#and mess with layout things on dreamwidth

[nootybloops]

Literal computer programmer here.

Primary school, mac at school, windows at home (once we got a computer). High school, windows at school, mac at home. First two laptops were macs (one still runs my music!).

I didn't even learn how to start programming anything other than very basic webdev stuff until this point! I was in my late 20s!

Desktop is windows purely because so many games still require it, extremely shitty third laptop is linux because I was only using it for uni programming work anyway so why even bother paying for a windows license when you're going to have to fake linux half the time to compile stuff anyway.

All of which to say: I've got Some Experience in this shit, and I'mma tell you your computer literacy has nothing to do with the OS and everything to do with a combination of how interested you are, and the quality of the teaching you receive.

Forever grateful to my PS Computer Teacher, who who taught all the kids at my school how to use The Computers! IIRC the first computers we ever got a go at didn't even have mice, they just had keyboards! And she taught us about whatever the mac equivalent of ms paint was by drawing the GUI on a whiteboard, and explaining the icons!

(This is actually an extremely effective method, by the way. No matter what anyone tells you, understanding icons is not intuitive, and an explanation beforehand stops you freaking out because So! Many! Thing!!! I remember we were all particularly confused by the eraser tool.)

As it happens, she was also the librarian. And when we were a bit older and the school actually had an internet connection (it was the 90s, okay), she taught us about how to find stuff out online, and how to tell if it was reputable or not. Extremely good teacher, and excellent at guessing what would actually be useful for us to know in the future.

Anyway these days, where phones do so much shit By Magic*, and both mac and windows upper management seem to want pcs to follow them (see: app stores), it's no surprise that kids don't know how things work. How could they? The level of technical skills they need to make things work is tiny, and from what I hear they don't get helpful computer lessons any more! It's like expecting a regular train commuter to know how the signaling works. Just. What??

* ie, in the background where you can't see anything at all, even if you want to.

Also to underline Feather's point above, we had a semester's worth of typing lessons in high school. I was the only one in the class who knew how to touch type at the start of it, and I'm pretty damn sure I was the only one who knew how to touch type at the end of it, because no one cared. The teaching in that class was uh... nonexistent, I don't remember a single lesson. IIRC there was some kind of typing tutor program we were supposed to use, but we were pretty much just left to do whatever on the computers (as long as it was text-based. There was a LOT of people turning the font size in word way up and writing swears at people across the room).

If I hadn't already known I probably would've used the time to learn, because even back then it was extremely obvious that it was going to be An Extremely Helpful Life Skill, but clearly none of my classmates agreed with that. :/

[mousedetective]

It is nearing twenty-four hours of being awake now...

I have been up scrounging for codes for the various blogs and communities I have/have set up on Dreamwidth (I actually transferred over a ton of prompt blogs from back in the day way back when LJ started to implode but I haven’t messed with those yet today...I was working on mirroring the Tumblr stuff) and I’m pretty happy with everything, especially the kick-ass Kermit graphic at ragnarok_fic, which will be my resurrected fanfic community over there while I still rifle through the stuff I transferred from LJ that’s from 2007 (yeah, if you want to read old school stuff of mine that’s not up on AO3 yet, that’s the place to do it because I’ll delete most of it once I transfer it to AO3).

But yes. At DW, I’m penaltywaltz at my main blog. I am also penaltywaltz at Insanejournal, but that’s mostly for RP purposes (though once this crisis is all settled as much as it will be I’ll go join a game in progress there that I’ve been at before, maybe with a few new characters, so I’ll be there again more or less, just nowhere near as often as I used to be). I do still have an LJ, but I don’t plan on using it much, just for a few cross-platform things I mod at, but eventually I’m going to drop all my old blogs and just use penaltywaltz there.  And just for the sake of cohesion, my Pillowfort will probably be under that name too (or possibly an old LJ username of mine).

And as always, I have no plans of leaving AO3, not when I’m less than 250 fics away from the 2K fic milestone, so you can find me at AO3 under afteriwake.

Oh! Also, also, also! I can help with making shit look pretty at DW for anyone going there. That’s more or less what I’ve been coding all night and I found a few layouts that are DW-centric that have headers, plus I found a tutorial to do all the old school layer coding so I can transfer over LJ codes to DW, if anyone wants to slide a couple of coffees my way for pretty blogs if you don’t know how to code. 

[jmindigo]

My Collected Notes on A Hat in Time:

I think I'm done with A Hat in Time for a bit. I've hit a point where it's just not rewarding to grind out the last few achievements and Death Wish challenges, so I think I'll step away from the game for a while. Leave some things for me to do when I come back to the game for the promise second round of DLC. Here are some of my notes on the game from my journal, from different days over the last couple of weeks. (1/27)

I took far too long to get around to A Hat in Time. In fairness, it came out in the midst of a traumatizing mess of moving and for months after just looking at the name on my list of steam games made me feel guilty for being blindsided by how awful some people can be. A Hat in Time is a very good game, and it really doesn't deserve that association. I find the controls are blessedly both tight and forgiving, meaning I'm not frustrated like I am with Yooka-Laylee, and I about cried when I found that it had customizeable field of view options as I was getting terribly motion sick playing it. I love the visual design, and the characters turned out way more charming then I expected. (1/30)

Spent the afternoon playing A Hat in Time. I played up to beating Snatcher, and now I feel a bit aimless - should I go deal with Mustache Girl, or go to Alpine Skyline? There's no real direction because both have equal weight in game play. Subcon Forest was a level I was really concerned about during the kickstarter, I was worried it would be awful but I think now it's my favorite level in the game? The Snatcher boss fight is awful though, it just goes so fast I can barely keep up with it and it took a heavy dose of luck to beat it. Definitely not the fight I'm going to see for the one hit hero achievement if I go achievement hunting.

I really like Subcon Forest's music, right up there with the soothing Rift themes. So mellow I could listen to them endlessly. (2/1) I did play a bit of A Hat in Time early today - made an attempt at the final boss, and actually made it through the level this time. I'd made decent progress on learning the boss's pattern when suddenly the boss just up and despawned from the arena. Just poof, gone - I don't think I'd done anywhere near enough damage for any sort of cutscene to have glitched out. I played around in the arena for a bit, just in cause something was trying to load in the background, and one it was clear nothing was going to change I quit out and I didn't have time to try again. It's a mild delight, because it's been ages since I've run into a glitch that's actually really affected my ability to play a game! As I recall... the last time was needing to wait for collision to load in FFXIII-2, and that wasn't really a hindrance just an annoyance. (2/2) Played a bit of A Hat in Time - gave up on the final boss to play in Alpine Skyline, and almost immediately ran into a puzzle that needs a post-game item and ugh I'm so tired of that in games. (2/3) My goal for the day was to beat the final boss in A Hat in Time so I could open up the rest of the game, and it was about 2pm by the time I got to sit down and play the game. I beat the boss, ran around collecting yarn and relics. The game is open to me now, and I just have to decide how much of it I want to play. I guess I'll play until I'm sick of it or the achievements get too hard for me. It's a good game, I hope there's a sequel someday. (2/4) My reward to buckling down and doing that was a can of tamales and a bit of time playing A Hat in Time. I finished up with Alpine Skyline, and then I messed around with mod levels for a while. It's really fun to play rifts, I'm glad the developers left the doors open for custom levels and mods. It's a delight. Next up is the DLC content. I might play a bit more tonight, I'm not sure. I've hit a bit of a wall with the game, because the Arctic Cruise stuff all takes so much time and feels less... optimized. The critical path just isn't clear at all. (2/5) I put some more time into A Hat in Time. I'm still... I love the game, but I'm aggravated with the difficulty of the dlc. Because it feels... fake. I finished the first rift and the first act, the rift from a lot of practice(and I got all the storybook pages) and the act because I'd watched a playthrough video of it the night before. What gets me is the lack of healing items in the rift, which makes even small failures very punishing in a way other rifts to this point haven't been, and the convoluted and unintuitive layout of the cruise ship making navigating it a real chore, made worse by a camera that's just... The camera is bad, it's often way way too close to Hat Girl to the point of I can't see anything no matter what the settings are. Especially if I'm close to an object, like say a wall I have to precision platform off. It makes a lot of the platforming blind. The DLC feels bloated for length, to make the dlc 'worth it'. I'll finish it, but it's my least favorite part of the game so far. I don't want to play it, I want to replay the main game and all it's well designed levels and platformer that felt good and rewarding. The death wish challenges look interesting, at least if I don't need to do the higher level of difficulty for them they'd be fun. A good excuse to play the game over again basically. I haven't even poked at them, I'm afraid they'll be the sort that only unlocks in order.

Another like and dislike - I'm not a fan of the rope mechanics. They work alright, but I could use a bit more 'magnetization' because I just barely miss them so often. I love how Hat Girl counts when you pick up items that count towards a total, something about her voice clip is especially adorable. A neutral - the sound effect for the doors in Hat Kid's ship opening are... strange. It sounds like a sound a critter should make, and it took me forever to realize it was the doors. (2/6) I played more A Hat in Time - finished off the Arctic Cruise levels, and the rifts. It was... Arctic Cruise was not great. First a busywork level, then a timed busywork level, and then the physics were just all messed up for the final level. I feel like almost none of my failures were fair. Did a few of the mod levels, and some of the Death Wish challenges. I enjoy the 'Peace and Tranquility' mode. That is like the perfect thing - gimme the challenge without the impossible bullshit, gimme a way to play the game I enjoy. No judgement zone. It's beautiful. I wish more games had something like that, and I love the games that do. Platformers need to be forgiving on some level. I just wish I didn't have to kill myself three times to activate it. I technically 100%'d the game today! Which I think is all main story time pieces and rifts? They gave me the fancy hat and everything. That does feel like an accomplishment. --

Hmm. I feel like my tone is overall negative, but I suppose that's only because I took a break or got broken out of the game when I was frustrated. I love the game - five stars,, anyone who likes platformers should play it. I only mentioned briefly the soundtrack, but I find I love it in general - it's bombastic and cheerful, and some songs are so peaceful. I've added it to my rotation of music to play in the background. Current playtime is 32 hours.

comments x-posted to anindigomind on dreamwidth | comment there

[who-is-page]

I feel like this is coming from a really odd place, to be honest.

I don't think it's a bad place for people to figure out what lifestyle works best for them on their own. Honestly, I think that striking out on the path that works best for you is one of the healthiest things people can do, as opposed to taking the lines and layouts that society lays out for them and tells them will be best. And I'm going to be genuine, a lot of the conversations about lifestyle aren't happening at random on Tumblr; they're happening in more private, adult-focused spaces, like tight-knit Discord chats, forums, on Dreamwidth, etc. where the topic is more often brought up and more often applicable to the people who are there. This doesn't mean they aren't out there, of course-- hell, I myself wrote up a whole thing talking about my relationship with food and ethics and being a carnivorous nonhuman animal and how I'm building a lifestyle around that in just 2021-- but it's not going to be something you see all the time, everywhere around. That's not a good or bad thing per se, it's just a thing. If you want to see that change, then it might be worthwhile to start talking about your own lifestyle stuff and motivating others to do so too, rather than just telling people they suffer from online brainrot.

For the otherhearted stuff, that feels so strange to mention since we still have those first discussions around the creation of the word "otherhearted" available online. The Daemon Forum is still running strong to this day, and the original forum thread it was first coined on isn't even locked. If you want to see what spurred people to coin the term, you can. If you want to see what people are describing their otherhearted experiences as, there's 35 archived items in the otherhearted folder on the Alterhuman Archive. One is even titled, "Other-Hearted vs. Otherkin." You talk about how an in-person Howl would do more for you than reading essays, which is totally fair if that's more your speed, but this really seems to imply that you haven't even actually looked into any of the things you're interested in beyond a cursory scroll through Twitter and Tumblr tags.

And the otherkin stuff in the workplace has had a lecture before. @nova-dracomon did "Modern Draconity and Careers" just last year.

It's easy to dismiss people not taking OtherCon seriously because it's online-only, but the panelists put a lot of work into what they do. My first OtherCon panel was on my religious studies thesis, which was the culmination of four years of work. You can argue that that one was an outlier, but these things seriously often do take months of work and preparation. My Abnormal Instincts panel for OtherCon '22 started in November of 2021. For me and my throuple's Litter Box Hoax 2 panel for Otherkin '23, we'd been researching into that since February of that year, while posting updates on otherkinnews. So on and so forth. In-person Howls have their place and are great fun-- I can vouch! I try to go to the Arkansas mini-Howl every year, and I was the president of an itty bitty Otherkin club in college that was an absolute blast-- but it's really messed up to try and say that just because in-person Howls are more your speed, therefore the online gathers are useless and that everyone there is just pretending to give a shit.

Also, panelists do this shit for free! Originally I was going to leave this in the tags, but... there have been some panels that have absolutely blown my fucking socks off with how fun, or how well-researched, or how insightful they were. Like Poppy's Folklore case study: The Valravn from this year's Centaurus Festival. And they're literally not asking for anything in return. They're hosting these panels because they want to, for free, for anyone who wants to enjoy them. Not only is that ballsy as hell for the folks who have stage fright to do, but it's also putting a lot of time, energy, and sometimes even outright money into something for people to enjoy just because they want to. Do you walk up to the musician on the street and shit in his saxophone case? No! If you don't like the music, you can just walk the next block down. The same with these panels. If you don't like someone's panel, you can just exit out of the tab and move on. You don't have to publicly denounce it as garbage. Which isn't just rude, but also seriously disinclines folks from ever putting themselves or their work out there, or at least not unless it's behind a paywall.

Sorry for being so inactive lately... been busy irl, and have been meaning to post here more often, but also, like... I always feel a bit shy approaching the 'kin communities on here because it kind of feels like everyone is sort of... "internet poisoned"? For lack of a possibly-better word. A lot of folks here on tumblr in the 'kin and alterhuman communities are children, and a lot of more prominent community figures treated like "elders" are only about my age or younger, and it feels really strange, to be honest. There's a lot of discussion of feelings and terminology, but very little "lifestyle"? It's like there's a universal expectation for everyone to just figure everything out on their own; you get some definitions here and there yeah, but the amount of variance says much more loudly "just figure out what it all means on your own, pal". ex. Not only can no one actually explain what "otherhearted" actually means sans relation to otherkin, but it feels like I never see anyone talk about dealing with what one could call "kin feels" in the workplace, when unable to acquire your habitat, etc... Othercon is online-only, and while I'm pretty sure I'd be unable to attend an in-person event, part of me has a hard time feeling like everyone is really taking it all seriously and is really unafraid of being "cringe" when obviously it's so much easier to act like you're so confident online. I kinda feel like meeting some wolfkin stereotypes in a park for snacks and doing a group howl would do more for me than years of reading essays on tumblr ever has.

I dunno, I tried watching a recording of an Othercon panel I felt would be relevant and useful to me once, and was floored at just how... utterly useless it was. Despite its promising title, it was just shallow "you're valid" garbage and internet discourse... Makes me feel severely alienated, to be honest.

[tarkya]

I ended up making a neocities of all things. Friend mentioned it as maybe a joke, maybe a legitimate, but here I am.

It’s kinda neat, actually, setting things up! I like messing with basic html and css, and not having to work around the Standard Forum Layout like I’m used to is sort of freeing.

It’s no tumblr replacement by a longshot - I’ll probably have to go to wordpress or dreamwidth for my long-winded blogging desires, but it’s kind of nice to have a homepage again.

[givereadersahug]

Dreamwidth! I've been singing its praises to anyone who even show a hint of interest.

Here's my journal. There's a sticky about everything you can find on my journal. Feel free to say hi and subscribe! (I did recently changed up my theme to make it more mobile friendly, so please excuse the layout mess. It's under construction.)

Here's a look at my profile, if you want to know how to set one up. I'm in a bunch of communities - Harry Potter related, prompt communities, seasonal bingos, writing focused, anime, etc. Season of Kinks is doing their last ever round! Check them out if you are interested. If you like drinking and writing/drawing at the same time, Firewhiskey Fic is a great follow! There's also a new Dub-con/Non-con bingo. And the site hosts a lot of multi-fandom exchanges as well.

Potterfests is THE place to go to to keep up with what's happening around the HP Fandom. Lee_Bella is a beast!

Fandom on DW and Fandom Calender is a great way to advertise your events and keep up with what's happening around the Internet.

Find a few communities, read their profiles and rules, and join! <3

There are some amazing folks over there, too. (I'm a bit biased, since I'm mostly on the HP side of Dreamwdith. One person I follow is Eldricther. They pop up from time to time, sharing recs and great insights on fandom. Give them a follow!)

Once you subscribed to a few journals and joined a few communities, your reading page will be hopping. Here's how mine looks like.

One great thing I like about Dreamwidth is that I can set privacy levels to each individual posts. I do not need to set my whole journal to private if I want to post something about my RL or something deeply personal. I can make the post so only my friends can see them, and even then I can set it so only certain friends can see them. The only way I can control Tumblr posts here is set it so others can't reblog. However, the posts are still public for anyone to see.

However, because you can post private entries, sometimes a journal or a community may look empty. But once you join/subscribe, you have access to all the locked entries. I'm participating in Fandom Empire right now, and the default privacy level is locked entries, so from the public view there are only a few posts, but trust me. The community is hopping behind closed doors.

I also love the tags. Here's how I organize mine. They are there and easy for me to browse and click through. Tumblr is also about tags, where you can ramble on if you like. But on Dreamwidth it's all about organization and that scratches the part of my brain that loves order.

You might have to learn a few HTML tricks for posting. Their Rich Text is not the greatest. Here's a beginner guide. Dreamwidth's FAQ is a helpful resource as well! From finding entries by just one user in a community , how to make a cut , and how to link to another Dreamwidth account and/or service.

And, if anyone wants to do a friending meme, I'm down! Here's one that @consistentsquash did.

It is a bit slower than Tumblr. A lot slower than Twitter. But the people! The people on Dreamwidth are some of the nicest friends I ever met. It's a bit of work to get your journal up and running. You have to put yourself out there. There are occasional friending events like the Snowflake Challenge. (There is one coming up for July, but for the life of me I can't remember the name of the community right now.) But I think it's worth it. I occasionally escape the madness of Twitter & Tumblr and just park myself on Dreamwidth. lol

If you have any questions, I'm happy to help! <3

dreamwidth!!!

re. this

if anyone's interested in moving over to dreamwidth, feel free to add me (leftsidedown)! no real idea what's going to go on there yet, kinda just exploring and lurking for now, but I've already found a bunch of interesting folks & communities I'm looking forward to getting to know better. reviving LJ-era MWPP fandom would be AMAZING too -- dog days of summer? rs small gifts? 😍❤️

@mblematic @billsfangearring @tahtahfornow @toujours-prete @impishtubist + anyone else, reblog/reply with your username!!