#Software Localization Idea

[natjennie]

was anyone gonna tell me that when you engage in hobbies you enjoy it makes you feel fulfilled and capable and like a real person or was I just supposed to figure that out for myself.

[tinystepsforward]

autocrattic (more matt shenanigans, not tumblr this time)

I am almost definitely not the right person for this writeup, but I'm closer than most people on here, so here goes! This is all open-source tech drama, and I take my time laying out the context, but the short version is: Matt tried to extort another company, who immediately posted receipts, and now he's refusing to log off again. The long version is... long.

If you don't need software context, scroll down/find the "ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening" heading, or just go read the pink sections. Or look at this PDF.

the background

So. Matt's original Good Idea was starting WordPress with fellow developer Mike Little in 2003, which is free and open-source software (FOSS) that was originally just for blogging, but now powers lots of websites that do other things. In particular, Automattic acquired WooCommerce a long time ago, which is free online store software you can run on WordPress.

FOSS is... interesting. It's a world that ultimately is powered by people who believe deeply that information and resources should be free, but often have massive blind spots (for example, Wikipedia's consistently had issues with bias, since no amount of "anyone can edit" will overcome systemic bias in terms of who has time to edit or is not going to be driven away by the existing contributor culture). As with anything else that people spend thousands of hours doing online, there's drama. As with anything else that's technically free but can be monetized, there are:

Heaps of companies and solo developers who profit off WordPress themes, plugins, hosting, and other services;

Conflicts between volunteer contributors and for-profit contributors;

Annoying founders who get way too much credit for everything the project has become.

the WordPress ecosystem

A project as heavily used as WordPress (some double-digit percentage of the Internet uses WP. I refuse to believe it's the 43% that Matt claims it is, but it's a pretty large chunk) can't survive just on the spare hours of volunteers, especially in an increasingly monetised world where its users demand functional software, are less and less tech or FOSS literate, and its contributors have no fucking time to build things for that userbase.

Matt runs Automattic, which is a privately-traded, for-profit company. The free software is run by the WordPress Foundation, which is technically completely separate (wordpress.org). The main products Automattic offers are WordPress-related: WordPress.com, a host which was designed to be beginner-friendly; Jetpack, a suite of plugins which extend WordPress in a whole bunch of ways that may or may not make sense as one big product; WooCommerce, which I've already mentioned. There's also WordPress VIP, which is the fancy bespoke five-digit-plus option for enterprise customers. And there's Tumblr, if Matt ever succeeds in putting it on WordPress. (Every Tumblr or WordPress dev I know thinks that's fucking ridiculous and impossible. Automattic's hiring for it anyway.)

Automattic devotes a chunk of its employees toward developing Core, which is what people in the WordPress space call WordPress.org, the free software. This is part of an initiative called Five for the Future — 5% of your company's profits off WordPress should go back into making the project better. Many other companies don't do this.

There are lots of other companies in the space. GoDaddy, for example, barely gives back in any way (and also sucks). WP Engine is the company this drama is about. They don't really contribute to Core. They offer relatively expensive WordPress hosting, as well as providing a series of other WordPress-related products like LocalWP (local site development software), Advanced Custom Fields (the easiest way to set up advanced taxonomies and other fields when making new types of posts. If you don't know what this means don't worry about it), etc.

Anyway. Lots of strong personalities. Lots of for-profit companies. Lots of them getting invested in, or bought by, private equity firms.

Matt being Matt, tech being tech

As was said repeatedly when Matt was flipping out about Tumblr, all of the stuff happening at Automattic is pretty normal tech company behaviour. Shit gets worse. People get less for their money. WordPress.com used to be a really good place for people starting out with a website who didn't need "real" WordPress — for $48 a year on the Personal plan, you had really limited features (no plugins or other customisable extensions), but you had a simple website with good SEO that was pretty secure, relatively easy to use, and 24-hour access to Happiness Engineers (HEs for short. Bad job title. This was my job) who could walk you through everything no matter how bad at tech you were. Then Personal plan users got moved from chat to emails only. Emails started being responded to by contractors who didn't know as much as HEs did and certainly didn't get paid half as well. Then came AI, and the mandate for HEs to try to upsell everyone things they didn't necessarily need. (This is the point at which I quit.)

But as was said then as well, most tech CEOs don't publicly get into this kind of shitfight with their users. They're horrid tyrants, but they don't do it this publicly.

ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening

WordCamp US, one of the biggest WordPress industry events of the year, is the backdrop for all this. It just finished.

There are.... a lot of posts by Matt across multiple platforms because, as always, he can't log off. But here's the broad strokes.

Sep 17

Matt publishes a wanky blog post about companies that profit off open source without giving back. It targets a specific company, WP Engine.

Compare the Five For the Future pages from Automattic and WP Engine, two companies that are roughly the same size with revenue in the ballpark of half a billion. These pledges are just a proxy and aren’t perfectly accurate, but as I write this, Automattic has 3,786 hours per week (not even counting me!), and WP Engine has 47 hours. WP Engine has good people, some of whom are listed on that page, but the company is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets under management. Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your Open Source ideals. It just wants a return on capital. So it’s at this point that I ask everyone in the WordPress community to vote with your wallet. Who are you giving your money to? Someone who’s going to nourish the ecosystem, or someone who’s going to frack every bit of value out of it until it withers?

(It's worth noting here that Automattic is funded in part by BlackRock, who Wikipedia calls "the world's largest asset manager".)

Sep 20 (WCUS final day)

WP Engine puts out a blog post detailing their contributions to WordPress.

Matt devotes his keynote/closing speech to slamming WP Engine.

He also implies people inside WP Engine are sending him information.

For the people sending me stuff from inside companies, please do not do it on your work device. Use a personal phone, Signal with disappearing messages, etc. I have a bunch of journalists happy to connect you with as well. #wcus — Twitter I know private equity and investors can be brutal (read the book Barbarians at the Gate). Please let me know if any employee faces firing or retaliation for speaking up about their company's participation (or lack thereof) in WordPress. We'll make sure it's a big public deal and that you get support. — Tumblr

Matt also puts out an offer live at WordCamp US:

“If anyone of you gets in trouble for speaking up in favor of WordPress and/or open source, reach out to me. I’ll do my best to help you find a new job.” — source tweet, RTed by Matt

He also puts up a poll asking the community if WP Engine should be allowed back at WordCamps.

Sep 21

Matt writes a blog post on the WordPress.org blog (the official project blog!): WP Engine is not WordPress.

He opens this blog post by claiming his mom was confused and thought WP Engine was official.

The blog post goes on about how WP Engine disabled post revisions (which is a pretty normal thing to do when you need to free up some resources), therefore being not "real" WordPress. (As I said earlier, WordPress.com disables most features for Personal and Premium plans. Or whatever those plans are called, they've been renamed like 12 times in the last few years. But that's a different complaint.)

Sep 22: More bullshit on Twitter. Matt makes a Reddit post on r/Wordpress about WP Engine that promptly gets deleted. Writeups start to come out:

Search Engine Journal: WordPress Co-Founder Mullenweg Sparks Backlash

TechCrunch: Matt Mullenweg calls WP Engine a ‘cancer to WordPress’ and urges community to switch providers

Sep 23 onward

Okay, time zones mean I can't effectively sequence the rest of this.

Matt defends himself on Reddit, casually mentioning that WP Engine is now suing him.

Also here's a decent writeup from someone involved with the community that may be of interest.

WP Engine drops the full PDF of their cease and desist, which includes screenshots of Matt apparently threatening them via text.

Twitter link | Direct PDF link

This PDF includes some truly fucked texts where Matt appears to be trying to get WP Engine to pay him money unless they want him to tell his audience at WCUS that they're evil.

Matt, after saying he's been sued and can't talk about it, hosts a Twitter Space and talks about it for a couple hours.

He also continues to post on Reddit, Twitter, and on the Core contributor Slack.

Here's a comment where he says WP Engine could have avoided this by paying Automattic 8% of their revenue.

Another, 20 hours ago, where he says he's being downvoted by "trolls, probably WPE employees"

At some point, Matt updates the WordPress Foundation trademark policy. I am 90% sure this was him — it's not legalese and makes no fucking sense to single out WP Engine.

Old text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit. New text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

Sep 25: Automattic puts up their own legal response.

anyway this fucking sucks

This is bigger than anything Matt's done before. I'm so worried about my friends who're still there. The internal ramifications have... been not great so far, including that Matt's naturally being extra gung-ho about "you're either for me or against me and if you're against me then don't bother working your two weeks".

Despite everything, I like WordPress. (If you dig into this, you'll see plenty of people commenting about blocks or Gutenberg or React other things they hate. Unlike many of the old FOSSheads, I actually also think Gutenberg/the block editor was a good idea, even if it was poorly implemented.)

I think that the original mission — to make it so anyone can spin up a website that's easy enough to use and blog with — is a good thing. I think, despite all the ways being part of FOSS communities since my early teens has led to all kinds of racist, homophobic and sexual harm for me and for many other people, that free and open-source software is important.

So many people were already burning out of the project. Matt has been doing this for so long that those with long memories can recite all the ways he's wrecked shit back a decade or more. Most of us are exhausted and need to make money to live. The world is worse than it ever was.

Social media sucks worse and worse, and this was a world in which people missed old webrings, old blogs, RSS readers, the world where you curated your own whimsical, unpaid corner of the Internet. I started actually actively using my own WordPress blog this year, and I've really enjoyed it.

And people don't want to deal with any of this.

The thing is, Matt's right about one thing: capital is ruining free open-source software. What he's wrong about is everything else: the idea that WordPress.com isn't enshittifying (or confusing) at a much higher rate than WP Engine, the idea that WP Engine or Silver Lake are the only big players in the field, the notion that he's part of the solution and not part of the problem.

But he's started a battle where there are no winners but the lawyers who get paid to duke it out, and all the volunteers who've survived this long in an ecosystem increasingly dominated by big money are giving up and leaving.

Anyway if you got this far, consider donating to someone on gazafunds.com. It'll take much less time than reading this did.

[peachdeluxe]

I have this in my pinned, but i'd just like to formally ask.. please don't upload my art to pinterest!

I absolutely don't mind my art being saved for reference, the issue is with pinterest itself. People don't generally attach credit on there, and users tend to think of anything on pinterest as totally sourceless and free to use/copy. It's disheartening seeing my original work floating around and being used with no credit, or credited to the wrong person, or having people tell me they've seen my art all over but had no idea I made it.

(It'd be one thing if it were just hobbyists, but unfortunately this extends to the professional sphere as well-- I have been given moodboards with totally uncredited art to reference off of even doing professional design work.)

And besides, with pinterest you have to deal with low quality uploads, things being randomly removed, obnoxious ads everywhere... aside from the convenience of it being online, it really just isn't great for art archiving anyways! I think it's very worthwhile to have an offline art reference folder, and if you don't have one you should get into the habit of actually saving things. You can always save my art to your computer, or print it out to have it physically (as long as you aren't using it for-profit). Under the cut I have some image organizing software recommendations.

Tagstudio - free image and document organizer with tagging functions.

Hydrus network - another free media organizer with tagging functions. works like a locally-hosted booru. Has a little bit more of a learning curve and has the option to set up a server to share files over a server, but you can use it purely offline. (also yeah it's geared towards imageboard users but you don't have to use any of that to work with it)

Notion - freemium (free for one user), can be used online/cross platform and shared more like Pinterest. more of a general notetaking/organizational app, but you can create moodboard sites using templates.

may update the post with more if I find more!

[political-us]

The Dow is on track for its worst April since 1932—the bleakest year of the Great Depression. Nearly a century later, markets are once again facing economic turbulence on a historic scale.

Trump's approval rating drops to 42%, the lowest it's been since he became president, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

A cutting-edge microscope at Harvard Medical School could pave the way for major breakthroughs in cancer detection and aging research—but its progress is now at risk. The scientist who created the software to analyze its images, 30-year-old Russian-born Kseniia Petrova, has been held in immigration detention for two months. Arrested in February at a Boston airport, Petrova is now detained in Louisiana, facing possible deportation to Russia, where she says she fears imprisonment for protesting the war in Ukraine. Her case highlights the tension between immigration policy and the U.S.'s reliance on global scientific talent.

The Department of Homeland Security denied Mahmoud Khalil permission to be present for the birth of his first child, which took place Monday at a hospital in New York. Instead, Khalil had to experience the moment over the phone from Jena, Louisiana—more than 1,000 miles away from his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, who delivered their baby boy. The case has sparked criticism over DHS's handling of family and humanitarian considerations.

The White House is considering policies to encourage more Americans to marry and have children, including a potential $5,000 “baby bonus,” according to The New York Times. The proposals align with a broader conservative push to address falling birth rates and promote traditional family values. Other ideas on the table include reserving 30% of Fulbright scholarships for applicants who are married or have children, and funding educational programs that teach women about fertility and ovulation.

A group of Venezuelan migrants facing removal under a broad wartime authority challenged the Trump administration’s deportation process at the Supreme Court, arguing the notices they received don’t meet legal standards. The ACLU, representing the migrants, said the English-only notices—often given less than 24 hours before deportation—violate a recent Supreme Court ruling requiring enough time for individuals to seek habeas review.

The Education Department announced it will start collecting student loan payments from over 5 million borrowers who are in default. This means it will begin taking money from federal wages, Social Security checks, and tax refunds. This move comes as pandemic-era protections for student loan borrowers continue to wind down.

Tensions are rising within the Arizona Democratic Party as the state party chair is at odds with the governor and U.S. senators. In response, officials are considering shifting 2026 campaign funds to local county Democrats.

​The U.S. Department of Commerce has announced substantial tariffs on solar panel imports from four Southeast Asian countries—Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia—following a year-long investigation into alleged trade violations by Chinese-owned manufacturers operating in these nations. The tariffs, which vary by country and company, are as follows:​

Cambodia: Facing the steepest duties, with tariffs reaching up to 3,521%, due to non-cooperation with the investigation.

Vietnam: Companies may face duties up to 395.9%.​

Thailand: Tariffs could be as high as 375.2%.​

Malaysia: Duties are set at 34.4%.​

Senator Adam Schiff is urging the National Archives to investigate the Trump administration's use of Signal and similar messaging apps. He emphasized the need for NARA to reach out to every federal agency involved to make sure all relevant records are preserved. This comes amid growing concerns over transparency and potential violations of federal recordkeeping laws.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Book Cover

“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover!” We’ve all heard the phrase and we all know that’s impossible. Because the cover of a book is the first thing a potential reader sees—it should stop them in their tracks. It’s a very powerful marketing tool; having a well-designed book cover is crucial.

Tips for Making a Great Book Cover Design

Using more than two to three typefaces on a cover is discouraged, as it can look really messy.

Keep things simple. Your cover will be in a sea of other covers so try to keep your design from getting muddy and make sure it stands out.

Show your designs to people who have a design eye and/or you trust. It’s great to get feedback.

If you hire a professional designer, write a brief and send them info. Be really clear on what you want. Designers usually do a certain number of design rounds included in the agreed upon fee and any extra rounds of design will be extra.

If you hire a professional designer, they will likely have ideas about printing and may have connections to printers. They are a resource so don’t forget to ask questions.

Don’t forget: a book cover is an important part of selling any book. Whether you decide to do it yourself or collaborate with a professional, pay special attention to this part of the process, as a great cover goes a long way.

6-Step Guide: Professional Book Cover

STEP ONE Generate Ideas. Look around at book covers you like. Go to a bookshop and peruse what’s currently happening in book cover design. Take notes of what elements you like on the cover image. A certain typeface? Color? Do you prefer an image or an illustration or something purely typographic on the cover? Another option is to create a mood board. You can use a platform like Pinterest or Evernote, or create a folder on your desktop, and pull book cover inspiration from the web. While you’re gathering inspiration, keep in mind what genre your book is and what kind of book design feels appropriate.

STEP TWO Find a Designer (Who Could Be You!). Do you have design skills? If so, your next step is to begin layouts and mock-ups of the covers. You should use whatever software program you are comfortable with. Most professional book cover designers use a program from the Adobe Creative Suite:

InDesign. InDesign is a multi-page design platform but can also be used for single page design.

Photoshop. Used to manipulate and experiment with photography.

Illustrator. Illustrator is a vector-based program, which means you can create graphic art that can be scaled up or down without loss of quality.

Photoshop and Illustrator. These can also be used together as you can bring your Photoshop file into Illustrator to set the type after you have worked with your cover image.

If you don’t have design skills, now is a great time to hire a book cover designer. The first step is to figure out what kind of budget you have for this. A designer’s fee will range depending on their expertise. Get a figure in mind and then write a design brief which should include the book specs:

Size

Print-run

Intended audience

Where and how the book will be published

Anticipated publish date

You should also include a summary of what the book is about and what you are looking for in a cover. Also share the inspiration you’ve gathered with the designer.

If you don’t have design skills but want to create the cover without the help of a professional, there are a few software programs you can use, such as Canva or 100 Covers, design tools that allow you to DIY the cover (for free or a fee).

STEP THREE Decide on the Dimensions. If you’re self-publishing and printing with a local printer you can work with them to make sure your book dimensions will fit on their printer (remember a book prints front, back, and spine in one sheet of paper). It’s also a good idea to find examples of books whose size you like and feels good to hold. Use that as a jumping off point for your book.

Book Cover Dimensions List. If you are printing for a specific market, from print to ebook, here is a handy list:

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing File Format: JPEG or TIFF Cover Size (Recommended): 2560x1600 pixels Cover Size Requirements: between 1000x625 pixels and 10,000x10,000 pixels (one side must be at least 1000)

Apple iBooks File Format: JPEG or PNG Cover Size (Recommended): 1400x1873 or 1600x2400 pixels Cover Size Requirements: at least 1400 pixels wide

Barnes & Noble File Format: JPEG or PNG Cover Size (Recommended): Rectangle height and width, at least 1400 pixels Cover Size Requirements: Min. 750 pixels height and width

Kobo Books File Format: JPEG or PNG Cover Size (Recommended): 1600x2400 pixels Cover Size Requirements: Min. 1400 pixels width

Smashwords File Format: JPEG or PNG Cover Size (Recommended): 1600x2400 pixels Cover Size Requirements: Min. 1400 pixels width Draft2Digital

File Format: JPEG Cover Size (Recommended): 1600x2400 pixels Cover Size Requirements: Tall rectangle

STEP FOUR Choose Your Style

Photo-based cover. If you’re creating an photo-based book cover, you’ll need to source stock imagery. There are lots of great resources online to find stock imagery including ShutterStock, Getty Images, and Adobe Stock. (Keep in mind: most photography archives require payment to use their images. Always investigate the copyright of images you’re interested in using.) Look for images that convey or allude to your book’s genre. You can use programs like Photoshop to manipulate your image, making it black and white instead of color or cropping it in a certain way.

Illustration-based cover. If you’re considering a more graphic approach to your cover, Illustrator is the tool to use. You can bring hand-drawn drawings into it and outline them to create scale-able, high-res illustrations which you can manipulate within the program. You can also create shapes, patterns, experiment with typography within illustrator and play with color, transparency, size and much more.

Typography-based cover. Finally, many successful book covers use typography as the main graphic device. This takes some skill and knowledge of typefaces, the historical context of a typeface, and how to manipulate it thoughtfully. That said, using type as a graphic can be very impactful.

STEP FIVE Pick a Typeface (Font). No matter what kind of cover you are designing, you are going to need the title of the book and the author’s name on the cover. As mentioned above, picking an appropriate typeface is very important. You want to pick something that feels right for your book—is it a sans serif or serif? A heavy weight or lighter weight? You want to make sure it’s not something with a lot of baggage, like Comic Sans or Papyrus. It is a good idea to actually do a little research on when, where, and who your typeface was designed by to give you context and feel out if it will be right for your book. You might also consider using up to two different typefaces, one for the title and one for your name. A serif and sans-serif mix can give a bit of contrast and visual interest. There are some typefaces that pair really well together. Check out the website TypeWolf to get ideas of what fonts pair well together.

STEP SIX Test, Tweak, and Repeat. Once you have a few versions of your cover, print them out on your home printer and take a look with a critical eye. Does the type size feel chunky? Too bold? Too small? How does your image look? Is it cropped right? Are the lines of your illustrations too thin and not showing up? Go back and refine your design and then repeat! Don’t forget to look at your book cover as a small thumbnail as well. People are on their mobile phones and you want to make sure your cover still stands out and is impactful.

Book Cover - serves as your first impression with potential readers—and though book covers don’t always look the same, they do tend to contain the same essential elements.

Design standards may be different in the world of traditional publishing than they are in self publishing, and book cover templates for physical paper books may differ from those of ebooks—but they all serve the same purpose.

Some Functions of a Book Cover

A book’s cover provides essential information. At its most elemental, a good cover includes a book’s title, the author’s name, the publisher, and the price.

A good cover offers clues about your book’s content and tone. Your cover design indicates whether your book is a work of high-minded literary fiction, a pulpy page turner, or a compelling work of non-fiction.

A front cover reveals a book’s genre. You can usually tell if you’re holding a thriller, a memoir, a sci-fi epic, or a nineteenth century classic just by looking at a book’s cover art and typography.

A back cover offers broader context. It may feature quotes from reviewers and fellow authors. Softcover books may contain a plot summary or author biography on the back; those summaries and bios are typically moved to the inner flaps of a hardcover book.

How to Hire a Professional Book Cover Designer

Book covers are marketing materials, and a well-designed professional cover can make your book stand out among the competition. If you want someone with expertise in the realm of cover design to work on your book, you may want to hire a professional book cover designer. Here are some steps to consider when hiring creatives to design your book cover:

Hire a cover artist. A cover artist produces the cover art and imagery that will appear on your book cover, either on their own or with heavy input from an author or publisher.

Hire a graphic designer. Certain graphic designers specialize in layout; they incorporate cover art that you provide them—whether that’s an original illustration, photograph, or even a stock image—into the overall design of the cover.

Find a cover designer online. Reedsy is one of a number of online resources for independent authors, self-publishers, and anyone connected to the world of books. Many professional book designers list their services on Reedsy.

Use your personal network. Seek out writers’ groups, either locally or on Facebook. In these groups, people share professional referrals and help support one another when a member has a new book in the works. A group of like-minded individuals can be an invaluable resource when creating your own book cover for the first time.

When to Call a Pro:

You have a budget (a designer’s fee will vary depending on experience and location).

You have enough time to work with the designer.

You have a clear idea of what you want or at least what you don’t want.

You don’t have any design skills.

You don’t want to invest in the design software.

Your book isn’t selling.

How to Design a Book Cover Yourself

If you don’t have the budget for a pro designer or just have a DIY itch you want to scratch, it is easier than ever to design your own book cover. While it may not be quite as rudimentary as when you covered your textbooks in a brown paper bag back in fifth grade, modern technology has made cover image design accessible to anyone with a computer. Here are some tips:

Use a template. There are numerous websites that offer book cover templates and step-by-step tutorials covering basic cover design skills. Some even have a free book cover creator tool, along with cover ideas, design tips, pre-made design templates, and digital cover image tools.

Use standard design software. Book covers can also be made using standard home computing software including Photoshop, Microsoft Word, and even (with a little sweat equity) Google Docs. This is particularly easy if you are importing a pre-made cover image from another source.

Make a prototype. The process for assembling a book is straightforward and satisfying. If you want to test out how your book will appear in print, you can learn to bind a copy yourself.

When to DIY:

You don’t have any budget for design.

You have design skills to do it yourself.

You have the design software.

You have a template and know exactly what you want.

You have people with an eye for design that can guide you.

How to Make a Hardcover Book

So you’re ready to bind your own book. Here’s what you’ll need:

Content, of course.

Uncoated printer paper for book pages

Decorative paper for endpapers, such as wrapping paper or cardstock

Davey board (aka bookbinder’s board), thin chipboard, or cardboard for the book covers

Craft knife

Polyvinyl acetate (PVA) glue such as Elmer’s glue

Hot glue gun and glue sticks

Ruler or straight edge

A long stapler

Thin fabric or book cloth for cover

Binder clips

Thick decorative paper (optional, for dust jacket)

Paper trimmer (optional, for trimming book pages)

Paintbrush (optional, for spreading glue)

There’s more than one way to bind a book, and you’ll find tons of great tutorials online for making homemade books, including Japanese bookbinding and perfect bound softcover books. The most popular style of hardcover book binding is called case binding, which is traditionally done by stitching pages together with thread. Here is how to make a hardcover book step-by-step—no sewing or special materials required:

Assemble the content. The number of pages and the type of paper you work with depends on whether you’re binding a novel, a full-color photo book, or a sketchbook. Familiarize yourself with the format by taking some hardcover books down from your bookshelf and observing how they were made.

Format your pages. If you’re creating a blank book, you can skip this step. If you’re printing a book with text, you'll need to format the text so that you can print it into a book. You can get help with this at a copy shop, or you can download book design software and print at home. Eventually, you’ll end up with a PDF with a page count. This page count has to be divisible by four so that your book can be bound as folios made up of eight sheets of paper (32 pages) each. You may need to add some blank pages at the end of the book to keep your page count correct for the folios.

Print and fold. Once all of your pages are printed, fold pages in half and stack eight within each other, making sure the pages are in the correct order. Staple the folios together in the folds, alternating the location of the staples so that you don’t end up with a bulge in the spine.

Bind your folios together. Arrange all of the folios in the correct order and flatten them between heavy books. Once your folios are flat, it’s time to glue them together. Hold the folios together with binder clips and use a glue gun to glue the folios together along the stapled edge. This will become your book’s spine. Be careful not to overdo it on the glue: Use just enough to keep the folios together. Before the glue cools, use a thin piece of fabric to cover the spine only.

Even out the pages. Carefully trim the edges of the pages with a paper trimmer or craft knife, if needed.

Make the hardcovers. Cut two pieces of cardboard for the front and back covers of your book. For the spine, cut a piece of cardboard that is the same height as the front and back covers, with a width equal to the thickness of the spine plus the front and back covers.

Attach the hardcovers. Paint the cardboard (both covers and the spine piece) with a thin layer of PVA glue and attach to the cloth you’ll use to cover your book, leaving a space between the covers and the spine equal to one and a half times the thickness of the cardboard. Let dry.

Assemble the book. Use PVA glue to attach the fabric-lined spine of your bound folios to the cardboard spine. Keep the book propped up between other books while you wait for it to dry.

Attach the endpapers. Trim the paper lining so that it’s twice the size of the first page and fold it in half. Paint glue onto the inside of the front cover and the front page, and attach paper lining. Repeat with the back cover.

Make the dust jacket. If you’d like to cover your book with a dust jacket, measure a piece of thick decorative paper as tall as your book and as wide as the entire book, plus a few extra inches to fold over the edge of the cover. Fold the dust jacket over the bound book. Lay another heavy book on top of it to help the dust jacket keep its shape. This is the place to add a cover design, if you’d like.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[dduane]

The first part of that last message got me curious -- given how long-running of a series YW is, how do you keep track of All That when writing a new entry? Copious amounts of notes? Re-reading the entire series backlog? Keeping a fully-functioning simulation of the entire YW universe running in your head with perfect accuracy? (only mostly joking with that last one)

And somewhat-relatedly, did you have any plan or idea when you started for how long YW would run? Or was it more of a "I'll keep writing about this universe until it stops churning out ideas," type of thing and that point just (very thankfully!) hasn't happened yet? I know for per-book purposes you're a proponent of outlining (I swear I'll try writing to one one day Q_Q) but do you also apply that to a series as a whole?

Let me take this backwards, as it may make more sense that way.

Particularly when doing series work, outlining is more vital than usual for me. (Which is saying a lot.) Some of the most basic reasons for this are laid out over here.

The simplest one, though, for series outlining, is logistical. Without having achieved a sense well in advance of what events (or effects of events) are going to be most formative or important (or both) for the characters in a series, you won't have allowed yourself time to think about them enough. And to fail to spend enough time on this is to cheat both yourself and the books in the series. (And your readership.)

If you're smart, you learn very early on that attempting to save time by shortchanging or omitting the planning stages is potentially profoundly destructive. You need to have a plan... and you need not to let anyone make you ashamed of needing one. Putting off your detailed character-interaction and event planning in the name of some magically occurring fit of inspiration, or theoretical bid toward creative spontaneity, will serve neither you nor your creation. You can throw "Hail Mary" passes all you like... but you'd better be damn sure there'll be someone in the end zone to receive. ...If not Herself.

...And just in case you're worried, your initial plans can be really loose! They don't have to jump out of your head full-formed like some local war goddess after somebody hits her dad in the head with an axe. The plan for the Middle Kingdoms books—after The Door Into Fire dumped me gasping by the side of the road and left me a few minutes to breathe—was nothing more than "Now that his boyfriend's finally upped the ante beyond all expectations, Freelorn finally gets off his feckless Would-Be Robin Hood shit and gets to work becoming king." I then spent the next decade thinking purposefully about how that was going to happen, and writing the second book in the series—while sufficiently working out the fine details of the climax (and beyond) to then be able to get busy executing the third book. Even though there was a change of publishers between the beginning of that series and the end of it, the basic dead-simple MK plan from a very early stage quickly became detailed and robust enough (because the series was short enough) to withstand the change. Not least because I'd been thinking about it in a general way since the early 1970s... and continue to do so, pretty much daily. The Door Into Starlight is still hanging fire...

YW has been a different story—quite literally—because the only plan extant at the start of things was, "Everybody slowly gets older (and slowly closer)." I always knew there were going to be more than the original three: there was way too much interesting ground to cover to just stop with those. (I've never yet succeeded in finding out who started the rumor that there were only going to be three books. Over time it's become one of those things you just shrug at and move on.)

(Adding a break here, because this does go on a bit. Caution: contains publishing skullduggery, plans ganging aft agley, approximate word counts, software recommendations, and value judgments.)

("Now wait just one minute. 'Feckless would-be Robin Hood shit'? Can she just say that??")

The circumstances surrounding the writing of Deep Wizardry and High Wizardry, though, made it plain to me that I was not going to be at the then-publisher (Dell) all that much longer. By the time HW came out, they were already starting to pull away from midlist books and authors in order to spend that part of the budget on best-sellers... so it became plain to me that attempting to construct a long arc with/at that publisher would have been folly. Because who could be sure what was going to happen next, and blow everything I'd built to smithereens?

Sure enough, when I finished A Wizard Abroad, Dell declined to pick it up (even though the books had been selling steadily and increasingly strongly in paperback). This annoying validation of my concerns—and my shiny new agent's—made it plain to me that further books in the series were going to need to be thematically driven, rather than mostly character-event-driven, and almost entirely capable of being taken as standalones. Any long arc was going to have to be one that could be suspended, or reworked, with little warning. Because what happens to you once, in publishing, doesn't at all mean you're immune to it after that.

It wasn't until the YW books were picked up by Harcourt in the mid-90s, with a strong editorial team behind them, that I felt confident enough to start building longer-arc material into the books, beginning with the arc that kicks off in The Wizard's Dilemma and more or less completes in Wizard's Holiday and Wizards At War. There is a secondary (and I assume, generally less obvious) arc that picks up material still unhandled in the "War Arc," and deals with it in A Wizard of Mars and Games Wizards Play. But plans for those stories' management were already nailed down in electrons as soon as 2001, because I had made some early choices about where I was going with the characters and their situations; and as new books came out, my editors agreed with me that the choices had been sound, and should remain.

I'll say this only because I've said it before: there is one piece of business planted in So You Want To Be A Wizard that has never been explicitly dealt with/followed up on in any of the books, and is at the core of YW #11. For the moment, it's safest merely to say that I do not willingly leave loose ends hanging. Beyond that, I'll leave you all to your own deductions.

...Now. How do I keep track of all this stuff? (The urge to mutter "With great difficulty" and run off into the wings is strong. But never mind.) :)

The question's fair, as there's a million-plus words' worth of it in the series at the moment. ...Mostly my guide remains the books themselves, in ebook form (in their NME versions. If I need to, I refer back to the traditionally published versions as necessary). I normally have a general memory of where a given event happens or where a given issue comes up for handling. I then pull that copy of the ebook(s) in question, and do a search on various useful target phrases until I find what I'm after, and where it leads.

For new work, or stuff not yet committed to what passes for canon, I do have lots of notes. Some of them are actually out in public, at the currently-being-revised Errantry Concordance (though they're not in any form that anyone but me will recognize). Others are tucked away in the notes sections of pertinent Scrivener files—this being one of the most valuable things about Scrivener, as far as I'm concerned: the ability to store project notes in the project itself as opposed to "all over the damn place." Others yet are in my iPad, as either typing or dictation, and get transferred to other files/formats as necessary.

But the very first thing that happens, when a new work comes into train, is an outline. Sometimes a hilariously simple one, sometimes one with more detail in the middle than at the beginning or the end. Doesn't matter what shape it starts in. All notes, scraps, prose chunks, random thoughts, and midnight cogitations, get slotted into place in this until it's ready to be organized and sent off to an editor. And this outline—no matter how fragmentary or how polished—remains ready to hand at all times until I've finished with correcting the book's ARC and am looking at the release date.

And then I zip it up and put it away where I can find it later if I need to... because some other plan, still in the building stages, may need something in that one that never happened, but now has its chance. Because in YW, as everywhere else in my work, it's so often about the things that have always almost happened... until they do.

...Anyway: HTH!

[nostalgebraist]

I typed out these messages in a discord server a moment ago, and then thought "hmm, maybe I should make the same points in a tumblr post, since I've been talking about software-only-singularity predictions on tumblr lately"

But, as an extremely lazy (and somewhat busy) person, I couldn't be bothered to re-express the same ideas in a tumblr-post-like format, so I'm giving you these screenshots instead

(If you're not familiar, "MCP" is "Model Context Protocol," a recently introduced standard for connections between LLMs and applications that want to interact with LLMs. Its official website is here – although be warned, that link leads to the bad docs I complained about in the first message. The much more palatable python SDK docs can be found here.)

EDIT: what I said in the first message about "getting Claude to set things up for you locally" was not really correct, I was conflating this (which fits that description) with this and this (which are real quickstarts with code, although not very good ones, and frustratingly there's no end-to-end example of writing a server and then testing it with a hand-written client or the inspector, as opposed to using with "Claude for Desktop" as the client)

[animalphotorefs]

Hey! Sorry if you’ve been asked this before, but I didn’t see it anywhere.

I volunteer at an aquarium and often arrive before my shift, in which case I wander around and like to take photos. However, there’s been a problem of my phone focusing on imperfections in the glass rather than the animals, making the photos very blurry. I’m thinking about buying a small camera to fix the issue, is there a specific feature I need to look for or should just about any kind work? Your zoo and aquarium photography always turns out so clean so I was hoping you’d have advice. If not no worries!

What I’ve learned so far is that taking photos of fish in tanks is really dang hard, honestly. I’ve got a good idea of how to get the basics I want for the site now but they’re not like… what I would consider good photos.

You’ve got a couple problems with trying to shoot into tanks that have to be solved around: the acrylic/plexi is thick, and can warp or scratch or discolor; the water itself also creates light refraction and adds distortion to images; not all tanks are well lit, and many are lit with LEDs that have a flicker cycle; tanks are often very shallow, which requires a macro capability, or they’re super deep but anything farther back gets distorted by the water volume; fish are fast little buggers that require a really high shutter speed.

I think your phone is probably focusing too close to you - its software is telling it the salient point of the image is the surface of the tank, instead of the things in it. That’s more common now I think as phone cameras get better and better and the design improvements are focused on close up detail like a flower or a dog nose or a portrait from three feet away.

The current setup I’ve been using is a mirrorless camera with the autofocus software set to detect eyes, prioritize animals, and hold tracking without switching subjects. For fish I rented a macro lens with a big aperture so I could get close-up shots with lots of ability to take in light (35mm RF 1.8 if anyone is curious). That compensated for the fact that I had to use a shutter speed of like, 4000th-5000th of a second to catch moving fish without motion blur - for context I normally shoot birds in flight at around a 2000th of a second. Some tanks were well enough lit that worked with normal settings, but a lot required purposefully overexposing the shots massively and cranking the ISO up to absolutely ridiculous levels.

Point being like… yeah, you can get a nice camera with a good macro lens if it’s important to you to get fish photos. But tbh I don’t know if that’s the best way to do it, and it’s a pretty major investment. I don’t think a point and shoot (anything without interchangable lenses) would have the capacity for the settings I found I needed. I don’t want to discourage you, but I do want to be honest about what you might be looking at!

That said, if you want to play around with the idea, you can always rent cameras and lenses! That’s how I’ve figured out what my daily kit looks like and what I want to buy for different use cases. I will always recommend finding a local store, but if you don’t have one and are in the US, I’ve always had good experiences with the company Lensrentals.

Let me know if you end up trying some new gear, and any other professional photographers please chime in with additional advice!

[briarscreek]

Corporate!Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick needs help

his computer keeps crashing every few days, but the poor man sends a request to the IT department hoping that it’s the new pretty bird who started a month ago helps him.

he had taken up a business idea with his old military captain and buddies, something in manufacturing or whatnot. he was part of the financial department so all he had to worry about was numbers.

the gorgeous IT tech became a constant image on his mind when he almost wiped a financial report once and panicked on how to get it back. that was all it took, an urgent request, a quick look and five minute conversation for gaz to fall head over heels for you.

whenever you came over to help, he always apologized with every excuse in the book: his computer is getting older (no it isnt), he thought the software protection was up to date (no it wasnt), or he didn’t know that link would download a virus (yes he did).

he was so clever, using his laptop as an excuse for you to come to him to chat about your day. slowly prying you open about your life. how you love going to the local aquarium with your nieces and nephews, or how your favorite chinese restaurant is a hole in the wall on 5th street.

“so kyle, are you ever going to put your computer out of its misery?”

ok maybe he wasn’t so clever.

“what’d you mean, birdie?” trying to keep his smile teetering from cheeky to nervous.

“kyle, your computer conveniently crashes every other week but never during payroll?”

“I told you before love, it’s an old laptop, grinding its way through, trying its best—“

“we can track everyone’s cursor patterns based on the wifi you connect to here.”

well fuck, does that mean—

“how long ‘ave you known?” he squinted at you with an exasperated smile.

“the whole time” you gave him a second to breathe before continuing. “your laptop is about to crash indefinitely if you don’t stop clicking on every virus you see”

he was stunned, utterly gaping like a fish.

“i’ll see you after work to get a drink, gaz”

oh you cheeky little thing.

[remidiy]

We Don't Gatekeep Art Resources | A Comprehensive List

Here's a list of some of the tools/sites I currently use or have used previously for works/studies. I'll separate it into Software/Utility, Reference, and 'Other' which will be just general things that could help you map out things for your experience with art. **[Free highlighted in pink, paid highlighted in green. Blue is variable/both. Prices Listed in USD]**

Software/Utility:

2D

Krita Painting app (PC) (my main digital art software on PC for 5+ yrs)

Clip Studio Paint [PC] [CSP 2.0+ allows for 3d modelling within the painting app and a lot of other cool features] [apparently allows up to 6 months free trial]

Procreate (12.99) [iPad/iPad Pro] (the GOAT)

Artstudio Pro [iPad/iPad Pro] (An alternative to Procreate if you enjoy the more traditional art app layout) -- I find this app handy when Procreate is lacking a feature I need, or vice versa. (you can easily transfer files between the two, but keep in mind Procreate's layer limit)

2D "Collaborative Painting/Drawing apps"

Magma Studio

Drawpile

Discord Whiteboard

Gartic Phone (Pretty decent for 2d animation practice, but has a hard limit on frames)

3D

Blender [3D Modelling, Sculpting + Layout] (PC)

Sculptris [PC] (it's an old unsupported version of Zbrush, but can help to get ideas out, and functions better than browser sculpting apps

Nomad Sculpt [iPad/iPad Pro] ($20) Works pretty well if you prefer a mobile setup, but it is a bit intense on the battery life and takes some getting used to

References + Study

Magic Poser [ PC and Mobile ] Has both free and paid versions, I've made do with just the lite version before

Artpose ($9.99) [Iphone + Steam]

Head Model Studio [IPhone] A 3D head, with both a basic blockout version for angles, and a paid version with more detail

Cubebrush [simply search "[keyword] pose reference pack"], they usually have good results + they frequently have sales!

Line of Action [Good for Gesture practice + daily sketching], also has other resources built in.

Quickposes Similar to Line of action, more geared toward anatomy

Drawabox | Perspective Fundamentals Improvement modules (Suggested by @taffingspy )

Sketchfab, this skull in particular is useful, but there is other models that can help you study anatomy as well.

Pinterest can be good, you just have to be careful, usually you're better off just finding reference pack if you have the money, sometimes certain creators have freebies as well

Artstation Marketplace can be decent [make sure to turn on the Aye-Eye filter so it doesn't feed you trash], a colleague of mine recommended this head model for practicing facial blocking, there is also this free version without lighting.

Local Art Museums [Unironically good for studying old "master work" if you're into that, or even just getting some inspiration]

Brushes + Other Useful software:

I personally have used both of these brush packs before making my own

(I actually don't know how to share my daily brush set because I frequently switch between Krita, Procreate, and ASP, but once I figure that out I'll be sure to do that lol)

Marc Brunet's Starter brush pack [Technically free but supporting him for this if you like it is ideal, there's some good brushes]

Dave Greco Brush Pack [$3]

Gumroad in general is a good place to find brushes and art resources. *Note; for Krita specifically, brush packs are a bit weird, so it may require you to find different packs, or import them in a particular way

PureRef [PC] - Reference Compiler/Moodboarding

VizRef ($3.99) [iPad] - Moodboarding/Reference Compiler

Artist Youtubers/Creators that helped me improve/guide me along as a self-taught artist from when I first started digital art to where I am today:

Proko

Marco Bucci

Sinix Design

Sycra

Hardy Fowler

Lighting Mentor

Winged Canvas

Moderndayjames

Swatches

Chommang_drawing

Marc Brunet (YTartschool)

+ Observing a lot of speedpaint art by people whose work I enjoy on social media/youtube, trying to dissect their processes

If you've gotten this far, first of all, congrats, you can read a lot, and second of all, thank you for reading and I hope this helps! I'll continue to come back and update this if I find any new resources in the future, or if my processes change :)

Much Love,

-Remidiy

[anxiouslyeccentric]

Just finished my latest project, I dub it the Wii Balance Skateboard!

Had one of my 3 Wii balance boards sitting in the trunk of my car next to my skatebaords, and thought, "oh ive got an awful idea"

Sourced some trucks, bearings and jelly wheels from a local skate shop i frequent and drilled some holes, and viola! Looks awesome and rides like the worlds heaviest pennyboard!

When i brought it over to the skate shop to show the finished product, i was surprised to find a Pride parade going on, and got a ton of compliments and picture requests! My very first pride was both an accident and a very fun time! This is definitely the most physical game project ive done, most of the stuff i do involving software and data manip, but im very happy with the finished product!

I should say i certainly dont recommend doing this or attempting to ride it, it's pretty fragile and even tho i spaced the wheel as far apart across the board as i could while keeping structural integrity, even the regulars at the skate shop had a lot of trouble staying on it XD. All that said it is a very fun and flashy way to get around on a nicer road! Bonus points for waving the broken wiimote i had laying around to steer!

[iconicstoner]

i found you

gn!reader x spencer reid (fluff)

words: 1778

summary: You and Spencer have been friends for years, so it only makes sense you went to a local St. Patrick’s Day parade together. However, when he loses you at the parade he realizes how important it is that you know how much he loves you, so of course he confesses.

Spencer pushed through the crowd, fighting to find you. You had been his best friend for years. You’d helped him through the fear his work caused, and you were even there during his addiction. He thought of you as his whole world. You reminded him of why it was worth it to deal with the horrors he saw every day. You were his light in the darkness, and now you were lost in a giant crowd of people. It was packed, and there had to be thousands of people around. It was one of the biggest St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the entire country. 

Spencer’s mind started to race with different ideas. You could’ve been kidnapped, or even killed. He knew the statistics on that, but he tried not to think about them for his own sanity. His mind flashed with different victims he’d seen over the years. You could be in the same situation as any of them right now, but he prayed you weren’t. 

He called out your name as loud as he could, trying to make himself see above the crowd, but the only response he got was a disapproving side eye from a mother carrying her child. He felt embarrassed but knew he couldn’t stop till he found you. His heart was beating in his ears, and his breathing was shallow. He knew this could turn into a panic attack at any second, and as much as he wanted to break down he knew it wouldn’t help him find you. 

He quickly turned around, thinking he heard your voice, but instead found a visibly drunk man. 

“Sorry about that,” the man said as he stumbled, spilling beer all over Spencer’s shirt. The beer smelled awful, and now his shirt was uncomfortably sticky, but the thought of finding you kept him together.

“It’s fine,” Spencer responded before quickly darting off, still set on finding you unharmed. He tried to clear out the horrific images in his mind, but there was little he could do. He rushed back to where he’d last seen you, deciding maybe you hadn’t gone that far after all. The sun was starting to set, and it put him on edge. When it went dark it’d be so much harder to find you. 

He regretted walking away from you earlier. He told you that he had to go to the bathroom, but he actually wanted to surprise you with a drink he noticed you eyeing at one of the drink carts. He had to wait in an excruciatingly long line, but he thought it would be worth it because it meant getting to see your beautiful smile. When he returned to where you were supposed to be waiting for him you were already gone. Looking back, it was stupid, but in the moment he didn’t think twice. He was an intelligent and trained FBI agent who was carrying a gun, so he felt safe, but he didn’t think twice about the fact you didn’t have any experience with dangerous criminals. 

He pushed through people, standing once again in front of the drink cart. He looked around, but there was no one there. He considered calling Garcia. Maybe she’d be able to hack into the security footage and use facial recognition software to see where you went and who you were with, but Spencer knew that would take too much time. Besides, it would be way too embarrassing to admit he was freaking out so much over losing you for 20 minutes. Garcia knew all about his feelings for you, and he wasn’t sure he could handle her teasing at a time like this.

Spencer noticed the street lamps starting to flicker on. They were the only light left now that the sun had set. As embarrassing as it was, he decided maybe it actually would be a good idea to call the BAU. Or Garcia at least. 

He noticed the diner sitting on the road’s edge in front of him and decided to wait there while he called. Running around in a packed crowd clearly wouldn’t help him find you, and it definitely wasn’t making him feel better. 

The diner had a muted brown roof with big white letters that spelled out Tony’s Place. It hardly had walls at all, as most of the sides were large glass windows. There was a quaint wooden bench outside of it facing the street. It was unsuspecting and matched every other building on the street.

Spencer Walked through the door, hearing a bell ring as he did. The place was crowded, but much less crowded than the parade was. The interior looked something straight out of the ’50s. There were black and white checkered tiles, booths with red leather seats, and a bar where people sat sipping their drinks. He could smell french fries and apple pie coming from the kitchen. 

“How can I help ya, sugar?” An older waitress with dirty blonde curls asked him. She looked tired, and Spencer noticed the pack of cigarettes in her apron. Her name tag read Darlene. 

“I just need a place to sit,” he told her nervously. She smiled at him with an understanding, motherly smile. 

“Sounds great,” she told him as she ushered him over to a booth. It was next to a giant window that faced the parade. He looked around, but there was no one who even looked like you. “Can I get you anything to drink?” She asked sympathetically. It was obvious to anyone who saw him that he was upset. 

“Coffee please,” he responded quickly. She nodded and quickly left to get him a cup. He fished his phone out of his pocket and let out a sigh. He anxiously dialed Garcia’s number, almost hitting the wrong keys in a rush.

“Hello, Mighty Professor. It’s not like you to call me like this when you’re not at work,” she said joyfully. Spencer wasn’t sure how to respond. He almost felt bad telling her what was wrong. She loved you too. “What can I help you with, sweetie?” She asked again. Spencer was usually eager to ask questions and get her help, but now he wasn’t saying anything at all. 

“Well, it’s just-“ he stopped himself, not sure how to even explain it. His leg was anxiously bouncing, and every second that passed felt like an hour. Before he got the chance to explain it all to Garcia the waitress had come back with his cup of coffee. He could see the steam emitting from it and he thanked her. 

“Just doin’ my job baby,” she told him in a reassuring voice. He could tell she was used to dealing with people who were upset, and just this once he didn’t mind being treated like a kid. 

“Who’s that?” Garcia questioned from the phone.

“It’s no one, just a waitress,” he responded. “That’s not the point. I need your help, Garcia.” Even from over the phone, Garcia could tell Spencer was anxiously biting his lip.

“What’s up?” She asked.

“I need help finding-” Spencer quickly cut himself off. Across the diner he noticed you. Even though your back was to him, there wasn’t a doubt in his mind it was you. He knew everything about you like the back of his hand. It was your hair, your clothes, your body. 

“Nevermind. Thanks, Garcia. Gotta go,” he told her before quickly hanging up. He stood up and quickly ran across the diner to you. He didn’t even realize it, but he was starting to cry. “Thank God it’s you,” he said. You quickly turned around and he wrapped his arms around you.

“Spencer, what’s wrong?” You asked, feeling one of his hands around your waist and the other on the back of your head. He held onto you tightly, not ready to ever let you go. 

“I couldn’t find you,” he breathed out. “I thought you were gone forever.”

“Spencer, I’d never leave you,” you respond. He nods and you look at him to see the tears running down his face. 

“I just couldn’t stop thinking about all the abduction cases I’ve seen before. All those people who died. I wasn’t ready to lose you too,” he tells you. You’ve never seen him so upset before. Working at the BAU wasn’t easy, and he was finally letting it show. You hold onto him, trying to let him know that you’re safe now. You hear his heartbeat, and it’s pounding quickly. His hands are shaky as they hold you, and his breathing is still shallow. 

“I found you,” he whispers in your ear. He pulls away from you just enough to kiss you. He keeps one hand on your waist and moves the other to your jaw, holding onto it as he kisses you passionately. He slowly pulls away, wanting to be as close to you as possible. 

“Take it outside!” An older man sitting at the bar playfully exclaimed, causing Spencer’s face to flush. He grabbed onto your hand, leaving a twenty on the table for Darlene, and led you outside to the wooden bench in front of the diner. The two of you sat down together, the soft glow from the street lamp illuminating him. A few stars could be seen shining brightly above you. There was a chilly breeze, but with how close Spencer was keeping you the two of you were plenty warm. He wasn’t crying anymore. He just sat next to you, admiring your presence. 

“I need to tell you something,” he says, gently squeezing your hand.

“What’s up?” you ask. 

“When I lost you, I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the bad things I’ve seen. I didn’t know what I’d ever do without you, and because of that, I don’t ever wanna be without you again. I know dating can be really complicated when you’re in the BAU. Plenty of relationships fail. But I love you so much, and I really think if you gave me a chance this might work, even if it’s statistically unli-” You interrupt him, softly kissing his lips. He leans into the kiss, and you can smell the aroma of coffee and leather that lingers on him. Reluctantly, you both pull away, but only by a few centimeters. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers against your skin, “did you do that because I was rambling again?”

“I did that because I love you too,” you whisper back. 

“You have no idea how happy I am to hear that,” he mumbles before kissing you again.

He didn’t let go of your hand the entire time. He hoped he’d never have to.

------------------------------------------------------------

a/n: Special St. Patrick's Day post lol! Also, I know I’ve been getting a lot of Twilight requests- and I’m so happy about it!! (and I am working on them)- but I wanted to take a break to write a fun Spencer Reid oneshot bc I love him sm lol

[quitealotofsodapop]

"Dave as a Selkie" fic ideas:

Debating whether or not Dave is unaware of what he is due to being raised by a human parent, or he was straight up raised in the ocean like a baby seal. Cobra would certainly notice tho. Who better to dive for Bancho's Sushi than that seal-merman guy he met one time?

In the mission where you save a baby Humpback Whale, Dave mentions having a living mother "[he] needs to call". Imagine the sheer lore of being a second-generation selkie - the product of love or captivity between a legend of the sea and a human.

Dave's selkie heritage suddenly explains why sharks seem to be dead set on chasing him. Humans taste bad, but seals tasty.

No matter how good Dave moves in the water, his stamina on land isn't great. Running is hard with webby feet.

Dave still has difficulty understanding the Sea People's language at first - he's not local after all. Him and Dr Bacon would try to learn how to speak it directly after they develop the translation software.

Dave canonically dives to a depth of at least 540 metres/1771.65 feet - which is well over the record for human divers. The record with a simple rebreather and oxygen is 316 m/1,037 ft, and the deeper records (534 m/1,752 ft) are from using experimental gas mixes, not random O2 tanks and air from gigas clams.

However, in the case of him being a mythical seal man; those numbers are pretty routine. Elephant Seals are one of the deepest diver; frequently going beyond 1,550 m/5,090 ft (record is 2,388 m/7,835 ft) for a snack run. Females can dive even deeper.

Deep-diving seals have thick hides and high volume blood for helping them hold onto oxygen during dives. Baikal seals are just jam packed with it. Probably explains how Dave doesn't immediately bleed out from being shot at, bitten, stung, and exploded throughout the story.

Dave seems habituated to a warmer climate, so he'd likely be a Monk Seal variant - which is fitting since they're voracious, flexible eaters (basically having unlimited menu options), and can be very friendly to non-seal animals like sea turtles! Their dive limit is also a little over the in-game one; at 550m/1800ft. Mediterranean Monk Seals in particular as a species; are also tied to myths of human men falling in-love with sea nymphs/nereids and producing weird half-seal kiddos - Psamathe from Greek mythos being the most famous. Though the Gaelic Selkie is linguistically tied to Grey Seals - Scottish "selkie" means "little selch/grey seal", it can mean any number of pinniped species.

The Sea People of the Blue Hole likely have no gotdamn idea what Dave is. Lore wise, perhaps the seal-like sea folk had a different evolutionary trigger - similar to how consuming the Divine Tree's fruit is implied to have mutated humans into the more fishy Sea People. Dave is stuck in the middle of being both not full human, but not fully a Sea Person.

They think he cute af tho.

Dave just be chilling on a lounge chair like he's replicating a retro pin-up, munching on all the free sushi he could ever want. Meanwhile scientists, chefs, secretly-evil corporations, and sea people go wild in the background.

[max1461]

Ok, so obviously this is not going to convince the people who already don't agree with me on this, who find it contradictory or unsatisfactory, but I'm merely stating and not defending the position in this post:

I care about about people, I care about the general population of every country equally, and I don't care about countries or nations as entities. Actually this is not quite true—I believe that caring, if coherent, has to involve some degree of adopting others' ends as your own. @tsarina-anadyomene thinks this is one characteristic of love, and I would indeed like to be able to say that in at least some minor degree I love every person (indeed every creature) in the world. Uh, Serbian nationalists care about Serbia and therefore I care about Serbia, at least a little bit.

But governments, well, first of all fewer people care about governments qua governments as much as they care about nations in the abstract, but more importantly I think that governments as individual entities do a lot of really heinous shit that makes it impossible for me to like them. This is distinct from any anarchist position that the state should not exist—it's more like, point at any individual national government. Do I like those guys? Do I think those are good guys? Well they do some good stuff, they keep the roads paved, hopefully, deliver the mail, all that's great. But they also do a lot of killing and torture, and economic sabotage and shit like that, that hurts a lot of people. And the closer you get to the top, the closer you are to discussions of "grand strategy", the more you're explicitly or implicitly talking about shit like economic sabotage and killing people and the less you're talking about delivering the mail. I guess building roads definitely comes up, and that's good, but it's always "building more roads than the other guys so we can sabotage and/or kill them better" which is :/

I've always been a little contrarian on governments. I've always been a little bit of the famed "median voter" on governments. Get me talking about my preferred system and I'll sound sound like those peasants from Monty Python. Uh. I've made a bunch of posts about it. I want some kind of decentralized, directly democratic, cooperative, federated bullshit like the ancoms talk about for real life and the techno-libertarians talk about for software. Everything other than that is, uh, bullshit, it's the man keeping you down, man. But second place, if we don't get that? I'll take a well-run oligarchy, I'll take the façade of democracy to reduce political violence and attract foreign investment while a party of crony-capitalist technocrats actually runs the show, I'll take the 1955 system before the Plaza Accords, you get the idea. Representative democracy is a sham, basically, it's a sham. So if you're not going to give me freedom, which none of the liberal democracies do, at least give me peace, stability, and prosperity—which they're pretty good at!

But this means I look at, say, China, and I think... sucks they don't have freedom of speech, that's a big issue for me. I mean not so big an issue that I couldn't live there, just a big issue. I'd strongly like it to be otherwise. But the rest of it? Single party state? Who cares. Standard of living is high (for the urban middle class—actually this is my biggest issue with Chinese policy at the moment, they need to do massive wealth redistribution towards the rural poor) but anyway, standard of living is high, there's political stability, it's fucking fine. I hung out with a tone of Chinese international students in college and none of them were like, unhappy with the state of China, although the really wealthy ones all wanted to park their wealth abroad for pretty obvious reasons—

Right, that's another thing China needs to fix: fears about overall stability lead the local elites to siphon money out of the economy and park it abroad. I think, as a non-expert, it seems like Xi's rise and centralization of power have been worse for this. Go back to Deng, go back to term limits and power sharing! God I love Deng Xiaoping.

Uh, freedom is a ruse, uh, Ted K was lowkey right that in a modern techno-world freedom is kind of a ruse. I mean people have to be uh, we have to act or be made to act like worker bees if we want a hive this big and cantankerous to function. Uh, sucks man, sucks that we had to choose between freedom and antibiotics. Maybe we don't, right, that's my whole idea. You know how they had the Juche idea, Kim and his assholes had the Juche idea, well I also have an idea. Maybe we can have decentralized, directly democratic control of economic and civil institutions and still maintain a modern industrial economy. Maybe we can escape Ted K's trap <- new name for it I am inventing. Well one can dream, one can solve a lot of math problems and maybe one day I'll read a bunch of econ books and solve the right math problems and discover the answer. Marx, I love Marx I'm a genuine Marx fan but he doesn't have it. Sorry. Just does not got it. Soviet Union was in a Ted K trap just like all the others. They drained the Aral sea bro! That's hard to forgive...

[lazeecomet]

The Story of KLogs: What happens when an Mechanical Engineer codes

Since i no longer work at Wearhouse Automation Startup (WAS for short) and havnt for many years i feel as though i should recount the tale of the most bonkers program i ever wrote, but we need to establish some background

WAS has its HQ very far away from the big customer site and i worked as a Field Service Engineer (FSE) on site. so i learned early on that if a problem needed to be solved fast, WE had to do it. we never got many updates on what was coming down the pipeline for us or what issues were being worked on. this made us very independent

As such, we got good at reading the robot logs ourselves. it took too much time to send the logs off to HQ for analysis and get back what the problem was. we can read. now GETTING the logs is another thing.

the early robots we cut our teeth on used 2.4 gHz wifi to communicate with FSE's so dumping the logs was as simple as pushing a button in a little application and it would spit out a txt file

later on our robots were upgraded to use a 2.4 mHz xbee radio to communicate with us. which was FUCKING SLOW. and log dumping became a much more tedious process. you had to connect, go to logging mode, and then the robot would vomit all the logs in the past 2 min OR the entirety of its memory bank (only 2 options) into a terminal window. you would then save the terminal window and open it in a text editor to read them. it could take up to 5 min to dump the entire log file and if you didnt dump fast enough, the ACK messages from the control server would fill up the logs and erase the error as the memory overwrote itself.

this missing logs problem was a Big Deal for software who now weren't getting every log from every error so a NEW method of saving logs was devised: the robot would just vomit the log data in real time over a DIFFERENT radio and we would save it to a KQL server. Thanks Daddy Microsoft.

now whats KQL you may be asking. why, its Microsofts very own SQL clone! its Kusto Query Language. never mind that the system uses a SQL database for daily operations. lets use this proprietary Microsoft thing because they are paying us

so yay, problem solved. we now never miss the logs. so how do we read them if they are split up line by line in a database? why with a query of course!

select * from tbLogs where RobotUID = [64CharLongString] and timestamp > [UnixTimeCode]

if this makes no sense to you, CONGRATULATIONS! you found the problem with this setup. Most FSE's were BAD at SQL which meant they didnt read logs anymore. If you do understand what the query is, CONGRATULATIONS! you see why this is Very Stupid.

You could not search by robot name. each robot had some arbitrarily assigned 64 character long string as an identifier and the timestamps were not set to local time. so you had run a lookup query to find the right name and do some time zone math to figure out what part of the logs to read. oh yeah and you had to download KQL to view them. so now we had both SQL and KQL on our computers

NOBODY in the field like this.

But Daddy Microsoft comes to the rescue

see we didnt JUST get KQL with part of that deal. we got the entire Microsoft cloud suite. and some people (like me) had been automating emails and stuff with Power Automate

This is Microsoft Power Automate. its Microsoft's version of Scratch but it has hooks into everything Microsoft. SharePoint, Teams, Outlook, Excel, it can integrate with all of it. i had been using it to send an email once a day with a list of all the robots in maintenance.

this gave me an idea

and i checked

and Power Automate had hooks for KQL

KLogs is actually short for Kusto Logs

I did not know how to program in Power Automate but damn it anything is better then writing KQL queries. so i got to work. and about 2 months later i had a BEHEMOTH of a Power Automate program. it lagged the webpage and many times when i tried to edit something my changes wouldn't take and i would have to click in very specific ways to ensure none of my variables were getting nuked. i dont think this was the intended purpose of Power Automate but this is what it did

the KLogger would watch a list of Teams chats and when someone typed "klogs" or pasted a copy of an ERROR mesage, it would spring into action.

it extracted the robot name from the message and timestamp from teams

it would lookup the name in the database to find the 64 long string UID and the location that robot was assigned too

it would reply to the message in teams saying it found a robot name and was getting logs

it would run a KQL query for the database and get the control system logs then export then into a CSV

it would save the CSV with the a .xls extension into a folder in ShairPoint (it would make a new folder for each day and location if it didnt have one already)

it would send ANOTHER message in teams with a LINK to the file in SharePoint

it would then enter a loop and scour the robot logs looking for the keyword ESTOP to find the error. (it did this because Kusto was SLOWER then the xbee radio and had up to a 10 min delay on syncing)

if it found the error, it would adjust its start and end timestamps to capture it and export the robot logs book-ended from the event by ~ 1 min. if it didnt, it would use the timestamp from when it was triggered +/- 5 min

it saved THOSE logs to SharePoint the same way as before

it would send ANOTHER message in teams with a link to the files

it would then check if the error was 1 of 3 very specific type of error with the camera. if it was it extracted the base64 jpg image saved in KQL as a byte array, do the math to convert it, and save that as a jpg in SharePoint (and link it of course)

and then it would terminate. and if it encountered an error anywhere in all of this, i had logic where it would spit back an error message in Teams as plaintext explaining what step failed and the program would close gracefully

I deployed it without asking anyone at one of the sites that was struggling. i just pointed it at their chat and turned it on. it had a bit of a rocky start (spammed chat) but man did the FSE's LOVE IT.

about 6 months later software deployed their answer to reading the logs: a webpage that acted as a nice GUI to the KQL database. much better then an CSV file

it still needed you to scroll though a big drop-down of robot names and enter a timestamp, but i noticed something. all that did was just change part of the URL and refresh the webpage

SO I MADE KLOGS 2 AND HAD IT GENERATE THE URL FOR YOU AND REPLY TO YOUR MESSAGE WITH IT. (it also still did the control server and jpg stuff). Theres a non-zero chance that klogs was still in use long after i left that job

now i dont recommend anyone use power automate like this. its clunky and weird. i had to make a variable called "Carrage Return" which was a blank text box that i pressed enter one time in because it was incapable of understanding /n or generating a new line in any capacity OTHER then this (thanks support forum).

im also sure this probably is giving the actual programmer people anxiety. imagine working at a company and then some rando you've never seen but only heard about as "the FSE whos really good at root causing stuff", in a department that does not do any coding, managed to, in their spare time, build and release and entire workflow piggybacking on your work without any oversight, code review, or permission.....and everyone liked it