#what kinda metadata....???

[paragonequinox]

3/13/2016 8:57 AM

[fandom]

Top 23 of 2023

Have you been aching to get your hot little hands on 52 weeks of data around original posts, likes, reblogs, and searches, all weighted and ranked and tied up into categories with a nice little bow on top? Well, today’s your day! It should come as no surprise that Artists on Tumblr reign supreme: from stunning traditional art, jaw-dropping digital art, fanart, sculptures, textile art—you name it, basically—this year’s list shows that Tumblr truly is the home for art and artists. Thank you, Artists on Tumblr, for enriching our dashboards day after day. 

Rounding out the top three, we have two iconic shows: Good Omens is live-action, and The Owl House is animated, but both have a heck of a love story at their core. The second season of Good Omens blessed us with not one but two ineffably exquisite ships, while the final season of The Owl House broke and then healed fans’ hearts in equal measure. Thanks, @danaterrace! Actually, come to think of it, the Good Omens finale kinda did the same in reverse. Thanks to you, too, @neil-gaiman! We can’t wait for season 3. 

Speaking of heartbreak and healing, Our Flag Means Death’s second season offered both in droves. The entire cast gave stellar performances, and fans couldn’t have been happier to see the kinds of representation the show displayed. Last year’s #1 topic, Stranger Things, may have dropped a bit, but trust us, you wouldn’t know it from the amount of meta, fanart, and fics in the tag. And did you hear about the live-action adaptations of both The Last of Us and One Piece? They were a preeeetty big deal this year, too. Check ‘em out if you haven’t yet (lol, of course you have). And we’d be remiss not to mention the hugely dedicated fans, fanartists, and fic writers devoting their time to all things Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Y’all deserve a little pizza, as a treat.

2023 was also a year for blockbuster movies, which of course hasn’t escaped anybody’s notice here on Tumblr. Barbie smashed box offices worldwide and left us reeling with every re-watch. How can one describe Greta Gerwig’s pink-filled opus? It certainly is one of the movies of all time. Meanwhile, with its incredible animation and soundtrack, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse introduced us to a whole new multiverse of Spider-People, opening the portal to a veritable flood of incredible OCs. And then, of course, we got a fresh perspective on an old classic when cinephiles introduced Martin Scorscese’s cinematic masterpiece, Goncharov (1973), to a new generation of film aficionados who resoundingly agree that it is, in fact, the greatest mafia movie ever made. We’re so glad this underrated film finally got the acclaim it has long deserved.

In the realms of gaming and tech, the long-anticipated Baldur’s Gate 3 has basically become everyone’s new favorite D&D/dating sim combination. Of course, the Pokémon franchise, games, shows, and Hatsune Miku collabs remain perennial favorites. Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, sorry, we mean of course X, made waves across the internet. Similarly, the Reddit blackout drove Redditors to new venues, and Tumblr users welcomed the folks from r/196 with open arms—we’re huge fans of your memes, y’all, and you fit right in. Welcome, we’re glad you enjoy the chaos. Here’s a fun fact: if we included post metadata in Year in Review rankings, #polls, introduced in January of 2023, would have been the #5 topic on Tumblr this year. Phenomenal. 

And, oh right. Taylor Swift had kind of a big year, what with the albums, the epic global tour, and the movie and stuff. Fantastic work, @taylorswift, the Swifties on Tumblr thank you for everything.

This is Tumblr’s Year in Review.

Artists on Tumblr

Good Omens

The Owl House

Barbie

Pokémon

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Critical Role

Goncharov

Taylor Swift

Genshin Impact

Stranger Things

The Last of Us

Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Elon Musk

196

Star Wars

Our Flag Means Death

Crowley | Good Omens

LGBTQ

Cottagecore

Baldur's Gate 3

One Piece

Aziraphale | Good Omens

[s-lycopersicum]

That post got me thinking about programming, and that maybe I should talk about one that I really had fun writing recently, and that I'm kinda proud of, so here it goes!

So, in my computer experiments and stuff like that, I often have to write scripts that process entries in various stages. For example, I had a thing where it read a list of image urls and downloaded, compressed, extracted some metadata, and saved them to disk.

That sort of process can be decomposed in various stages which, and that's the important part, can be run independently. That would massively speed up the task, but setting up the code infrastructure for that every time I needed it would be cumbersome. Which is why I wrote a little library to do it for me!

That gif is a bit fast, so here's what it looks like when it's all done:

This is from a test I wrote for the library. It simulates running a set of items through 4 different processes (which I named production lines), each with their own stages and filters.

Each line with a progress bar is a stage in the process. If you follow the traces on the left side, you can visualize how the element enter the 4 production lines on one side, and are collected on the other. The stages I wrote for the test are simple operations, but are written to simulate real world delay and errors.

To set up the processes, I do practically nothing. Just initialize the production line structure and connect the stages together, and that's it! All the work of setting up the async tasks, sending the entries from each stage to the next, filtering, error logging, even the little ascii diagram, all that happens automatically! And all that functionality packed into one data structure!

I feel like trying to explain how it does all that (and why having built it myself makes me proud) would make it harder to believe that I actually had fun doing it. I mean, it involved reading a lot of code from high profile open source projects, studying aspects of the language I had never played with (got really deep into generics with this one), and I can't really explain how I really enjoyed doing all that.

I don't know, I feel like I lost the point of what I was trying to say. Hm, I guess this feeling are harder to pin down that I expected.

[olderthannetfic]

A question about fanvidding: do you usually 1) have a song that inspires an idea for a ship or show the vid will be about or do you 2) usually have an idea for what kind of scenes the vid will contain or what "vibe" it will have and then use a song you know that kinda fits or do you 3) look for a song with a specific "vibe" without necessarily knowing the song first and if yes, where do you usually look for specific songs? Is there maybe a specific site you'd recommend if you use a specific site?

I have a vague idea for a vid and an even more vague idea for the song's "vibes" and that I'd like to use an 80s song but no actual song where my brain shouts, "Yes! This is it!" and no clue where to specifically look, apart from putting vague terms into a search engine in the hopes it will actually show me useful stuff for a M/M vid that's supposed to be about their sexual tension. I thought maybe "Poison" by Alice Cooper could fit but it's not really it although it also fits the ship because "the 'no fraternization with fellow members' rule says no but my body says yes please" and that kind of secret mutual or at least one-sided attraction is supposed to be the topic or vibe... No idea if I'm making sense. Sorry if not, it's very late. Your recent stuff about looking for danceable vids for Escapade made me want to try to go for a danceable song because spring approaching always makes me want to dance, so that sounded fun.

--

Most vidders try to avoid 3 because it's a pain in the ass... but yes, that's very often what I do.

One time, I googled "saddest saxophone in the world film noir" to find music for a vid. (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud for the record.)

I don't find any sites helpful. All of the 'find me music that sounds like x' ones straight up don't work for me because the traits that make me like a song aren't categories of metadata they contain.

To pick a standard complaint: Vidders love like 3 Vienna Teng songs and vid them constantly, but any pandora/spotify/etc. thing will immediately fetch you soft, meandering piano glurge wholly unsuited to vids instead of songs with that soaring quality of the few people are looking for more of.

What I typically do is search for "top ten greatest hair metal ballads" or "songs about starting over" or the like and go down somebody's best-of list. I'll sometimes find a youtube channel devoted to highlighting new artists and go through their archives.

I also keep a huge spreadsheet of songs that have caught my attention that could be good for a vid some time. I'll go back through it when I'm looking for inspiration.

Sometimes, though, the perfect song remains out of reach. I did my Escapade vid super late because I just couldn't find what I wanted and had to settle for a slightly different vid structure and a song that was in the ballpark but not quite perfect.

[mustardyellowsunshine]

One of my work projects this week is uploading a batch of graduate theses and dissertations to the university archives. This involves plugging metadata into a batch upload sheet. One of the metadata fields is for subject terms, so that means I get to read at least enough of each thesis/dissertation to suss out appropriate subject/search terms.

I'm almost done with this particular batch, and what I've learned is that half of these graduate students did not give a flying fuck about their thesis. Not even a fraction of a fuck. The most egregious example: someone titled their thesis "Final Draft"—that's literally what's on the title page—their table of contents is the most useless I've ever seen (e.g., "Essay 1," "Essay 2," "Essay 3," "Works Cited,"), there's no abstract or discernible thesis statement to give any hints about the thesis' topic... it's like they were actively trying to make sure nobody ever read it.

Ngl, it is very funny to see someone phoning it in so hard. 😂 I'm curious about the story here. (Cuz you know there is one.) And another part of me (probably the perfectionist side) is like, "I know how much tuition here costs, and I know the university doesn't offer financial aid for grad programs. Why would you pay that much money to enter a program that culminates in a thesis presenting years of your research... just to present something so lazy??"

It's also entertaining to read parts of the good theses and dissertations, because they're very niche subjects and so much passionate interest obviously went into the research and writing. I feel like I'm peering into another person's multi-year hyperfixation and it's kinda neat.

[space-writes]

hi! you convinced me to download obsidian and give it a shot. its honestly quite confusing for someone with 0 knowledge about coding. im watching some youtube videos to try and figure it out, because it looks like an interesting program, but its still pretty hard. do you have any suggestions/resources to learn how to use it? also, i have a silly question. how do you go from the markdown page to the preview page, like in your template post image? thank you very much

hello! welcome to obsidian, im happy you’re giving it a shot!

to answer the second part of your question first:

you can switch with either the command palette and the commands ‘toggle reading mode’ to switch to reading mode (no editing at all), or ‘toggle live preview/source mode’ to switch between plain markdown and live preview (the two different editing mode)

or you can use the toggle button in the status bar that looks like this:

I like to use the commands, so I assigned hotkeys in the settings menu: Ctrl+E to switch between reading and live preview edit mode; Ctrl+S to switch from live preview to plain markdown.

getting started notes and resources below the cut!

i will agree, Obsidian can be a little confusing. however! unless you want to get into modifying how it looks with custom CSS or making plugins, you don’t need coding knowledge!

The key thing for writing in it is markdown, and there’s a link in my resources list below about that. Once you crack markdown, you’re set.

The other key thing is knowing what you want obsidian to do/be for you. If you just want it to keep text notes, make a single folder and make text notes. Link them if you like. If you want it to be all-singing all-dancing do-everything manage-your-entire-life…well, that’s going to take a bit more work, but it can be done!

I truly truly suggest starting small (yes yes i know i didn’t but i am full of gay audacity and also i like poking at these kind of programs). Make one note, and figure out markdown. Make another note, and see how you can link them. Make one or two folders and see if they work for you. Try out tagging the things you write to organise them, and see if that works for you (you can use hashtags in the note itself, same kinda tags you use on here!) Copy a few notes from other places in and play around with themes to see what kind of appearance you like. Open up the settings and toggle things on and off, see what changes. Obsidian really encourages playing around and being curious, I feel, so get curious!

All that said, here’s a list of some resources that will hopefully be helpful:

obligatory link to Obsidian Help

Danny Hatcher’s Obsidian for beginners- it has timestamped sections for all the main features.

Another Danny video: Starting with Obsidian. He goes through setting up an example vault (with a template you can download), looking at the settings.

Basically any of Danny’s videos I recommend, he explains things in a really accessible way imo. He has several covering more complex plugings like Dataview and Metadata Menu as well. Go say hi in his comments, he's a good dude!

This beginner guide covers the basics in article form, rather than another video

If markdown is confusing, this page on the Obsidian Hub has links to markdown guides, and also covers some of Obsidian’s custom markdown syntax for things like wikilinks and callouts. You can also get plugins like editing toolbar which gives you a similar toolbar to a regular word processor, if you find learning and remembering markdown syntax too much.

for novel writing, although I don’t share all aspects of her workflow, PD Workman’s Writing a novel in Markdown is clearly written with screenshot examples, and is a good showcase of how you can set up a writing vault (she’s an actively published writer as well, so her stuff is all practical and actually used)

as always, i highly recommend joining the discord server and asking questions. It’s very active, and there are lots of smart and helpful people in there who know way more than I do XD

i’d link the forums but i do not get on well with them honestly. still, there are help threads and it’s searchable!

and im just gonna throw the hub page for TTRPG things here as well, since a lot of people doing stuff with TTRPG have interesting videos that, while they may not necessarily cover the basics, I always find at least a little bit inspirational in a way that helps me think about the kind of things I can make obsidian do for me

there are definitely a lot of other youtube resources out there (like Nick Milo’s beginner guide) but I haven’t read or used them all, so I can’t fully recommend them. One of the troubles with Obsidian is it updates such a lot, since it’s still pretty new, so videos can get out of date (like Nick’s playlist, I’m sure it’s great, but it’s 2 years old now and a LOT has changed in Obsidian since then. The basic-basics are still the same, but yeah. active app development, yo!)

also, would people like. want to see my vaults? if I shared them? I’d need to make like. cleaned up versions but if that would be helpful I could do it? I do have a Dragon Heist Vault that’s shareable (don’t tell wotc ssshh) if that sounds interesting to anyone.

[bumblekastclips]

KYLE CROUSE: Got a question from DDRMASTERM! "Boom Crossover special! Dan Hibiki opens a Saikyo-style Dojo on their island. What shenanigans result?" Oh man, this is like... Knuckles and Dan are gonna pump you up! [laughs]

IAN FLYNN: [chuckling] Oh, they are. Everybody shows up day one, 'cause Dan's an excellent salesman. KYLE: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. IAN: And... Sonic clues in real fast on what a snake oil salesman he is. Sonic's like, "Yeah, I don't need this... bye." Everyone's like, "Oh, you're so full of yourself. Dan's a master! You could stick around for at least two classes." [as Sonic] "Fine, whatever!" And then Amy and Tails kinda clue in to the whole, "Yeah, okay, we're not actually learning anything here. We've already surpassed the master. Maybe Sonic was in on this... Okay, we're done." KYLE: [chuckles] IAN: And Sticks is convinced that he's hiding something. There's no one this inept. No one is this clueless unless it's purposeful! He's hiding his true powers! She'll stick it out. She wants to know what his real objective is! And Knuckles... yeah, Knuckles drinks the Kool-Aid. He is wholesale involved, he follows all of Dan's directives, he completely and utterly cleans his clock, and Dan spins it as, "Great! You're ready for, like, level three!" [as Knuckles] "Oh boy! One day I'll actually be as strong as you, Master Dan!" KYLE: [laughs] Uh oh! IAN: And then, y'know, Eggman learns that there's this new, incredible, powerful fighter opening up a dojo. That's gonna be trouble. Sonic's bad enough as it is! So sends the little spy probes down there, gets all the metadata off of Dan, and decides to build the counterpoint. And thus, we get Metal Dan, who is as functional and deadly as Dan is! KYLE: [laughing] Which is to say, not? IAN: Doesn't get off the launch platform the first three tries. So finally, Eggman just scoops up this thing and dumps it on the beach. [Eggman voice] "Go get 'em already!" And Dan is terrified, because here is this towering, evil, maniacal, mechanical clone of him! He's like, "Uh, Knuckles! Your graduation test is to take out that thing!" [as Knuckles] "Alright, Master! I'll do my best!" And they size each other up, and the dramatic music builds, and... Knuckles throws a punch just as a swift gust of wind knocks the whole thing over. KYLE: [chuckles] IAN: Knuckles is like, "I did it... I did it! I saved the dojo! I'm the Master now!" KYLE: [laughing] Knuckles truly is the master! To be a master, you must be Knuckles.

--- TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Please remember that nothing that is said on BumbleKast is canon! It's just some guys and their opinions occasionally spitballing ideas. If you don't like an answer, you don't have to take it as Word of God or anything like that. It's all just for fun! ----- This question was requested by @ddrmasterm! Do you want a specific question transcribed and posted? Send the question and the episode date to my ask box! Or if you just want questions about a certain character, send me their name and I will see what I can do!

[nyanpasuuna]

How did you get started with Python? I'm trying to learn but am kinda stuck in tutorial hell

kind of a boring answer, sadly, with python in particular it was part of an optional IT course i took in 8th grade

programming as a whole? around 2 years before that i learned some java through minecraft modding, i never made anything like super groundbreaking but with the help of my mom (degree in some combination of IT and electrical engineering? and since then having worked as a programmer) i knew what values to change and what parts to copypaste over from existing code well enough to e.g. add in a very basic new passive mob

tutorial-wise hmmm

you know actually one thing that could help bring in the motivation is making it more personal to you, like learning through making small things you know will be useful to you personally, e.g. for me those have mainly been music-related so stuff like screwing around with MP3 metadata or sorting files by loudness or simple audio effects or just small things i've needed in general like a browser extension to hide irrelevant search results or the countless times i've needed to calculate something and the best way to do so having been just to write a python script to do it

the satisfaction of making stuff is so much greater when you can actually see the practical use in front of you (or at least that's how it is for my ADHD "out of sight out of mind" brain), like sure there are all the usual things you make while learning a programming language but those don't really become useful tools on their own, and maybe for some having small projects that do become useful tools works better than doing the traditional ones

[cephalog0d]

Hey, Batfans, are you a weird completionist who likes sortable data way too much, like me? Do you want a giant spreadsheet of appearances of a bunch of Batfam members that you can filter across multiple people to see where they show up in the same issue together?

WELL GOOD NEWS because thanks to my hyperfixation I made a spreadsheet. (It's view-only but if you save a copy it should be editable for personal use.)

The Spreadsheet currently contains all post-crisis appearances for the following characters: Barbara Gordon, Cassandra Cain, Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson, Duke Thomas, Harper Row, Helena Bertinelli, Jace Fox, Jarro, Jason Todd, Jean-Paul Valley, Kate Kane, Luke Fox, Stephanie Brown and Tim Drake. I feel like that's most of the big ones (and several not-very-big-ones), but if there's a Bat-person missing you'd like to see on there, feel free to ask!

This is up to date through July 2023. I have intentions to keep updating it on a semi-monthly basis, but we'll see if that happens.

All sheets are conditionally formatted so if you enter "Y" in the Read column it will highlight the whole row in green to mark it off, if you're the kind of person who likes to keep track and mark things off a list.

The Master List is filterable by any character, and more importantly, multiple characters! Up to "all of them" although I don't think anything actually contains *all* of them.

(Some more notes below)

SOME NOTES:

Dates are the start of the series, since that's how a lot of places besides DC itself with their weird "volume" convention distinguish different runs.

These aren't sorted by preboot vs. New 52 vs. Rebirth vs. IF, sorry, that was too many sorting functions for now. You can kinda figure it out by date, though (New 52 was 2011, Rebirth was 2016, IF was 2022) or look up the issue on a wiki and see what version of the character is tagged.

On that note, all of this was pulled from the DC Wiki, and while I did a little bit of spot-checking as I went for things I knew off the top of my head it's entirely possible things are missing or mis-attributed. I'm happy to update accordingly if there are.

Similarly, I didn't go through every issue here to check what role people are appearing in, either in terms of what identity they're using (e.g. Spoiler vs Robin vs Batgirl) or if they're a major character or not. Some of these are as minor as background appearances or off-screen mentions. Some day I might add more metadata to sort for those things, but right now that's not part of it.

[pastlight]

so since yesterday:

the official twitter account for the presidency published a list of the deputies that voted against the law (some only voted against 1 article) which would be normal publicly available info but they decided to call all of them traitors who voted against the will of the people. some rational people saw this as uh, not a great move and kinda dangerous.

Milei, from his personal account, liked a tweet calling the party from which he negotiated votes for the megalaw "putitas" (bitches/whores). literally begging for someone to take his phone away.

today they announced they wouldn't try to get the megalaw voted on again and the government wouldn't present any more projects to congress for the rest of the year.

despite that, at around 9 pm some deputies from their party presented a project to abolish the abortion law which makes it legal and free, even in life threatening cases or rape.

now, 3 hours later, after multiple deputies whose signatures are in the project and even Milei said they "knew nothing about this", some prominent Milei-militant twitter accounts are claiming it was fake-- because the metadata shows it was created on the computer of the father of one of the party's deputies. and that means they were? blackmailed?? or it's some sort of sabotage payback by the local governor for the megalaw??? listen i barely understand this conspiracy. also the project was uploaded two days ago anyways so. there's that.

idk why i'm making this post it's 2 am and im very tired but wired and im trying to make heads or tails of it. i guess im starting to suspect everything this government is doing and has done for the last 2 months is just to exhaust people

or maybe they really are a mess who the fuck knows

edit: it was confirmed that the deputy that uploaded the anti abortion project did so without asking anyone else in the party because, in her words, SHE DIDN'T KNOW SHE HAD TO. all the other signatures were from deputies that had given her a vague promise of support in theory but never actually gave her permission to use their names, and definitely not right now. Milei is now linking tweets calling her a traitor who should be tried and fired from congress. what the fuck.

[moorishflower]

hi, sorry for crashing in here every once in a while, would you share some of your writing process with us? I don't know how you manage to consistently put out god tier writing so regularly and would like to know if it's not too much trouble?

my dear my darling you can crash through these walls whenever you want just absolutely rip through 'em <3

So I always find it a little bit funny when the topic of writing process comes up because I really don't consider myself to have one, or rather, not a particularly VIABLE one

But the process goes kind of like this:

Have idea (idea is usually had while lying in bed trying to sleep, or while in the shower, or sometimes as the result of a prompt from my personal server or from an ask here)

Go to work the next day and absolutely SLAM KEYBOARD during my breaks. I have ADD and I am not medicated for it because I am largely well-functioning and I've previously had some uhhhh unfortunate side effects from Adderall, but one of the results of that is that I write fastest and best when I'm under pressure to do so. A manufactured time limit is the easiest way to trigger this, so I have a little bluetooth keyboard that I can connect to my phone, and in my spare time at work I write. I usually do like. 2,000 words this way? Sometimes more sometimes less.

It is important to note here that I used to do metadata entry for a living, a job which required me to have an insanely high wpm type speed, so at my fastest I was clocking somewhere around 89 to 92wpm with like a 75% accuracy. I am at this point probably typing 70-75wpm with a significantly higher accuracy (have not measured in a while, so this is a rough guess). What this means is that I type fast and hard and have broken keyboards, so I can and do fuckin SLAM words out, in very short periods of time.

When I get home, mostly what I want to do is write? It gives me a lot of joy to do so, and so at home I usually work on smaller projects, or answering prompts or asks. In between I play Pokemon or read or play with my cats (I got Pokemon Violet, and Shroodle is my one true love).

So kinda the unfortunate thing for me is that my writing and my reading brain are connected by some mysterious psychic link, so it's hard for me to switch back and forth between them. It means I don't have a lot of attention to give to other fic when I'm caught by an idea, which SUCKS ASS because everyone is writing a TON of really cool and good stuff. I suspect i will go through a hibernation phase at some point and catch up on like a year of fic in 1 month l o l

As for the quality of my writing I don't have a lot to say for that! I have a bachelor's in English and World Literature, which might contribute to just. Basic understanding of the flow of stories. But I mostly don't do editing, I've never taken classes on writing outside of what I took in college, and honestly I think any quality of my writing is more of a tribute to all the fantastic things I've read. I tend to absorb little bits and pieces of other writing styles as I go, so there are concepts and turns of phrase buried in my subconscious going back 20 years to when I first started reading fic. basically I turned imposter syndrome into my identity! (j/k j/k)

idk my friend judging the quality of my own writing is difficult, but if it resonates with other people, if it gives you feelings, if it makes you laugh or makes you horny or makes you think, that's all I can ever really ask. I have to try not to think about it much beyond that because i try to keep aware of my self esteem issues and hyperfixating on whether people "like" me is a problem, sometimes! though thankfully one I am often aware of, and can take steps to mitigate.

so like, the short answer to your question i guess is: have a cool job, regularly give yourself wrist damage, be feral about words. and write. just keep writing. the more you write, the easier it gets, the faster it gets, and the better the words feel!

[linkysmommy]

im also reading bb3 rn we are in this together 🤝🤝🤝 eagerly awaiting ur future reviews/reactions idk about you but I went in kinda blind and a part of me still can’t believe what I thought was a sexy vampire ceo book is actually an intense gothic romance/horror about three vampires very fucked up interrelations and the cycle of violence and abuse they are trapped in and working to break and that’s literally the tip of the iceberg i’m never judging anything again actually ive been humbled. 😭

omg this is amazing, I love how like three years after the game releases or however long it’s been, you and I are just HAPPENING to be reading it for the first time 🥹 so fun knowing that someone else is experiencing the same thing as I am right now! Can’t wait to share my overall reviews and reactions when I finish 🤭

I actually played book 1 when it first came out but I’m pretty sure I only bought ONE diamond scene and it was the one with Adrian in the cabin. oh wait no I also bought the diamond scene to chase down Nicole. Anyway, idk why but while I didn’t hate it, I didn’t like it that much? So I never bothered reading the sequels and like you, I kinda figured it just turned into a cheesy steamy vampire story for some reason 😭 but I decided to give it another shot and since diamonds are way easier to come by now I got all the tapestry scenes and that is SUCH a game changer… i genuinely haven’t had this much brainrot about a Choices game since It Lives. Feeling embarrassed I’ve also been lowkey judging this series for so long fjdkkd

Although PB’s marketing of BB is pretty criminal… like whyyy are the metadata tags “sexy, vampire, CEO” like they marketed it as vampire 50 Shades or something and then it’s this incredible story with unforgettable characters and meaningful themes but I digress

[enarei]

I'm trying to organize the library on my kobo and running into the issue of almost everything I want to read, aside from manga, going into the same folder, "essays", which is not much better than having no folders at all.

At first I separated between "history", "political essay", "critique", "memoirs", "anthropology", but unsurprisingly these categories aren't exclusive and intersect more often than not.

On calibre this isn't an issue because I can actually group things by tags, which are just descriptive, but if I tried to apply them to a folder structure everything would just end up having a bunch of clones. So like, say, the books about the history of hentai manga, which is essentially literary critique, and stuff by David Graeber are in the same folder.

You could in theory solve this by implementing a similar system as calibre's, where each individual book has some metadata linking it to a class, and then you can browse instances of that class without affecting their actual physical location in the file system. Which is essentially identical to itunes's, it's what a library software should do, be it music, pictures, or books.

And I think kobo's default interface does this, to some limited extent, but it also does silly things like enforcing DRM and treating PDFs as second class (they are, which is why the lack of tools to make reading them less of a chore is annoying) — circumventing this is thankfully much easier than on kindle, where you have to jailbreak it first, on kobo you just install the dependencies so it knows how to launch different software. The one that I use, koreader, on the other hand, only allows a very strict file system hierarchy for organizing books, which is completely inapt for shit like this. It's kinda mindblowing because it blows kobo's interface out of the water in every other way, but that, and being a bit ugly, you could say it has a more retro ui, give it a completely different feel, even though they're essentially running on the same underlying Linux OS.

This is a quirk that obviously annoys me but it also gives me deeper appreciation for why the whole interface is like that, not trying to hide the fact ebooks are nothing more than self-describing HTML files. Like I'm not "borrowing a license to read these documents", which is essentially what e-readers do nowadays, keep a whole database of keys to unencrypt a bunch of zip archives (that would be unmanageable without that layer of abstraction), these are literally just little files on my computer which I can move around as I wish.

[notquiteaghost]

congrats on making a public inquiry on a line of interest situated in the middle of a venn diagram of like four things i've been thinking about a lot lately, your prize is this ask that is so long that in the time spent writing it and checking info someone less annoying may have directed you to some of it! this is all like easy enough to google but just in case it feels less uuhh to have someone with an approximate knowledge on some things offer you some pointers: here are some pointers

(i AM ALSO a thousands of CD's type of guy, but i've not done any big digital management of them since the last time i was regularly using ipods in the 2000s, n i am kinda Prepping for big digital management around my current standing main hyperfixation (participants of a season of an old korean idol reality competition show, a collection of Too Many Gotdamn People who have made Too Much Gotdamn Music) but i don't actually currently own a lot of the physical media there, so none of this are pointer from like. oh here is a workflow i am using etc, but)

answers to your two questions are 1) file sizes really depend on lots of factors but rule of thumb is that in a collection of 'normal song' mp3 file size averages out to 5-7MB a song, and a 3-4min mp3 file being >10MB is surprising

and 2) re: storage prices, 1TB (~1,000,000MB, so probably ~166,666MB 3min mp3's) in external harddrive will run at about £50 in western digital brands atm (western digital is what i've been occasionally looking at for my data management thing bc i've seen it mentioned specifically as more reliable than seagate, which i have had issues with; anecdotally, my mum's WD elements has lasted her about a year longer than her seagates kick the bucket). prices atm on curry's stack up at £80 for 2TB, £108 for 4TB, £180 for 8TB

refurbished is an option when it's 'rectified' and sold by the company itself; for WD, those prices atm stack up at £30 for 1TB, £35 for 2TB, £55-60 for 4TB (their page for these are https://www.westerndigital.com/en-gb/products/recertified) (i do not know enough about this area and would wanna look up specific reviews on a company's rectifying track record before purchasing myself, so obv do the same)

answers to questions you DID NOT ask but may have later on if you do set out on the CD Digitization Project that i have answered preemptively bc i am ANNOYING:

tagging music with correct info is often the most time-consuming part of this shit, so a tagger is your friend. the musicbrainz database should have a lot of stuff covered, so their tagger picard might well do (https://picard.musicbrainz.org/, also has some good plugins for like formating multi-disc albums etc if you wanna scan through those), but tagscanner (https://www.xdlab.ru/en/index.htm) can also pull from discogs if needed, though you may still need a discogs account + to make an api key do use that

i was like. spike will probably appreciate it if i provided ways in which their dad could still be autistic about music in a digital format, but i'm having a hard time pulling up music players that meet my vision / make it clear if they do re: you can see cd booklet, and also this info seems to not typically be in databases. i'll carry on looking for players in this area bc i ALSO want this, but suggested desktop windows players other than windows media player / grooveshark / vlc (which are all fine, but imo none are the most intuitive for regular heavy listening) are my best friend foobar2000 (https://www.foobar2000.org/, also has a tagger that pulls from musicbrainz and maybe discogs?), musicbee (https://getmusicbee.com/, tagger plugins available), and aimp (https://www.aimp.ru/); deadbeef (https://deadbeef.sourceforge.io/) is created more to get your hands into with the technical stuff, but it's got custom metadata fields. really after you've looked to see if you think your dad would want a particular feature, unless space is a major consideration then it is just well what looks nicest.

file backup! backblaze (https://www.backblaze.com/) allows an external hard drive to be added in an image backup of a machine, which is the only good way to do a (pseudo-)sync backup without paying for cloud subscription or setting up a NAS etc; at $70/year it is obviously A Cost but way less than premium cloud drive subscription, so if it feels useful to know,

if the NAS mention / video at the end of that post wrt turning an old computer or laptop into a media server (so thing that is plugged into a wall that has files on it + a media player --> other computers / phones / etc on the same network (which can be outside the home too) can connect to that player and files) was interesting lmk bc i've also been looking into that a lot mostly as like, storage nerd aspirations, it's just a whole other thing that's irrelevant if you're more interested in just bunging stuff on an external drive (i've send this as an ask with the intent for you to keep it On File, so sent me another or a dm to lmk!)

you are not at ALL annoying you are a godsend!!!!

the thing abt my father is he is actually better at tech stuff than me (he ran his school's website & also michael's website, in the 00s, when that meant he built them from scratch) (he's still a little bitter abt his school outsourcing their website to whatever service every school uses nowadays. he used to add little falling snowflakes in the winter n april fools jokes n such), so yes i was very much anticipating saying to him like. find a backup storage method you like and i will do the legwork of actually ripping n sorting everything

i did NOT know taggers even existed but holy shit yes i will definitely need one. i do not anticipate him ever actually getting rid of his physical copies – smth he has already done is buy a ton of plastic wallets n move the CDs & booklets into them so instead of ur standard plastic jewel case taking up all that space it's effectively as thin as the actual CD – & also he no longer has a computer (i do not get this decision either. he just uses his phone????) so i doubt he'll need music player software. my thought is really 'he needs backups spare CDs and a CD writer so if any die they can be replaced'

however i will definitely look into the music player software, and maybe also forward this info to my brother (if it's even news to him, he's the kind of music autistic who has a £200 pair of headphones). thank you SO much <3

edit: just saw ur second ask n shdgdhd yeah i am gonna bookmark this post, my askbox is a pit things vanish into forever

[olderthannetfic]

Hello, so, I want to know if is kinda worth it begin to uh, not panic but be hella more careful about Amor Yaoi. After what happened with FFes I did the Amor Yaoi collection on AO3 but nothing else, until now.

I was bored so I did all the metadata recollection already. Then I started fucking around with the links, and the printable version of the fanfics is active. This wasn't an option months ago (I don't recall if this was an option years ago, tho — but there wasn't and there isn't a button to redirect to the printable version), because I checked. FFes didn't have it active either before closing, so IDK if I'm just being paranoid or extremely cautious.

Also, Marfil renewed the website certificate in September but only until December. And like, IDK if this can be indicative of anything (as it isn't about FFnet closing down, for example).

Anyways, IDK if I should do a precaution post on the fandom groups I'm in on FB to like let folks know that maybe there's a chance that Amor Yaoi won't be with us anymore.

--

"Be careful" as in "It's probably on the chopping block", not as in "watch out for viruses" or "the site owner doesn't want us saving it"?

Good to know.

I still haven't done the AO3 links for FFes, though we of course have them, and they're on the Wayback machine. Doh! I should get back to that. (I don't know how to automate it myself and got distracted by other projects.)

I too would not trust most site mods further than I can throw them, and especially not ones with a track record of shutting down sites abruptly.

[valleydean]

Can I ask what working in the scheduling dept entails...?

yeah, so basically it's kinda catch all! putting this under the cut because it's a long explanation.

we schedule everything that airs on the networks at both a macro and micro level. macro, meaning we schedule the shows and movies, obviously. and we do this month-to-month, but then we have documents that plan out our original content years in advance.

micro, meaning we have a team that schedules all the promos for our shows during ad breaks and all the graphics, lower thirds, etc. that pop up on screen while a program is airing.

but we also have an acquisitions team that buys movies and syndicated shows to air on the network, and they deal with how many times we can air each in accordance to the contract with the distribution studio. (for example, let's say we have the greatest movie ever made, tombstone (1993) for the month of august and we can only play it 7 times - and that's to share across all 5 of our nets. they negotiate stuff like that.) and screening things to see if we actually want to play them on our networks.

andddddddd we also come up with stunts (that means like - marathons of a tv show or like, "action mondays" where we just play action movies or whatever, or a month of christmas movies in december and scary movies in october)

but wait there's more!! we also make sure the guides like tv guide, zap2it, etc all have the correct metadata and schedules listed on their websites. and we track ratings!! both of ours networks and competitive networks (those two things are mainly my responsibility). and we track competitors to see like.... basically everything. where are they scheduling their acquired movies and series and how are they airing them? do any of their programs overlap with our programs so we can avoid scheduling them at the same time? what do their promos and lower thirds look like? what kind of stunts are they doing and when? how do they promote them? also, the competitive stuff is lowkey fun because, as i like to say, my job is to watch tv and channel surf.

and also we schedule when things go up on demand and for how long they can stay on there before we take them down.

anddddddddd we have a team that does all of the above but for our SVOD services.

so yeah. it's....... a lot.