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microbiologynerdd · 4 years

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Notion - BASIC and EASY Note taking system FOR STUDENTS

Hello everyone!

I hope you are well!

For this weeks #Microbiologynerddweeklytips post, I shall be sharing my university note taking and organisation system using Notion.

I have been using Notion for roughly 1 year, and have used it to organise my second year university studies, in addition to my voluntary position as the VP of my society.

So below is a very BASIC and EASY to use format you could adapt for yourselves! Enjoy😊

Contents

As a directory to everything I need at university, I have a contents page. Here I have each of my modules, as though they were chapters of a book. Each leading to a separate page of their own.

After this I have the required ‘modules’ for my placement year. I have arranged this slightly differently to my regular university notes - more details on this later.

Below this you can find pages for my summer microtalks hosted by SFAM. I attend these weekly and make notes in that subsection.

And finally I have a section for Taekwondo, to organise tasks I have to complete as the VP of Taekwondo.

Module pages:

So i have tested 2 different methods for module layout, each only having a slight twist.

- Please click the photos to enlarge -

In the photos above, I visualise the 2 different systems. Each of the systems involves having a new cell per lecture. However, in the first 2 photos (from left to right) I have separate pages for my lectures vs my lab notes. Whereas on the right, I have my lectures, labs, extra reading and questions all formulated into one table. Clicking the See All button at the top left of the table, above the search bar, you can choose to view classes by type i.e. just see my lectures or just see my lab notes for example.

The second system I have found works best, otherwise you are just clicking too many buttons to get to the area you need. However, in future I shall implement the ‘breadcrumb’ at the top the page, like i did with the first and second photos. (Breadcrumb = univeristy/ BMS2037:cellu../lecture below the page titles). Breadcrumbs make it easier to shift between pages instead of clicking the back button all the time. They are essientally hyperlinks to other pages.

Tip: to insert a breadcrumb simply put /breadcrumb and a breadcrumb will appear. This works for anything you are trying to insert e.g. a table

You can also choose to insert materials e.g. any lecture slides or resources you used within that lecture. Personally I dont find this helpful, as our VLE is clearly laid out with our lectures. But it might be something worth trying, as you can also insert pictures or any sort of media you require.

I also use the tick box function to keep track of whether I have written the lecture into Anki cards (flashcards)/ attended the lecture.

Side note: Please ignore my spelling/ how I label lectures, they make sense to me, they dont need to be 100% correct - right?

Internship/Placement Page:

I have recently been dabbling in the layout I would like to use for my internship year, however, I shall update you at a later date with any additional details, as due to COVID-19 the formate of the year and my assessments has changed. I also will find out more when I start my internship... which is soon - yay!

I’ve decided to have reminders at the top, which I inserted using /callout - you can change the emoji to anything you would like. This is for me to know instantly any important documents or tasks that I need to complete.

The external work to that provided by my internship is included in the table. This is essientally the coursework I have to complete on the side of the placement. Here i decided to note the deadlines and percentage of the year that it is worth. This is just to help me grasp the format of this year, since as mentioned above, it is slightly different.

Underneath this I have a selection of details to do with the company. This includes my acceptance letter and any insurance forms I need to send off. I just wanted to have them at hand so i can reference them at any time.

Summer 2020/Taekwondo pages:

These pages I format the same as the ‘Module’ Pages, so I haven’t included any pictures etc.

Miscellaneous things:

- NOTION IS FREE FOR STUDENTS - if you have an educational email, you can sign up for free! If not, packages start at $4 a month, which isn’t too bad for something you use frequently!

- This service is avaliable on tablets and computers, so anyone can take advantage of this organisational software!

- You can change the cover and icon at the top of each page. They include emojis and a standard image database, but you can also upload your own unique images if you desire.

- There are also template designs for pages, with different themes for different needs. So if you don’t want to start one from scratch you have lots of options to choose from. Use those as a base and edit them from there! For example, there are calendars, habit trackers, resume trackers and whole load of other things.

- Using a device for notes, such as notion, allows you access to any notes you have made at ease. It is organised, and you are unlikely to lose your notes. Paper is great until you scrunch up that important sheet, or it rains and the paper gets wet, or you are carrying every single note you have ever made - that can become heavy. Just something to bear in mind, especially if you can afford a laptop/ note taking device of some kind.

- You can create multiple pages for different aspects of your life (photo below). For example I have 2 additional pages, 1 for personal things and another for blog post ideas - to keep you guys entertained... haha! 😆

Conclusion :

What I have shared here is a very BASIC overview of how I use notion. If you desire a detailed in depth report of how notion works, it might be worth checking out Ali Abdaal, who can give you this information. As for me and what I require from the service, Notion has been working really well, keeping me organised with all my notes in one area. Knowing what I am doing, when, and being able to keep up with the speed of lectures - considering my writing speed is questionable. 😂

When you first download notion and look at all the templates, it can be a bit overwhelming/ exciting. Start with what you need, and then explore new ideas that you want to incorporate. There is no point setting up hundreds of pages if you aren’t going to use them, just like writing out pretty notes doesnt help you learn content - but more about that in a future post. Start small, being organised involves consistency, you can’t be consistent if you have given yourself too many things to do daily. Or at least you are unlikely to be.

One word of warning, Notion is not compatible with the Apple Pencil, so if you like writing notes on your iPad, this may not be the best software for you. As well as this, if you are a faster writer than you are typer, DO NOT USE NOTION. The whole basis of this app or at least how I use it, is to stay organised and write notes productively and efficiently. If you prefer writing, keep at it! Don’t just switch because suddenly you hear lots of tapping on keyboards in the lecture theatre.

Play to YOUR STRENGTHS , enhance what you are good at, not what everyone else is doing. As always, you’ve got this 💪

Let me know if you have any questions, or whether you’d like any further posts/details about my notion workflow. I’m happy to answer any queries you have.

Speak soon,

Lucinda x

542 notes · View notes

47pictures · 3 years

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“All-Star”

Link to original r/nosleep post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/mv9j9a/for_my_blog_i_toured_a_movie_studio_to_find_the/

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I finally made it to Hollywood… at least, I suppose that’s what I’d say if I were trying to make it big. That wasn’t exactly the case, though. On the contrary, my old hometown friend was the one who I’d say ‘made it big,' and she was the only reason I managed to get there. No way in hell I could just stroll through these Hollywood gates without some sort of reputation associated with my name.

I’m currently pursuing a degree in journalism, and right now I’ve got a pretty successful status as a blogger, and hopefully podcaster in the near future. My topics typically cover things involving entertainment, specifically movies, television, some celebrity gossip here-and-there, the ins and outs of the film and occasionally music industry, nerd topics about comic books or comic book movies, and I could go on. Essentially, all the things you’d expect from an entertainment blogger.

I don’t have a secret or special tip for how I grew a mass following. It just sort of happened. I did it since I was in high school - sophomore year, to be exact, and it started mainly as a hobby. Most people are surprised to hear that I was such a good writer and articulate for my age when they look back on the articles I’d put up during that time, speaking on topics such as the ‘downfall of blockbuster films,’ and the ‘toxicity of media's body standards on the youth.’ Truthfully, I didn’t know all of what I was saying half the time. Writing was sort of just my natural gift that I honed to where I could essentially bullshit anything well enough to make a great story. However, being ethical always remained my moral code.

The topic I was covering now involved my own personal ‘investigation’ of a famous movie studio known as Gemini Films. They’ve put out several flicks now that have garnered what most would consider moderate success (they're no Warner Bros. or Paramount, that's for sure). They deal mostly in the thriller/horror genre, sort of like Blumhouse. I’m a bit more in the sci-fi, comedy realm when it comes to my tastes, but really, I’m a bit of a pussy when it comes to scary stuff.

So why am I 'investigating' them? Well, as it turns out, it's their amazing use of special effects. Yep, that’s it. Special effects, that thing we fell for as children we called ‘movie magic,' and growing up learned that some of it were all the crafty work of well-put CGI. Though that’s usually the case, this time, something about Gemini Films seemed different. They’ve always been praised for their ‘hyperrealistic’ visual effects and pulling off stunts that would otherwise seem impossible. I was watching one of their action/horror films titled Last Thorn, and in a particular scene, a character’s on-screen death is, well, very lightly put, gruesome. I’ve seen my share of on-screen gore and played plenty of Mortal Kombat growing up, but I gotta say, I found the scene hard to watch. To clarify, it involved a character literally exploding before the camera, and from the way it was shot and the lack of cuts and edits typically required to create the illusion of a scene, it seemed quite real. A little too real…

They’ve done other things aside from their special effects department that some people on internet discussion forums found a bit too impressive. Take the actors, for instance. In their dramatic scenes, especially the horror flicks, I’m almost always convinced that the actors are actually going to die on screen. I’m surprised all of them haven’t been given Oscars yet, ‘cause goddamn, you’d think the director was holding them at gunpoint. We all saw just how amazing the acting was in films like Hereditary and The Babadook were, but I gotta say, after watching these films, they make those two look like child’s play (no pun intended to the Chucky series). I was so impressed with the actors that I had to look them up and see what other work they’d done, but from what I did find, their resumes didn’t seem that much greater than the work they’d done for GF. It was almost as if that was the peak of their careers unless they decided to further their contracts to star in any more of their movies. Anything else they did pale in comparison that showcased their acting chops.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jamie Douglas.

It had somewhat of household name potential, I thought. She was the next rising star. She’d just won a Golden Globe for her leading role in a TV series I’m sure no one had high hopes for in the beginning, and her name was now attached to an Academy Award-winning film for Best Original Screenplay, all at the age of 22. Her acting was stellar, always had been even growing up back in high school when we did theater together. I was never for the acting side of things; I always preferred the technical realm and behind-the-scenes work. She, however, had the ‘it’ factor. I never once doubted that she’d be famous. It was destined for her.

The taxi driver dropped me off in front of a luxurious one-story home in the Beverly Hills neighborhood, surrounded by other similar houses with a property value larger than what I’d probably make in my lifetime if I was being honest. From the outside, her home reminded me of that gilded, golden age of Hollywood back in the 60s, with a slanted roof and art deco-styled exaggerated features. It was nice and simple. But that’s how Jamie was. Nice and simple.

I could see her peeking through the curtains of her window before she came running out the door to meet me in the front yard. That big beautiful smile and those joyous eyes came rushing at me with open arms.

“Christian!” she screamed my name with excitement, as she gave me a big, suffocating hug.

I hugged her back with my free arm, as my other one was still carrying my trolley bag and she had that one pinned in her grip.

“I’m so glad you made it,” she exclaimed.

“Yeah, I made it to Hollywood, right?” I dryly humored.

Jamie giggled as she began to pull back from her hug and put both her hands on my shoulders.

“Yes we did,” she said with a big smile, flashing her perfectly straight, white teeth. “We sure did.”

She led me inside the house and gave me a tour. Compared to the outside, the inside was the complete opposite in regards to the decorative era. Whereas the exterior was ‘groovy’, the inside was a bit more with the times. Wide-open spaces, tan or beige-colored furniture and walls, a wide sliding door for the backyard where you can see the pool. Jamie recently moved into the house, so I figured there wouldn’t be a lot of things to fill it up with just yet.

“Someone said Bette Davis used to live in this house, which I knew was bullshit, otherwise the value on this home woulda been way outta my league,” Jamie commented.

I chuckled. “Oh, I think you’re well on your way, trust me,” I reassured.

I was going to be staying with her for a week while I did my journaling/blogging. We did tons of catching up. She gave me all the inside scoop of what goes on in Hollywood - or ‘Hollyweird’ as I liked to call it - and even some of her other famous neighbors you might recognize living double lives on the down-low. She said she’d been to a couple of big mansion parties as well, where you’ll see all sorts of celebs from different categories of entertainment. Actors, athletes, musicians, models, influencers, you name it. But Jamie insists that she doesn’t attend those very often, if hardly at all. She prefers to be a homebody when she’s not seeking work through her agent, and her extraversion mostly comes to play when it involves networking.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The rest of the night we stayed up watching TV and YouTube videos. One that fascinated both of us was a video explaining how scientists managed to find a way to make a perfectly cooked steak from a cow, but without actually harming or slaughtering it. Instead, they extracted a small sample of the cow’s cells and took it to a lab where the cells would essentially grow into muscle for it to be cooked later.

“I’d consider that over going vegan,” Jamie said.

But I grimaced at the thought. “I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem right,” I remarked.

"What, are you vegan?"

"No, not that. Just the thought of cloning animals, ya know?"

“I mean, it’s not like they’re killing the cow or anything. They said it’s perfectly unharmed.”

“I know, but still…”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The next morning was day one for me. Jamie had the right connections to get me an on-set tour of the studio lots associated with Gemini Films. I was greeted and led by the third assistant director (or AD as they’re commonly referred to).

“Hi, I’m Tiffany, nice to meet you,” she said, with a rather forced smile and handshake.

She carried a clipboard in her other arm, as well as a hand-held radio clipped to the pocket of her jeans, and I saw that she also had an earpiece nestled in her right ear. I could tell she was about her business and probably didn’t have time to be overly nice or talk too much.

I got a sneak peek of their most current production under the production title *"*Cold Silence", which required me to sign an NDA beforehand, of course. That wasn't actually their final name for the movie, but it's a common thing for them to do when shooting a film when either they haven't decided on a name yet or to keep the nature of the project a secret. It sort of took me back to my theater tech days with all the set designs and props lying around, except these were much more detailed and intricate thanks to their higher budget than what my high school had at the time. Here, there was limitless potential. Tiffany also introduced me to the other ADs, PAs, boom operators, cameramen, make-up artists, and then last but certainly not least, the director.

“Jeffrey?” Tiffany called to the man sitting in the director’s chair. The man turned to face her and then me. “This is Christian Watkins. He’s the man we’re giving a behind-the-scenes scoop for his… blog?” She looked to me for confirmation, to which I nodded. “Yeah, for his blog.”

The man in the big chair stood up with a cool smile and classy charm and extended his hand for me to shake.

“Christian, nice to meet you,” the man spoke in a tenor pitch. “Jeffrey Bachmann,” he introduced himself.

I didn’t take too much time last night trying to read up on his bio, but from what I could tell at first glance I knew that he was about in his mid to late fifties, as his hair was greying and skin was starting to wrinkle, and I could see that he had a surprisingly calm and laid-back demeanor. Surprising to me, at least. I always thought directing was a high-paced, chaotic mess that never ceased to present a myriad of complications onset that’d make any man want to pull their hair out. But Jeffrey seemed calm, collected, and very personable.

“Hi, thank you for having me,” I replied. “Seriously, this is like a really cool opportunity for me and my blog.”

“Hey man, it’s my pleasure,” Jeffrey said. “I heard you got a big following behind your name. Props to you. I respect the work ethic, especially giving your readers what they really want to see, ya know?”

I shrugged modestly. “Well thank you, but this time was mostly in my own interest to seek out this idea for my current blog,” I said.

“Ah, an interest in GF, huh?” Jeffrey replied. “Well, what would you like to know? We’ve got nothing but time today. In fact, we’re just getting ready to shoot the mangle scene for today and then we’ll wrap it up before we review the dailies.”

“Mangle scene?”

“Oh yeah, if you’ve got a weak stomach or aren’t into gore you don’t have to watch.”

At least he gave me discretion. “Hmm, I think I’ll tough this one out,” I said. “For the blog.”

Jeffrey gave me a sincere but slightly unsettling grin. “That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout.”

He was a nice guy so far, but you know how you just meet certain people that for whatever reason, out of their control, their aura seems off? Maybe it was my preconceived notion and warranted cynicism I had of people working in Hollywood. Just a bunch of sharks in a pool with hungry eyes for desperate young talents eager to take a dive in the spotlight. But as I’d imagine with any field, there had to be a decent share of lambs among the many wolves.

Suddenly, one of the makeup artists scampered over to us, their attention directly at Jeffrey.

“Hey,” they said to him with a noticeably fake inflection.

“Hey, what's up?” Jeffrey returned.

“Savannah? She’s losing it back there. Said she wants to talk to you and only you.”

Jeffrey nodded. “Don’t worry, I got it,” he said, as he patted his hand on the MUAs shoulder. He then gave me an apologetic look. “Sorry, Christian, duty calls, but hey, Tiffany?” he looked to the stern AD. “Make sure he gets a front-row view for the martini shot.”

“Yes sir,” Tiffany replied.

Jeffrey and the MUA stepped off to handle whatever business needed handling regarding one of the actresses backstage in the dressing room.

“Martini shot?” I asked.

“Last shot for the day,” Tiffany explained. “For me, that’s a term I like to take literally.”

She seemed so serious all this time that I found the joke almost funny.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

There was now quiet on the set. Shooting was about to start shortly. At this point in the movie, the main character has a stand-off that turns into a big fight scene with the main bad guy at a warehouse factory building. At first, there’s a gunfight, then eventually they both run out of ammo and it comes down to a fistfight before finally having a standstill on top of a rail just over a giant industrial shredder.

Right now, the actor playing the bad guy, Will, is hanging on for his life over the rail above the shredder, while Thomas, the main good guy, is standing over him victoriously. My question was, is the shredder real? ‘Cause it sure as hell looks like it. It wasn’t turned on yet, but just from a glance it seemed legit enough that if I dropped something as sturdy as a microwave in there, it’d come out jelly on the other end.

For the blog, I told myself. For the blog…

Suddenly, my suspicions were confirmed once Jeffrey called to have the shredder turned on. The machine roared to life, the inverting sharp metal gears rotating past each other being a black hole eating everything that passes through it with no escape. Holy shit. It was actually fucking real.

Jeffrey gave the nod to the 1st AD, and the AD returned the same.

“Action!” the AD called.

Based on what Jeffrey showed me from the script, Thomas is supposed to stomp on Will’s hand that’s gripping onto the edge of the rail, causing him to fall to his death into the shredder. The camera was now rolling, yet, I didn’t see Thomas do the deed. Was he pausing for dramatic effect? Was he acting for the camera? I wasn’t quite sure why he was hesitating.

I peaked over to notice that Jeffrey, the once calm and collected man I met backstage earlier, was now beginning to seem noticeably impatient and about to snap at any moment. There was now that dark edge I noticed about him from before but couldn’t quite put a finger on that I could see now coming to light.

Hesitation filled Thomas’ veins, about to raise his foot, then not, dragging on the scene longer than intended. From this distance, I tried to see Will’s own expression, and I regret ever doing so. Surely he was acting, but I’ll be damned, it was too good. Whatever fear he portrayed transmuted itself into me now. It was the kind of fear that I didn’t think could be replicated on command. Jeffrey stood up from his seat, but just before he could say anything or call ‘cut’, Thomas stomped his foot down on Will’s hand, and we all watched as his fingers slip from the railing. Will sent out a bloodcurdling scream as he plummeted to his ‘death’. What followed will haunt me forever.

Do you know what it sounds like to have a person’s body mangled to death? Have you bitten into the bone of any sort of meat? Heard and felt the crunch? Or maybe even the crunch of celery? I myself have never broken a single bone in my body, but imagining what it might sound like other than what I’d heard in movies or video games all seemed elementary now. At first, I had to look away, but what forced me out of my seat to leave was Will’s horrifying screams. He’d fallen feet first into the shredder, so his lower body had to suffer first before reaching his upper body and finally silencing him at the head.

I ran to find the nearest trashcan and hurled. I guess I really didn’t have the stomach for gore, at least, not to this degree. Will’s screams kept looping in my head. It was a new primal sound that evoked a dread within me that I wish I never discovered. The sound of torment. One thing was for sure, Will was one fucking hell of an actor - if this was acting. But the shredder…

It seemed so real. And there was no greenscreen besides the ones to be used for the background later in post-production. I saw him fall right into the damn thing. With my own eyes. In living color. There were no edits, no crazy tricks, no lighting effects. There couldn’t be. It just wasn’t possible.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I was sitting down trying to recuperate, as everyone else around me was wrapping up set for the day. Tiffany came over and handed me a bottle of water.

“Thanks,” I said, taking it.

“You feelin’ better?” she asked.

“Hmm,” I answered with a scoff, raising both my eyebrows and taking a sip from the bottle.

“I’m surprised you stuck around if you had such a weak stomach. I mean, he at least warned you.”

“I usually don’t. But that?” I shook my head. “How do you guys do it? It looked so real.”

“I’m just pulling your leg. I almost vomited too my first time. Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

If it was a shame to flinch at something so vile, I don’t wanna know what goes on in Jeffrey’s mind to even come up with such a scene. Speaking of which, I still didn’t get a one-on-one interview with him as I’d hoped. All I had was the end result of his ‘movie magic’, but not how he did it. At this point, I'm not sure I really wanna know.

I went to go get my belongings, which were left in one of the dressing rooms, and was stopped by the sound sniffling from the one a couple doors ahead of mine. I looked on the door to read whose room it belonged to. It read: SAVANNAH YOUNG. She was one of the lead actresses in the movie, or rather I should say the only actress in the whole film. With the makeup artist and Jeffrey thing that happened earlier, it was evident to me that something sour had gone on behind the scenes I didn’t know about.

The door was cracked open and I couldn’t see her face entirely from my view, but I knew she was sobbing. She looked to be sitting in front of her mirror. I was about to just ignore it and go on about my business.

I lightly knocked on the door. “You okay in there?” I asked.

She stopped and I could hear her get up and approach the door. She pulled it back just enough to where I could see her whole face. She was beautiful, just like Jamie, even if she had been crying.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Savannah said. “Thank you.”

There was a brief awkward moment of silence between us. Clearly, she wasn’t fine, but I didn’t wish to pry any further than that.

“Are you one of the new PAs?” she asked. I arched a brow. “Production assistant?” she clarified.

“Oh, no, I’m just a visitor,” I assured. “Writing for my blog. I was supposed to be writing about behind-the-scenes things and how it all works around here, but I bitched out from the ‘mangling scene’.”

Savannah gave a short nod. “I see,” she said. “Well… I don’t blame you.”

I wasn’t sure if it was the way she said it or just from the state that I was in, but her words gave me chills.

“I should get going,” I told her. “Nice meeting you.”

“Likewise,” she replied, and then shut the door.

I got my stuff from the dressing room and got ready to head out. I wonder what could’ve made Savannah so down to where the director had to get involved and set her straight. Jeffrey seemed pleasant to work with at first glance, but who knows, maybe he had a mean streak to him after all, especially the way he looked during the shooting of the scene. God, I just wanted to forget about it. I can’t unhear the sounds. The bones crunching, the blood splattering, and the screaming. The fucking screaming…

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As I was leaving the studio lot, I noticed the cleaning crew of two men dump a large amount of black bags in the dumpster. From the way they swung the bags over into the bin, the shit didn’t seem light. The bags were in several different sizes, some small, some big, some disproportionate. I stood there and watched as the two men finished disposing of the junk and walked away to go about their other duties.

Regular, common sense me would’ve just picked up the phone, called Jamie to let her know I’m ready to get picked up, and go about my day. But the nosy blogger me kept itching…

I made sure the coast was clear and made my way over to the bin. I can’t believe I was actually dumpster diving, and for what? What did I really expect to find? In my head, I knew the answer, but was avoiding it, either out of how ridiculous it may sound or, God forbid, I was right.

The trash wasn’t stacked high enough from the bottom for me to simply reach, so I had to literally get in there myself. I climbed over on the other end, raised the lid, and jumped down on the piles of plastic bags, holding the lid up with my arm and my breath so I didn’t get a huge whiff of the smell. Though, if I did need to puke again, I supposed this would be the place to do it.

I immediately noticed the bags the men threw away, but in order for me to check what was inside, I’d have to crouch down and let the lid close on me. Fine. That’s what the flashlight on my phone was for. Surrounded in darkness and garbage now, I turned the flash on, illuminating the four dirty walls around me and I pulled back one of the bags. I felt around to try and see what sort of contents might be inside. Mush. It felt all mushy with chunks of solid and a little bit of liquid.

This was stupid, I thought. I realized how stupid I probably looked right then and there, sitting in a bin full of filth looking for clues like some sort of private detective. My followers have no idea how far I’d go, but this was ridiculous. Oh well, I’m too deep in it now, no pun intended.

I held my phone in my mouth as I used my hands to rip open the plastic. My heart began pounding as I slowly pried the bag open. Once I got a peek inside, shame and embarrassment came over me.

Food.

I should’ve just called Jamie to come get me. Had I really become that desperate? I threw the bag over and out of my way. Then I noticed the bag underneath had trickles of fluid. Curious, I shined the light down on it. They were red trickles. Considering how I’d just overreacted only to find a bag full of thrown out lunch, I wasn’t about to get all up in arms about finding red drops behind a Hollywood studio lot. I didn’t know the full recipe for fake blood, but if I recall correctly, Alfred Hitchcock used chocolate when they filmed the shower scene from Psycho.

I tried to follow the small trail and see if it led to another bag. I slowly pointed the light further up and it led me to the bag just behind the one I tossed to the side. Looks like it had a small bust that caused it to leak. When I pulled this one over, a very noticeable smell filled my nostrils and erased any other scent of the trash that surrounded me. It was a metallic, rusty sort of odor, like copper from a penny. However, that smell also belonged to something else…

I ripped open the bag, and with the shine of my light beaming down, I was welcomed to a bright crimson sight of mashed blood and guts. It had to be fake, I thought. It had to… but the way I recoiled from the putrid metallic fresh scent of carnage, my primal instincts told me that wasn’t the case. I innately knew that it was real. I was staring at Will’s mangled body.

Frozen from fear, I sat there for who-knows-how-long. What the fuck was I supposed to do? I’d call the cops first, of course, but they would need evidence, and even then they’d probably dismiss me after I told them I dove into the dumpster of a movie set where fake blood is a common prop. I’d tell Jamie the same, but she’d look at me crazy, too.

I unlocked my phone and started snapping pictures. As much as I could. I even opened some other bags and did the same. I tried to snap every bit of remains that was left of Will and saved them into my phone. It felt like a sick test to see how long I could hold my breath so I wouldn’t gag, and I think I broke a new record that day.

I snapped probably about 47 pictures on my phone before I finally shot up and threw open the bin. The wave of fresh air hit me like a truck, and enjoyed it for only a brief second before turning to see Jeffrey, Tiffany, and the other AD standing by his side. My soul left my body right then and there.

“Christian?” Jeffrey said, sounding concerned.

Fucking say something, I told myself. I did my best not to stutter and look stupid.

“Hey, Jeff,” I said, raising the inflection of my voice, probably sounding dumb.

“Going for a swim there?” Jeffrey joked.

I fake laughed, then put on my best acting skills. “I cannot for the life of me find my ring.”

“Your ring?”

“Yeah, my mom’s ring?”

Then, with the slick subtle motion, I hid my hands to where they couldn’t see them behind the walls of the bin, and with careful coordination used my fingers on my right hand to pull the ring I already had on and flicked it down onto the trash below. I shuffled my feet over the bags I stood on to make noise so they wouldn’t hear the ring drop. Please God, don’t let the ring hit the hard bottom floor or one of the rusty walls, I thought. To my relief, it didn’t.

“Oh man, I’m sorry, Christian, I haven’t seen it,” Jeffrey said, as he looked at the other two as they also shook their heads. “But we can definitely look around again and let you know if we find anything.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” I said, trying not to make my voice tremble with anxiety.

“Now, c’mon, let’s get you outta there,” Jeffrey said, waving his hand over.

I nodded and shot a quick timid smile. I climbed out of the bin and faced the three before me, wiping myself down.

“Hands a little messy there,” Jeffrey said.

Anxiety raced through me again, but adrenaline had my back to make sure I didn’t fuck up by saying anything dumb.

“Oh, the fake blood?” I chortled. “Yeah, you guys lots of that shit in there. Smells like a chocolate factory.”

Jeffrey fell for it, and laughed. Good. But he could just as easily be playing me right now.

“Given how you ran off earlier back there I’m surprised you can stand to look at it, better yet, touch it,” he remarked.

“I’m sorry about that,” I stammered but stayed on track. “It’s just… I now see for myself, no one does it like GF.”

“Haha, you don’t have to flatter me to get back my respect. Don’t sweat it. I totally understand.”

Is that so? I thought.

“You could use that martini shot right about now, huh?” Tiffany joked.

Definitely not with her any time soon. Or any of them, for that matter.

“Well we’re just heading out for the day, you got a ride?” said Jeffrey.

“Yeah, I should probably call Jamie now and let her know I’m done,” I replied.

“It’s no problem, man, I can give you a lift. I can drop you off wherever you need me to.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Seriously, I insist-”

“Jamie and I got a spa appointment to catch in a bit. Otherwise I appreciate the offer.”

Jeffrey had a brief look in his eyes, a glint of what I could only compare to a wolf’s gaze hiding behind that sheep’s clothing he carried himself around as, and then smiled and nodded.

“Okay, Christian,” he said. “Once again, nice to meet you and I hoped you enjoyed the tour, and hopefully make some good content for your blog.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Thank you so much again. Seriously, I can’t thank you enough.”

“It’s nothing, Chris,” Jeffrey said, throwing me off a bit. “Can I call you, Chris?’

I shrugged. “Sure. I mean, I called you Jeff by accident,” I said.

“It’s fine. Chris and Jeff it is.”

I needed to get away from here. Now and as fast as possible. But I still needed to do one more thing.

“Any chance I can wash these off inside?” I said, raising my bloodied hands.

“Oh of course,” Jeff said.

“I can lead him back,” Tiffany said, ready to go with, but Jeffrey stopped her.

“Ah, he knows his way in, right?” Jeff looked to me for reassurance.

“Yeah,” I answered confidently.

“Good, well hopefully I’ll see you around, Chris, and you enjoy the rest of your day.”

“Thank you, Jeff. And you all do the same.”

As I walked past them and towards the studio lot, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was being set up. Why hadn’t he let Tiffany escort me back inside? I’d think that would be customary for them to do for visitors entering and exiting the building. But I felt that they were watching me from behind, and with every step, I grew more and more anxious.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I’d made it inside and the lot was now nearly empty and quieter. I didn’t see a single person in sight, and only a few lights remained on, making it mostly dark. I hurried the fuck up and did what I came to do, as I didn’t wanna be here any longer and didn’t feel safe.

Down the hall where the dressing rooms were, I rushed over to Savannah’s door, and saw that it was closed. I tried opening it only to see it was locked. Looking down, there was no light shining through the cracks either, meaning there was no one inside. She wasn’t there. Shit.

I washed my hands in the bathroom, scrubbing the dried blood off as thoroughly as possible, getting under nails and all, cringing at the thought of it being Will’s. Suddenly, I heard a noise from outside the hall leading to the bathroom. Petrified, my heart sank into my chest, and I froze. I shut the water off, and carefully approached the door. I listened for any other sounds as I placed my ear closer. After a few moments, I heard the noise again, but then realized that it seemed to be coming from one of the dressing rooms just outside in the hall.

Since I carry a notebook around most of the time for jotting down notes, I certainly always carry a pen. What most people don’t know is that I carry a military tactical pen for a variety of uses, and in times like these, it can be used as a subtle but effective weapon. I switched the tip from an ink ball to a small slick blade.

I opened the bathroom door and crept through the hall over to the dressing room door that made the noise, holding the pen underneath the breast pocket of my sweater. On the outside of the door, it read, “WILL BANKS.”

Confused, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Common sense me once again kept barking in my brain telling me to GTFO, but I had to be sure. I gave three shy knocks and waited. There was definitely someone in there because whatever noise I thought I heard from behind came to an utter halt. I could hear faint whispers of someone’s voice, and then another. There was more than one. My hand trembled as it tightly gripped the pen underneath with sweat as I heard whoever it was on the other end of the door approach.

It swung open, and there stood Will Banks, the man whose blood was just on my hands moments ago, alive and well, in the flesh. It couldn’t be, I thought to myself.

“Can I help you?” he said.

I just stood there, baffled, without answering. Behind him, I saw Savannah, who instantly recognized me and came over.

“Hi,” she said. “I thought everyone left.” She looked to Will. “He was visiting the set today for his vlog, or I’m sorry, blog.”

Will nodded, understanding now. “Oh. Sorry, I didn’t get to meet you. Will Banks,” he said, pointing at his name on the door. “As you can see.” Savannah chuckled, and Will extended his hand for me to shake.

“Christian, or Chris,” I said, releasing the pen from inside my sweater and reaching my own hand out to take his. "Whichever you please."

He had a firm shake, and it felt uncanny considering what I’d just witnessed. I was touching him, feeling his skin and bone underneath, the warmth of his body temperature through the flesh. He was real. He was alive and breathing. That couldn’t be faked. That couldn’t be a visual effect. This was real. After we let go, suddenly my hand went cold. Everything about this seemed off and downright strange.

“Did you stick around for the shoot?” Will asked.

“I did, as a matter of fact.”

“Well, what’d you think?”

I wanted to say so many things right then and there, he had no idea.

“Um... y’all are some damn good actors,” I said.

Will laughed a bit, accepting my sham form of flattery, but Savannah, not so much. She gave one of those forced gestures as to not make it feel awkward, though, I noticed it right away.

“How do you do it?” I asked.

“I would give you some artistic bullshit answer like ‘study your craft’ or ‘years of training,' things like that, but honestly… it just kinda clicks, ya know?”

I fake chuckled. “No, I don’t. It looked kinda real from my end. Too real, I might add. Care to go into detail how you guys pulled it off?”

“Well, uh-”

Savannah interrupted. “Wait, you know what Jeffrey would say,” she whispered to him.

“I know, but it’s for his blog,” Will argued.

“But still.”

“I mean, Jeffrey’s not here, right?” I chimed in.

They both looked at me, then at each other. There seemed to be some sort of nonverbal understanding between them, and Will looked back at me.

“All right, for the sake of your blog, I’ll give you what I can to the best of my wording, that sound good?” Will proposed.

I took the pen back out from inside, switching it to the ink ball with a short click, and whipped out my small notebook. “Hit me,” I said.

“Get ready for this one. Basically, we’ve been using a new thing in the biz lately sort of like mocap but it’s not exactly. It’s also kinda like hologram sort of tech?”

“Really?” I said, eyes widened with interest as I wrote words down.

“Yep. That’s how we did it. What you saw, was as real as the hologram thingamajig allowed you to.”

“Hmm.”

“The shredder, too.”

“What?”

“The shredder. That was a hologram also.”

“Really? Okay…”

I finished writing on my notepad then turned it so that Will could read it.

BITE ME, I wrote with a big circle around it.

He laughed. Savannah did, too, but, again, in a strange nervous and restrained demeanor.

“That’s a nice story,” I said. “So if you’re ready to quit bullshitting with me, and tell the truth, I’m ready,” I spoke in a playful yet no-nonsense tone. “How’d you do it?”

“You’re good, man,” Will said with a smile, pointing his finger at me. “Like a true journalist.”

Any other day I’d be pleased to hear that, but I was serious. I needed to know, so much that I’d forgotten how long I’d actually been here. I told myself I was gonna leave as soon as I could, but now, for some reason after talking with Will and seeing how personable and genuine he came off, he put me a bit at ease. Maybe I was blowing this out of proportion. But then the screams echoed in my head again, and the smell...

“You’re not gonna tell me, are you?” I said.

“Look, I wish I could, honestly, but if I did, Jeffrey may not be too happy with either of us,” Will responded sincerely. That much was true, I could tell.

“All right, I think I tortured you enough,” I said, then immediately regretted my choice of words.

“No worries, man. Nice meetin’ ya. Good luck with the blog.”

“Thanks.”

I looked at Savannah one last time, and she looked back with a serious and almost scary gaze as though she needed to tell me something very bad. That’s who I came back for anyways. But that opportunity was a lost cause now, as I left with nothing and still no understanding of how Gemini Films did their visual effects? And I lost my mother’s ring. Fuck, I didn’t have time to go get it right now. I didn’t wanna risk being seen again. Hopefully, Jeffrey keeps his word and they somehow manage to give it back. That being said, I'd be fine with not having to see him ever again.

Whose blood was that? Whose body was that in the dumpster? Was it real? Was it actually just that well made to where the average person could be fooled into thinking it was actual flesh? Who’d go through the trouble of all that?

The screams of losing your life inch by inch, the sounds that would haunt me forever. And the smell of what was inside that bag. That instinctual gut feeling… how was it not real?

#writing #story #horror #nosleep #horror stories

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centrally-unplanned · 4 years

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Serial Experiments Lain: A Guide to Proper Mindfucking Procedures

(I finished Lain! I originally wrote here “will jot down some thoughts, maybe I can write a full essay sometime later”, reviewing it now this is absolutely a full essay, so scratch that lets commit)

Serial Experiments Lain is a starring member of the pantheon of 90′s “mindfuck” anime, those shows that supposedly blow the mind with esoteric philosophy and trippy visuals. Current-me has frequently sallied against this notion, particularly the idea that any of these shows (or most any show) are that philosophically dense - the nature of television & film is such that they almost never are, which is normally a good thing. But young-me watched Lain around the same time I watched the original Ghost in the Shell film, and I had that halcyon experience for both: intriguing, but also on the border of incomprehensibility. As such I held little opinion of either of them, not trusting my hazy memories, until I saw them again much later. Ghost in the Shell, by the way, is a terrible, painfully boring film, precisely because it tries to be that philosophy-mindfuck concept. Which can work when you are young and stupid, but once you have read literally anything, anything at all, a single op-ed will do, about “AI and Identity” or the like its ideas are trite and shallow while it has sacrificed characterization, plot, and pacing in pursuit of that failed dream.

Lain on the other hand is a brilliant show that succeeds at that concept far better than media like GitS ever could precisely by not even trying to be that. The thematic foundation of Lain is actually quite simple; the openness & inter-connectivity of the internet is not just utilitarian but can offer a way of living that is seemingly brimming with unlimited freedom and emancipatory potential, but that promise is found fundamentally to be a hollow (ahem) shell, with reality being not only inescapable but desirably so. Or something like that? I mean maybe. Lain never spends that much time on answers, because those are boring; instead focusing on the actual experience of the titular Lain herself as she navigates these concepts. All of the content it throws out are lateral moves around this core, details to mull over as opposed to attempts to “go deeper”, which makes it not-that-hard to follow once you understand that is what is happening. There is even a scene where the, let’s say “villain”, tries to go full-philosophy on Lain: who is the real her? What is identity anyway? Plays that whole entire hand, and she replies:

Which, given that those themes are absolutely the themes of GitS, made me laugh out loud and yes is 50% of why I am comparing them. I am certainly not saying that Lain doesn’t have philosophical concepts, it clearly does in spades. Stitching those concepts together into a grand thesis, however, is just not the focus.

What is Lain’s focus is mood, and I have never seen a show use so many varied animation concepts and narrative approaches all towards capturing a singular mood; that of the free-wheeling hacker-for-truth aesthetic of the early internet. It is of course famously filled with glitchy shots of Lain flickering on CRT monitors and horror-shadowy power lines, damn does it have so many shots of power lines. But that is covered ground - instead I want to note how often the narrative approach itself just goes off the walls in service of its goals. Episode 9 is the peak of that approach, where scattered throughout the episode is a fully-fledged documentary that starts with the Roswell incident, which it then admits is fake, nevermind! before pivoting to discourse about Schumann Resonances and the Earth as a decentralized Neural Net and...

Just a screenshot from an anime here folks! Vannevar Bush better have a Danbooru tag

All of this information is “true” by the way, as in real concepts and thinkers and crackpot ideas...until the end, when suddenly its someone from Tachibana Labs adding Schumann Resonance Integration to the 6th Protocol and wait-a-second that’s the show-canon, Tachibana Labs isn't real. As a ~youth~ you might be foolish enough to try to figure out how say ELF bands might be critical to understanding the plot of Lain, which is a classic “philosophy mindfuck” mistake; its all bullshit, the ideas only matter in the most loose way that does not require understanding them. Yet, this is *exactly* what that early hacker internet felt like; crazy ideas being stitched together from low-pixel edited docu-footage repurposed to utopian futures or secret conspiracies, and by sliding this stream-of-consciousness braindump right into the canon of the show it makes Lain feel like a perfect simulacra of that age. To spend any amount of the runtime of an episode on this and to actually pull it off is queering the madness/genius binary in the hottest way.

The reason Lain can pull this off is its other source of strength I alluded too - all of these visual elements are in service of a very human story, that of Lain trying to figure out her place in the world. And this arc hits one of my sweet spots for media, what I have called the “multifaceted arc” in the past, where instead of a show having multiple independent arcs for characters it instead has one seemingly-completed arc that proceeds to be refracted, challenged,and altered over the run of a show. I mentioned in my previous Lain essay how the show was using the visual language of exposed skin to communicate Lain’s digital emancipation, becoming Lain of the Wired. In those early episodes that is what is happening, and this process peaks around the halfway point with a confident, powerful Lain. She spends much of episode 6 looking like some variation of this:

Total badass. That confidence and power then proceeds to be abused, manipulated, revealed as a false identity, and then stripped away over the latter half of the show - being Lain of the Wired turns out to be a curse as much as a blessing, and for the very human reasons of the connections to real people she loses through that process. This emotional core does an amazing job of keeping you grounded - in the same episode as that conspiracy documentary, Lain has her first kiss! (Its a bit of a dud, but still). And by the end of the show she is at the apogee of her digital empowerment, and also riddled with despair, loneliness, and in desperate need of help, looking like this:

Note the withdrawn pose and the positioning of Lain backgrounded and way below her friend in the frame, to imply a state of weakness despite her capabilities. That is some classic visual language by the way: no crazy shot effects, no weird narrative devices, just straightforward emotional communication. Lain spends 50% of its runtime going full avant garde, but never (okay, rarely) lets that overwhelm its arc, and threads the needle to make that arc one of the deeper and more moving arcs I've seen in a show.

Serial Experiments Lain is far from perfect, despite all the praise I just put on it; Episode 6 for example has some dumb midichlorian-style “you are trying to explain something no one needs an explanation for” plot, and half of the crazy visual effects are compensating for the fact that its budget was like 10 dollars. But it peaks far exceed its valleys, and I am exceedingly happy to have watched it; I have always struggled to name my “Number 5″ on my top 5 Anime list with a lot of contenders for the slot, but Lain might have just snagged the title.

(Which would make my top 5 list *entirely* composed of anime from the second half of the 90′s, and not due to nostalgia as I only saw the majority of them in the past few years. Certainly a question worth answering, but for another time...)

#serial experiment lain #executive dysfunction strikes again #but even though this essay is a bit unpolished I still like it #essay

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wellyoucantliveinfear · 5 years

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There’s Something Rotten in Las Vegas (It’s Clexacon)

Hey y’all, I’m back again with my feelings about Clexacon. This is my 3rd year going to the convention, and sadly it’ll likely be my last. This will be a longgggggg post, so I’ll be putting it under a cut. So if you want to hear about my experience at Clexacon 2019, here you go:

Show! Me! The! Money! (No Seriously, Where’s it Going???)

One of my biggest concerns (among the many that I have) is how this convention is now an opportunity to grab as much money as it can from its LGBTQ audience. I’ll start with the con itself, and then work all the way through to its “affiliates”.

If you wanted to do anything at Clexacon that was not the actual convention itself, you were required to pay an additional fee. I personally went to the Academic Lab, which was an additional $75 on top of the regular $160 3-Day Pass ticket price. The Creator Lab was also the same day and was also an extra $75. Ascension, the Saturday night party, was $50. There was also a comedy show, and unfortunately I don’t have the info on how much that was. And sure, you might say, “Well Morgan, those are all extra events that are optional, so maybe paying for ‘opting in’ makes sense!”. Okay, sure, but there are also plenty of conventions that have additional, “opt in” events that are free for attendees.

Let’s use Dragon Con for example, as I live in Atlanta and am the most familiar with that one currently. Dragon Con has a TON of extra events, including a wrestling show, a burlesque revue, and dance parties. Most of these events are completely free as long as you have your convention badge. The events that aren’t free? An awards banquet and a HUGE ball with celebrity guests. There’s even an academic track for panels, which is also free. And okay, yes, Dragon Con is gigantic and is already established in the convention circuit. There are even smaller conventions that are doing free events too. I lived in Cincinnati for years and went to the Cincinnati Comic Expo, which is much smaller but still runs free events for attendees. So it is doable.

There also needs to be attention drawn to the fact that every organization attached to the “Clexacon” name is ran/owned by the same handful of people (NOTE: The two people in question will not be named here as I do not want to open myself to them potentially taking legal action. However everything stated here is either my experience, the noted experience of others, or easily accessed through organization websites, particularly the website for The Visibility Fund). Those people own and operate Clexacon, DASH Productions, and DASH Photos. They are also on the board for The Visibility Fund, a non-profit organization that gained funds from the Cocktails for Change event hosted at Clexacon this year. Prior to the removal of the Clexacon staff page online (which was removed promptly after the convention ended), the names of people from Tellofilms were also included as staff for the convention. It is deeply concerning that all of the money is being funneled in/through a small number of organizations ran by a small number of people. When I teach Media & Culture I always warn my students of the dangers of a small handful of people owning the means of creation. Often when that occurs, the limits on what the audience is able to see get smaller and smaller, focused on the wants of the corporations and businesses. It seems that Clexacon is moving in that direction.

Who’s Running the Show?

The organization of this year’s Clexacon was a complete and utter mess. I’ll start with the mismanagement of the Vendor Hall. While there was more space in the Vendor Hall this year, this did not lead to better promotion by the Clexacon staff. With the Photo Ops being moved upstairs, the hall was not as cramped, but it did remove a large source of foot traffic for the vendors. A logical next step would have been for Clexacon to tweet something about the Vendor’s Hall to push that foot traffic back into the space, but that did not happen. Instead, the traffic continued to flow upstairs and into the large panel room, with people only coming into the Vendor Hall through word of mouth or to get autographs. As someone who was in the Vendor Hall this year and last year, I noted a significant decrease in foot traffic, and other vendors I talked to noticed it too. This doesn’t even take into account the issues concerning the inconsistent pricing of vendor tables. I cannot speak further about this as I wasn’t involved, but there are multiple tweets in the #clexapocalypse hashtag with more info.

There were also issues with volunteers checking badges and other forms of “security” during the weekend. There were multiple instances where I walked into the Vendor Hall and no one checked my badge. There were instances where I walked into the Vendor Hall without a badge on, and no one questioned me. Bags were rarely being checked. I’m not advocating for more security at Clexacon. I’m against having heavier security or “police” in a queer space, especially a space where queer folks of color are present. However, there at the very least should be volunteers present to make sure that people without badges can’t walk in. Why on earth would I buy a $160 badge if anyone can just walk into the space?

Photo Ops were also a disaster. My friend and I bought a Photo Op for Chantal Thuy and Nafessa Williams. Not only was the picture very washed out, but when we asked about getting an extra print for one of us, we were told by volunteers that extra prints wouldn’t be available, and if we wanted them we’d have to “wait for the digital print and get it printed at a Fed Ex or something”. Y’all, I’ve been to multiple conventions and not once have I not been able to get another print at the con. They also said that it would take nearly two weeks for us to get the digital print, as “it’s just one person processing all of the images”. WHAT. That’s completely unacceptable. Other folks I spoke to at the convention cited similar issues, including being charged for Photo Ops that they didn’t get and poorly shot photos.

Finally, there’s the issue of leadership for this convention. In the previous section I outlined an issue with the heads of Clexacon running multiple organizations connected to Clexacon, which appears to be fairly well known on the internet. What might be less well known is that after last year’s Clexacon, those people pushed out one of the original organizers for the convention. This person questioned the concerning direction the convention was taking and not only were their concerns invalidated, they were given no choice but to walk away from staff and were asked to not return to the convention this year. (Note: slight edit made to previous sentence based on new information) After the removal of that person, the convention morphed into what was presented this year. As you might have noticed on Twitter, many of the Clexacon staff resigned from their positions through each of them sending a public statement tweet. Of my knowledge of the situation, this was due to the management issues concerning the heads of Clexacon, as well as problems with how their labor was used (or misused) by those heads. When multiple people exit their jobs within an organization, that signals an issue with how that organization is run. I hope people will look deeper into this issue than what I’ve outlined here.

I’m going to move on now to more “identity based” issues. I wanted to get all the money bullshit out of the way first because I have a lot of fucking Feelings about how people were continually marginalized at this convention and I didn’t want to run out of anger steam before talking about the money.

Concerns About Accessibility (I Have Them)

HOLY FUCKING SHIT, DO I HAVE CONCERNS. First, let’s review what occurred before Clexacon happened. Multiple people contacted Clexacon with issues attached to their unclear accessibility policy, with many getting poor responses or no responses at all from the staff. Eventually the outcry on Twitter prompted the staff to issue a new statement about accessibility, which was initially done so through an image on Twitter…which was not accessible to those with screen readers. They later reissued the statement through multiple tweets, but this would be foreshadowing of things to come. They stated they were talking to people well versed with ADA compliance knowledge, but it’s clear that either they didn’t do that at all, or they did and then chose to not follow them. This showed at the actual convention itself.

First was the issues with obtaining the program itself. They didn’t have any paper programs available this year, instead telling everyone to use the app. Well, that app was only accessible half the time because getting wifi was impossible, and cell service was horrible in the con space. Also, having the programs through the app only meant that they were assuming everyone had a cell phone and were able to use it throughout the entire con. I’ve been to conferences/conventions where they’ve had digital programs, but there’s always the option of getting a paper program if that works better for you. Not having those options got in the way of people being able to plan what events they were going to.

From just my experience at Clexacon, there was not enough accommodation made for attendees who were deaf or hard of hearing. There were multiple panels, including panels in the large room, that did not have an interpreter present. There were also clearly not enough interpreters available for the number of attendees who needed them. Moog ( @wayhaughtt ) talks more about this in their vlog, which I’ll link here. It is completely and totally unacceptable (not to mention illegal) for Clexacon to not have enough people available to assist attendees.

Along with not having enough interpreters, the space is just totally not accessible for anyone who has mobility issues. Small panel rooms are all the way at the back of the con space, making it hard for people who cannot walk long distances. Aisles were not wide enough for people with mobility devices to use. While there were some things in place to assist with having to stand in line, it was still difficult for many people who couldn’t stand for long periods of time. The elevator on the bottom floor near the Vendor Hall was out of the way enough that I didn’t notice it until Sunday. The Quiet Room shouldn’t have even been called that, as it was sandwiched between the Photo Ops and the Film Festival, making it impossible for people to achieve the quiet they were going there to find. And sure, you might say, “Well that’s not their fault, it’s the fault of the Tropicana”. But at the end of the day if you are really committed to making your event accessible to everyone, to create this “safe space” that you continually advertise, then you will make the effort to not only actually provide people with adequate accommodations at the very least, but also find a venue that will be accessible for your attendees.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being (At Clexacon)

Okay, so, I’m really annoyed that I basically have to write the same thing I did last year. I was really, really hoping that white people wouldn’t fuck it up again and would show up, but apparently the small amount of faith I had in my fellow white fandom people was too much. It was very clear AGAIN this year that white fandom will only show up for shows with white characters. I did notice an increase in the amount of people who attended the One Day at a Time Panel, and that’s great! But there were so many other panels with queer folks of color that were either a quarter or half full. I was hoping more people would attend the Black Lightning panel now that they were an established show finished with their second season, but nope, it was maybe half full. The Vida panel had a good number for attendance, but it was in a smaller panel room, so I can’t really gauge it with the other large room panels, but that room was not full. The Queer People of Color Representation panel, a really great panel with an important discussion, was about a quarter full. WHITE FANDOM NEEDS TO BE HEARING THESE CONVERSATIONS. Us not showing up and not putting in literally the minimum amount of work is fucking ridiculous, and shows everyone else where we stand.

There also, again, was a noticeable difference in the length of autograph lines for white actresses verses actors and actresses of color. Jes Macallan’s line was wrapped around the autograph area. Even though this is their third Clexacon, Dominique Provost-Chalkley and Kat Barrell’s lines were long as well. Caity Lotz’s line was also pretty long. On the other hand, Nafessa Williams was sitting at her table with no line for a significant chunk of her autograph time, as was Chantal Thuy and Lesley-Ann Brandt. Just that visual alone makes it abundantly clear who white fandom is willing to give their time and money to. So many of us complain that there’s not enough LGBTQ representation, but then refuse to put in the work when the characters are people of color. Saltygaysianpowerhour on instagram has a great post about this, which I’ll link here. White fandom, if we’re not putting in the work, we cannot complain when we feel there’s not enough LGBTQ representation. We’re part of the problem.

Lastly, I noticed that the Clexacon space was extremely white. When this happened, we as white fandom should have been aware of that and been better allies for attendees of color. That did not happen. I’ve heard so many stories of attendees of color who felt othered or additionally marginalized by both attendees and con staff in a space that should have been just as much theirs as everyone else’s. This convention is not a “safe space” for queer people of color, and some very, very significant changes will have to be made for it to get even close to that.

I Can’t Fucking Believe I Have to Write About TERFs

Just like the fucking subtitle says, I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT TERFS. The complete and utter failure to make this con a positive and safe space for trans folks is honestly stunning. Literally so many people I know got repeatedly misgendered at Clexacon, and so many people didn’t even care to find out what people’s pronouns were. Volunteers misgendered multiple people, which is a problem staff should have addressed at the very beginning. I heard many people say they encountered TERFs at the con and I don’t think I need to mention this, but like, if TERFs think your con is a safe space then that’s a huge problem. I honestly think there were more cishet men on main stage panels this year than trans folks. That’s a problem. This con should have had some way to signify your pronouns on your badge, whether that be a ribbon, button, or even a fucking sticker for people to fill in. I feel like if you’re running a convention that claims to include all LGBTQ people, then you need to do basic things like that. Otherwise change how you market the convention.

What Is it Good For? (Actually, a Few Things)

Okay, now that I’ve aired all my grievances (or at least the ones I can think of), I do want to talk about the good things this con can bring. This con does offer a space for people to create community. Sure, we can do this online with Tumblr or Twitter, but it’s not the same as seeing a living person in front of you. It’s not the same as talking to someone face to face and being excited about whatever media you love. It’s not the same as getting to hug your favorite people. And with all its faults, Clexacon does create a space for this to happen in real time. I know people who have met some of their closest friends at Clexacon. Hell, I met my current girlfriend at the first Clexacon. But that doesn’t erase that this community is currently toxic, and if we want to keep going we’re going to have to deal with those toxic parts or it’s all going to rot. Unfortunately I’m not going to be attending Clexacon in the future unless the current management is removed and significant changes are made. I’m lucky enough to have other places that create positive LGBTQ community like @tgifemslash. I’m not going to shame anyone for going to Clexacon next year, especially if that’s the only community you have. I just hope that in reading this very long post (and thanks if you’re still with me!) you reflect on what Clexacon is and how it can be better. We’re already marginalized by broader society, we don’t deserve further marginalization from our own “community”.

#Clexacon #Clexacon2019 #Clexapocalypse

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mcad-ae · 4 years

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Earth Day 2020 Visiting Artist

For Earth Day 2020, MCAD will be virtually hosting Christine Baeumler, a community-based artist focused on ecological restoration. An associate professor at the University of Minnesota in the Studio Arts department, Baeumler has worked on various green spaces within the Twin Cities and abroad, including the rooftop Tamarack Bog at MCAD! To join the Google Meet for the Visiting Artist lecture, use the following information:

Google Meet Room: Christine Baeumler Lecture

Link: https://meet.google.com/hfy-gxsp-swt

Phone, dial 601-935-4191

PIN: 220 663 421#

To lead into this talk, I asked Christine a couple of questions regarding both her work and the current global situation.

First of all, what are you currently working on?

Currently, I am focusing on the intergenerational as well as the interdisciplinary dimension of my collaborative practice. For example, in the Buzz Lab youth internship program at the Plains Art Museum and in the Backyard Phenology project, I am focused on appreciating how those projects can bring people from different backgrounds and age groups together. We all have so much to learn and gain from each other’s experiences.

You often work to improve urban green spaces. What are some examples of what you believe is a well done/designed green space? Any in the Twin Cities specifically?

I am most interested in urban green spaces that are not “designed” but intentionally create the conditions for increased habitat, biodiversity, and water quality considerations. This may mean managing plants introduced from elsewhere that thrive here to give the native plants a chance to re-establish, but also considering plants that are beneficial for pollinators and other species. These places may not appear designed to an outside observer, but a lot of labor goes into creating a thriving space. I acknowledge, however, it is not possible to fully restore our ecosystems given the damage humans have done to the land, water, and soil, at least in a short time frame.

Several places I particularly appreciate are the Quaking Bog at Theodore Wirth Park, (which inspired the Rooftop Bog at MCAD). It’s a tamarack bog with a walkway so that people can enjoy the bog but won’t disturb the delicate bog ecosystem there. The Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary in St Paul below Iminija Ska (the White Cliffs) is an ongoing oak savanna restoration of a railroad brownfield, managed by the Parks and Recreation Department and the Lower Phalen Creek Project. If you haven’t been to either of those places I recommend a socially distanced walk (the walkway at the Quaking Bog is a bit narrow, so something to consider now).

I also appreciate the Native American Medicine Gardens on the University of Minnesota, Saint Paul Campus (across from the Bell Museum on Cleveland Avenue). The director of the Native American Medicine Garden, Cante Suta/ Francis Bettelyoun, has built up the soil (and the microbes) on the site over many years. Bettelyoun, students, and a team of volunteers care for the plants and animals there from the Indigenous perspective of Relatives. I love that among the neat rows of the experimental agricultural plots, the NAMG has an organic quality that is teeming with life--insects, birds, and mammals.

What aspects of urban living are you looking to change? How do you believe the integration of art and green spaces work to improve the living conditions within an urban environment?

As I mentioned before, in relation to the Native American Medicine Gardens, I believe that shifting our perspective as the natural world from resource to Relative, which is an Indigenous perspective, is such an important shift in awareness. I hope this shift in our consciousness can lead to different approaches about the ways we live, what we consume, as well as how we see our role as artists, designers and people with political agency.

I believe we have the opportunity to reconsider our roles as artists, and expand our notion of what is and what can be. I admire the practitioners of Maintenance Art, Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Sean Connaughty, whose artistic practice involves an everyday attention to dealing with waste (something most of us would choose to ignore).

This is another chance to think in terms of systems instead of discrete projects. We have big complex challenges, such as climate change, that need comprehensive and coordinated solutions. Individual choices matter, but we have to make systemic and political change on larger scales while keeping issues of environmental and social justice at the forefront of our consideration. Big topics, to be sure, but they require us to be attentive to ways things are interconnected. Maybe we can see how we are all connected more clearly at this time as we are all starting to feel our own vulnerability.

Artists and designers can integrate art and the urban environment by playing a variety of roles--but to me, working in interdisciplinary teams and with and in conversation with communities seems like an impactful way to collectively address environmental challenges.

As I watch environmental protections rolled back, for example, during this moment of Covid 19, I believe it is also incumbent upon us to act politically, to make our voices heard, and to vote in the fall.

We are in a time of great global change and uncertainty. How do you believe the quarantine and constantly shifting events will impact the art world, creatives, and our reactions to the world around us? Any advice for the students in quarantine?

I have so many questions instead of answers. First, how do we, as individuals and a community, consider those most deeply impacted by Covid 19? Those who do not have a home, food security or have health or economic challenges? How are we addressing more immediate needs? How do we effectively stand up to attempts to dismantle environmental protections or other moves that are destructive?

While we are reeling from the impact these changes make in our own lives, how do we stay present to what’s happening in the public sphere? I am asking these questions of myself and turning to those who have more advanced ideas and thinking about the present situation than I do.

The art world, consisting of cultural and educational institutions, organizations, community groups, funders and individuals have all been impacted in ways we are only beginning to comprehend. This may lead to a different way of organizing ourselves and our practices.

As I look out, I see a myriad of ways artists are approaching their work in this time of crises (plural because we face more than the pandemic) by creating platforms, opportunities, raising up voices, making the invisible visible, calling out injustice, creating awareness, and expressing a range of emotional responses through a variety of media --and offering work that provides solace and humor as well.

Historically, artists have always responded to crises and have been at the forefront of movements addressing injustice, violence, war, health crises, and environmental threats.

Now it is our turn, as artists, to consider how we respond. What a significant, and perhaps somewhat terrifying, opportunity. It may take us some time to collect ourselves. In fact, it seems important to take the time we need to adjust before we spring into action.

For students in quarantine.

I would encourage students to take this time to slow down, reflect, journal, meditate--whatever self reflective practices help you to be in touch with yourself--and take care of yourself. Embrace your feelings, and reach out if you need assistance. It’s ok not to be “productive” at this moment. We are in a time where people are experiencing extreme disruption and trauma--so be gentle with yourself. Connect to others in the ways you are able.. and don’t get too isolated.

Your voice, your ideas and your work are significant, and matter to the world. But being in touch with where you are in the moment may be the most important thing to honor.

Right now, many of us have the opportunity to slow down, reflect and more deeply examine our own lives and our relationship to what is important to our own well-being, our Fellow Beings and our Earth.

Any advice for how the individuals reading this can practice creativity, or any overall thoughts on the creative process in this time?

I want to offer a way to refresh our creativity. Take a break from technology. Go outside and connect with your “nature family,” the trees, the birds, the rocks, the sun, moon and stars. The weather. Using your imagination and the power of observation, quiet your mind and listen to what the world has to communicate with you. Have a conversation with a chipmunk, debate a crow, chuckle with a stone. The human world has become more quiet now, and perhaps it is our chance to engage, through our minds and our senses, with the world outside of our doors and beyond our screens.

-An Interview with Christine Baeumler, edited by Madilyn Duffy

#mcad_ae makemcad creativity stayhome2020

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meiwroo · 6 years

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Can you write something along the lines of Peter being super obsessive over the reader and he sneaks into her room and hides in her closet every day after school, constantly takes pictures of her and has Polaroid’s of her all over his room, she eventually talks to him in class and they agree to do a project together, she insists that they should do it at his place and she comes too early and sees the pictures in his room? ~ what happens after that is up to you ;) -🎱 (can this be my signature?)

Can you tell I didn’t edit this one as much? Also, I think I’m getting into the swing of things? Enjoy

Okay, so there’s one thing that bothers me. Whenever Peter sneaks into your room, he’s wearing his Spider-Man suit—enough to get caught in broad daylight scaling an apartment building by a bystander—or even worse a villain. Do you know how many villains could peep this and start coming after you?? Anyway

When it comes to you, Peter has a one-track mind.

It’s always ‘Do physics homework—Check the camera to see what Y/N is doing; Cook dinner—Check Y/N’s social media and see if she posted anything new.’ 24/7 until something urgent pops up that requires his undivided attention i.e. trying not to die

And the way Peter ends up in your closet is gradual.

At first he happened to swing by as you were on your way home, and he trailed you

Then he swung by when no one happened to be home. Curiosity got the best of him, and before he knew it, he was putting Karen on mute and sliding open your window before dropping down in your room

One thing he loves is that right off the bat your room smells like you

Staring at the knickknacks in your room, noting whether or not your room and desk is orderly, all of it gives him a better gauge of your personality that he’s not able to see when he’s listening to you and your friends talk during lunch or in class

And then it happens again and again, until one day, his Spidey senses start tingling and he can hear you unlocking the front door and heading up to your room. On the spur of the moment, he hid in your closet. Stupid, if you were the type of person to hang up your clothes as soon as you got home. But for hours until you finally fell asleep, he was forced to sit in your cramped closet watching you in your natural habitat. It was truly a wonderful experience…

It made him feel stupid for not thinking of it before. So, every now and then he would treat himself into sneaking into your room. On particular days where he hardly saw you because you either called in sick, ditched class, or had a field trip with another class.

If you were already home, he’d wait and sneak in when you left the room, or if he was feeling particularly brazen, when you had your back turned and earphones in listening to your music at full blast, he would just slide your window open, climb on the ceiling, and gently sneak into your closet.

If you ever wonder where the sudden breeze came from, that’s Peter.

And it continues until every day after school, Peter beats you home by minutes, sneaking into your closet, getting his daily dose of you.

He’s gotten himself a routine, where he would accomplish all of his work at school before the final bell, head to your place and make himself comfortable on your closet floor, leave when you go to grab dinner and go eat dinner himself with May, and then head out for patrols, before coming back home to catch a bit of shut eye

That’s what? Only like 3-4 hours he gets to spend with you every day? Regardless it’s not enough

Peter does record you though. At first through his phone, and then through surveillance cameras he’s placed around your room; One in the smoke detector and then a listening bug in your light switch

It would be small minor things like you talking to yourself, telling yourself a joke, humming to yourself while you browsed the web, watching you rage quit at video games, and even watching you struggle with homework which frustrates Peter to no end.

Listening to you get upset over not being able to solve a problem makes him want to tear his hair out. If he could just pluck the pencil from your hand right quick and show you how it’s done…All he needed was a minute

Another thing that also irked him? You losing points on homework because you left a section blank or didn’t turn it in at all. During those times, Peter just wishes he could turn homework in on your behalf and not get caught. He’d do it in a heartbeat if teachers couldn’t recognize your handwriting and the assignment had no way of getting back to you

When it’s late, and he’s all snuggled in bed, Peter likes to watch the videos and fantasize about would it would be like if he was next to you. How you two would interact, and etc. He feels closer to you whenever he does this.

Sometimes he likes to fall asleep to the sound of your shallow breathing when you’re asleep

Every now and then Peter likes to ease into bed beside you after hard fights that leave him bruised and exhausted

It’s easy to pick your habits and routines like this. eating habits, bathroom habits, what music you tend to steer towards, what content you like to watch the most on the internet; All of your likes and dislikes, favorite food, color, drink, what’s on your wish list right, what’s even got you stressed right—which breaks his heart because he’s not sure what he can do to help

But Peter has this collection, right? Of odd pictures that he snaps of you every chance he gets.

He has a collage of them—11 or so—on the wall against his bed. Easy to hide with a perfectly propped pillow if May were to ever walk in his room while he’s away. He hangs the ones that are both artistic and articulates your personality the best. It’s his little masterpiece.

Let’s say he gets beaten up too badly in a fight and he’s forced to stay home while you recover. Those pictures keep him going

But then there’s the scrapbook Peter has (in his desk drawer). Tons of Polaroid snaps—dated and describing what you’re doing—in addition to nonsensical diary entries beside them about how you made him feel in that moment or what he’d love to do to you, or maybe even a little poem

It’s mainly filled with fun memories Peter wasn’t really a part of. Pictures of you hugging your best friend and goofing off during a field trip, you winning a small award and going on stage to receive it, you participating in extracurriculars e.g. track and field

And then there are the nonsensical ones like your face before you’re about to devour your favorite food, or your aloof expression while you sit outside during study hall, or your deeply focused expression while you cram in gym class before a test you have next period.

In general, Peter takes a lot of pictures of you; And they’re everywhere. All you have to do is look closely and you’ll find a photo under his desk by the foot of his chair, or a more risqué one poking out from under his nightstand—even phots sprinkled between the pile of dirty laundry he’s been throwing in the corner

It’d honestly be bad if May ever decided to spontaneously do spring cleaning in his room

It’d be bad if you came across these photos which—spoiler: you do.

Everything was going great with Peter watching from afar, and then you had to go and talk with him

Don’t get me wrong, Peter was so happy he thought he would puke.

It had been in APES, and the class was doing a lab. Your friend who takes the class with you and had called in sick, so you decided to partner up with Peter, I mean he did sit directly to the left of you

His heart stopped, of course, he was praising the heavens that his voice didn’t crack, everything was great. His day was blessed, and he actually spent time talking with you which rolled smoothly between you to.

There was a report due on Monday, so you two decided y’all would both knock it out today after school at his place.

Big, fucking, mistake.

Peter was so high on cloud nine, that he forgot about his little hobby littered around his room—the same room which you two planned to do the assignment in since May had her weird project occupying the majority of the surfaces in the living room which she explicitly told him not to move

It didn’t dawn on him until you asked to use his bathroom, and he walked into his room.

He picked up a shirt, sniffed, and was ready to toss it into the hamper until two photos fluttered out.

And then magically he realizes that he had his scrapbook out with the recently developed 6-7 photos scattered on his desk.

He heard you exit the bathroom and his heart stops.

“Peter, you in here?”

His eyes dart between the door and the scrapbook comically

He could’ve webbed the door shut, climbed out the window, and then crawl in through the bathroom and say something like he needed to go retrieve something from May’s room—which he should’ve did, but instead there you are smiling at him in the doorway casually greeting him before your eyes flicker to all of the Polaroid's and decide to pick one up

“Y/N wait!”

Your brain takes a full minute to fully process what you’re seeing

Let’s say it’s a picture of you changing in your bedroom

When you look Peter in the eyes and see his panicked expression, it tells you everything you need to know.

You should’ve left after the first picture, but you needed to confirm, so you started picking up the nearest pictures, shuffling through them.

You grabbing coffee with MJ, you going shopping with your mom, you trying on dresses and browsing in a local department store, even you propped lazily against your friend’s car while you wait for them to lock their front door.

“Where did you get these?!”

“I—I can explain!”

You try to make a run for it, but Parker’s quicker than you, stronger than you; He pins you against the wall easily, both of your wrists clasped tightly in one hand.

He’s breathing heavily as though a panic attack was soon about to set in

“I can explain…” is all he says, staring into your eyes wildly

Feedback?

#yandere headcanons #yandere marvel #yandere peter parker x reader #yandere spiderman x reader #yandere peter parker #yandere spiderman

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acaseforpencils · 5 years

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Tips and Tricks: Watercolors Edition.

It always surprises me that more current cartoonists don’t use watercolors. I know that Will McPhail and Carolita Johnson use them, but watercolors haven’t really popped up much in the dozens upon dozens of interviews I’ve conducted over the past several years. Of course they show up more in interviews I’ve done with cover illustrators (Barry Blitt, John Cuneo, etc.), but I think a lot more cartoonists would find a whole world of opportunities in watercolor, if they were to experiment with them a bit. I’ve been painting a lot of watercolor pet portraits recently, and thinking of (and using!) some tips and tricks that I have found useful over the years, but that haven’t come up in any of the interviews that I’ve conducted on this blog, so I thought I would take the time to share them!

Here is some of my more recent work:

You can find more of my art on my Instagram, here.

-Watercolor has a similar look to ink wash, but is less permanent. You put down a layer of ink wash and you’re stuck with it. But if you use watercolor, you can take a wet rag and practically erase it! Plus, if you don’t feel confident doing linework with a brush, you can still use ink or a pen for that. Look at this landscape that I did a few years back. The shadowy sand was done by putting down opaque watercolor, letting it dry, and then scrubbing most of it away!

-If you have discovered the joys of lifting up watercolor mistakes, but have gone about it a bit over zealously, and caused your paper to pill up (but haven’t fully dug a hole through the fibers), I have discovered that the Cliceraser, a Japanese tool that Roz Chast recommended in her Case as an ink eraser, is your savior. If your paper is still wet, blast it with a hairdryer until it’s fully dry, and then gently sand off any errant paper fiber until it’s smooth enough to paint on again. Now, this would not work on printer paper (you shouldn’t be using watercolor on there anyways—I generally work on heavy cotton watercolor block), but this has helped me on more occasions than I care to admit. It is basically a grainy eraser. I haven’t tried using sandpaper, but I think the Cliceraser is more gentle, and would allow for more precision.

Image from Roz's Case

-Frank Cotham uses water-soluble crayons, which have a very unique look to them, but I’ve discovered that they can sometimes cause an unwanted glow in photographs. Say you spent ages painting a landscape, and thought it would be a great idea to use water-soluble crayons to paint the leaves. Everything looks uniform and tied together, but when you try to capture an image for your portfolio, you discover that your subtle fall foliage is garishly glaring. Devastation. Use water-soluble crayons with caution, especially when you're doing mixed media, and perhaps take photos of your work as you go along, to make sure that what you see through the camera matches what you see in front of you (or at least to ensure that you won’t be faced with any horrifying realizations at the last second).

-Speaking of water solubility, a very versatile tool that hasn’t been mentioned in any Case interview is one of my favorites, and one that I think would make a lot of cartoonists’ lives a lot easier: watercolor pencils. They blend really well with regular watercolor paint, and work great for detail work, for building up an area quickly, and for outlines (though I sometimes like to have graphite peeking through in a painting, using it for initial sketches can be helpful, especially when using light tones, because you can seamlessly blend your lines into your painting).

A lot of cartoonists will use gouache straight out of the tube for highlights, but that can require extreme precision, and sometimes, watercolor paper will eat up the paint! However, if you use a very sharp white watercolor pencil instead, the highlights won’t get absorbed. If you’re feeling fancy (or using grainy paper), you can trace over the watercolor pencil with white gouache.

Watercolor pencils can also be used for building up an area quickly. I find that if I’m using a thick cotton paper, it can be hard to get colors dark enough, so sometimes I’ll just lay down some watercolor pencil in whatever color is best suited for the task at hand, and then go over that with watercolor paint, which can lead to some interesting textures. I do that often with rocks.

-My rock painting leads me to my next tip, which is if you struggle with drawing something, that’s all the more reason to draw it. I used to struggle with painting rocks, so I sat down and said, “I’m going to paint a very rock-heavy painting,” (well, the painting itself is very light). Did I regret this decision greatly while painting all of those rocks? Yes! But I am now able to paint rocks fairly easily, so it ended up being worth the agony. This applies to many things in life besides watercolors, of course!

-Another tip (which also applies to the above rock painting) is to use the paint’s texture to your advantage. There are some really interesting paints with high levels of mineral separation, that can create beautiful grainy effects. You can do a light wash of a grainy paint over a flat wash of paint, and end up with a fascinating texture with minimal effort. This is an especially great technique for painting dirt.

-Try to use shadows effectively rather than accurately. With portraiture, as with cartooning, you are telling a story. Such as writers use various devices (metaphors, etc.) to tell their tales, we do the same thing with how we use tones. If I’m painting a dog, I want all of the information in the image to go towards showing the dog. Part of this can be using background tones. In my average pet painting, I’m not going to try to make a meticulously true to life shadow, but rather use shading to either convey space or make the dog stand out from the background. If I am painting a pet with light fur, I am generally going to paint a more expressive background in darker tones that contrast with their fur. If I’m painting a chocolate lab, I will do a light shadow to convey that they are occupying space of some sort, but that won't cause them to blend into a dark background. I always want to make sure that the darkest (or sometimes lightest, if everything else is rather dark) color on the page is on the part of the painting that I want you to see first. Cartoonists do the same thing, but in a way that leads the viewer’s eye to the joke.

-If buying a whole set of watercolors is cost-prohibitive, I recommend buying a cheap set, and then buying a nicer tube here or there as you are able. That’s what I did. A lot of high quality companies also offer smaller sized tubes, that are often significantly cheaper than the large sizes with scary prices. Coupons are also your best friend. I’ve used a coupon on almost every single tube of paint I have ever bought. Plus if you work mostly in black and white, you only need two tubes!

I hope this was helpful! I know people of many different levels of ability and knowledge read this blog, and it’s fun to be able to have artists share what they know, because the more we help others learn, the more wonderful art we get to enjoy! If anyone else has any tips or tricks, be sure to stick them in the comments! Also, if you’d like to follow my art, I have a fairly new-ish art Instagram here. Oh, and If you’d like to support the blog there is a Patreon and a Ko-Fi (essentially a PayPal account). And if you are hankering for some more art supplies on your social medias, consider following Case on Instagram and Twitter! Have a nice week!

#watercolor #illustration tips #art process #jane mattimoe #artists on tumblr #my art

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kikifeliz · 5 years

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8 TIPS FOR MAKING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR UNIVERSITY EXPERIENCE!

Deciding to become a university student is a huge investment of both time and money. You don't want to start only to have to drop out due to finances or failing grades. You also don't want to finish and find that all you have is a piece of paper with mountains of debt and no job prospects.

The average cost of a 4-year Bachelor's degree is about $36k at a public university, and about $136k at a private university. Google the yearly cost of your school of choice, then multiply by 4. Then add on about 5k for the additional costs of books and travel fees, clothing, and other miscellaneous. Then add on about 10k for the interest that your student loan debt will incur! 😫

The average cost of graduate degrees can vary by school and concentration, but can easily cost over 90k for tuition alone. Student loan debt is not a joke! Invest your time wisely while you're in school so you don't end up regretting your decision and sharecropping your life away in some 9-5 that you hate.

So, here are my tips for making the most of your time as a university student! Whether you're in undergrad or graduate school, I hope this advice helps you! I'm not going to give you the basic "go to every single class" bullshit. While that's undoubtedly good advice, I want to be a bit more practical and dig a little deeper. I think if you're paying for an experience like college, it's obvious that you should attempt to be as immersed in that experience as possible. You're not going to pay for entrance to a water park then stay off the slides and out of the pool, are you? No, you're going to jump in and go on as many rides as possible! At university, you're paying for school, so you need to treat it the same way. If you're paying for a class, obviously you should go as often as you possibly can. So in the hopes that I can be practical without being trite, I'm going to address the finer details of the college experience. From the perspective of a woman who's in the process of finishing her 2nd Master's degree (at an Ivy League school, no less), you can take it or leave it!

1. Update your resume as soon as you commit to a school and give them your deposit.

As soon as you've paid the deposit to the school of your choose and sent back your decision letter, go ahead and update your resume. If you don't have a resume, make one now! There are plenty of templates online you can follow.

Include your new school and anticipated graduation date under the "Education" section. (You can add it to your social media bios too, if you're into that sort of thing.) The truth of the matter is, the moment you pay the deposit to the school, you've paid for the brand name. You might as well start wielding and wearing it ASAP! This will help you as you apply for internships for the summer after high school and during your freshman year of college.

2. Once on campus, join clubs and student associations.

This is super important! So much of college is about networking. Once you graduate and leave campus, your college network can help you find jobs, travel, keep you up to date with learning opportunities/conferences, or even help you settle into to a new city. It's important to make authentic connections with people on campus outside of your immediate friend group, and a great way to do that is through common interest clubs or associations. Attend a programs fair and check your school's websites and message boards to find events.

Once you've decided which clubs you want to join, make sure to introduce yourself to the leadership! By getting to know the club leaders, you can make sure you'll always know what's next for the group so that you can take part and continue to build community.

3. ‪Spend as much time as you can at the library and in other public study spaces on/around campus.‬

Most university libraries will have cafés, help desks, computer labs, and even group study areas. Often it's okay to talk in the group study areas, so you can always take a break from studying and do a bit of socializing when you need to. When you need more privacy or quiet space, it's typically available just a room or a floor away! Bring healthy snacks like carrots and almonds and chocolate-covered espresso beans or raisins to keep you energized and alert.

Studying is obviously an important part of being in college. You don't want to get into the job field without fluency in the language/jargon or requisite content knowledge that is necessary to succeed!

4. Use the "free" time to develop your genuine interests and hobbies.

If you have the time and don't have a ton of responsibility to other people in your family, take advantage of that! You likely won't have a lot of time like that in your life again. Use this period to follow your curiosities and your interests. Make art! Join an intramural sport! Experiment with fashion! Work part-time in a place you never thought you would! The possibilities are endless. As my dad would say, "It's your world, squirrel!" (He's really corny.)

5. Be as discerning as possible with the classes you take - you are paying for each of them, after all!

Take classes that really interest you, with professors you truly want to learn from. Read the class descriptions carefully, and do research on the professors. Try to get professors that have great ratings, multiple publishings in reputable journals, books, and websites, and a good track records of helping students.

Many colleges have core curricula that you must complete to graduate. If the classes in your core don't interest you, see if you can find ways to navigate the system so that there's a silver lining or so you can make the best out of them. Always give it a shot, you may find that you're more interested once you attend than you were by reading the description alone.

Even if the class isn't of interest, the people there probably are - especially if everyone has to take it! Whether that's ensuring you get the best professor that's offered or finding a great group of friends to struggle through it with, get to know the people around you. Maybe you decide to develop a working relationship with the TA by attending office hours and asking questions about how to contextualize the content in a way that's more engaging for you or more aligned with your interests. To do this, just explain your interests or proposed field of study and ask them for examples of how you can transfer the knowledge you're learning in class toward your interest.

Another option is seeing if you can take the class pass/fail. If this is possible and the class isn't aligned with what you feel your true academic interests are, then don't expend too much effort. Attend lecture, pass the class, and devote your time to your other interests. (This is an option only for people who are serious about not failing the class. Make sure you calculate what scores you'll need to pass exams and other requirements like attendance, and hold yourself accountable to these. Do your absolute best on your papers! Taking a class pass/fail is NOT an excuse to slack off or avoid doing your best work, but it may be a way for you to free up some time if you calculate your grades and find that you don't need to do every single assignment to pass.)

6. If you can find a work-study job or start a side hustle *without* jeopardizing your grades, do so!

Again, the student loans are no joke. I avoid taking them if I can, because I hate debt. Of course, this means I occasionally have had to pay tuition out of my own pocket. I held 3 jobs when I was in undergrad and have always had side hustles even while working 9-5. Many of my favorites have included babysitting, tutoring, pet/house sitting, DJing, and party planning. I know a lot of people in grad school who also worked in restaurants or as delivery drivers, as administrative aids in university offices, law offices, and medical practices. Nowadays, a lot of people work as as influencers, photographers, video editors, and models for their side hustles. I always preferred jobs that were lowkey so I could study. My favorite work-study job was at the library! I always got to see my friends and I could read PDF copies of my assignments while I sat at the circulation desk.

7. Find out about scholarships and fellowships that are offered by different departments in your university.

A lot of fellowships and scholarships are only advertised internally by department and school. Spend time on your department's website and stop by the department office every few weeks to make sure you're up to date on the opportunities that are being offered to students. Become a frequent patron of Financial Aid to see what is available through that office as well.

Additionally, feel free to email the department chair/other professors to ask if they know of any fellowships or scholarship opportunities that may come up in the future so you can be prepared. Ask about qualifications for those as well, so you can plan ahead.

Do your research and make sure you qualify for these opportunities! In writing your essays, attend to each point of criteria laid out in the "call for applications." Treat your essay similarly to how you'd apply for the job. Why are you the right person to receive this money? How do you fulfill the criteria that this scholarship is supporting?

8. If you're struggling with your studies, use the resources on campus that you're *already paying for* in order to get back on track.

This includes TA and professor office hours, peer tutors, the writing center (most universities will have offices that can help you structure and edit your essays, etc.).

Join or create study groups by finding a partner in your class to study with, and ask the university librarians (and your advisor!) what other resources/tutoring/study help is available on campus.

A strong foundation in the content knowledge for your field of choice is a necessity once your graduate. My father always told me, "The key to success is uncommon knowledge." I agree with this somewhat, but I really believe it's actually that the key is an uncommon thirst for mastery. You move forward in your career and your personal development by learning and mastering new levels of skill. The more you know and the better you can communicate, the more respected you'll be in your field - which opens the door to further opportunities. Studying (and studying *well*) is imperative during your time at university!

Good luck this year, scholars! Work smarter & always remember, education is the key! We cannot dismantle the master's house with the master's tools//we are the gold we wanna hold! Go forth & make this school year your bitch!

Xoxo,

Kiki

#university #study tips #college #college students #kiki feliz #original #blogger #advice

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arcticdementor · 5 years

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Dealing with GNU/Linux meant dealing with Richard Stallman, the eccentric genius who had guided the creation of pretty much everything but the Linux kernel itself. I say “eccentric”, but what I’m really saying is that Stallman is mentally ill. I don’t know the correct words to describe that illness, but it manifests itself in dozens of different ways, from extreme hydrophobia (fear of water!) to various disturbing habits of phraseology, communication, and physical behavior. Nobody who knows Stallman thinks he is sane. By the same token, nobody would doubt his intelligence. He’s the only person I have ever met in person who struck me as being measurably smarter than I am, which sounds horrifyingly egotistical but is probably more a reflection of my choice in fellow-travelers.

Stallman agreed to eat dinner with me on the condition that he be permitted to order my meal and that I eat the whole thing without complaint. I wouldn’t have dinner with a resurrected John Coltrane under those conditions but there were plenty of great jazz musicians and there is only one Richard Stallman. The meal was an utter nightmare, of course. Everything he picked had the texture, and taste, of Jell-O made from dog vomit. I told myself that if G. Gordon Liddy could burn his own finger down to the tendon that I could finish a five-course “authentic” Chinese meal. Having done so, I managed to extract some absolutely brilliant ideas from him about software design and programming principles. “Come back to my office,” he suggested, and we headed out to walk over towards the MIT Media Lab. About ninety seconds into our walk, it started to rain. Just a light sprinkling, not build-the-ark stuff. Stallman screamed like a teenage girl, pulled his dashiki (yes!) over his head, and ran in waddling fashion towards MIT.

Twenty minutes later, I arrived at the Media Lab to find him huddling on the other side of the door, shaking. “Why did you not run?” he asked, in a whining monotone. “Is it because you are heavy?” (I was 195 pounds at the time; lighter than Stallman, half a foot taller.)

“Yes,” I replied, “my weight prevents rapid locomotion.” Stallman nodded in satisfied fashion. Two hours later, in the middle of demonstrating some bizarre Bulgarian folk dance, he looked over his shoulder at me and said, “I would be happier if you were not in the office.” He did not stop dancing. I took this as my cue to leave.

I mention all of this so you know precisely the sort of person who is in the middle of being crucified for “defending Epstein’s rape island” by his institutional rivals.

…

When asked to give his thoughts on the matter, Stallman responded like any 110-octane autism-spectrum genius would: by questioning the terminology involved. He suggested that the correct word for Minsky’s alleged statutory rape was not “sexual assault”, noting that

a) Minsky had no way to know the girl was 17, not 18 ; b) she had been coerced by Epstein out of Minsky’s presence and might well have appeared to be entirely willing.

In true Stallman fashion, this was

a) absolutely correct from a logical perspective; b) mind-blowingly stupid from a perspective of The Current Year.

It’s no different from the thousands of logical but emotionally uncomfortable things he has said and written over the past forty years. Stallman has no way to understand how people feel about something; he doesn’t feel that way. The community of actual computer scientists and clued-in tech people has long accepted this because — and I cannot emphasize this enough — Richard Stallman is responsible for computing as we know it.

…

The idea of truly free software given to the world for humanitarian purposes would not exist without Stallman. He was the only person who ever had the thought. Which means it is more radical than calculus, heavier-than-air flight, the theory of relativity, or the atomic bomb. It took someone with Stallman’s particular blend of Promethean IQ and mentally handicapped social skills to push it all the way to reality. You live in Richard Stallman’s world, whether you like it or not. He has had more influence on how we communicate in 2019 than any other single human being currently living. Any sane society would consider him a national treasure of greater importance than Fort Knox, to be cherished and protected accordingly.

Naturally, our society has decided to crucify him.

…

Ms. Selam Jie Gano, the author in question, is part of the most pernicious, and reprehensible, movement in technology, namely: the cabal of people who want to reduce the American (and Western) programming and technological development base of expertise to a kindergarten political commissariat which investigates its own belly button for thoughtcrime while rent-seeking the American economy to its knees and producing absolutely nothing of value in return. This cabal is actively aided and abetted by the one-percent Silicon Valley Illuminati who are murderously intent on pulling up the ladder behind them so that the existing tech (and financial) structure in NorCal is etched forever in stone. Both of these groups have identified native-born American coders and tech experts as the only thing keeping them from turning tech into a plantation system where the San Jose crowd pursues ever-more-specific meanings of “diversity”, “race”, and “problematic” while the actual work of coding, designing, developing, and manufacturing is done overseas by lowest-bidder sweatshops where the concerns of the commissars are taken with precisely the seriousness they deserve — which is to say none.

These people secretly believe that all the major necessary technological innovation has already been achieved, which is why they are so intent on crippling any further possible achievement with insane systems like Agile and pair-programming and Russian-doll containerization. Their current fetishes, NoSQL databases and headless content, are directly reflective of their moral, spiritual, and intellectual poverty. They yearn for cash-cow garbage projects like the Obamacare website, which cost two billion dollars but which likely contained more of Richard Stallman’s code than the government’s.

Haven’t you noticed how much worse computing has gotten in the past ten years? How much slower your phone is to do something than the desktop computer of 2002, which had a fraction of your phone’s power? How every bit of software in your possession requires near-constant updating to eliminate previous bugs and introduce new ones? This are the bitter fruits of modern tech-industry stupidity. Nota bene that China has very little difficulty of this nature; their WeChat software combines the functions of Facebook, Paypal, iMessage, and a half-dozen other apps in one lightweight, fast-running platform that works effortlessly on a twenty-dollar phone. That’s the kind of efficiency, and progress, we sacrificed when we decided that Selam Jie Gano’s vision of the future is more valuable than Richard Stallman’s. The eventual reckoning implied in that comparison will not be long in coming. Oh, wait: it’s already here. While we were busy making sure that every programming team at Google looked exactly like a Benetton ad, the Chinese were putting microchips between the layers of motherboards to give the CCCP ultimate control of the world’s networks.

Perhaps the final indignity here is that Stallman should be protected by the very guidelines of Diversity And Inclusion which are being used to crucify him. Were Stallman in a wheelchair, MIT would make sure he had a near-effortless path to work. Were he blind, he would have the appropriate hardware and software to enable his genius to proceed uninterrupted. But because he is mentally challenged in social interactions — an area where the Illuminati respect, and permit, nothing besides complete and total compliance — he is going to be drummed out of the world that he single-handedly created.

Mark my words: if we continue like this, the airplanes will start falling out of the sky. Oh, wait. It’s already happening.

#jack baruth #richard stallman #read the whole thing

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orangeblossomstudies · 5 years

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ahh hi there !! I hope this isn’t weird or anything but I’m actually an aspiring english major and I was wondering if you would tell me a bit about what it’s like? and maybe what you’re planning on doing in the future if that isn’t too invasive ! I’m off to college after this year and I’m super nervous aha :’)

Ahh hi!! I’m excited to hear you’ve set your heart on the major! Sorry if this is long, but let me just say this is a really loaded set of questions.

I might as well start with my own experience. I actually started out as pre-med (for shame what was I thinking) before going to English as it’s what I’m good at and what felt right. My major is actually fully English Editing, Writing, and Media which is more geared toward the journalism side of the major but I’m using it as there are certain required advanced courses that are helpful for what I want to do. The classes themselves are pretty easy, to be frank. As long as you find it easy to crank out papers or digest text easily. If not, your experience may be different from mine, but if in your high school career you saw you had an affinity for cranking out bullshit papers you have nothing to worry about!

Truthfully, the only classes I ever really struggled with were the “liberal studies” classes all individuals at my uni are forced to take (math, two sciences + lab, cross-cultural studies, humanities etc). I would have to say to prepare yourself for some really boring courses as, at least for me, I didn’t get into the class that actually has to do with what I want to do until last semester (second-semester junior year.

Speaking of junior year, that was actually when I figured out what I want to do with this. I applied to work at one of the libraries on campus and got accepted, eventually getting the museum and archive assistant job I currently hold in the Special Collections of my uni. It made me realize I wanted to go on to get a Master’s in Library Science in order to become an archivist/librarian of sorts. My major doesn’t exactly pertain to this field and only a few classes help with it at all, hence my minor in museum studies and history (more the museum studies though, I’m rethinking that history minor because the classes are annoyingly dull--I think I’ll pull through though because I only have to take one more class).

Honestly, I was pretty nervous during my first year but you’ll be a master in no time! I promise everything works out somehow (I sure as hell didn’t think it would for me when I completely changed majors but look at me now? I’m already a senior OPS worker in the exact type of environment I want to spend my life in and soon to be on my way to grad school (I never would have imagined this)!

That's the short of it, but if you want some real advice pertaining to your own university/program, drop me a DM and I’ll be happy to talk to you about your particular situation (I literally have been waiting for this moment, I love to help).

Thanks for the ask and I hope everything goes well for you!

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 years

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#1yrago My RSS feeds from a decade ago, a snapshot of gadget blogging when that was a thing

Rob Beschizza:

I chanced upon an ancient backup of my RSS feed subscriptions, a cold hard stone of data from my time at Wired in the mid-2000s. The last-modified date on the file is December 2007. I wiped my feeds upon coming to Boing Boing thenabouts: a fresh start and a new perspective.

What I found, over 212 mostly-defunct sites, is a time capsule of web culture from a bygone age—albeit one tailored to the professional purpose of cranking out blog posts about consumer electronics a decade ago. It's not a picture of a wonderful time before all the horrors of Facebook and Twitter set in. This place is not a place of honor. No highly-esteemed deed is commemorated here. But perhaps some of you might like a quick tour, all the same.

The "Main" folder, which contains 30 feeds, was the stuff I actually wanted (or needed) to read. This set would morph over time. I reckon it's easy to spot 2007's passing obsessions from the enduring interests.

↬ Arts and Letters Daily: a minimalist blog of links about smartypants subjects, a Drudge for those days when I sensed a third digit dimly glowing in my IQ. But for the death of founder Denis Dutton, it's exactly the same as it was in 2007! New items daily, but the RSS feed's dead.

↬ Boing Boing. Still around, I hear.

↬ Brass Goggles. A dead feed for a defunct steampunk blog (the last post was in 2013) though the forums seem well-stocked with new postings.

↬ The Consumerist. Dead feed, dead site. Founded in 2005 by Joel Johnson at Gawker, it was sold to Consumer Reports a few years later, lost its edge there, and was finally shuttered (or summarily executed) just a few weeks ago.

↬ Bibliodyssey. Quiescent. Updated until 2015 with wonderful public-domain book art scans and commentary. A twitter account and tumblr rolled on until just last year. There is a book to remember it by should the bits rot.

↬ jwz. Jamie Zawinski's startling and often hilariously bleak reflections on culture, the internet and working at Netscape during the dotcom boom. This was probably the first blog that led me to visit twice, to see if there was more. And there still is, almost daily.

↬ Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society. Curios and weirdness emerging from the dust and foul fog of old books, forbidden history and the more speculative reaches of science. So dead the domain is squatted. Creator Josh Foer moved on to Atlas Obscura.

↬ The Tweney Review. Personal blog of my last supervisor at Wired, Dylan Tweney, now a communications executive. It's still going strong!

↬ Strange Maps. Dead feed, dead site, though it's still going as a category at Big Think. Similar projects proliferate now on social media; this was the wonderful original. There was a book.

↬ BLDGBLOG. Architecture blog, posting since 2004 with recent if rarer updates. A fine example of tasteful web brutalism, but I'm no longer a big fan of cement boxes and minimalism with a price tag.

↬ Dethroner. A men's self-care and fashion blog, founded by Joel Johnson, of the tweedy kind that became wildly and effortlessly successful not long after he gave up on it.

↬ MocoLoco. This long-running design blog morphed visually into a magazine in 2015. I have no idea why I liked it then, but indie photoblogs' golden age ended long ago and it's good to see some are thriving.

↬ SciFi Scanner. Long-dead AMC channel blog, very likely the work of one or two editors and likely lost to tidal corporate forces rather than any specific failure or event.

↬ Cult of Mac. Apple news site from another Wired News colleague of mine, Leander Kahney, and surely one of the longest-running at this point. Charlie Sorrel, who I hired at Wired to help me write the Gadget blog, still pens articles there.

↬ Ectoplasmosis. After Wired canned its bizarre, brilliant and unacceptably weird Table of Malcontents blog, its editor John Brownlee (who later joined Joel and I in editing Boing Boing Gadgets) and contributor Eliza Gauger founded Ectoplasmosis: the same thing but with no hysterical calls from Conde Nast wondering what the fuck is going on. It was glorious, too: a high-point of baroque indie blogging in the age before Facebook (and I made the original site design). Both editors later moved onto other projects (Magenta, Problem Glyphs); Gauger maintains the site's archives at tumblr. It was last updated in 2014.

↬ Penny Arcade. Then a webcomic; now a webcomic and a media and events empire.

↬ Paul Boutin. While working at Wired News, I'd heard a rumor that he was my supervisor. But I never spoke to him and only ever received a couple of odd emails, so I just got on with the job until Tweney was hired. His site and its feed are long-dead.

↬ Yanko Design. Classic blockquote chum for gadget bloggers.

↬ City Home News. A offbeat Pittburgh News blog, still online but lying fallow since 2009.

↬ Watchismo. Once a key site for wristwatch fans, Watchismo was folded into watches.com a few years ago. A couple of things were posted to the feed in 2017, but its time has obviously passed.

↬ Gizmodo. Much has changed, but it's still one of the best tech blogs.

↬ Engadget. Much has changed, but it's still one of the best tech blogs.

↬ Boing Boing Gadgets. Site's dead, though the feed is technically live as it redirects to our "gadgets" tag. Thousands of URLs there succumbed to bit-rot at some point, but we have plans to merge its database into Boing Boing's and revive them.

↬ Gear Factor. This was the gadget review column at Wired Magazine, separate from the gadget blog I edited because of the longtime corporate divorce between Wired's print and online divisions. This separation had just been resolved at the time I began working there, and the two "sides" -- literally facing offices in the same building -- were slowly being integrated. The feed's dead, but with an obvious successor, Gear.

↬ The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Required reading at the time, and very much a thing of its time. Now vaguely repulsive.

↬ i09. This brilliant sci-fi and culture blog deserved more than to end up a tag at Gizmodo.

↬ Science Daily: bland but exhaustive torrent of research news, still cranking along.

The "Essentials" Folder was material I wanted to stay on top of, but with work clearly in mind: the background material for systematically belching out content at a particular point in 2007.

↬ Still alive are The Register, Slashdot, Ars Technica, UMPC Portal (the tiny laptop beat!), PC Watch, Techblog, TechCrunch, UberGizmo, Coolest Gadgets, EFF Breaking News, Retro Thing, CNET Reviews, New Scientist, CNET Crave, and MAKE Magazine.

↬ Dead or quiescent: GigaOm (at least for news), Digg/Apple, Akihabara News, Tokyomango, Inside Comcast, Linux Devices (Update: reincarnated at linuxgizmos.com), and Uneasy Silence.

Of the 23 feeds in the "press releases" folder, 17 are dead. Most of the RSS no-shows are for companies like AMD and Intel, however, who surely still offer feeds at new addresses. Feeds for Palm, Nokia and pre-Dell Alienware are genuine dodos. These were interesting enough companies, 10 years ago.

PR Newswire functions as a veneering service so anyone can pretend to have a big PR department, but it is (was?) also legitimately used by the big players as a platform so I monitored the feeds there. They're still populated, but duplicate one another, and it's all complete garbage now. (It was mostly garbage then.)

My "Gadgets and Tech" folder contained the army of late-2000s blogs capitalizing on the success of Gizmodo, Boing Boing, TechCrunch, et al. Back in the day, these were mostly one (or two) young white men furiously extruding commentary on (or snarky rewrites of) press releases, with lots of duplication and an inchoate but seriously-honored unspoken language of mutual respect and first-mover credit. Those sites that survived oftentimes moved to listicles and such: notionally superior and more original content and certainly more sharable on Facebook, but unreadably boring. However, a few old-timey gadget bloggers are still cranking 'em out' in web 1.5 style. And a few were so specialized they actually had readers who loved them.

Still alive: DailyTech, technabob, CdrInfo.com, EverythingUSB, Extremetech, GearFuse, Gizmag, Gizmodiva, Hacked Gadgets, How to Spot A Psychopath/Dans' Data, MobileBurn, NewLaunches, OhGizmo!, ShinyShiny, Stuff.tv, TechDigest, TechDirt, Boy Genius Report, The Red Ferret Journal, Trusted Reviews, Xataca, DigiTimes, MedGadget, Geekologie, Tom's Hardware, Trendhunter, Japan Today, Digital Trends, All About Symbian (Yes, Symbian!), textually, cellular-news, TreeHugger, dezeen.

Dead: jkkmobile.com, Business Week Online, About PC (why), Afrigadget (unique blog about inventors in Africa, still active on FaceBook), DefenseTech, FosFor (died 2013), Gearlog, Mobile-Review.com (but apparently reborn as a Russian language tech blog!), Robot's Dreams, The Gadgets Weblog, Wireless Watch Japan, Accelerating Future, Techopolis, Mobile Magazine, eHome Upgrade, camcorderinfo.com (Update: it became http://Reviewed.com), Digital Home Thoughts (farewell), WiFi Network News (farewell), Salon: Machinist, Near Future Lab, BotJunkie (twitter), and CNN Gizmos.

I followed 18 categories at Free Patents Online, and the site's still alive, though the RSS feeds haven't had any new items since 2016.

In the "news" folder, my picks were fairly standard stuff: BBC, CNET, digg/technology, PC World, Reuters, International Herald Tribune, and a bunch of Yahoo News feeds. The Digg feed's dead; they died and were reborn.

The "Wired" feed folder comprised all the Wired News blogs of the mid-2000s. All are dead. 27B Stroke 6, Autopia, Danger Room, Epicenter, Gadget Lab, Game|Life, Geekdad, Listening Post, Monkey Bites, Table of Malcontents, Underwire, Wired Science.

These were each basically one writer or two and were generally folded into the established mazagine-side arrangements as the Age of Everyone Emulating Gawker came to an end. The feed for former EIC Chris Anderson's personal blog survives, but hasn't been updated since his era. Still going strong is Bruce Sterling's Beyond the Beyond, albeit rigged as a CMS tag rather than a bona fide site of its own.

Still alive from my 2007 "Science" folder are Bad Astronomy (Phil Plait), Bad Science (Ben Goldacre), Pharyngula (PZ Myers) New Urban Legends, NASA Breaking News, and The Panda's Thumb.

Finally, there's a dedicated "iPhone" folder. This was not just the hottest toy of 2007. It was all that was holy in consumer electronics for half a decade. Gadget blogging never really had a golden age, but the iPhone ended any pretense that there were numerous horses in a race of equal potential. Apple won.

Still alive are 9 to 5 Mac, MacRumors, MacSlash, AppleInsider and Daring Fireball. Dead are TUAW, iPhoneCentral, and the iPhone Dev Wiki.

Of all the sites listed here, I couldn't now be paid but to read a few. So long, 2007.

https://boingboing.net/2017/12/29/my-rss-feeds-from-a-decade-ago.html

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ayearofpike · 6 years

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The 2010s reprints, all at once

So if Simon & Schuster is going back to the well for Pike’s vampire books, what’s stopping them from bringing back other stories from their one-time best-selling young adult author? Form factor, perhaps. It’s the twenty-first century now, and no self-respecting teen would be caught dead reading a pocket-sized paperback. We need something big and beefy to show that we’re Serious About Literature even as we read about murderous insane girls. Fortunately, he’s written more than a couple continuations that will link together into a handy packaged bind-up. But a lot of these books were originally written twenty years ago or more, when the absence of technology and communications wasn’t something that needed to be addressed to explain why these bastards weren’t better informed. Indeed, new audiences (the ones we in education call “digital natives”) might not even understand the characters’ rationales for action without being able to step back in time and forget what they take for granted.

Is it worth rereading these new editions? How different are they from the originals? Lucky for you, I’ve decided to find out.

Remember Me

Compiles Remember Me, The Return, and The Last Story Simon Pulse, 2010 789 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-0596-7 LOC: PZ7.P626 Re 2010 OCLC: 646299604 Released July 6, 2010 (per B&N)

Since this was the magical bestseller that made Pike who he was in the first place, it shouldn’t be too surprising that not much is changed or updated in this edition. Still, the very nature of the YA market having morphed into the vehicle that allows these stories to be reprinted throws a pretty massive wrinkle (like, even worse than the fact she’s publishing under her white name) into Shari’s expectation that her mom will never read Remember Me. Come on, dude — I guarantee she already read about the vampires.

The only changes I found through all three stories were giving Lenny the Latino gangbanger a CD player rather than a cassette (because 2010), saving the final story on a jump drive rather than a floppy disk (again, 2010), and swapping Shari’s green pants for blue jeans (I guess to match the outfit Jean is wearing when she falls off the balcony?). One thing that hasn’t changed: Third Book Whitewashin’ Shari is still an asshole. You’re lucky I’m so determined to be thorough, otherwise I would have never reread this shit.

To Die For

Compiles Slumber Party and Weekend Point, 2010 408 pages ISBN 978-0-545-26432-1 LOC: not listed OCLC: 679759450 Released September 1, 2010 (per B&N)

Little weirdness here, as this is a Scholastic joint rather than Simon & Schuster, but the covers are all coordinated, down to the typeface. Not sure whether the two houses worked together to try to sell their books (at Pike’s agent’s suggestion?) or whether Point saw an opportunity to mine some back catalog and tried to copy the existing presentation as close as possible.

The oldest viable stories (read: not Cheerleaders) must have some major rewrites pending for a modern audience, you’d think, but it’s not that drastic. The main complication would be these kids being able to reach someone outside the immediate group and report problems, so Pike quickly writes around that with a single line in each story establishing the locale as beyond cell service. They also both turn emergency CB radios into walkie-talkies, which isn’t even close to the same thing. It’s a little hinky at times, especially in accepting that Lara Johnson has packed an alarm clock instead of a phone, but it does the job.

Most of the rest of the changes hinge on contemporary references. Slumber Party loses its Richard-Pryor-lighting-himself-aflame-while-freebasing joke, but keeps the kids watching Dr. Zhivago at the first fateful party. Weekend has to adjust a lot more — party music is no longer on record, David Bowie becomes Bono (replacing a ten-year-old reference in 1985 with a ten-year-old reference in 2010), Angie’s Datsun is now a Camry, and song leaders are finally just cheerleaders. At times, he’s just wiped out a reference altogether: gone are Pat Benatar, Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw, Fonzie, Michael Jackson, and most tragically the Carpenters, which undoes a joke at Sol’s expense and removes any understandable sense from the passage they once were in. Oh well. At least he spelled “gringo” correctly in this edition.

Until the End

Compiles the Final Friends trilogy (The Party, The Dance, and The Graduation) Simon Pulse, 2011 846 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-2252-0 LOC: PZ7.P626 Unt 2011 OCLC: 693810612 Released August 30, 2011 (per B&N)

I’ll be honest: I’m not sure what this compilation is doing here. Did anybody clamor at the bit for Final Friends even back in the day? I mean, there must have been some demand to let our boy write a trilogy, but even as a teenager I saw the problems embedded in this tale. Simple time-shifting adjustments weren’t gonna fix those. And this is the beefiest book of the lot, maybe to appeal to young readers who like the huge format and want to show off how much they can read. (I had it in the waiting room of my kid’s doctor this week and another dad said it was the biggest book he’d ever seen.) It’s a lot to plow through for the sake of completeness. Still, we’re committed, right?

I got like 200 pages in and did not see a single change — not even in the computer lab where Bubba is “hacking” into the district grade data bank — which made me worried I was going to just be rereading the same stories over again. And 650 pages later, GUESS WHAT. Literally the only difference is that Jessica, in bemoaning her travails with Bill, says she was “trying to seduce a gay guy” instead of merely “a gay.” Like, even the part about it taking all day to transfer 40 megabytes via modem and filling up a school computer’s hard drive is still there. This was NOT done for new fans. But reading it so fast and soon and smushed together did help me realize that The Rock does indeed have a given name. (I’ll save you the research time: Theodore Gordon.)

Bound to You

Compiles Spellbound and See You Later Simon Pulse, 2012 490 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-5971-7 LOC: PZ7.P626 Bo 2012 OCLC: 777602521 Released August 7, 2012 (per B&N)

Maybe this is the only bind-up where the two stories could have been anything. (The Point book: those were his only two under Scholastic, so it makes sense.) There’s a back catalog of literally two dozen books not otherwise committed that they could compile. So why these two together? OK, sure, we’re four years away from the phrase “sexy lizard teens” entering the lexicon, but for sure Scavenger Hunt is better paired with Spellbound than a story about nuclear war survivors time traveling out of regret. See You Later seems like a really obtuse deep cut to me, but if he was committed to it why not pair it with The Midnight Club, which is similarly about love lost to inevitable death? I don’t really see the connection, and am too lazy to do any rationale research. But I’m not actually mad at the books — they’ve shown as two of my favorites in this reread.

Spellbound, being the oldest of the S&S catalog, does need a little reworking, particularly in the racist elements of an African shaman going to a podunk Old West high school. Pike didn’t take them all out, of course, because we have to know what a dick the boyfriend is by his connection of the dude to savage cavemen. However, the lack of cell phones is very glaring in the bits where they’re trying to find the brother/potential murder victim, and Cindy has to sit around the hospital waiting to be paged. In 2012 it’s inconceivable that high school kids wouldn’t have SOMETHING. You tried to reach the brother at his house, at his friend’s, at his girlfriend’s ... did you call him directly? Such a simple fix: “He’s not answering his cell.” It probably would have made the unease even stronger.

See You Later, hinging as it does on the main character understanding a video game, has its own needs for updating, and does it better than the Final Friends remake. Still, it’s a little slapdash. Becky works in an electronics store instead of a record store, but do these places even sell physical media computer games anymore? Even six years ago that shit was all download-only. And Ray STILL works in a bookstore ... do those still exist? Mervyn’s definitely doesn’t; they went bankrupt in 2008. As for the game itself, it requires 12 gigs of RAM rather than the paltry megabyte, which is what my newish machine runs six years later. (At the time I had ... two gigs?) Also, in the original Mark asked who won the 2010 World Series, which isn’t the future anymore in 2012 ... but it’s weird that he’s now asking about 2020, just eight years off rather than twenty. Most unsettling, though, is how the tenor of international violence rhetoric still rings true for the setting of this story, even though we’re not worried about Communists anymore. The Cold War is long over, but we’ve swung through tolerance and hope and are right back on fear.

Chain Letter

Compiles Chain Letter and The Ancient Evil Simon Pulse, 2013 456 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-7215-0 LOC: PZ7.P626 Ch 2013 OCLC: 852941511 Released July 23, 2013 (per B&N)

Chain Letter was also not originally published by S&S, so it’s interesting that they’ve gotten the rights to print it in this volume. (Though they were compiled in the UK in 1994, so maybe it wasn’t too hard.) By now, though, it feels like they’re reaching, as the teen fiction world shifts yet again to futuristic dystopias and Pike doesn’t really have anything like that. Thirst was on its way out too; the fifth book appeared just before this, and we’ll note that even though Pike didn’t finish the story the sixth has yet to emerge. Curse you, unpredictable teen girls!

Not too much is different from the original editions here. Obviously Pike was throwing in his timely references that had to be cut for understandability (Nastassja Kinski?), but by Chain Letter 2 he’d learned to rein that in. Also, there’s a moment in the first one where Alison yells “Hate you!” at the attacking Caretaker, which always struck me as awkward. This version changes it to “Screw you!” which makes me think Pike originally wrote it as “Fuck you!” and had to bowdlerize for YA. Of course they have to throw some shade at snail mail, too, since that’s how the letters arrive in the first place.

But the main differences are cassette recorders and phones. Obviously the kids aren’t going to tote around a whole bunch of old-school tools when we are now six years into the smartphone era. There’s some nice cleaning up in The Ancient Evil, writing around the idea that people need to (or even CAN) look numbers up in the phone book, but in lots of cases it just makes things awkward. Like, why is Joan going after the driving controls to turn the incriminating recording off if it’s on Kipp’s phone in the backseat? Why do Alison and Brenda have to sit around the kitchen waiting for a return call? Why is Kipp waiting until he gets home to check his voicemail? Did he seriously leave his phone in his room while he ran to the store and left a seven-year-old sister alone at the house? It just makes less and less sense.

You might have seen somewhere online a mention of another compilation, collecting Last Act and Master of Murder. This book does not actually exist. The ISBN and OCLC numbers associated with the title both lead to a British printing of the second half of Final Friends, by Hodder Publishing. I emailed the house just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, and they responded that they’ve never printed these two stories together. There’s no record of it anywhere else, certainly not on Simon & Schuster’s Pike page, and reviews I’ve found where people have attempted to buy this collection attest to the fact that they’ve actually received a copy of Final Friends Part 2 But Not Book 2 Even Though the Second Half of Book 2 Is In It.

There also used to be another one named on Wikipedia called Time of Death, which was supposed to compile Bury Me Deep and Chain Letter, but why the hell would they do that when Chain Letter has its own sequel already? There’s not any verifiable record of such a book anywhere online, not even a flawed cross-listing like the first.

So fuhgeddaboudit. I’m done reading compilations.

7 notes · View notes

lexload545 · 3 years

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Bharat Electronics Tablet Pc Software Free Download

Here, in this page you can checkout how to re-install Android OS on Tablet PC. This process of re-installing OS is termed as Flashing. This is required in order to fresh up the tablet and the device get reset as the new one.

Some of the possible reasons are listed below-

Helps defend against ransomware, viruses, spyware, malware and other online threatsAdvanced security helps protect your private and financial information when you go online.Winner of AV-TEST Award for best protection.Secures multiple PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets with a single subscriptionAutomatically backs up your photos, financial files and other important documents of your choice on. Runs on: Win95,Win98,WinME,WinNT 4.x,WinXP,Windows2000,Windows2003,Windows Tablet PC Edition 2005,Windows Media Center Edition 2005,Win Vista EMule +Ultra Downloads v.1.21c Access to the largest downloading network on the planet. I find it really difficult to operate my android 2.2 version tablet pc manufactured by bharat electronics limited, india.please help. #1 androidrajib, Mar 12, 2012 olbriar.

i- OS corrupt ii- Tablet get stuck at boot menu iii- Hang iv- Slow processing v- Tablet getting on/off automatically vi- Application not responding

Here all you have to do is to format or re-install the android OS on your tablet. The re-installing process in Android is different as you normally do with windows.

To install OS on your Tablet you need Android OS file that are compatible with your tablet and Software tools.

The various Software tools used for Flashing are :- a) Live suit tool – See working steps b) Phoenix tool c) Rock chip tool – See working steps d) Phoenix card

Here we will see the working of Phenix card software.

1) Memory hard has to be made bootable. For this the PhoenixCard tool is needed. You can get this tool from here. Pheonix Card.

PhoenixCard has a simple user interface as shown in the image.

2 ) First format the memory card, then select the compatible Android ISO file. Please note that different tablet need different ISO files. Few of the Tablet files has been listed in the table below.

See the installation process in detail in following video.

Samsung frp tool for mac. Note: The ISO which is used to make to the memory stick bootable sizes around 900 MB and different tablets need different software for Flashing/re-installing Android.

Here we have listed few of the links from where you can download the ISO file of the respective company. Other Tablet PC firmware link will be published soon.

Tablet ModelDownload LinkNotes 1) BSNL Penta Tablet ( All Models)DownloadSee detail instruction here 2) Domo Slate ( All Models)DownloadSee instruction videohere 3) Micromax Funbook Talk P350DownloadSee instruction here 4) Micromax P300Download– 5) Micromax P275Download– 6) Micromax P255Download See instruction video here 7) HCL ME U1 Download See instruction here ( Above mentioned method will not work with HCL Tab)8) HCL Tablet (All model)Download9) UbiSlate 7C+ See Working Video here

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As we are receiving more and more request for installation. We recommend post your tablet details on our forum so that other user with same tablet can use the info. Check out the forum.

If you can’t find your tablet PC in above table then let us know about your Tablet PC’s company and model name on My Tablet Guru Twitter Page.

Bharat Electronics Ltd. is something that doesn’t have any big hold in the gadgets market, but the low budget products of its, made by the central research lab do make an impact. This is another attempt by the Indian govt. lines to work on something that asks for low budget, and the low poverty people getting their touch on the gadgets. Earlier it was the HCL Sakshat tablet which was to be available for $35, and overhyped for the low price, yet no news of its actual launch. The new product, double the price is getting something more interesting – Solar powered charging.

The tablet device would be using the Android 2.2 Froyo operating system, and the battery would be powered by Solar charge. The data can be uploaded and synced, kept in with the lines of the central server in real time. Using the Android OS and downloading the various applications, making the device usable in many ways, but one of the best uses of its can be the e-reader, where the e-books can be read very well. Bharat Electronics has claimed that around 6 lakh orders have come already for the Tablet device, which totals to the 250 crores.

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This attempt is said to be working on well, as there have been a lot of orders already and BEL is actually building the devices, according to the sources through the supplier companies. The solar charging is another advantage the customers would be happily having an eye on.

Bharat Electronics Tablet Pc software, free download For Pc

Here are a few recent tablet devices of Android OS that we covered – Reliance 3G Tab, Techpad, Dell Streak Pro 10, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Beetel Magiq, HTC Puccini, Motorola XOOM.

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