incredibly powerful technique, one that can take loads of time if you try to do it manually. Cloudinary’s advanced API allows you to execute image transformations to create amazing, custom images on the fly. Consider the following image flow:

Cloudinary offers an API for every programming language including URL modification to generate the desired image. Using separate images we can create a final product that looks professional yet fairly easy to create:

cloudinary.image("base.jpg", {transformation: [ {width: 700, height: 200, crop: "scale"}, {overlay: "mobile_phone", width: 150, gravity: "west"}, {overlay: "mobile_phone", width: 150, gravity: "east"}, {overlay: "movie_time", width: 90, gravity: "center"}, {overlay: "movie_time", width: 100, gravity: "east", effect: "distort:30:20:85:40:25:120:-30:90"}, {overlay: "text:roboto_120_bold:%2B%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%3D"} ]})

No need to learn Photoshop to create advanced graphics — automate their creation with just one of Cloudinary’s many awesome transformation.

Effects – Cartoonify!

Many image effects and filters add slight tints to images but the more advanced effects are a bit more fun. One of the many Instagram-like filters is cartoonify, an advanced filter to give your images a cartoon effect. The URL format looks like:

.../upload/e_cartoonify/v1470072927/landscape.jpg

Here are a few examples of cartoonify:

Instagram has nothing on Cloudinary! Check out the other Instagram-like filters they provide!

Custom Font Overlays

If you want to use Cloudinary to customize and deliver your media with custom overlays and even pricing or branding text (product personalization), you’ll be excited to know that Cloudinary allows you to upload custom fonts so you can maximize the branding within your images. Start with uploading the font:

Cloudinary::Uploader.upload( "/fonts/AlexBrush-Regular.ttf", resource_type: 'raw', type: 'authenticated', public_id: 'AlexBrush-Regular.ttf');

With the font uploaded you can use it to customize and transform your images, all via change of the URL:

.../upload/o_70,w_700/l_text:AlexBrush-Regular.ttf_80:Double%20Rainbow!,co_deeppink/double_rainbow.jpg

You can upload fonts in a variety of formats.

Advanced Facial Recognition

Cloudinary offers premium add-ons for very advanced image processing; the add-on that first caught my eye was Facial Attribute Detection. Cloudinary’s FAD feature identifies facial features so that you can manipulate images. As an example, imagine you’ve created a website which allows users to purchase eyeglasses. One thing that would prevent me from ordering eyeglasses online is not knowing how I’d look wearing them. Cloudinary’s FAD feature solves that problem: allow the user to upload an image of their face, analyze the image with FAD, then transform an image of the glasses onto the uploaded facial image:

.../fl_region_relative,g_adv_eyes,l_glasses,w_1.7/c_thumb,g_faces,w_300,h_300/coupled.jpg

Cloudinary provides other add-ons like Celebrity Detection, Website Screenshots, WebPurify Moderation, and more!

Auto-Tagging

One of the most useful image processing actions is identification of objects within the image. The bad news is that coding your own recognition feature is incredibly difficult; the good news is that Cloudinary provides an amazing auto-tagging feature so that you don’t have to!

Consider the following image:

I can upload that image to Cloudinary using Node.js…

var cloudinary = require('cloudinary'); cloudinary.config({ cloud_name: 'david-walsh-blog', api_key: '###############', api_secret: ''###############-'###############' }); cloudinary.uploader.upload('sports-balls.jpg', function(result) { console.log('result: ', result); }, { categorization: 'imagga_tagging' });

…and the resulting payload provides an array of identified objects with a confidence level:

// ... "info": { "categorization": { "imagga_tagging": { "status": "complete", "data": [ {"tag": "baseball", "confidence": 0.5475}, {"tag": "tennis", "confidence": 0.4414}, {"tag": "football", "confidence": 0.4121}, {"tag": "soccer", "confidence": 0.394}, // ...

You can even query your account for images that match a specific tag!

cloudinary.api.resources_by_tag('arsenal', function(result) {});

GIF <-> Video Conversion

Different file formats are optimal for different applications, devices, and even specific browsers. While you may upload a GIF to Twitter and other services, most of them convert the GIF to a MP4 for the sake of efficiency, size, and the ability to pause. Not only can Cloudinary deliver and transform your images, they can also manage and optimize formats for you:

<!-- Assuming "kitten_fighting.gif" was uploaded... --> <!-- Render a mp4 of the GIF simply by changing the extension! -->

http://j.mp/2hjIKrt

<!-- Render a webm of the GIF simply by changing the extension! -->

http://j.mp/2hjILf1

Simply adding the mp4 file extension converts the source gif to desired mp4 . To do a proper HTML5 video element with backup formats, you can use the following:

<video width="320" height="180" autoplay loop muted="muted" poster="http://j.mp/2f4U0Yd;> <source type="video/mp4" src="http://j.mp/2hkHG6y;> <source type="video/webm" src="http://j.mp/2f4Vpxy;> Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag. <a href="http://j.mp/2hjIMzB;>Click here to view original GIF</a> </video>

The ability to generate a new file by modifying the file extension is incredibly convenient!

HLS/MPEG-DASH Streaming

There’s nothing more frustrating than ineffective streaming; the word “buffering” strikes terror into the minds of every user. Since HLS and MPEG-DASH are two of the most effective streaming formats, Cloudinary offers optimized streaming in those formats and with a variety of options. For example:

Cloudinary::Uploader.upload("big_buck_bunny.mp4", :resource_type => :video, :eager => [ {:streaming_profile => "full_hd", :format => "m3u8"}, {:streaming_profile => "full_hd", :format => "mpd"}], :eager_async => true, :eager_notification_url => "http://mysite/notify_endpoint", :public_id => "bb_bunny")

You can even create advanced, custom streaming profiles!

These features are just a tiny sample of what Cloudinary can do. Optimized delivery, transformations at the change of a URL, APIs in every language; Cloudinary makes it simple, fun, and efficient!

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