#and if it is. I hope the files are recoverable.

[forcedhesitation]

maaaaaan. and now my pc is stuck in a bios loop. tells me it cannot find any bootable devices. checked the cables and everything seems alright?? trying to repair start up thru USB windows installation next but I have a deep dread in me that this could be worse :(

[babysdrivers]

tried to turn on my laptop for the first time in a year and it took about 30 minutes to boot and then refused to load anything other than the (empty) taskbar 🧍🏻‍♂️ this wouldn't be a problem except that i have about 10 years of photos on there that i stupidly didn't back up

[badolmen]

I’m having a normal one.

[sirfrogsworth]

I have a favorite photo.

It's the one I am most proud of.

It involved a lot of luck, but also required a lot of effort to capture.

I use it as the header for this Tumblr.

It was a foggy morning and I thought it looked spooky. My instincts were telling me I could get a unique image. I dragged out my lighting equipment and had Otis roam around in the yard. I set up my shot in an area I knew he would pass by. I didn't have wireless flash triggers yet, so I was using the little flash on top of my camera to trigger my big flash. But that doesn't work great outside. Typically it is meant to bounce off walls and ceilings so the external flash can see the light. I was trying to use a tiny mirror in front of my little flash to direct the light towards the big flash. But I kept getting the angle wrong and my flash was only firing once every few shots. I also kept missing focus as I was concentrating on too many things at once.

By all accounts, it would take a miracle to get the shot.

I should not have gotten a good shot.

But for one single frame... the fog, the sun, Otis, and my flash all cooperated.

I didn't even realize my efforts had worked until I loaded the files onto the computer. And the second this image popped onto my screen, my jaw dropped.

Up until this point I had never captured an image of this quality before. This was very early in my photography journey and I was still figuring things out. And I think seeing what was possible—what I was actually capable of capturing—that was the moment I was all in. The moment I wanted to be a "real" photographer.

This is the RAW file. The side of his face was a bit dark, but that is why you shoot in RAW. That is recoverable.

This is my original edit in 2013. The biggest thing that bothered me was the ear tips. I always wish I hadn't cut those off.

But thankfully technology has advanced enough that I can give Otis his full ears back.

And here is the remastered 2024 edition...

I used other images as reference to make sure the ear shape and size was perfect. And I also used another image of his Super Otis badge facing forward and comped that in.

Otis has a very specific shade of orange fur and it is very sensitive to editing. If you make him brighter, the orange changes to the wrong orange. If you make him darker, same thing. But I am hopeful I got that lovely orange fur pretty close to his actual coat.

I don't know if I would have fallen in love with this artform without this image. Or without Otis. He gave me so much in his short time in this world. I can never thank him enough for that.

[theskit]

Stickers AU

Important!!!

On the mobile app, direct linking gets rid of the readmore cuts!

If you came here via direct link, or wish to use the direct links to another part of the story, and DO NOT want to spoil the surprise stickers, please click on my blog name to go to the actual post after using the link.

Also, due to the apparent shadow banning of people with long tag lists, I will make a master post that people can subscribe to for updates.

Part 10

Master Post

《Prev

Red Hood and Nightwing coming to the cave on Sunday night with tales of their own encounters with the sticker kid had unfortunately not given them as much to work with as Tim had hoped.

Jason was tagging along more to hear about their encounters and to see the rest of the stickers than providing much in the way of evidence himself, what with having his helmet cams and comms shorted out for the duration of his encounter and not bringing his own sticker with him.

There was some friction when Batman and Robin made it back to the cave, it being a fairly slow evening for Gotham with no sign of the kid, which made sense if he'd gone all the way to Bludhaven to bother Nightwing.

Bruce had wanted to compile all the evidence together, and while Dick had been obliging, after they'd gotten the frankly hilarious sticker off of him, Jason had promptly refused to hand his over. Much like Damian, he'd claimed it as his own and would hear nothing else about it, only providing a picture of it after a lot of coaxing from Dick.

The corrupted audio/video file had also been less than helpful. Besides a flurry of green-tinted gray static snow and laughter so distorted it almost sounded like screaming, there was nothing else recoverable.

The sheer degradation of the files was actually impressive. That was either very good tech, or a very strong meta ability. Either way, they needed to find this kid and figure out what was up with him.

Dick at least had managed to both lay eyes on and semi-converse with the kid, though that was also bringing up questions. Such as: how did he get out of a dead-end alleyway? Which, while similar to the disappearing acts he'd pulled in Gotham, those had at least been on rooftops with clear, if possibly inadvisable, access to escape routes all around. As well as the question on why the kid was wearing a blood stained hoodie.

Yes, they had figured he'd injured himself to some degree last night, but why hadn't he changed out of those clothes? Did he not have access to more? Was the kid in a bad living situation here in Gotham instead of having come in with the rest of the out of towners for the ghost hunting convention and the stickers were something unconnected to him that he'd somehow gotten ahold of?

If that was the case, they might be looking at some sort of meta trafficking escapee, since the boy's accent very much labeled him as not a native Gothamite and most people would not move here with a meta ability with Batman's supposed dislike of metas in Gotham. A stance Bruce had taken more to discourage metas from possibly getting targeted by the revolving door of Gotham's Rouge gallery than any real prejudice.

Despite everything, the convention was still their best lead, so it was decided they would go investigate as civilians tomorrow for the last half-day it would be held and try to find more clues.

The description of a short, young male, with blue eyes and dark hair, an echoey voice, possibly still wearing a bloodstained hoodie, was not a lot go to off of in a crowd of hundreds. Maybe they would get lucky and find where the stickers came from, which might give them more of a lead.

Bruce was reconsidering the effectiveness of coming to the convention as Brucie Wayne instead of the small time criminal Matches Malone, regardless of how that may have effected that alias, as he was accosted by another non-gothamite.

Bruce had forgotten how those outside of Gotham tended to act around celebrities. People native to Gotham usually had a strong mind-your-own-business attitude regardless of where on the social scale they happened to fall.

Smiling for yet another photo, Bruce hoped his slightly-less-widely-recognized children were having more luck moving around the convention to check for leads, having abandoned him to fend for himself after the third photo ambush.

Coming on the last half-day might have also been a miscalculation, even if they hadn't had much of a choice with the timing, as it seemed to make people even bolder, knowing they would leave the city in a few short hours.

Dick was having fun roaming around the convention. Seeing all the booths set up with either crystals, tarot cards and other mystical odds and ends or EMF meters, magnetic field detectors and more scientific equipment for ghost hunting.

It all mostly went over his head, but it was interesting to talk with different people and hear all the differing accounts and history, both historical and personal, behind their choice of what equipment or mystical dodad worked best.

He'd even seen a few people cosplaying as The Ghost Busters, and he swore he'd seen a couple in full hazmat suits for a moment before he lost them in the crowd.

He had forgotten how interesting conventions could be when they weren't constantly crashed by Rogues. Dick would have to try and find time to go to more of them. The eccentricities on display reminded him fondly of all the different personalities you could find in a circus.

Damian scowled as he made his way through the crowds. This was ridiculous. There was no practical use for most of the things displayed in the various booths, as most wardings against Pit demons needed to be cast by those with magical or mystical bloodlines as far as he was aware, and to date there was no known scientific way to capture or quantify Pit demons.

Most of the 'evidence' provided by both sides was also suspect. Generally involving blurry photographs and 'spooky vibes'.

There was also a marked dearth of younger people in the crowds. Mostly consisting of small children accompanying their parents with few teenagers, such as a redhead female approximately his age he'd spied a time or two due to the eye catching color of her hair, to be seen.

Jason had decided to leave the convention a little early. Despite the fun he had watching Bruce get mobbed by out of towners with his Brucie mask on, something about wandering the crowds was riling up the Pit.

Maybe it was the crowds themselves, all those people blatantly not from Gotham, who *did not belong* here. Or maybe all the talk of death and ghosts and what came after, but *something* had his aggression ramping up out of the blue as he made his way around the convention.

Randomly feeling the need to punch something wasn't exactly new, but the sheer number of times he'd started seeing green out of nowhere was worrying, so he'd called it quits.

He'd check in with Dick later to see if any new leads had been found.

Danny breathed a sigh of relief as Jazz came to collect him. Everything was already packed up in the RV and it was time to grab whatever he wanted for the ride back as their parents wanted to get ahead of the leaving crowd.

He'd been feeling something wandering the convention for the last few hours. Not quite enough to set off his ghost sense, but definitely at least ghostly-adjacent.

He'd been doing his best to navigate away from the feeling any time it drew near, not wanting a fight to break out between him and whatever territorial spirit had decided it was a good idea to haunt ghost hunters.

Hitting up a nearby coffee shop for a hilariously named Deathwish coffee and a pastry for the road, Danny saw a guy wander in, take in the line almost out the door, and nearly fall into a seat instead.

Holding his head in his hands, it looked like the guy was almost nodding off where he sat. Poor dude had eyebags darker than Danny had the time Technus, Skulker, Ember and a swarm of Blob ghosts had all decided the night before a major test was a great time to invade Amity with their shenanigans.

Taking pity, Danny ordered a second coffee, handing it to the guy with a little surprise attached before heading out. Hopefully it would brighten his day a little.

"You look like you could use this."

Tim glanced up from his seat at the coffeeshop table as a younger teen placed a large coffee cup and a few napkins down on the table.

The other boy was out the door before Tim could even fully process that some kind soul had taken pity on him and saved him from having to stand an eternity in line before getting his hands on the much needed caffeine.

Blessing whoever it was silently, Tim took a large swallow, closing his eyes a moment as the strong coffee helped kick his brain back into gear. Ahh, Deathwish, my beloved, hallowed be thy beans.

Standing up, he grabbed the couple of napkins to take with him, feeling an odd stiffness to them. Shifting the top napkin out of the way, Tim boggled at the sticker staring back at him for a moment before bolting out the door.

Looking around frantically, he was just in time to see the boy on the other side of the road, getting into a frankly absurdly proportioned vehicle before it sped down the street, barely keeping from sideswiping at least three other cars before careening around a corner and out of sight.

Well, he thought as he glanced from the sticker to where the vehicle had disappeared, at least something that... distinctive, should be easy to track down...

@mygood-bitch99 @stargazer-luna @easily-broken-by-emotion @dolfay @britcision @cyber-geist @is-this-even-relatable @alcorbearson @fisticuffsatapplebees @thegatorsgoose @my-mom-calls-me-rat @some-rotten-nest @crystalqueertea @meira-3919 @wandererofthestars @seraphinedemort @bjurnberg @blep-23 @stargirl1331 @bianca-hooks123 @addie-lover-of-stories @pickleking8 @iconicanemone @sarina-elais @mur-ururu @sailor-goddess @dragonfirefeather @nutcase8691 @ravenpainter @liandrin @jaguarthecat @russetfur1128 @purefrickingspite @oakskull @vythika96 @molasses-being-slow @satisfactionbroughtmeback @serasvictoria02 @tkiesai @breesperez139 @dhampir-princess @redhoneysugarorange @gildedphoenix @iglowinggemma28 @f4nd0m-fun @therandomartmaker @mandyne-1001 @learning-to-fly-on-my-own @solarisaetherlumine @zeldomnyo

[vodid]

my store is open this week!

shortly after posting my comic, my ssd took its last breath and said no more. we are working on seeing if its revivable or recoverable but i may be in severe financial trouble soon. any help would be appreciated by buying my art or leaving a tip via the tip jar* 🙏

my birthday is also coming up next week. all i want at this point is to not be stressed about how i am going to pay for things. so if you're at all interested in holding my art in ur very own hands, here's your chance!

open until saturday. i will see about getting orders out asap and open again soon. unfortunately, due to my laptop being Dead, i cannot access my files and i will not be able to include my usual freebies in orders :( i hope u understand!

*if you are in the US and would only like to donate money and not buy art, please visit my ko-fi so you are not charged tax.

[parsapuff]

Good news I got my new laptop ordered! And bad news my external drive broke as well and I can't access any of my files 🥲🥲 Taking it somewhere to see if they can save my files from there. I really hope they're recoverable since I had so much done for the fontaine npc set already 😭😭🙏

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Ask me Anything -- Tal Smithson

Have you heard of the magical girl genre?

Fuck yes, have you read Sailor Nothing? World-changing. Preneek. Literature. I mean we only have two thirds of it but they were a great two thirds.

If you had awoken in Captain Aspen’s situation, would you have waited as long to wake others up?

I wouldn’t have woken anyone up. I don’t think it would even have occurred to me.

Do you feel more lucky or guilty that you’re the only one to survive your Ring’s ejection? Sorry if this one is too personal.

Why would I feel guilty? I was asleep.

If this is not too rude to ask, could you tell me a little about the Brennan gender identity, and grammar around pronouns?

I don’t know what you’re asking. It’s just a gender. Some people are men and some people are women and some people are brennan. And some people are something else I guess, like Aspen or the Friend.

Did you have any pets, or tend to animals growing up?

I had a pet monitor lizard named Cthulhu.

Have you done any work salvaging preneek data?

Yeah I used to be involved in tracking down and scraping old hard drives and servers for any possible recoverable data. Fillmore! Episode 5, Red Robins Don’t Fly? That was me. I found AND recovered that. You’re welcome.

Would you download a car?

I did once but the machine shop wouldn’t build me anything from unverified files. Also I don’t drive, obviously. Also I have nowhere to put a car.

What is Neocambrian meme culture like?

What’s meme culture?

Do you think the developments with Amy are as wild as I do?

Amy makes no fucking sense, my entire life since waking up on this ship has been a fever dream. In fact I’m not entirely convinced it isn’t a fever dream. Possibly I went to sleep and the neurostimulator started making me dream to preserve my brain on the trip and that’s what’s still happening right now. We’ll all wake up at Hylara super disoriented and filled with years’ worth of false memories.

What do you think should be done with the colonists that are too affected by Amy when the ship reaches Hylara?

It’s hardly up to me, is it? They’re going to die. I’m not a necromancer.

Do you ever worry you are in some sort of preneek science fiction novel, or movie?

What kind of weirdo would write something like this?

You are good at being a cybercriminal, how did you get caught?

The police, as it turns out, are also good at catching a cybercriminal.

If you could bring sometimes from earth with you, what would you pick?

Reget Bryce. Fucking arsehole. I hate that guy. He should have to be on this ship.

Do you want to give some of your dreams to Amy?

No, I’m very glad to have woken up before that could happen. Although maybe if she had a brain that knew literally anything about computers she wouldn’t be such a fucking mess in there.

What you hate the most?

People who think Star Trek and Star Wars were alternate names for the same franchise and totally fuck up our databases through unnecessary combinations. No Spock wasn’t a Force user. That took so many months to fix.

Are you scared of being made into a slave when you land?

I honestly don’t see how things are going to be significantly different to our current situation, except that we will be on the ground and presumably have less gaming time.

Kill someone innocent or be killed? Choose one.

We’ve got like four thousand spare innocent lives on hand, it’s not like it’s a limited resource. I probably will end up fucking up and killing at least one of them anyway. Just based on probability and this fucking nightmare of an AI.

Have you even be out of Texas?

Yeah I went on this submarine trip once to follow an old internet cable we discovered in the hopes that it would lead to some interesting server with some interesting information. It didn’t. It just lead to a small bunker from the time of the collapse, a seal had been breached and the entire thing was flooded. Nothing electronic was recoverable. There were some cool skeletons in there though.

[lefae]

PLEASE HELP - PC ISSUES

As mentioned in a prior post, my desktop pc is currently out of commission due to hard drive issues. My pc is my primary everything in terms of communication, entertainment, and what little income I have available to me, being disabled and unable to work.

As it currently stands, I have a primary hard drive that my OS and most of my software runs off of, and a secondary drive that acts as my primary file storage for active use files. Both of these drives are having issues after I had unplugged the desktop during a recent thunderstorm (leaving the pc plugged in during such weather isn't an option, due to a ridiculously shoddy power grid and high risk of not only the power getting knocked out, but lightening running in on the lines as well).

The primary drive is clearly technically recoverable - all the files are still accessible through the Windows PE I've booted into from a flash drive, so I can do backups of things from there. The secondary drive, on the other hand, may prove more trouble than I originally anticipated, as it's only showing as either roughly 4GB or 120GB, depending on the utility trying to access it, and it's a 3TB drive...

The biggest obstacle right now is that I don't have the spare space to back up what I can in order to even hope to recover things properly. And, with the secondary drive doing as it is, it may or may not be recoverable at all - I've faced similar issues in the past, but I don't remember how I fixed it then, which is definitely a problem now. (For those reading this who don't know me, I have severe memory problems, mostly as a result of a brain injury, further complicated by other health issues, which is the largest reason for why I am unable to work.)

As it stands, I may also need to completely replace the secondary drive entirely, as preliminary scans show a mass of bad sectors, though how accurate that may or may not be, I can't currently determine. Either way, what limited income I have (which is barely $100 per month, and not even consistently every month) goes entirely to paying for groceries and medication. Due to my health, I can't sacrifice a month's worth of groceries to buy computer hardware (or a new mattress for my bed, which I desperately need as well, nor a new cane and ankle brace, nor any number of other things I need and simply can't afford).

It is this reason that I am asking for help. If, by some odd chance, you have ideas of how I might even fix the issues (because I'm at my wit's end, and have been stressing over this for over a week now, and it's not like I can take it to someone else to be fixed), then by all means, poke me with your suggestions.

Otherwise, if you're willing and able to help me get the necessary external drive (and potentially a new internal drive too, if it comes down to having to replace internal parts as well), then I would highly appreciate it:

You can leave a tip here on tumblr, or you can buy me a coffee.

Reblogs are highly appreciated as well.

[anderwhohn]

For those who aren't aware (because I didn't have an easy mean to update on the rp blogs), my computer suffered catastrophic issues that led to me having to completely reinstall Windows on the primary drive, and I've yet to recover my data from the secondary drive (it's a 3TB drive that's only showing as an unallocated ~3.86GB to 128GB drive, depending on which utility I'm looking at it through, and it's all in the unused sectors that never had any data on them).

Luckily, most of the rp stuff that I need regularly in terms of finished graphics and coding was backed up to a cloud and an external drive, so there was minimal data loss there, save for some things I was actively working on. But a lot of other stuff - particularly project files - are still inaccessible at the moment, while I'm trying to recover the data drive...

I'm still not fully set up to be active on any of my blogs, but I'm also desperately in need of distractions other than watching youtube while utilities run in the background, trying to do what I can in hopes of saving the data from the other drive before I'm forced to attempt wiping it completely in hopes of at least regaining the full capacity and seeing if by any chance the data is still recoverable in the aftermath.

So, you might see me answering inbox stuff and/or replying to drafts/dash games/etc, but I'm not currently going to be truly here at the moment for new stuff. If you want to chat, or plot things for future stuff, or whatever, I'm technically around on discord, but with low social energy due to high stress levels, so don't expect a lot of quick responses.

For now, I'm going to go wrangle together some breakfast, and coffee...

[mainstask]

Draconic tinkertool

DRACONIC TINKERTOOL HOW TO

DRACONIC TINKERTOOL INSTALL

DRACONIC TINKERTOOL REGISTRATION

DRACONIC TINKERTOOL SOFTWARE

It means porting a lot of database procedures to MySQL format which could take awhile, given KaniS's limited free time. Because a new host will save a lot of money vs running the dedicated server Draconic currently runs on, we're going to continue that move. It turned out that the hard drive that failed on the server was only used by the live snapshot backup system and that the main drive is still working after removing the failed drive.ĭuring the downtime, it was assumed the server was not easily recoverable and we began to move to a new web hosting provider. UPDATE: They extended the deadline so you now have about 26 days.Īround Nov 23rd, the Draconic server experienced a hard drive failure. It's pretty cheap to fund a copy for yourself and the author only gets the money if they reach their goal in the next 8 days, so spread the word. It looks a little hokey, but the artwork's decent and the humor looks reminiscent of the old text adventure games on DOS. Indiegogo has someone wanting to produce a dragon dating simulator game. I've imported the latest version of the database to the new server and am working on converting database logic.ġ2-10-14, 7:27am: Dragon Dating Simulator There was a nightly backup run that seems to be intact, so not much data should have been lost. I'll un-grey more links above as I restore various sections. That work is not complete, but I'm going to work on completing it rather than waste time and money on restoring to a new hard drive.įeatures on this page that aren't greyed-out have been converted. I've been wanting to move the site to a hosting service for a long time, but it requires converting the existing database to a new system. But we'll see.ĭraconic's hard drive died.

DRACONIC TINKERTOOL INSTALL

So at this point, I'm hoping most of the remaining 87 procs will install without many additional features to figure out, in which case the remaining site features should be ready in the next weekish.

DRACONIC TINKERTOOL HOW TO

Each time I figure out how to convert an obscure feature, I convert every use of that feature in every proc that uses it. Unfortunately the remaining 20% is the most obscure stuff that is harder to figure out how to convert.

DRACONIC TINKERTOOL SOFTWARE

This is a pretty complicated task, but I found conversion software that gets it about 80% of the way. Most of my time has been spent converting message bodies from flat-file storage to in-database storage, and stored procedures from one database format to another. If you notice any new bugs, especially critical things like duplicate messages appearing, messages being lost, linked out of order, etc, please email immediately because the longer such things propagate, the harder they are to fix. Going forward, messages won't be archived till they're 365 days old instead of 90 days. Search is now based on a different piece of software so I need to see what fields in advanced search will translate.Īlso, I un-archived messages posted in the last year so you can reply to them. Message search works, but advanced search fields do not. If you notice problems, let me know.Īfter many days of marathon coding, data conversion, importing, and testing, the forums are restored!Īmazingly, it all seems to work just as before, even obscure things like signature image resizing. Basically, everything should be working again. If anyone still has problems, please email users are now prompted to create a password instead of being sent a random password later.Ĭurrent password is now required to change account information via Edit account info.įind a Dragon is ported and tested, new user registration, Edit Account Info, forums advanced search, and all admin features. I never knew about the problem because my original test browser did not encounter the issue. I fixed a bug preventing new users from registering using certain web browsers.

DRACONIC TINKERTOOL REGISTRATION

Serving the dragon otherkin community since January 1998.Ĩ-10-18, 7:20pm: New user registration fixed

[saturniandragon]

🌌 MILKY WAY: What was the inspiration behind your oc? what was the first thing you decided about them?

For your TES OCs

Oh, oh goodness, Nebu I'm sorry but I'm gonna have to ramble a million words so things sort of make sense. I hope you have the patience to read this entire thing.

🌌 MILKY WAY: What was the inspiration behind your oc? what was the first thing you decided about them?

---Skyrim---

Draqanar: (I practically never talk about this dude anywhere in my blog, because he's pretty much retired, but I want to tell the story anyway)

It's a bit complex, Draqanar (Khajiit male) was both my first and my second Skyrim OC I've created. He is first, in a sense that I first completed the game with this character, although he is second in a sense that he's not the first character I produced from the character creation menu.

Technically speaking the first Skyrim character I created was an Argonian, predictably named after, you guess it, Adrastea. I came into Skyrim totally blind, not knowing anything like naming conventions or the lore about the universe (hell I didn't even know you could create your own character), other than "arrow in the knee" references in memes. He chose the Warrior stone, with sword and shield equipment.

Bleak Falls Barrow was the time I realized sword and shield did not fit my style at all. I consulted to my best friend who was pretty much a Skyrim veteran that time (and by that time, I mean, 2019 lol, I was that late to start playing the game) and asked which race would be suitable for more of a stealth play style. He suggested Khajiit, so then Draqanar was born.

So he was created because I wanted a stealth playstyle. I wasn't aware yet that you could go back to previous saves or choose a different standing stone.

I used a Khajiit name generator because, like I said, I have zero idea of Khajiit naming convention, and I wanted to be fully immersed in the game. His full name is Draqanar Raitannil, but after some hours into the game and discovering that Khajiit NPCs only have single-word names, I unofficially removed his last name.

His appearance was pretty much bare. I think I chose one of the available presets, modified it a bit and just decided it was good enough. I thought I would make this dude an evil reckless character, hence the dark coloration, but he ends up being possibly the nicest guy you would ever meet. And with him I also discover just how effective stealth archer playstyle really is, in Skyrim.

He's married to Shahvee. After some 600 hours with him, I decided to retire him since there's no more lore to develop for him.

Adrastea: And then Adrastea. The proper Adrastea. Not an Argonian this time, but an Argonian-based race which was pretty much an Argonian-dragon hybrid called Draconian. By this time my copy of Skyrim was filled to the brim with mods.

No inspiration this time, I just wanted to insert the Saturn Adrastea into Skyrim to see how close I could replicate him.

The second reason is I wanted to try a proper sword and shield style, after canceling the first Adrastea (why yes I just realized, I have too many versions of Adrastea across the board, but fuck it). And for funsies, I messed around with console commands to make him noticeably taller than most NPCs, by setting his height value to 1.05.

The third reason is I wanted to marry Mjoll the Lioness with a different character. Like Draqanar however, he also ended up retired. He has no lore to begin with, and no lore to end it with.

By this point I was pretty much running out of ideas to do in Skyrim. All vanilla marriage candidates are pretty boring, added by the fact there are no Khajiit marriage candidates.

Until I ran into a mod that adds 4 fully-voiced Khajiit marriage candidates, Khajiit Will Follow. They are Ma'kara (F), Bikhai (M), Nanak (M) and S'ariq (M).

Dar'sien: Dar'sien is a lost character, lost in a sense that his save file was in my previous laptop and it broke down to the point it's not recoverable. Basically he's like an alternative Draqanar, but he's orange furred instead and has cowardice trait. Purely created him to marry Ma'kara.

This is the only image of him that I can gather.

Ma'kara questline was long, but it was well written and well constructed. I was blown away. Like, holy shit, if Ma'kara questline was this good, I needed to try marrying the other Khajiit from this mod.

Merri'sa: And now here comes Merri'sa. My current active Skyrim character. Like Dar'sien, she was created purely to marry one of the Khajiit from the mod. This time I chose Bikhai.

Another obstacle, of running out of Khajiit designs and names, especially because I've never designed a female Khajiit before. I turned to Google, and found a female Khajiit preset that looks so good yet simple to replicate, with a fitting name included in the package.

Merri'sa - Khajiit Racemenu preset

Yes, I'm kind of ashamed that Merri'sa is not a name that I came up with (well, I guess Draqanar isn't either, because I used a generator). But the preset looked so good, I just had to grab it. Once in-game I applied some minor modifications, notably the eye color, but largely it's similar to the preset.

And I grew attached to her. Never before I've seen a character look so good. So attached, I decided to develop a mountain of lore that isn't even completed by the time of writing this tumblr post.

She did end up marrying Bikhai. Bikhai's questline doesn't quite have the same quality compared to Ma'kara questline, but I loved it regardless. Plus, I have a female Khajiit to be obsessed about. In fact now she has much longer lore than any of my previous Skyrim characters.

Now the lore is that she was rescued by an Imperial soldier from a burning caravan wreck when she was just a cub, somewhere along the roads of Cyrodiil. The soldier and his wife have suffered 2 years of childless marriage, so they decided to took her in and raised her as their own.

But why she decided to move from Cyrodiil to Skyrim remains to be seen :)

---Elder Scrolls Online---

Now a new title of Elder Scrolls for me, Elder Scrolls Online. Like Skyrim, I came into ESO completely blind, only carrying with me the bare basics of informations of TES races from Skyrim. May 2021 was my first touch in ESO.

Yes, I suppose I did refuse to read the Steam page of ESO before I downloaded the whole thing. But I wanted it to be that way, I want to start from the closest I can be to absolute zero.

Except, those information from Skyrim can't be used here, not in ESO. I was surprised to learn about factions in character creation screen, and every race is tied to at least one of those factions except Imperial race. Which I didn't have, I was playing base game ESO.

More surprise for me to find that Khajiit race is tied to Aldmeri Dominion, a faction that I think a good portion of Skyrim players dislike, especially Skyrim players who have no experience with ESO. I was conflicted, already too accustomed to playing as Khajiit in Skyrim.

I think I was going to choose Argonian, but Ebonheart Pact just sounds way too foreign for me. At least I've heard of Aldmeri Dominion before. So a bit reluctantly, I decided to roll a Khajiit as my first character.

Zanri al-Anaqi:

Now this is a name that I took way too long to come up with. It took so long that I was kicked from character creation screen because of 10 minutes of no activity. If that's not the record for the fastest a player has been kicked from ESO, I don't know what is :))

"Zanri" is a play of "Ryzen", derived from AMD Ryzen, a CPU brand name. I swapped some letters around and added flavor so it sounds Khajiit/Ta'agra.

Next I wanted to add a twist of my own. During my time of Skyrim I notice that Khajiit names have a small Arabic influence in them. In fact, apparently in Arena and Daggerfall "Mohammed" is listed as a possible Khajiit name.

And what other things that are known to have Arabic names? Stars in the night sky! Astronomy was a major thing during Islamic medieval period.* The star Gamma Andromedae is known in its Arabic name as "Almach", itself is derived from "al-‘anāqi", which is Arabic for caracal or desert lynx. I've never laid eyes on Elsweyr, but there's been multiple accounts of Elsweyr being a desert region (there's a reason Skyrim Khajiit NPCs use "warm sands" as greeting). So, naturally a perfect fit.

(*in fact to this day astronomy community around the world still use some Arabic names for stars, like Aldebaran)

Let's use that. Zanri al-Anaqi. Still sounds perfect to this day.

Appearance wise I went with gold/orange fur color and green eyes. Who else has green eyes? Adrastea (Saturn), although I only realized that these two have green eyes after a few months of playing as Zanri, a lucky coincidence.

Oh how times have changed :)

My decision to roll Aldmeri Dominion character in my first playthrough proved to be immensely worth it because of figures like Razum-Dar and Queen Ayrenn.

Ahravani al-Karim:

Ahravani, Avani, Vani or Karim for short. She was created because I wanted some kind of companion character to go alongside Zanri. Something that's closer than just a friend, but not as close as a girlfriend or a wife, if that makes sense. So, step sibling.

I couldn't make her his sibling, because Zanri's lore was already set on him being the only child in his family.

I was going to apply the same naming convention as I did Zanri; Ta'agra first name and Arabic-esque last name. And I also wanted her last name to be derived from a star name, like Zanri.

At first she was going to have "Ainrivva al-Debaran" as her name. Al-Debaran is a star name in Arabic, meaning "the follower", because she was meant to follow Zanri everywhere. But then something changed, I felt her name was a bit off, so I set out to find a replacement.

(eventually Ainrivva al-Debaran became a name for a Khajiit character I have in PCNA server)

I couldn't come up with another fitting name for her. "Ainrivva" was good but felt a bit off for whatever reason. I went back to Khajiit name generator, and obtained "Ahravani" as a replacement.

But I wasn't done. "Ahravani al-Debaran" sounded a bit too long now. I went back to wikipedia, look for another Arabic star name, but couldn't find any other that fits her. Still, I wanted her to have Arabic-esque last name.

Then I remembered, there's a character in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) named Farah Karim. She's like this very fierce militia leader, unorthodox in her ways but a benevolent character overall. I took her last name as inspiration, modified it from just "Karim" to "al-Karim." Al-Karim is Arabic for "the generous."

(A weird train of thoughts I had just to name a Khajiit character innit lmao)

So there you have it; Ahravani al-Karim. Nowadays I'm a bit lazy to type the entirety of her full name, especially when writing fics, so often I shorten it further to just Vani al-Karim.

Adrastea Drago:

Same case as with Adrastea (Skyrim). No inspiration at all, I just wanted to insert Adrastea (Saturn) into ESO to see how close I could replicate him. Although I did eventually develop some Elder Scrolls-compliant lore about him, so that's something.

-

Well, that concludes it. That was a hell of a roller coaster from start to finish, even for me as the author :)

[srbachchan]

DAY 4736(i)

Jalsa, Mumbai                       Feb 17,  2021                 Wed 8:48 AM

Apologies for the unprotected , unnecessary expressions of deep frustration that enveloped me last night .. but the Blog simply disappeared .. in the middle of my writing .. this was so annoying that , despite my efforts to find it in some file or format hidden in the complex Tumblr., it was just not recoverable .. 

So the entire night was filled with remorse and a distaste , which kind of kept me awake intermittently , and the moment I felt that order needed to be restored, I am here connecting again, and pushing my schedule by a few minutes to accommodate this little essential diversion ..

The accommodation is a slight adjustment in the work out routine .. that is it .. the body needs some regularity before it begins some heavy work schedules in the forthcoming .. 

Most importantly .. an adjustment to the increase in weight .. need to get that belly out of the way , make it respectable for some of the appearances to come and give it a more aesthetic feel and look .. more importantly get the clothing right .. when they start to go wrong, its time to work on the gym timings .. 

AND .. more importantly the diet .. 

All kinds of routines are being propagated by friends and well wishers on how this can be achieved , but they all seem to be a little confusing and conflicting , so one gets back to what worked all these years and stick to it rather than try out some fresh generation , seemingly drastic flair and ruin whatever remains .. 

Intermittent fasting is one .. you eat and then you do not eat for 10 to 12 hours and then eat .. and they say the results are amazing .. cut out the salt, cut out the sugar, cut out the oil .. I mean what ..??? just cut out everything .. तो बचा क्या  ??

वैसे भी  I am a meagre eater .. dal, roti, aaloo thats it .. and a little dahi cheeni at the end .. so what ?? what to leave out .. 

Anyway shall sort it out ..

What is more frightening  is the work of sorting out the paper work lying around .. the years of material , the years of collecting , the years of .. well .. just .. years of it ..

Sorry for this domesticated outpourings , but I do  believe sharing my thoughts with the Ef is  .. well .. no issue at all   ...

.. the family prayers went up yesterday for the Saraswati devi ma .. the goddess of learning and knowledge and music and the arts .. it was and has always been such a blessing when the family and staff sit together in prayer .. and find themselves under the protection of the Divine .. a divinity of all .. of all faiths and beliefs .. in unison .. 

More is achieved in prayer than any other .. and prayers go out to all in need and in suffering and in the hope of well being and safety and good protection ..

Saraswati the goddess that adorns ‘white’ .. that sits on the ‘white swan’ the purity of its presence .. arts and culture have Saraswati as its signature for all that creativity demands .. her blessings bring the beauty of learning , and the arts and make it prominent .. 

ANS so the Ef wonders what next in this sphere .. 

And the next has been kept in a month or so with gap deliberately to take some rest to take some important medical decisions , nothing very serious, just general , and then get back to the next venture and the next and the next .. 

The scheduling masters at Janak, are in a tizzy at the moment trying to accommodate all that is hopefully coming our way ..

Its not just moi .. its a whole lot of the family too .. 

Aishwarya shoots film at Hyderabad with Mani Ratnam .. Abhishek is on to his next in Agra and also his next web session Breathe .. Jaya has taken on a film and yesterday was her first day .. and I am the only one at the moment unemployed  !! 🤣🤣

.. alright all this is not for public consumption .. ok .. just for us here in the Ef world .. 

Fine .. am off to the gym now .. the doc is waiting .. doc as in physio trainer doc .. to get that abs right .. to get the belly in shape .. to get fit .. to be able to climb steps without loosing breath .. to just .. well get and get going ..

ok ..

see ya ..

my love to all ..

Amitabh Bachchan

[hexalene]

how to truly annihilate data from your flash/external drives for both windows and mac from someone who also glazes over and zones out of those jargon-laden tech bro tutorials trying to maximize your desperation for ad revenue by breaking every single step into a separate article with more jargon and more links and more jargon and more li-

So there you are, hand CLENCHED around your brand new 32GB flash drive from the discount bin left over from the back to school blitz at Walmart. 32GB of POSSIBILITY.

Unfortunately, after a few months or years of packing the damn thing with weird shit, like, idk, furry porn and weird candid shots of Gritty, idk I’m not here to judge your life, you clear out the damn thing, empty....but not.

Those 32GB of possibility now struggle to accommodate a PITIFUL 800MB of deep investigative research into the origins of the Florida Skunk Ape. What has happened? How could your memory have been eaten away like this?

So it turns out your flash drive will hold on to as much of the data you put onto it even AFTER you’ve dragged the files to the recycle bin or the trash. 

This sort of news can be a blessing or a curse. For the blessed, yes! If you’ve deleted something by accident, YOU HAVE A CHANCE TO GET IT BACK. But that’s not this tutorial. 

If You Gargle Cock For The Google PC Master Race:

>Plug in the flashdrive >Go to “Start” >Go to “This PC” >Go to “Devices and Drives” >Right click your flash drive >Click “Format” >Careful now boys, it can get scary here: >Okay, so now you’ve got some spicy options. >In “Capacity” This should show approximately whatever the drive’s original capacity was, maybe a little less. Leave this alone. >We’ll come back to “File System“ ignore for now >Skip to “Allocation Unit Size” and make sure it’s on the default setting, whatever that is. >For “Volume Label” this is just the name of your drive. Call it whatever you want. It’s the thing you can rename whenever, so it literally doesn’t matter. >Now all that’s left is “File System” and “Quick Format”

File System For Basic Bitches:

>All memes aside, you can end up with a few or a lot of options. I’m sure there’s a proper answer for this, but the options you MOST LIKELY need to worry about are “NTFS” and “ExFAT”. If you’re needing more than that, that’s way out of my paygrade. > “NTFS” is your default, 100% safe for windows option. Can’t go wrong, especially if this drive has only ever been used with Windows. >HOWEVER: >If you need to switch between Windows and Mac for whatever reason, you’ll want to pick “ExFAT” >”ExFAT” is the option for compatibility across both systems.

Format Options Making Your Files Unrecoverable Even With The Patriot Act:

>I’m being funny, but this IS actually, kinda, for real, what you’re dealing with, so READ CAREFULLY. >The default is for “Quick Format” to be UNchecked >UNchecked will unleash holy nuclear hellfire upon your drive, burning away your sins and leaving only a pure, newborn flash drive behind. >THIS CAN TAKE LONGER THAN YOU THINK IT SHOULD. If you need this drive quickly, DO NOT CHOOSE THIS OPTION. >This will annihilate all the data on the drive. The data will be UNRECOVERABLE. >Now, memes about the CIA and weird furry shit aside, you may want to be cautious about using this. If this flash drive has ever stored anything important, like family photos or important paperwork, or anything you’d be turbo fucked to lose, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE BACKUPS.

>If you’re uncertain about going full nuclear hellfire, CHECK the “Quick Format” option. >This is faster, and leaves the data somewhat recoverable on your drive. How much or how little? No idea. That Basic Bitch comment up in file systems also applies to me.

>WITH THAT NONSENSE DECIDED: >Click “Start” and then “Yes” >Now you’re cookin’ with peanut oil. Fresh, beautiful, full of data and ready to ride.

If You’re a Slut For Steve Jobs’ Forbidden Fruit:

>Plug that drive in >Go to “Applications“ >Go to “Utilities” >Go to “Disk Utility” >In the column on the left, you should see your main drive, and under “External” should be whatever you call your flashdrive. >Click it to enter the SpiceZone >Now here we have a few interesting things to note >The main section breaks down all of the info about your drive, and actually lets you see the Invisible Memory Eater haunting your device. You’ll see what data is under “Used“ versus the drive’s actual capacity. That used shit is what we’ll be clearing out. >On the top of the window, you’ll see five options: >First Aid (worth talking about, so we will) >Partition (abandon all hope ye who click thee) >Erase (THE GOOD SHIT WE CARE ABOUT) >Restore (out of my paygrade) >Unmount (fancy eject key this is fine we just don’t need it now)

File Systems For Basic Bitches: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

>Click “Erase” >”Name” is whatever your drive is called. Call it whatever you want, it can change any time, no harm no foul. >”Format” is where it gets spicy > “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” is your default, 100% safe option. Can’t go wrong, especially if this drive has only ever been used with Apple computers. >HOWEVER: >If you need to switch between Windows and Mac for whatever reason, you’ll want to pick “ExFAT” >”ExFAT” is the option for compatibility across both systems

Format Options So Tight It Meets The US Department Of Defense (DOD) 5220-22 M Standard For Fucking Over The CIA

>It sounds funny, but the title is literally an option you can pick, I’m not kidding >First off is “First Aid” >TECHNICALLY, this is not an erasure function. This is a basic system diagnostic tool that can be used on your main hard drive to find any errors or corrupted files. It can do the same for a flash drive, which in my experience often results in freeing up some of that precious precious data without the commitment of a full wipe. If you’re nervous about nuking the drive, this is a safe place to start. >If all you want is a quick and easy wipe of the drive, ignore “Security Options” and hit “Erase” >Now for the good shit: “Security Options” >Click this bad boy. The window that drops down will be a slider with four options. “Fastest -> Most Secure” The middle two don’t have names. >”Fastest” is the default option. This is the equivalent to Window’s “Quick Format” which clears your drive, but like, leaves a potential breadcrumb trail back to your embarrassing One-Direction-During-The-Purge fanfic, so be warned. The second and third options are escalations of erasure, each taking a little longer, since it’s re-writing the data more and more each time. >”Most Secure” is your CLEANSING NUCLEAR HELLFIRE option with the hilarious note about the DOD. >THIS CAN TAKE LONGER THAN YOU THINK IT SHOULD. If you need this drive quickly, DO NOT CHOOSE THIS OPTION. >This will annihilate all the data on the drive. The data will be UNRECOVERABLE. >Now, memes aside, you may want to be cautious about using this. If this flash drive has ever stored anything important, like family photos or important paperwork, or anything you’d be turbo fucked to lose, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE BACKUPS. >HAVE YOU CHOSEN? >Hit “OK” >Hit “Erase”

AND WE’RE DONE.

This last bit down here isn’t necessary for the tutorial, but I wanted to include it as a fun side trivia thing:

All this shit is the secret behind those cop shows recovering “““““deleted””””””” computer data. Remember how my joke example went from 32GB to 1GB despite the flash drive being “empty”? The Invisible Memory Eater is actually the drive’s previously held data, despite what efforts you may have put into deleting it. It’s still there, like a ghost. 

This is my best understanding of what exactly is happening, and why some data is recoverable, and why some is not: Using a painting as a metaphor, let’s say this:

You have a blank white panel and you paint a picture of a cat.

Next, you take white paint and cover the cat up. The cat is still there, but now there’s no way to see it. 

You paint a sunflower. And then you cover it in white paint. The cat and the sunflower are still there, and now your panel is pretty thick with paint. 

You paint a house. And then you cover the panel in white paint. All three paintings are still there, and the panel is really bloated and heavy. You had two options.  

1. It’s not as capable of being worked as it was previously, so you give the panel away. The next person gets the canvas and notices how thick the paint is. With an x-ray, they can see multiple paintings under the plain white layer. Now, with a special tool, they can carefully scrape off each layer of paint to see each image. The house shows up well enough, maybe a bit of a mess. The sunflower is more degraded, and the cat is unrecognizable. But now they have an idea of what the old paintings were. And that wasn’t your intention at all, that was private. But you can’t do anything about it now.

OR

2. You decide to freshen up the panel. Maybe it won’t be as good as new, but you can work with that. You take the panel around back, and blast the damn thing with the power washer until all traces of the paint are gone. Maybe the board is a little worse for wear, not quite brand new, but the evidence of the old work is absolutely gone, forever.  There’s no image left to access. 

Now when you give the panel away, well, maybe someone could notice the wear and tear, maybe a hint of old paint in the nooks and crannies, but there will never be enough to bring the old paintings back to life. Or even know that there were more than one painting at all. 

That’s simplifying, obviously, and doesn’t perfectly line up with the technical things that are happening, but I think it’s a decent metaphor. To line it back up to the cop show bits, they’ve basically got the x-ray and the special tools to get at the old data, and the tutorial above would be the power washer annihilating everything. 

[waywardmartian]

Doing part of a prompt list to keep in practice. And because it is technically more a fic prompt, short fic.

It's more a metaphorical warmth.

Huddling For Warmth ( But they're empty armours animated by magic, they don't have body heat. )

Galatea's element was ice. Fire and lightning left burns, earth broke things, but ice would melt away like it had never been there. It was tidy. Things always seemed more quiet, more peaceful, more still in the cold.

Then Galatea realised ge had no idea how long ge had been staring at the page without reading it, reliving old wounds over and over as if dwelling on them could change the past. Ge reached to turn the page and felt the ice crack between gids joints.

Galatea radiated cold when angry but also when sad, a way to soothe giself and try to bring calm when upset. Freezing over completely ...

Of course I lose control of my magic, the only thing I have ever been good for. I am as useless as they said I am, if I am not in control of my emotions at all times then I am a bad person. Asking for help forces emotional labour on others and being an inconvenience is the worst thing a person can be. I do not deserve help because my problems are stupid ...

Ge became aware of spider-paws drumming on gids gauntlet. "Galatea!" squeaked Akari. "It's never been this bad before. Can you move?"

"Get the Iron King," Galatea ordered before ge shamed giself out of it. He said I may always ask him for help. I do not deserve his kindness, I must not bother him - But Akari was already out the door.

A moment later the Iron King flew in, Akari clinging to his crown. He carefully removed the book from Galatea's hands, then picked gid up, moved the chair back from the desk, and sat in it himself with Galatea on his lap so he could hold gid as if trying to thaw the ice with body heat he didn't have.

He leaned his helm against gids. "You sent Akari to get me. I'm glad that you know you can always ask me for help. Tell me - do you need to talk about what upset you or do you just need company?"

"Company." It was something they had worked out at a time when Galatea was calm, to use gids programming to redirect gids thoughts - Galatea wasn't compelled to answer a question stated as an order, it was just the path of least resistance, making it easier to say what ge needed rather than going into a spiral of 'I don't deserve help.' Galatea felt the ice grind in gids joints as ge tried to curl against him. Ge hadn't realised how much of an automatic response it was to get closer to him until ge was prevented. But wasn't it logical to move towards a source of comfort?

The Iron King noticed the attempt and tightened his embrace. "Don't try to move yet. I'll be here as long as you need. Tell me - do you need me to talk or do you need silence?"

"Talk. Talk about anything."

"Hm. Well, I'd been cleaning the workshop when Akari came to fetch me. I was sweeping up the metal powder and filings from around the grinder - I'll need to melt it down to see how much of it is recoverable metal and how much is dust. I'm not even sure how we get dust in here. But I was cleaning up because I had been going through the broken items in the vault yesterday and had an idea for how to repair that thing that looks like a wire puzzle. You remember - the thing you said had traces of four different spells on it and theorised that the spell changed depending on the configuration. I was looking at the joins on it again and I think I've figured out how they work ..."

Listening to the Iron King talk about his day was a comfort, a proof that Galatea was here, that this was gids life now, that ge was allowed to have this life. The Iron King wanted Galatea to know him, he trusted Galatea with the things he cared about. He would undoubtedly tire of Galatea someday, but for now there was comfort, for now there was belonging, and for now there was hope that someday would be a very long way off.

When Galatea finally thawed enough to lean against him, he paused. "How are you doing?"

"Better. Permit this unit to inspect the wire puzzle again before the Iron King begins repairs - ge believes ge has seen similar shapes two weeks ago in a book of Dwarvish arcana. If these are related, it could be useful to know the shapes the puzzle is likely to take."

He patted gids pauldron before settling back into the embrace. "That's my wizard."

Finally able to move gids helm again, ge looked up at him, then paused. "Akari is still on the Iron King's helm."

"She fell asleep. I can feel her snoring."

"The Iron King knows he is permitted to remove Akari."

"I don't mind."

[prideandpen]

I have a brand new computer, much to the disgust of my bank account, and all I have on it are the basics that i didn’t uninstall (I uninstalled a lot of junk), scrivener - the program -none of my files, brave browser, and the three bookmarks I use most regularly. i have lost. so much. Even if I get my files back (I hope, I pray!) I’m still pretty sure I’ve lost all of my bookmarks. I doubt those are recoverable. and of course I never sync bookmarks to my phone because it always seemed like a waste of time... go figure