#alternatively i can just give you a code for the website LOL i have a million of them

[bugwizard]

a little needle felted imp i'm auctioning over on toyhouse!! (link to auction)

[castle-dominion]

castle 6x16 room 147

the cult hypnosis episode liveblog

(side note I can't believe they didn't have dever & huertas-- heck I would have loved the OTHER dever to do an audio commentary. The castle's dad one had the audio instead which, like, valid ig.) Anyway I'm on a new dvd now, which is why I am complaining about the lack of (my preferred) bonus features.

Not QUITE the same mess lol

KABOOM I loove alexis sm <3 <3

Oof I'm quitting my job to go to school I can't imagine having a job & a non-job & a tutoring gig & paying a lease & holy crap I am so privileged

Yay calling him Sito.

were not was

Jane: He didn’t have to. Good looking guy, no bags, checking in for one night?

that's a flip phone... Plenty of people have their own website. too bad the guy doesn't have imbd tho

random lady yelling.

Love esposito's outfit! so chill!

You never get a confession this early in an ep. u KNOW smth's going to go down. Is there going to be another one really fast like this where they solve it hella fast & after the third murder with an instant confession they get suspicious?

Ah she has an alibi! Is she confessing to cover for someone else?

Love the doodle. Maybe it was a code to whoever is going to read her confession I love the flashbacks. While I'm here, the door opened on the left, attached on the right. I don't think it was like that in the crime scene. wdym you don't think so?

someone is making her confess to their crime that's why this stuff is happening.

Yeah that's how addiction is alright.

I loooove how she doesn't remember! Anita Miller: No, from me!

RC: What about forensics? Did CSU come up with anything? JE: Yeah, a hotel room in New York City? (he shudders) They found all kinds of fun stuff. (not clipping)

Clipping the theory part. unless there was a tall/cext to the phone you don't have!

Doc holloway's back!!!!

Ryan & me: Two weeks? Wait a minute, that’s how long Anita says she’s been feeling blurry.

RC: As much as I love a good mystery, a small part is hoping he can give us some clarity on what the hell is going on.

idk why I find the "ask for help" poster with the guy crying in their hands so humerous. Maybe bc it reminds me of the cotton eyed joe meme I made. Me: *just commit autosurgery trying to cut off my own breast* My surgical tape: *won't stick* Me: *crying* my adhd: IF IT WEREN'T FOR COTTON EYED JOE I'D BE MARRIED A LONG TIME AGO

Love background artists.

I need details.

I love love love the way it goes with the filming. POV filming. (markiplier moments, girl hand, man hand, we also need a black guy. Like that aone scene where you have three hands at some point bc you're picking up the artifact, swapping the teddy bear, holding his nose so he doesn't sneeze, & every single movement is a different person's hand. for Diversity. We need a left-handed person now tho.

Because he did what to you? aiy dee kay. Love the music sm KB, explaining like bonvolio: Yeah, you and Anita Miller are working together on this. You’re either covering for each other or you’re covering for someone else out there.

love how there are two interrogation rooms. She's very adamant that she did this. Why not take the out? "So I didn't kill him? I'm hella confused after all..."

Get doc holloway back here. RC: What if their lives intersect, just not in such a literal sense? Me, just participating in the fictional canadian character poll: ramona flowers? powers? renata? Hold on... scott pilgrim dreams is what I'm saying.

RC: (dryly) Really? Alternate universe? That’s how little you think of me? RC in a future episode: *goes to an au where lanie is preggo & rysposito is canon. unless that was just a fanfic i read...)

I love her ring KB: (off is look) I’m sorry, it’s just, you got excited. It’s kind of cute. RC: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know how I like the weird stuff. Me: SEASON ONE

WHAT'S nothing? on your phone there?

I LOVE this kid, this absolute child. radar oreilly vibes off him, esp with castle's psychic link theoryu.

OUTSTANDING! LOVE THE WORDS! consistency bc of slaughter! "I need to confess!" 'take a number'

"She remembers bc she thought it looked suspicious" that's the only reason someone WOULD remember! & the only reason they'd take a pic.

a big bald man!

It's just a doodle. It is a celtic knot holy trinity sign, no? the van you've been disoriented. How long have you had that symbol in your head? KB: this is important! Dwight: *I killed a guy but fuck ok bestie*

Assertiveness training I love this tranny sm. He needs to get on testosterone.

Sometimes THEY scrub footage, sometimes it's the detectives...

her phone again. what is even going on with that?

I love it. love the way she picks up her jacket, the boys, she's coming back to work this late at night in an hour... I love these folks this family their dynamics their movements & body language I thouht it was jim not alexis. Peter's cafe/bistro

Her face. she is rolling her eyes & I love alexis & I love her bangs & I love alexis & the alexis-kate relationship kjsdflkjkldjfsd It IS pride! Ooh music!!

Love those two cops smiling in the elevator. IT implies that there was a conversation in there that we missed.

Me: native Esposito: also technically native EHI: *kills ppl in their "sweat lodge initiation"*

lmao SO culty he talks so slow. Need to speed this up. good gravy. Ooh I only just noticed her eyeliner. love it.

this place reminds me of japan. Why is he expecting? Oh maybe bc he killed the guy! ooOOooh! SHUT THE DOOR SHUT THE DOOR BY WHICH I MEAN NO DON'T SHUT THE DOOR YOU'RE GOING TO BE TRAPPED THIS IS MY PARANOIA KICKING IN.

Love the art of himself on the walls. Where is that? Sweden? years????

Bauer: I’m struck by the level of your hostility, Detective. It’s not healthy. RC: You know what I’m struck by is your total lack of curiosity as to why a homicide detective is asking about your employee. "little group" THOUSANDS of members across the globe! RC: Wow. That’s – amazing, how you would just know what off the top of your head. Bauer: I make a point of meeting every member of my EHI family. The people you mentioned are not among them. Me: thousands of members & you have met every one sure but u remember every one?

Bauer: *looks to the side offscreen* RC: *looks to the side too* *realizes* *rolls his eyes up* Me: I do the same thing when my brothers are standing behind me irl & annoying me so I whip around to face them...in minecraft

btw what is that glass thing on there?

grande poobah??? his what???

RC: So all three of our confessors have had problems in their lives. Alcoholism, anger management, assertiveness issues, all things that they could have gone to EHI to treat.

that's true! RC: Wipe memories. Think about it. The fogginess, the confusion over the last two weeks? KR: So you’re saying that a glorified self-help group can erase memories? How? Doc H: With drugs.

Me: *seen the s7 premier* Memories actually change all the time. Outstanding! Love the words! KR: Castle, do you have any idea how insane that sounds? I would clip that but meh RC: Just not in person. Me: Not your psychic theory again!

"Ok he did NOT flirt with me" (why does the woman's vers need to be flirty tho? /gen q for EHS or w/e their name was)

Just letting them continue to argue lol

KB: Yes, a genius at annoying me. (not clipping) RC: Yes, a genius at annoying me. KB: (aside) I’m starting to feel the urge.

the door opens the wrong way THE DOOR OPENS THE WRONG WAY THEY MENTIONED IT RIGHT AFTER MEEEE (tho I have seen it too) wait all these rooms have the same painting? srs?

the way ryan says "su'm" instead of something, I looove it. kinda hate it tho.

CSU: Detective, I traced the signal from Bauer’s video conference with Beckett. JE: So where in Stockholm is he? CSU: That’s the thing. The signal was routed through Stockholm, but it looks like it originated from a local IP address. JE: Local, as in Manhattan? CSU: As in inside this building.

Love esposito's giant coats & layers & stuff.

that hand is slim, but pretty masculine. He smiles but idk if it is flirtatious. None of the suspects said that the bathroom door was open. Why do they know his name tho? Two versions, one for women & another for men? You don't have one for left-handed ppl or someone who maybe can't use or doesn't have their right hand, for Black ppl, for any poc, for ppl who are women but don't want to smile flirtatiously with justin, for fat ppl...

Someone from the crew, yeah you do need a bunch more ppl than just justin, the suspects, & the head of ehi.

At least she pronounced her T. Oof the music. it's so good.

Aw dwight never got to confess slkdjfslkdfjl these three have become friends & I love it sm. Friendship forged in a situation like this.

KB: It’s okay, Castle. You know I like the weird ones. Me: YES YES SJDLFSJKDFLSJDKLFJDS THIS IS THE SERIES

KB: (slyly) How do you know what I do to you when you’re sleeping?

Alexis!!!

[queenlua]

hey, i started following you recently and ur bio says ur a hacker? any tips on where to start? hacking seems like a v cool/fun way to learn more abt coding and cybersecurity/infrastructure and i'd like to explore it but there's so much on the internet and like, i'm not trying to get into anything illegal. thanks!

huh, an interesting question, ty!

i can give more tailored advice if you hit me up on chat with more specifics on your background/interests.

given what you've written here, though, i'll just assume you don't have any immediate professional aspirations (e.g. you just want to learn some things, and you aren't necessarily trying to get A Cyber Security Job TM within the next three months or w/e), and that you don't know much about any specific programming/computering domain yet.

(stuff under cut because long)

first i'd probably just try to pick some interesting problem that you think you can solve with tech. this doesn't need to be a "hacking" project at first; i was just messing around with computers for ages before i did anything involving security/exploitation.

if you don't already know how to program, you should ideally pick a problem you can solve via programming. for instance: i learned a lot back in the 2000s, when play-by-post forum RPGs were in vogue.  see, i'd already been messing around, building my own personal sites, first just with HTML & CSS, and later on with Javascript and PHP.   and i knew the forum software everyone used (InvisionPowerBoard) was written in PHP.  so when one of the admins at my RPG complained that they'd like the ability to set multiple profile pictures, i was like, "hey i'm good at programming, want me to create a mod to do that," and then i just... did. so then they asked me to program more features, and i got all the sexy nerd cred for being Forum Mod Queen, and it was a good time, i learned a lot.

(i also got to be the person who was frantically IMed at 2am because wtf the forum is down and there's an inscrutable error, what do??? basically sysadmining! also, much less sexy! still, i learned a lot!)

the key thing is that it's gotta be a problem that's interesting to you: as much as i love making dorky sites in PHP, half the fun was seeing other people using my stuff, and i think the era of forum-based RPGs has passed. but maybe you can apply some programming talents to something that you are interested in—maybe you want to make a silly Chrome extension to make people laugh, a la Cloud to Butt, or maybe you'd like to make a program that converts pixel art into cross-stitching patterns, maybe you want to just make a cool adventure game on those annoying graphing calculators they make you use in class, or make a script for some online game you play, or make something silly with Arduino (i once made a trash can that rolled toward me when i clapped my hands; it was fun, and way easier than you'd think!), whatever.

i know a lot of hacker-types who got their start doing ROM hacking for video games—replacing the character art or animations or whatever in old NES games. that's probably more relevant than the PHP websites, at least, and is probably a solid place to get started; in my experience those communities tend to be reasonably friendly to questions. pick a small thing you want to do & ask how to do it.

also, a somewhat unconventional path, but—once i knew how to program a bit of Python, i started doing goofy junk, like, "hey can i implemented NamedTuple from scratch,” which tends to lead to Python metaprogramming, which leads to surprising shit like "oh, stack frames are literally just Python objects and you can manually edit them in the interpreter to do deliberately horrendous/silly things, my god this language allows too much reflection and i'm having too much fun"... since Python is a lot of folks' first language these days, i thought i'd point that out, since i think this is a pretty accessible start to thinking about How Programs Actually Work under the hood. allison kaptur has some specific recommendations on how to poke around, if you wanna go that route.

it's reasonably likely you'll end up doing something "hackery" in the natural course of just working on stuff. for instance, while i was working on the IPB forum software mods, i became distressed to learn that everyone was using an INSECURE version of the software! no one was patching their shit!! i yelled at the admins about it, and they were like "well we haven't been hacked yet so it's not a problem," so i uh, decided to demonstrate a proof of concept? i downloaded some sketchy perl script, kicked it until it worked, logged in as the admins, and shitposted a bit before i logged out, y'know, to prove my point.

(they responded by banning me for two weeks, and did not patch their software. which, y'know, rip to them; they got hacked by an unrelated Turkish group two months later, and those dudes just straight-up deleted the whole website. i was a merciful god by comparison!)

anyway, even though downloading a perl script and just pointing it at a website isn't really "hacking" (it's the literal definition of script kiddie, heh)—the point is i was just experimenting a lot and trying a lot of stuff, which meant i was getting comfortable with thinking of software as not just some immutable relic, but something you can touch and prod in unexpected ways.

this dovetails into the next thing, which is like, just learn a lot of stuff. a boring conventional computer science degree will teach you a lot (provided you take it seriously and actually try to learn shit); alternatively, just taking the same classes as a boring conventional computer science degree, via edX or whatever free online thingy, will also teach you a lot. ("contributing to open source" also teaches you a lot but... hngh... is a whole can of worms; send a follow-up ask if you want that rant.)

here's where i should note that "hacking" is an impossibly broad category: the kind of person who knows how to fuck with website authentication tokens is very different than someone who writes a fuzzer, who is often quite different than someone who looks at the bug a fuzzer produces and actually writes a program that can exploit that bug... so what you focus on depends on what you're interested in. i imagine classes with names like "compilers," "operating systems," and "networking" will teach you a lot. but, like, idk, all knowledge is god-breathed and good for teaching. hell, i hear some universities these days have actual computer security classes? that's probably a good thing to look at, just to get a sense of what's out there, if you already know how to program.

also be comfortable with not knowing everything, but also, learn as you go. the bulk of my security knowledge came when i got kinda airdropped into a work team that basically hired me entirely on "potential" (lmao), and uh, prior to joining i only had the faintest idea what a hypervisor was? or the whole protection ring concept? or ioctls or sandboxing or threat models or, fuck, anything? i mostly just pestered people with like 800 questions and slowly built up a knowledge base, and remember being surprised & delighted when i went to a security conference a year later and could follow most of the talks, and when i wound up at a bar with a guy on the xbox security team and we compared our security models a bunch, and so on.  there wasn't a magic moment when i "got it", i was just like, "okay huh this dude says he found a ring-0 exploit... what does that mean... okay i think i got that... why is that a big deal though... better ask somebody.." (also: reading an occasional dead tree book is a good idea. i owe my firstborn to Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development, as outdated as it is, and also O'Reilly's kookaburra book gave me a great overview of web programming back in the day, etc.  you can learn a lot by just clicking around random blogs, but you’ll often end up with a lot of random little facts and no good mental scaffolding for holding it together; often, a decent book will give you that scaffolding.)

(also, it's pretty useful if you can find a knowledgable someone to pepper with random questions as you go. finding someone who will actively mentor you is tricky, but most working computery folks are happy to tell you things like "what you're doing is actually impossible, here's why," or "here's a tutorial someone told me was good for learning how to write a linux kernel module," or "here's my vague understanding of this concept you know nothing about," or "here's how you automate something to click on a link on a webpage," which tends to be handier than just google on its own.)

if you're reading this and you're like "ok cool but where's the part where i'm handed a computer and i gotta break in while going all hacker typer”—that's not the bulk of the work, alas! like, for sure, we do have fun pranking each other by trying dumb ways of stealing each other's passwords or whatever (once i stuck a keylogger in a dude's keyboard, fun times). but a lot of my security jobs have involved stuff like, "stare at this disassembly a long fuckin' time to figure out how the program pointer got all fucked up," or, "write a fuzzer that feeds a lot of randomized input to some C++ program, watch the program crash because C++ is a horrible language for writing software, go fix all the bugs," or "think Really Hard TM about all the settings and doohickeys this OS/GPU/whatever has, think about all the awful things someone could do with it, threat model and sandbox accordingly." occasionally i have done cool proof-of-concept hacks but honestly writing exploits can kinda be tedious, lol, so like, i'm only doing that if it's the only way i can get people to believe that Yes This Is Actually A Problem, Fix Your Code

"lua that's cool and all but i wanted, like, actual links and recommendations and stuff" okay, fair. here's some ideas:

microcorruption: very fun embedded security CTF; teaches you everything you need to know as you're doing it.

cryptopals crypto challenges: very fun little programming exercises that teach you a lot of fundamental cryptography concepts as you're going along! you can do these even as a bit of a n00b; i did them in Python for the lulz

the binary bomb lab is hilariously copied by, like, so many CS programs, lol, but for good reason. it's accessible and fun and is the first time most people get to feel like a real hacker! (requires you know a bit of C beforehand)

ctftime is a good way to see when new CTFs ("capture the flag"s; security-focused competitions) are coming up. or, sometimes CTFs post their source code, so you can continue trying them after the CTF is over. i liked Stripe's CTFs when they were going, because they focused on "web stuff", and "web stuff" was all i really knew at the time. if you're more interested in staring at disassembly, there's CTFs focused on that sort of thing too.

azeria has good ARM assembly & exploitation tutorials

also, like, lots of good talks out there; just watching defcon/cansecwest/etc talks until something piques your interest is very fun. i'd die on a battlefield for any of Christopher Domas's talks, but he assumes a lot of specific x86/OS knowledge, lol, so maybe don’t start with that. oh, Julia Evans's blog is honestly probably pretty good for just learning a lot of stuff and really beginner-friendly?

oh and wrt legality... idk, i haven't addressed it here since it hasn't come up in my own work much, tbh. if you're just getting started you're kind of unlikely to Break The Law without, y'know, realizing maybe you're doing something a bit gray-area? and you can cross that bridge when you come to it? Real Hacking TM is way more of a pain-in-the-ass than doing CTFs and such, and you'll learn way more with the latter, so who cares lol just do the fun thing

[exeggcute]

something that I think gets overlooked whenever the topic of ao3's fundraising comes up is that, like... if you are not on board with the shit that the people running the site get up to (everything from potential mismanagement of funds to their extremely laissez-faire approach to content moderation and letting terrible shit fly under the radar) then you probably do not want to give them donations. I, personally, do not think ao3 deserves my money or your money or anyone's money (unless they somehow managed to clean up their act in a major way, which I place somewhere between "unlikely" and "impossible").

now, that being said, as much as you should not donate to this particular website, the idea that a website needs money to operate is not weird or controversial in itself. every single thing you do on the internet is incurring costs for someone, somewhere. every server request, every byte of data stored, every domain registered and SSL certificate renewed has a dollar value attached to it. and I think this gets obfuscated because most sites offset this cost (and usually come out ahead with profits) by running ads, which, as we all know, are all but ubiquitous at this point. quarantining the rest under a readmore here because I know long posts are really annoying, lol. sorry to all you poor souls.

but it's one of those "if you aren't paying for the product, you ARE the product" things: and it's not true 100% of the time online, but the majority of free-to-use sites are only free because the people running the site are making money off of your ad impressions. the alterative is either that someone is paying for it out of pocket (as a passion product or whatever) or that it's being collective funded by user donations—but any time a website loads on your computer, money is absolutely changing hands to make it happen (regardless of where it comes from!)

wikipedia is the most obvious example of a site that does not run ads and therefore relies on user donations, and with the absolutely insane size of wikipedia (both in sheer quantity of data and like, its overall information hierarchy), it's not hard to imagine why jimmy wales isn't just running it out of his basement for free. every time you read a wikipedia article, it essentially "costs" the site money, and wikipedia has a lot of fucking articles read by a lot of fucking users. the donations they receive pay for the server request fees every time you load an article.

which isn't to say that you should just suck it up and donate to ao3 if you use the site, because I don't think that's true at all lol. but if anyone is serious about creating an alternative website for hosting fanfiction, ideally way way more robust content moderation, they'll need money to do it. potentially a pretty big sum, especially when it comes to the moderation aspect, because it's hard to fully automate that kind of thing (as we've seen time and time again—look at facebook or yotube or even tumblr's own ill-fated adult content flagging system) and you'd probably want to pay people for their time and labor if they have to slog through nasty shit to make those judgements about it. and that's not even getting into all the regular old stuff about a website: the code you'd have to write, the databases and content management systems, "customer" (or user) support and documentation, hosting fees, data compliance shit, whatever. the options for getting that money are basically (1) solicit optional donations from users, (2) run ads on the site (which seems like a fraught possibility when it comes to fanfiction's relationship to copyright law and essentially "profiting" off of content without reimbursing the source material's rights holders), or (3) find a rich programmer who really likes spirk fanfiction and will take care of literally everything for free.

so I don't even know what I'm really trying to say here other than, like, it's kind of nuts that this one shitty fanfiction site is one of the few popular websites these days that isn't plugged in to the whole digital advertising economy? and the ad ecosystem is a whooole other thing I could (but won't lol) get into/ it just sucks that everything on the web these days trends towards "free but only because the website's owners are profiting off of your engagement." especially considering that yes, free-to-use sites that rely on donations are still costing some users some money, but the direct commodification of User Attention is a direct contributor (if not the biggest cause) of so much shit that's plaguing the internet at large. I would very much love to see more popular sites that steer away from ad revenue and towards some other means of financial support. and I want to believe we can grow it ourselves... we just have to pitch in and make it less shitty than everything else that's already out there. somehow.

[pk-majora]

exploring my natal chart like pt 13 i think. found another really great website for a free chart astro-charts.com

I was born during a waning crescent moon and a lot of planets were in retrograde when i was born.

"A Waning Crescent is a wise, aged moon that has already experienced every phase in the cycle. This causes people born under a Waning Crescent to possess special talents or knowledge. Having this unique perspective can lead to a life of success, imagination, and fulfillment."

SOURCES: https://www.yourmoonphase.com/blogs/your-moon-phase/what-the-moon-phase-on-your-birthday-says-about-you#:~:text=A%20Waning%20Crescent%20is%20a,success%2C%20imagination%2C%20and%20fulfillment.

"Retrograde Mercury: These people absorb thoughts and ideas through repetition and osmosis rather than careful, deliberate study. Constantly editing, reviewing, rethinking, replaying it in their mind. Own best teacher. Questions what others accept as gospel. More capable of dealing with abstractions and impressions than those with Mercury direct.

Retrograde Jupiter: These people are capable of taking advantage of opportunities that others ignore or pass by. They prefer to “take another crack” at things others have tried and failed. Their moral and ethical code, religion, and philosophy are their own. They seek answers from within rather than subscribing to the dogma of the outside world. They seek abundance in new, untried, and unproven areas.

Retrograde Saturn: These people may doubt their worthiness as human beings. May avoid taking responsibility for their mistakes and be fearful of taking chances. There is often subconscious fear of rejection and loss. Their limitations and burdens are self-imposed. This may be the most difficult retrograde.

Retrograde Uranus: Here is a natural-born rebel. Strong reformer instincts — for everybody else. These folks have a strong inner need and desire to persistently test their personal abilities against those of others. They must constantly prove themselves to themselves. In seeking greater freedom for themselves, they may limit the freedom of others.

Retrograde Neptune: These people may be confused inwardly as to whether they are “virtuous” or not. Persistently seek to help others, whether their help is wanted or not. They are more susceptible and more easily taken in by others."

SOURCES: https://www.mollysastrology.com/lessons/retrograde-planets/

Some other information about my chart:

"Most of the inner planets are located in the top hemisphere

Mars is on the Midheaven

Ascendant and Mc are in 9 aspects

Venus in Libra and Uranus in Aquarius are in the signs of their rulership.

The Square aspect occurs the most, a total of 11 times

Uranus and Neptune are rising

The bottom right quadrant is empty

The Fixed mode is dominant among the inner planets"

SOURCES: astro-charts.com (they give you all that info if it applies to you when you make your chart super cool website)

Based on my chart from cafeastrology.com I have:

6 masculine/4 feminine placements

3 cardinal/4 fixed/3 mutable mode placements

and my breakdown by element is 3 fire/3 earth/3 air/and 1 water sign lmfao which is my scorpio mars + midheaven lmfao.

Going to see if I can find out what that all means too lmfao.

Also found some really cool websites with info on chiron and lillith placements.

"Chiron is the wounded healer and shows our long-term wounds that often come from a past lifetime. Chiron in Libra is the particular wound of relationships.

We tend to overcompensate in Chiron areas by becoming a bit extreme. It’s natural to try and “fix” the wound, but often I find that we chase a solution to fix our Chiron, instead of uncovering the solution inside of us.

Unlike other planets, it’s hard to ignore your Chiron. It will hit you in the face, over and over, and can make your life pretty terrible, especially if you don’t know how to work with it. The Chiron in Libra wound is especially difficult because it’s all about relationships, something we deal with almost every day.

Chiron in Libra means that you feel like there is something missing from your life. Usually, this “something” is your soul mate.

The Chiron in Libra wound might feel like a hole inside you. You may spend time trying to fill it with things from the outside world. You might also feel as though the world is just a bit off-balance at all times.

With Chiron in Libra, you are hurt by loneliness, but you are also hurt by relationships. Whether you’re in a relationship or are alone, the wound is there. Chiron in Libra shows itself no matter how hard you try to hide it.

There can be a lot of anxiety and guilt surrounding the Chiron in Libra wound. These people typically feel inadequate socially as a child, regardless of whether or not this is apparent to others.

This Chiron in Libra wound can show itself in a variety of ways. Often, these people feel alone and incomplete without a relationship, but they never find the fulfillment that they’re looking for in any relationship, either.

The Chiron in Libra wound usually manifests as conflict in interpersonal relationships. It is really difficult for these folks to have relationships without triggering the wound. This can include conflicts in romantic relationships, as well as partnerships and friendships. If you have Chiron in Libra, be wary of self-neglect in relationships.

Most relationships for the Chiron in Libra person will be karmic. It is important for these folks to focus on relationships in order to heal the wound, but this spotlight must have the intention of learning and working on ways to approach relationships that are more authentic.

It’s not abnormal for the Chiron in Libra person to wear a mask in a relationship. It might be really hard for them to show their true self to their partner for fear of losing the relationship.

The terror of being alone makes it hard for a Chiron in Libra person to get out of a relationship, even if it becomes unhealthy. It’s not uncommon for these relationships to have some sort of abuse involved in them, mainly because the Chiron in Libra person is passive and malleable, so they’re really a prime target.

I find that those with Chiron in Libra tend to give far more than they receive. This is most likely due to their fear of being left alone. There are definitely “people-pleaser” tendencies with this placement; these are the classic conflict-avoidant individuals.

Alternatively, the Chiron in Libra individual can be so afraid of being alone that they refuse to engage in relationships at all. I don’t see this outcome as much, but it is certainly a possibility. These people are often able to give others relationship advice that they can’t follow themselves.

Typically, the Chiron in Libra person gets into relationships with those who show a mirror image of the qualities they can’t see in themselves. They might also give to their partners what they aren’t able to give to their inner selves.

A Chiron in Libra individual might live a double life. It’s easy for them to hide who they truly are inside if they feel that they must put on a face in order to stay in a relationship. Sometimes, these people will do this for years, even while living with a partner.

This really is the classic Romeo & Juliet placement. Chiron in Libra is all about sacrificing yourself for the partner. Often, individuals do this because they are desperately trying to heal the wound, but it doesn’t fix it.

I find that most Chiron in Libra placements are developed in a past life. Unlike other wounds, this wound is about karmic relationships, so Chiron in Libra people will usually meet the same souls over and over until the wound is healed.

Sometimes, these Chironic beliefs are cemented by parents or through other early life experience, but the original wound almost always comes from a relationship trauma in a past life.

The first step to healing Chiron in Libra is to recognize that the true soul mate is within. The Chiron in Libra person is constantly looking to fill that “soul mate” void with other people, but they will only feel truly complete by connecting with the inner self.

You will find with this placement that others reflect your own needs back to you. If you see qualities in others that you feel you lack, then it’s time to try and discover those qualities within yourself instead of outsourcing.

You will need to learn how to be authentic in a relationship, without hiding any part of yourself. You probably feel fear that you might be left alone if you do reveal your true self, but this is fear that you have to process and move through. It’s okay to be afraid. The lesson with Chiron in Libra is to do it anyways!

Unconditional love for the self is something that will be helpful for you to develop. You will learn, by doing this work, that separateness and aloneness were simply illusions. I find that energy work can be especially helpful, as well as meditation and inner work."

SOURCES: https://teaandrosemary.com/chiron-in-libra/

(Lillith in Virgo) "Rebellion against order; provocative humour.

Their sensuality is strongly suppressed by trying to appear calm; emotional conflicts often occur because it is very difficult for these people to feel relaxed. They want to suppress their instincts or they appear to be cold and perverted.

Beware of alcoholism and surgery of the intestines."

SOURCES: https://horoscopes.astro-seek.com/lilith-in-virgo-sign-astrology-meaning

I also have something called a yod that i dont quite understand yet lol. it looks like an isosceles triangle in my chart between my MC, North Node, and Saturn and it looks like its pointing at my saturn but idk what that means lol. the chart on astro-charts.com just let me know i have it lmfao.

[captain-of-the-historicfuture]

~hello~ !! For the meta asks!: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, and 25 :))

Hello!! Thank you for sending these; I was really excited to see that ask game and I was hoping somebody would send some in. It still took me a while to actually answer them though, and for that I apologise. But without further ado! Some meta answers (under the cut because they ended up being fairly long, whoops):

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (Consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway.)

I thought of a few examples, but they could basically be grouped together under a common theme: whumpy/angsty scenes that were self-indulgent as all heck. The whole self-indulgent aspect often required the characters to be just the teeniest, tiniest bit OOC and/or necessitated rather unrealistic plot circumstances. So it was simply easier to keep such scenes as maladaptive daydreams, rather than trying to think of explanations for the character/plot issues…or exposing myself to judgement for them LOL.

Receiving permission to write/share one such scene anyway is an opportunity I can’t let slip by though. It might be because I’m writing this while running on zero (0) hours of sleep—let’s hear it for insomnia, y’all!—but I suddenly couldn’t remember any of my newer ideas under this category. However, I did recall a one-shot I had started writing a couple of months ago that sort of counts? “Sort of” because I could actually be arsed to write it since I was, ya know, writing it. Only got about six hundred words down though.

…should I share those six hundred words…?

………nahhh. I don’t think I’m quite ready for that yet.

But here’s the gist of it: Coulson and May (because of course it’s Philinda) were married for quite some time before the Attack on New York. But then Coulson DiedTM and then got ResurrectedTM. But gasp of horror, he had to lose his memories of his romantic relationship with May because reasons. (I actually did have some ideas for those reasons but sshhhh this is about me yeeting context and setup.)

The first half of S1 still happens as normal (except MayWard doesn’t happen because??? Vows) and it’s now post-E20 “Nothing Personal”. The morning after (or a morning soon after, whatever) the T.A.H.I.T.I. reveal! May’s mom—who doesn’t know about GH.325 and whom May fed a cover story about Coulson divorcing her or something equally as oof, IDK—shows up at the hotel and starts ripping into Coulson for breaking her daughter’s heart, then dragging her back into the field with her ex-husband (him), then accusing her of terrible things and forcing her away again.

Poor guy’s confused as heck, and so is the team, and soon enough so is Lian. The only one who understands what’s going on is May, and she’s freaking dying off to the side like why is this happening to me and eventually everybody’s like! Explain??? (Was thinking about including something from Coulson like, “Are you still keeping things from me?” Just for that extra smidge of angst, yay!)

So yeah then May gives a, like, two-sentence debriefing that elicits more questions than answers. Coulson decides to take May aside and they have a heart-to-heart. Lots of feelings and angst and hurt/comfort and at some point plenty of kissing too. Just! May hiding her feelings for Coulson’s sake but really magnified, plus some actual apologies and consideration of the grief May’s been through on Coulson’s part.

And uhh yeah that’s basically it I dunno hdsjncjshd. I warned y’all it’s OOC, plot-bendy, and very self-indulgent!

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

I don’t think I could name a single character for this. I get different things out of taking on different voices, you know? I guess recently I’ve found myself gravitating towards more taciturn and introspective points of view, like JQ from my original novel Rosewood or M. Yisbon from my…other original novel Temple.

Generally, however, I like tackling stories from an outsider’s perspective. That’s why I so rarely write my more “substantial” (serious? demanding? for lack of better words?) projects from the PoV of my “preferred” character. This usually means writing from their love interest’s perspective, but not always. With shorter fanfic, using a more removed/unconventional/niche PoV can be really fun. Like, I once wrote a canon compliant ficlet purely(-ish) about Philinda from Tony Stark’s perspective. That isn’t always sustainable with stories that demand more character development or closer character studies, however, which is why it’s a good thing I like writing drabbles!

9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other?

My word counts tend to run long, but I usually only write one-shots for fanfic. If I’m even inspired with a novella- or novel-length story idea for a fandom, you already know I’m in deep with them. And if I actually find the motivation to plan and execute that idea? Dangg. That’s only ever happened…twice, maybe thrice, and I’m in a lot of fandoms.

At times, I wish I could go for more of a middle ground ’cause, like, you know what I love to see? An AO3 dashboard with several completed novellas for my ship/character of choice. I mean yes, I hecking love >90k fics, but sometimes I’m in the mood for quick reads…and what am I supposed to do when I burn through all the drabbles and 2k one-shots? (Besides despair and/or reread my faves desperately.) Novellas are basically always safe for me LOL, and I’d hope to be able to give as much as I take.

Ultimately though, I think I’m okay with where I am with regards to that. I wish I could write more in general, but I’d be okay with “writing more” just meaning “writing more one-shots”, ya know? More than okay, really. I have mad respect for fic writers who have, like, a hundred or more one-shots under their belt for this one ship. The fandom ecosystem would be incomplete without them (as well as every other type of writer, but sshhh that’s the type of writer I’m closest to being right now).

I’m definitely a plotter, and I definitely prefer it that way. It’s cool having such a detailed record of my process. I like feeling like a frazzled genius on the brink of a major discovery with all of my different outlines and colour coding and many drafts and various websites.

12. Do you want your writing to be famous?

Not exactly. It might be cool if my original works were recognisable in the world, but I don’t think I’d want to be recognisable. As for fanfic, I’d low-key enjoy gaining a place in that fandom’s community as a fic writer. Like someone who gave and got fic gifts from fic writer friends, who participated in challenges and GCs, who received writing prompts on Tumblr, whose name was known for doing a certain trope/genre a bunch of times… Ya know what I mean?

Unlikely to happen when I’m so hecking hesitant to publicly (i.e., outside of AO3) claim credit for my writing, but fjnskfsjhfjs. A writer can dream, right?

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Of those three, tags are the easiest for me, for I have a reliable system for figuring out those.

Next easiest would probably be titles. For fanfiction, I like to use titles that are a quote from the source material. You should have seen all of my old Hamilton fanfic… I was really proud of some of those titles. And I don’t mean, like, whole lines—usually only two to five words. It’s a unique type of wordplay that I just love dabbling in.

And lastly, summaries. Sometimes inspiration strikes me and a snappy and intriguing synopsis just jumps out—one that I’m quietly pleased with—but most of the time I’ll spend way too long trying to think of such a synopsis and eventually just go with whatever I’d come up with so far. And live with my quiet dissatisfaction for the rest of time.

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (Plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations...?) Tell us about them!

Typically, no. If I have deleted scenes, I save and publish them separately, but that’s about it. I sometimes think of AUs for my own work and might talk about them in my author’s notes—might even talk about writing them—but I never really do anything with them.

Although…

It’s not uncommon for me to decide a plotline isn’t working for a certain story or to think of an interesting but undoable arc for a certain character, but what I’ll do is make a whole new story for those ideas. Once I’m done developing the original idea and the branched-off one, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell they grew from the same roots. Does that count?

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as (film, webcomic, animated series, etc.)?

That depends on the story. I’ve actually written stories in other mediums—movie screenplay, musical stageplay, poetry, TV show scripts, play scripts, roleplay—but the novel does tend to be my comfort zone. Sometimes, if I have an idea that I think could work, or would even work better, as another medium, I’ll label it as such in my folder of ideas and decide not to write it as a novel.

Most of the time, my non-book projects are collaborations. I’m working with five different people on six different story ideas: two webcomics, one stage musical, one anime, and two animated TV shows. Little concrete progress has been made in any of those, mind you, but they’re still fun to discuss!

24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?

Absolutely. But I’ve been writing stories since I was five years old, so we would hope so, huh?

I wouldn’t say my writing’s changed completely, though maybe that’s just my insider’s perspective.

25. What part of writing is the most fun?

Oh gosh, I can’t believe you’d make me choose. Writing is just such a wonderful experience for me; I love just about everything to do with it. Admittedly, not all the time, but. Since that barely qualifies as an answer, however, I’ll give you this—

The endings. Not only that intense feeling of rightness when you wrap up that last sentence, but also the moments before. The adrenaline of knowing you’re almost there but you gotta push just a bit more to actually get there. And also the part right after—the real wrap-up, honestly: the revision and the editing. Heavens, I love revising and editing my work.

Which is not to say I don’t like writing it out for the first time, too—there’s nothing quite like seeing your cursor scroll to the next page, like going from a blank expanse to a Oh man, how many more lines are even going to fit on this page?, like watching that page counter tick up another number. However, there’s something cathartic about finally ironing out those problems I had to force myself to stop worrying about earlier because “just finish the first draft dangit”.

I guess that’s not really the end of the writing process, but whatever. Close enough (as fic writers are wont to say).

Another thank-you for these asks, and feel free to come back with more at any time! ;P

Send in fun meta asks for your friendly neighbourhood writer!

[hinapia-archived]

how do you make your gifs?

hi there! i’m not sure if you wanted the very basics or a tutorial, but i think this is more of a tutorial? sorry if that isn’t what you wanted! i tend to overexplain everything ;;;

i only started making gifs this summer, but i hope i explained everything (somewhat) clearly! feel free to send any other questions if you have any~

to make gifs, i use vapoursynth (alternatively, you can use avisynth) and photoshop cc 2019

under the cut!

downloading videos:

so! for live stages, i always use the ts file for it. ts files give the best quality for your gifs, and i’ve found i don’t like how the quality looks even if it’s 1080p, but that’s all your preference!

to find and download ts files, i use these websites:

4sashi, kpop24hours, kpopexciting // along with these, i’ve heard you can use twitter as well for ts files but i honestly don’t know what to search to find them lol

if you’re downloading from youtube, i always look for 4k videos, but if i can’t find any 4k for what i’m looking for, i use 1080p! i don’t really like going less than that, though ;; 

to download youtube videos i use 4k video downloader! it’s really nice because it lets you download any youtube video (no matter the length) and it lets you download it in the highest quality for free! (if you want to download videos with 4k resolution, you have to pay a one time fee of $20 *i believe* and you have an access key for up to three computers! otherwise, 4k video downloader is completely free!).

if you want to download anything from vlive or twitter, i normally just look up “vlive video downloader” or “twitter video downloader” and just click the first thing that pops up

using vapoursynth: (link to where i downloaded vapoursynth -> here)

i somehow by miracle got vapoursynth to work on my windows computer, but i honestly have no idea how because the first time i tried it just would not work! it’s a big pain, but i’ve heard it’s a lot easier to download and get to work on mac! if you’re using windows, though, a nice alternative is avisynth, which i used before i got vapoursynth!

vapoursynth is really simple to use, to be completely honest! i don’t know how good i’ll be at explaining it so i’ll leave a link to a tutorial i used at the end of this explanation! it can be a bit daunting at first because of all the code, but tbh you don’t really need to know everything it says, most of it is just copy and paste!

to get the resizer and the vapoursynth script to load, you just have to click and drag your video file over on top of the file called vapourscript, which can be found in your vapoursynth folder! (my folder is called “VapourSynth64Portable”, because that’s how it came for me) to know if you’re in the right folder, you should see other files in there like “gifs” “scripts” “plugins” and others!

after you drag your video file onto the vapourscript and resize your gif, copy what it says in the resizer and paste it in vapoursynth!

here’s the tutorial i used to explain it easier -> here

options i use: 

i normally use the size 268 x 400 in the gif resizer (makes it portrait), or if i want it to be a landscape type size, i use 268 x 200!

if you’re using a ts file, click the preprocessor option (the first one that says none), and change it to one of the qtgmc options! i always use qtgmc 60 fast, but it’s up to you!

for anything else (mkv, mp4, etc), i would suggest leaving it on none!

i don’t use any sharpen actions in photoshop, i use vapoursynth instead!

typical vapoursynth settings:

for the amount of frames: ts files i try to keep under 200 (even under 100 if possible) and for everything else i don’t really pay attention to the number of frames!

everything from here on is done on photoshop!

coloring: 

this is all preference!! a lot of gifmaking is just about what you like personally! some people actually have a base psd or use others’ colorings (again, preference!), but i personally really love coloring, it’s my favorite thing about gifmaking, so i almost always make a new psd (coloring) for every gifset i make! the main things i use in coloring though are selective layers, color balance, hue/saturation, threshold, contrast/brightness, and then i top it off by lessening the exposure!

frame delay: 

0.04 or 0.05 seconds, i never use anything above or below that! this is another preference thing though lol

exporting:

to export your gif go to file > export > save for web (legacy)! here are my export options!

i hope this tutorial helps you! sorry if it was too long or if i overexplained anything/made it even more confusing! i only started making gifs during the summer, so if you have any tips for me as well, please don’t be afraid to send any in! you can send in any more asks as well, if i made things too confusing/you have any more questions!

bye bye!

[pkgam]

What Happened to Twitch?

Twitch used to be a pretty good website. I had really high hopes that it would be a competitor to Youtube. It is a live stream platform that was ahead of Youtube as Youtube took a while to do live stuff. It has videos as well such as of past streams or people streaming videos they made for viewing later, viewer interaction features, solid streamers, no audible magic, good mods/staff, etc... Now the issues with the site are virtually endless. Let me give you a rundown of various things I have experienced and I have heard others experiencing which you may or may not have experienced because it’s as if that issues are not even account-specific.

Lately when logging in, every time, they prompt be to get a 6-digit code from my Email to continue to login because they “don’t recognize” my device. Yeah, you know how on every other website that has verification things like this, it’ll keep track of what devices you logged in from so you don’t have to keep verifying? No matter what, it doesn’t do that for me and a bunch of others. It seems to work fine for others though. So it’s user-specific. I have even tried logging in from one PC, then logging into another off the same internet while STILL being logged in to that PC and it’ll ask me to verify on both. It should at least be able to tell it’s from the same IP, but nope.

Try reporting the glitches and problems to Twitch as well. You’ll get nowhere. A recent experience I had with them was I tried to resolve that 6-digit verification thing for months. I explain it, get what looks like a generic copy/paste or automated response that does not address the issue, I respond back saying that wasn’t it and explain it again, then get NO response back, but do get a response back with a survey on how they did. Needless to say I was not satisfied and explained it in a civil way. No response back from them for that either. They used to handle stuff like that so well way back. Like, I remember when The Speed Gamers migrated from Ustream back to Twitch that they were having layout trouble during one of their charity streams in that what they wanted to incorporate on their page couldn’t be done, so they messaged Twitch staff about it and they tweaked the page so they could. Stuff like that was amazing! I don’t see things like that happen anymore.

When finally being able to log in, I’ve noticed that oftentimes my status is set to “offline” when I always have it set to “online”. Alternately I have seen friend’s statuses going to idle despite them being active on the site. So that status part of the site is entirely borked.  Moving on to other topics...

I think users knew when they implemented Audible Magic (basically Content ID for Twitch, automatically hitting videos) and played it off as a benefit to streamers so they can remove copyrighted music in their videos that it was going to go downhill. Remember that a lot of people went from Youtube to Twitch (Or Justin.tv) BECAUSE they were tired of Youtube’s horrible automated systems. Add automation in the mix and, well... it indeed went downhill.

Twitch is clearly inconsistent in their moderation now too. There was this one girl who frustratedly threw her cat behind her on stream and nothing came of it. But on the other hand, there was a girl who got banned for apparent dog yelps off camera with her being there, stating the ban was for animal abuse. Story: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/twitch-streamer-furious-over-animal-abuse-ban-amid-alinity-controversy-1296710 Many’ more examples like that out there on various topics.

Also, ever since they implemented automatic moderation of words in chat, there has been a ridiculous amount of people punished for innocent things (you can briefly read what they post before it gets removed from view or use a browser extension to reveal them) because it can’t tell context. At least streamers can turn that off, but it was set to on by default which caused a lot of issues. Still’ does when people have it on as not everyone turned it off.

Streams have been getting very bad audio glitches for me in that they will get more and more distorted until I pause then play the stream. On top of that, the chat will stop scrolling with new messages at times, forcing me to scroll it down manually. With both of these, it’s like having to maintain two fronts while trying to interact. Not fun.

Speaking of trying to interact, ever since they implemented that stream delay of like 20 seconds to cheap on the servers, it has not been the same anyway. They eventually implemented a “low latency” thing which yields faster delivery at the cost of possibly buffering a lot, but it’s still longer than the 2-3 seconds it used to be. Just imagine trying to converse with someone face to face and they respond 20 seconds later first. It’s the most awkward thing to keep track of. (Smashcast doesn’t have that. Just’ saying...) It can be even worse if the stream player itself gets an error and you have to refresh, which does happen fairly often. Making you possibly miss the point the streamer talked to you. Trying to sort it out then just stalls the whole thing because they have to readdress you if you mention it to them which backlogs them responding to others and etc...

For the videos on demand (VOD) themselves, playback is often glitchy as errors happen midway through, they don’t play at all and seeking to a certain part is often very difficult as it doesn’t go where you click. Heck, I heard from others that sometimes you can’t even PAUSE a VOD as that functionality is glitched out. But pausing works fine for me. Why is that? Who knows.

Live streams aren’t much better as they have their own issues. I often get errors and have to refresh the page to get it to run again. Even when not getting an error, I noticed that I’m served a slightly-slower stream than others seem to get. So I have to pause then unpause the video every so often to get it to jump back ahead to the closest point I can see. Part of me wonders if the error and slightly slower stream are related, but don’t hold me to that. I have a good internet connection too.

Twitch streams also get deleted nowadays unless set up to into highlights. Given that many weren’t aware this happened before it was too late (you only had 14 days to save them if not a turbo/prime member and 60 if you are), a TON of content got lost. People argued that it’s to save money because of the hosting costs of video data being large. So rather than streams just being automatically turned into highlights as a precautionary measure, they just let them get wiped because they didn’t care. I’m not entirely sure about that “because” you can save streams to highlights as mentioned. So it’s just going to fill back up again since people now know of it, if not already has filled back up.

Twitch also got rid of PMs so past conversations you might have wanted to look back on or had to catch up on as a backlog were lost. You can do the same sort of thing in whispers if a person allows it in their settings, but what’s the point of getting rid of PMs?... Text is text regardless of where it’s located. This was one of those sorts of changes that I can’t figure out. I “thought” maybe they wanted to unify a private place to talk since both existed at once time, but why not just move the conversation to the other or not have both at the same time to begin with?

Another thing they get rid of for no reason is email notifications to streams you follow. They “say” if you don’t watch a stream for a while they’ll turn off email alerts to it. Which makes sense to not fill up someone’s inbox. Imagine for instance they stream 30 days straight and you don’t go to any of them as sort of a break. That’s 30 emails that are useless to you. Except it doesn’t work. Even streams I watched regular like Bob Ross got email alerts disabled. You can tell that they keep track of when you click an Email link to someone’s stream too because in the URL you’ll notice it recognizes you came from the Email. So there’s no excuse. Oh and there’s no way to toggle that automated disabling of alerts to off as far as I’m aware. So you just have to deal with it. At least they do seem to be consistent about telling you when it does turn off email alerts, but get ready to enter that 6-digit login code just to fix the alerts regardless if the person is streaming or not.

After the Amazon buyout, eventually they started pushing Twitch Prime as well, basically another paid subscription thing like Turbo, only with Amazon benefits added on it. But all the things they push as “prime loot” are complete garbage. Stuff like Raid: Shadow Legends which is hardly a “game”. What made them even think a community of gamers would be into that? Well, maybe they did realize that, but did it anyway as a business partnership for the moolah.

I get the feeling that business partnerships are what’s going on with all the Valorant stuff popping up as well. Only with streamers being able to take advantage of it. For example: People found out to try the game, they need to watch any Valorant stream with drops enabled for a for 2 hours. That lead to people going to streams just for that invite. Many people. Artificial-inflation amounts of people that encourage people to stream it for said numbers and Twitch recommending channels playing it like mad to people, lol! So yeah, I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t a business partnership.

You can find many more examples out there of people may or may not having a bug for things, but this should be enough to explain that Twitch is a complete mess. Every single aspect of it. It’s in a state like Youtube where everything is broke and they are ignoring users who message them telling about bugs (which they claim they encourage people to do and they listen to) or maybe are just unwilling to fix any of them even if they know about them. Who knows because they don’t communicate like they used to.

Your thoughts?

Thanks for reading and have a good one!

[comicteaparty]

June 10th-June 16th, 2020 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from June 10th, 2020 to June 16th, 2020.  The chat focused on the following  question:

How does poor web design affect if and/or how you read a particular webcomic?

carcarchu

it's a huge factor. if a comic is amazing in every way but the website or app makes it difficult for me to read i'm simply NOT going to read it. there are a lot of great series that i've put on the back burner just because the website is so annoying to navigate

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i've honestly never run into a website so bad it stopped me from reading a comic i was interested in

carcarchu

FYI the worst comic app i've ever experienced is Aqua Kiss which I downloaded to read a single series. it's the most barebones app imaginable with no search bar. if you want to read something you actually have to manually load each calendar week to find it and some stuff are buried dozens of pages back. and to make matters worse it doesn't have a "history" or "bookmarks" feature either

Deo101 [Millennium]

The worst things with sites that I see often are 1: huge headers, and 2: laggy sites (not really site design, but its adjacent I think) Another is if the pages are too big on the screen, so you can't, for instance, see some panels all at once. Those kinds of things can really ruin a reading experience for me

carcarchu

One example of a website that is hostile to the reading experience is ZMYK which for some reason hosts vertical scroll comics but cuts them up into little pieces as if they were comic format so you can't actually scroll through the entire chapter as it was intended to

That kind of thing grinds my gears so much how can something you have to pay for be that incredibly bad

Deo101 [Millennium]

I've also seen some sites that have graphic design issues, where elements are illegible due to their color, and some have very busy and distracting backgrounds. Those kinds of things won't necessarily ruin it, but they're distracting

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

forward comic's website was doing this weird thing where the further I read the longer pages took to load. Near the end it seemed they were taking 10 full seconds. Still read the whole thing though. Reading manga on shady sites with terrible internet connection as a kid has desensitized me

Oh one comic I was interested in but didn't read because of the site: I was kidnapped by lesbian pirates from outer space. It doesn't have a website. To read it you have to pirate (hehe) copies of the archive.

It's a pretty sad story- the author was young and tricked into giving up the rights to her series

She ended up taking the site down to prevent the company from getting any more money off of it

https://rosalarian.tumblr.com/post/65353128180/its-with-extreme-sadness-that-i-announce-that-my

Here's her post about it

I think it can be a good warning message to us

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

For me, the biggest thing that deters me from reading a comic is if the website isn't well optimized for mobile (as someone who reads a lot on the go). This includes the images loading bigger than the page, or navigation being hidden on mobile, or glitchy scrolling, or any number of ungodly things. Also, too many ads. That'll turn me away in a heartbeat.

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah ads are definitely a huge turnoff for me too

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

FYI the worst comic app i've ever experienced is Aqua Kiss which I downloaded to read a single series. it's the most barebones app imaginable with no search bar. if you want to read something you actually have to manually load each calendar week to find it and some stuff are buried dozens of pages back. and to make matters worse it doesn't have a "history" or "bookmarks" feature either

@carcarchu okay i just digested this comment and wtf

no search bar is laughably bad omg

how did you even find out about it

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah that's ridiculous hahahaha

carcarchu

it's a shame because there are genuinely good comics on there you can't read anywhere else?? and i found it because an artist i adore did a series for it but it got AXED after only 2 chapters and after that was pretty much scrubbed from the internet. i think it's a shame because it really had so much potential and it ended before the story was really able to start

it's a screenshot from the app. you can see that it is categorized reverse chronologically by week

the point of aqua kiss is to emulate monthly/weekly style manga magazines but in app form. however i think the execution of this idea was horrendous

SteffieMusings

Oh no! It must make reading there so challenging. As for me, if the navigation is so hard to understand/pages don't load properly when you click a link or when the website's colours hurt my eyes so much I can't stay there for too long.

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

Honestly nowadays most of the CMS's out there share the same basic functionality and adaptability, so it's getting harder to screw up on that. Most sites are OK, if only a bit laggy. If the site takes less than 2 seconds to load and it's not so crowded that I have to look for the comic, I'm generally good.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

How much bad/inaccessible web design I'll tolerate is directly proportional to how much I care about the comic.

I've dropped a couple series in the middle of the archive just because they changed the site design to screw up the tracking of bookmarking sites, so I would've had to figure out an alternate way to keep track of it, and it didn't seem worth the effort

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Oh yeah, I've totally had that happen too where I was deep into an archive, had taken a reading break for a month or two, and came back to find the urls had been updated and my spot was lost it isn't so bad if a comic also has an archive page, but ive stopped reading a few stories that it would have been too hard to track down where I was.

DaeofthePast

I haven’t had to experience weird websites in a while, but I do sometimes go to an unknown website to read the comic/manga I’m looking for. Mostly what I’ve had trouble with is unnumbered chapters, of that it’s unclear where/how to start reading in general.(edited)

Like, I get to the page for that specific comic and then there’s no easy “start reading here” button anywhere

And when I do find the chapters list, I don’t know which end of the list is the beginning bc it’s unnumbered

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Is a "First page" button enough or are you looking for a "new readers start here" button? (<- is redisigning her page)

DaeofthePast

Is there a difference? :0

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

hm, sometimes yes.

Some old running comics have different jump-on points (schlock mercenary for example).

DaeofthePast

Ooh I see

Well when I first go on the site, I just want to start reading so idk

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

So, I always try to read every comic that's featured in the book club all the way through. Like even if I don't particularly like the opening, or if the comic is thousands of pages long, or I don't have time to meaningfully discuss the comic, I do try to at least give the comic a fair shake by reading through the entire archive. There have been four exceptions. One was because of content (it was a gag a day comic, and the content was SO horrible for SO long that I just couldn't stand it anymore. real "punching down" type of humor). Another was because the comic was literally deleted before I could get to it. The remaining two were because the site design/organization were so awful that the comics were unreadable. One of the two comics had a custom built, hand-coded site (I assume), and it just... didn't work properly. Like the "previous" button seemingly took you to a random page, the "next" button and the "latest" button led to the same place, etc. I'm not sure the creator ever bothered to test the site. The other one used some pre-built stuff, so it was ok... but you had to scroll to the top of the page to go to the next page. Not only that, but the author was posting all their comics to the same archive - which means one page would be the comic that was actually meant to be read for the book club and the next few pages were a completely different comic entirely. And this wasn't a gag-a-day either - it was a story based comic, so the three action minimum to get to the next page made things absolute hell to keep track of.(edited)

DaeofthePast

Wow

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Uff, yeah, that sounds horrible.

Nyx+Nyssa's page is currently a barebone mess, but I made at least sure the navigation works. :/

DaeofthePast

Having the comic be deleted while you’re reading it sounds like such a weird experience lmao

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

i mean, it wasn't thanos snap style lol

DaeofthePast

Was the website gone too or?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

it was in between days

nah the website was still there, it's just that the author had decided to reboot their comic and forgot that they had submitted it to the book club

DaeofthePast

Oh okay I imagined Thanos snap style

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Not really a design but a site thing: I can't do comics without an archive of some sort. On platforms like Tapas or WT, the episode list serves that purpose perfectly fine. I personally need to be able to see how many pages there are, and I need a way to go to specific pages easily. It might sound like a small complaint, but it's a big thing for me! There have been comics that piqued my interest, but once I saw that there was no archive of any form, I left forever. Sure, I might be missing out, but there are also lots of good comics out there that have accessible archives. My life isn't long enough to read them all, so I'm letting myself be very picky.

copperine

I can manage a very basic site just fine. But if a site is hard to navigate, or just makes reading the page/getting to the next page difficult - I'd be likely to give up eventually. Doesn't matter about the quality of the comic, but if it's a chore to just read it, it's going to put me off after a while

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I will note - if you want me to actually discuss your comic in the book club, please do have an archive link, and probably a cast page too. Like the lack of one doesn't stop me from reading entirely, but I can't discuss anything without being able to look back at specific moments. (and one of those archives that just has dates doesn't count - lemme know what the chapter is!)

copperine

For example - when I read webcomics on dA, I was absolutely fine with either the author having a dedicated folder with the pages in order. Another option was to link next and prev pages in the description. But if I had to go find each next page, I just wouldn't.

DaeofthePast

By an archive do you mean kinda like a chapters list?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

A list of all the pages, ideally

That also list the chapters somehow

copperine

Short version: if I feel like I'm spending half as much time navigating the site as I am actually reading, it's gonna get old real quick

DaeofthePast

And same copperine. As long as it’s organized well, I will probably read it

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Like maybe you click on a chapter link to get to a list of the pages, or maybe it's just a list of the pages with the chapter names as headers

some sort of organization

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah! (I admit my own comic's archive page isn't the prettiest, but it's 100% functional.)

DaeofthePast

I only have a chapter list so far ^^; idk how to go about getting an archive

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Chapter list is totally fine if your chapters tend to be on the shorter side

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

I like having chapter lists around, although coding them can be a handful Not sure if to go for an archive with thumbnails or just with page numbers though.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It's also workable if you also have like... a dropdown menu for individual pages on the actual pages? So it only takes 2 clicks to go to a specific page (first click to go to the chapter, second click to go to the page)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

OH yeah, there was also a dA comic in the book club once that didn't have any next/previous buttons. However, it was a short comic - the bare minimum for getting into the book club - so I still read it all the way through. But it was pretty annoying to do so. (it was also pretty obviously a fetish comic, but that's not really relevant to the discussion XD)

DaeofthePast

I want to post by scene so I’ll be dividing chapters like “chapter 3 part 1” to hopefully that will be better

copperine

I'll always take functional over pretty

DaeofthePast

Haha I’m not sure if I want to know the comic for that one

Also what is “punching down” humor?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Like, the author was a straight man, and nearly every joke was making fun of people who weren't those things.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

it's like making fun of people but

copperine

Yikes

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

you're intentially trying to put them down

that's punching down in my imo rip

DaeofthePast

Oh

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

yeah....

DaeofthePast

Well at least I know what to call it when I see it in the future ._.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Like, occasionally I see a shitty joke in a comic and I keep reading because maybe the author improved (we do sometimes get comics with archives that date back decades in here) But this comic was just so consistently awful for so long that I couldn't stand it

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

oof that aint good

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Though that's kinda off topic lol

DaeofthePast

Oh yeah

So bad site design...

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Anyway, I don't really wanna post the examples of the comics I talked about in here cuz I don't wanna call anyone out

Actually, hold on, lemme check something

DaeofthePast

I feel I haven’t had too much experience with bad site designs, but I might have just forgotten(edited)

K

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

ok yeah

so, the comic where you had to scroll up to the top of each page to click to the next one, and the site was multiple comics alternating pages that made the story rough to follow

copperine

Oof yeah having to scroll up to click next won't stop me but it is a bother

DaeofthePast

I like having the next button both on top and the bottom, even if they update page by page(edited)

It just feels convinient

copperine

Yeah same

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Re: punching up/down, here's an overly simplistic set of examples: billionaires making fun of poor people is punching down. Poor people making fun of billionaires is punching up.

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

's good webdesign pattern for everything with continous content - e.g. blogs, web-novels, webcomics.

Ideally you have one on top, between content and comments and under comments

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

the comic that alternated storylines & required scrolling back up to go to the next page was Antibunny: http://vinnied.comicgenesis.com/d/20061002.html if you see that page I linked and click next a few times, there's no obvious distinction between the main story and the spinoff story (no, like, header change between the two, and the art style looks similar), so you can see how it'd be confusing to follow and the scrolling is just icing on the cake (it used to be even worse) the only reason I feel comfortable sharing that is because the author uploaded the comics to new sites, and fixed all those issues in the process: http://antibunny.net/

DaeofthePast

Oh nice. So they realized the problem

copperine

Aren't they in this server? Or am I thinking of another one

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Yeah, the author is in this server

copperine

I thought so

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Hence why he realized, because we told him that there was a problem during the book club

copperine

I'm not gonna take anything said here as a comment on anyway btw

DaeofthePast

It’s cool that submitting their comic to the tea party resulted in some good feedback :3

copperine

You love to see it!

It always makes me happy when webcomic community stuff helps people out, that seems like the ideal outcome

DaeofthePast

Yess

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

i agree on that yeee

DaeofthePast

It’s like having a friend point out a spelling mistake. Embarrassing but you can live with the knowledge that your work is now a little bit better(edited)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Yeah kinda off-topic, but I love it when the author of the comic for the book club joins the server. Like not only does it mean that the author could join in on others' discussions in the future (pay it forward 'n stuff), but... it's just really sad when I see a comic pop up in the book club and the author seemingly forgot they submitted it.

DaeofthePast

How long does it usually take to get to a comic? :0 that they would forget they submitted it?

copperine

I always hope I can help others out or support them, and I hope they feel the same

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

The book club had a very very long wait list in the past. These days, not so long.

DaeofthePast

And I guess if you submit a comic with a website, the people here can be your beta testers

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

what's odd is that five months ago, the wait list was six months but now, the wait list is two months y'all need to submit/resubmit your comics

DaeofthePast

I tried going to submit mine yesterday and the site doesn’t let me v.v says you’re booked for July

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

oh yeah, so it is

DaeofthePast

Maybe later :3

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

i guess Rebel doesn't want the queue to get too long

copperine

I would submit mine but I'm only at 10 pages and I believe you need to have 20 to submit

DaeofthePast

Ooh they have a minimum?

Gotta count my pages now

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I mean it makes sense. Hard to discuss a comic that only has the cover for chapter 1

DaeofthePast

XD

Tru

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

"Let us dissect this cover image for an entire week"

DaeofthePast

It would be a hilarious April fools challenge

copperine

Idk I think it was 20 minimum?

DaeofthePast

shrug

copperine

@snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights) can you shed any light on this

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

The sign up form is where you would normally find that information.

copperine

... very good point

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

But the form is currently unavailable, and it's possible that Rebel might change the requirement when it becomes available again

copperine

Ah

Thank you for the heads up

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

FYI, https://comicteaparty.com/ is where the form will be available eventually

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

They accept resubmissions now?

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I def like arrows on the top and bottom of pages for sites to be more of a thing, as well as clicking the image for the next page too! Honestly there hasn't been a make or break, mainly preferences, and the most complaints i have are with the mobile formatting. I think most comics have been pretty solid in functionality that i've read, and it's clear that having their own website is becoming mainstream enough for there to be help, tips, and tricks to making it work!

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I definitely prefer if I can just click on the comic image to go to the next page especially for mobile.

copperine

Agreed!

Idk about resubmissions tho

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

... Wow. I absolutely HATE clickable images on mobile, because they usually mess with the pinch-zoom.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i've had sites that didnt have image click throughs and the arrow..... was like SO TINY XD

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Didn't think anyone would actually like it, so... huh.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i kept going back and forth

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

yeah, navigation needs to be bigger on mobile for safe tapping.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Oh, re:resubmissions, I'm pretty sure you can if it's been long enough? I think @snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights) mentioned it recently as an option. But maybe a tangent for #general

boogeymadam

i dont mind the pinch zoom being a little more difficult from time to time cause usually the clickable image is worth it to me

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Same

boogeymadam

am also fond of sites that allow left/right arrows to let you move forward and back on desktop

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Mainly it's just for like Krispy said, reading on mobile and tiny next/previous buttons.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ye my dummy thicc fingers prefer the click through image for sure

ohh yes Boogey that too

boogeymadam

it took me hours of googling to find the very simple comicpress option to just turn that on on my site

copperine

Mmm I do like sites that allow pinch zoom though

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I also prefer clicking on the image to go to the next page

mariah (rainy day dreams)

My fingers small, but still dummy T-T

copperine

It makes it easier to get a better look at the page

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

iweudhweiu Mariah XD

copperine

Especially if it's got smaller font

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

nyxandnyssa has a seperate navigation for mobile that's much bigger and skipping scene select to make tapping easier.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I've had the hover text def bum me out for some comics, where you click the image and it just displays the text, then you gotta click the tiny next bar def killed me there

copperine

I've never had issues with pinch zoom affecting clickable images but I can imagine it would be annoying

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

but! never breaks me out of a comic for me to stop reading-! i persevere in the face of adversity XD

boogeymadam

i've never encountered a site so bad i couldnt continue reading. maybe stuff where i'd stop reading until i was less frustrated but i'd come back later.

DaeofthePast

That’s something I’ll have to consider for my site then

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I feel like Smackjeeves had a really obnoxious auto pitch & zoom before they updated most recently. I like when I can turn it off on my phone. I'd rather do it myself most of the time and let my phone try to auto it X')

DaeofthePast

I usually read on desktop more often than on mobile so it’s good to hear from other’s experiences

copperine

Idk I've never used a custom site yet

boogeymadam

same dae, except on tapas and webtoons!(edited)

comics with their own website i'll boot up my computer for a single update of

DaeofthePast

Even on webtoons I read on desktop

boogeymadam

omg your power, webtoons feels so choppy on desktop to me

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

im definitely lucky that our site got a mobile friendly version i remember the 'ol pinchy zoomz was tiresome on our site for sure

DaeofthePast

I get headaches from reading on my phone unfortunately :/

Idk what the difference is between reading mobile and on a desktop but my brain doesn’t like it

Like, I can text fine???? But reading a comic for some reason is like “no”

So yeah, comics on desktop for me

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ohh!! it could be the close proximity!

DaeofthePast

Ooh :0 maybe?

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i know i get motion sickness depending on how close/ far i am from screens

DaeofthePast

Maybe it’s something like that... :O

boogeymadam

whatever the reason sorry you get headaches and motion sickness from comics :'0

DaeofthePast

Every once in a while I’ll try again to read on mobile I never learn

boogeymadam

the only reason i dont like mobile is sometimes comics text is a combination of too small there and the font is hard on my dyslexia

DaeofthePast

Rip

boogeymadam

so i see if zooming in on my computer helps

DaeofthePast

The lesson here is that it’s good to have both mobile and desktop options

boogeymadam

yep :'D

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ohhh yea def agree. I know that feeling and i sometimes ... have a Time reading my own work XD (i admit it lol!!)

boogeymadam

sometimes my own comic is hard on my dyslexia for The Effect so i never have hard feelings with other comics

copperine

(brb)

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ewiudhiwue the things we do AT WHAT COST XD

DaeofthePast

Asdfghjkl

Meanwhile I use the same font for everything

boogeymadam

wait im gonna generalize this more so it can be a party

DaeofthePast

Please post that on pillowfort so I can reblog it

boogeymadam

you can post it for yourself if you want dae!

i'm having a hard time logging on asdfgjh

DaeofthePast

Rip sure

copperine

Ah see I have both

Because hand lettering

It's great for feeling right for a comic but also eternally wondering if it's readable

DaeofthePast

Ooh yeah I guess that would count as both

What’s your comic btw :0

Wait, we’re supposed to be talking about website design right

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yep! If it gets too off topic, you can always continue in another channel that's more fitting.

copperine

Ah sorry! Sure thing

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Mobile is too small for me

DaeofthePast

Yeah

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

(oHHMYYGOSH BOOGEY XD)

boogeymadam

mm archives were mentioned already, and how it can really turn readers away to simply not have one at all? my favorite archive is https://www.vaingloriouscomic.com/comic/archive 's but i've seen some where they attempted an all picture archive and it backfired by just being a page of all empty boxes. this didn't deter me from reading it and it got fixed pretty quick tho~ mine is one of these and its a very chonky slowmoving page cause i uploaded the first 90ish as fullsized pictures. nobody's ever complained so idk if it's ever deterred anyone from reading but i know i gotta fix it someday.(edited)

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I really dont mind any kind of web design in particular though tbh. I prefer desktop sites but it’s fine if the design isnt great

DaeofthePast

Have you guys ever gone to a comic website (for a single comic) and the colors used in the background were so bright that it felt like they were blinding you to the point it was hard to read the actual pages?

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

My archive is down right now becayse it broke and I dont know how to fix it lol

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i def want a fully view-able archive but we're gonna be hitting 800 pages and i dont know how well that will work XD

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

But I have a navigation bar now

boogeymadam

u could have multiple pages of archive, krispy!

i'm starting a new page for chapter 2

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Or dropdown menus

boogeymadam

but its probably important to have a dropdown if u have more than 1 page, yeah

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I want to switch to picture archives, but I haven't found a good plug in/way to get my word press to do it :( if anyone has recommendations...

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I wish I knew how to make dropdown menus

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i'll have to bring that up ! we dont do the tech work for our site ( thank gosh seriously) but i love archives that show full pages

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

If I could make dropdown menus I would be unstoppable

copperine

I miss the drop-downs on SJ

boogeymadam

i feel like dropdowns are smth i pretty much only exclusively see on hiveworks comics

i wonder what their secret is,,,

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I’ve inspected the elements on so many hiveworks sites lol

I want to know

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

they use word press I think

for their comic sites

just have to do some digging with the site html and csss

copperine

Right click and inspect maybe...

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Php stands for my Personal hell pit

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

if i could go undercover for yall i would XD

boogeymadam

also!! @mariah (rainy day dreams) i use elementor for mine

its not perfect and breaks like every time i update it but it works asdfg

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

... I'm currently writing a sparkling fresh wp-plugin for my page (comic easel wasn't doing what I wanted), but I am also a software dev who enjoys coding.

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

My template I use functions in mostly php and xml and its gibberish to me but functions so well I dont know how to improve it to have specific things I want

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

my knowledge with site design is basic at best lmao

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

wordpress is a bit special in that it does most things more complicated than strictly necessary.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

but I do like fiddling with stuff

^that too lmao

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I know Shiza of osarilho is really good at web designing? she's made some beautiful work with her site!

boogeymadam

i want to ask shiza for more help but not before i have some money to pay her :')

she's helped me a lot already

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I can do html and css at the babiest level

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I'll check that out Boogey, thanks! Even if it does break X') And I guess I'll just make a note to start stashing money to hire shiza XD im definitely at the point where my site needs a general face lift, but I don't have the spoons for it.

boogeymadam

imo i've made some really pretty pges with it. it's a drag and drop that's excellent at galleries, but it doesn't like when you don't have even rows for some reason

the wordpress plugin, Elementor, i mean.

copperine

I've been wanting to try comicpress for ages

I just don't know where to start

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I'm gonna move over to #shop_talk for my response

copperine

I had someone who was gonna help me out but we lost contact so it's on the back burner

boogeymadam

OOPS yeah

copperine

But for websites in general I prefer to have one that feels very basic than one that feels too busy or crowded

I'm not a graphic designer at all lol

If I do try an independent site I'm planning to pay a coding friend to help me

DaeofthePast

yeah i have no idea what I'm doing when working on my site, it's kinda basic, but at least it looks nice

copperine

I just use a premade theme on my ComicFury site

It works and that's good enough for me so far

Oh I guess the other thing that would put me off reading a comic is if the site isn't formatted for mobile, and/or particularly if the site doesn't have adaptive formatting

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

same, but editted it hard core so it looks like it's own thing lmao

copperine

I usually read on my phone because my computer is where I work so I like to get off it for hobbies

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

but for me uh i guess mobile i try to read it either on tapas, webtoon or its own site

I find just clicking the page to the next one helps me a lot lol I don't do a lot of zooming

copperine

Mmm

copperine

It's personal preference a lot tbh!

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I like my comuter because its big

copperine

Valid

Mine is not

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

did anyone talk about paying me please you don't have to do that

copperine

Idk but you can pay me

Idk what for but

I'll take money

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I absolutely would have to if you made my site awesome X') work is work, and you should be paid for it

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

fair enough

Just send me a DM whenever you're up for that and lemme take a look at what you already have

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I would hire someone to do web design for me but I dont have the funds & I dont wnat to make someone do work for me for free

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

I've been meaning to set up my own website for a while now, since the collective i was originally hosting my webcomic with kinda fell apart, but it's so much work and i'm hella intimidated :'''D

copperine

@sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead) there's been some related discussion in #shop_talk and I believe @boogeymadam might be able to advise (I'm sure others can too but I'm going off the convo from earlier)

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

@sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead) depending on how much it is I can help you out

RebelVampire

Admin Reminder Remember this channel is for experiences as a reader first and foremost, so #shop_talk and #general are better if you want to discuss your own stuff.

DaeofthePast

thank you for the reminder :3

RebelVampire

I would say poor web design is something I have a complicated relationship regarding webcomics. On the one hand, outside of a site being 100% completely broken, I'm willing to sit through a lot to read. So in terms of affecting whether I read a comic the first time or not, there isn't much to say there. But it does affect how engaged I am with the comic. Cause if I can't easily go back to re-read a page, easily find things like character names, have to deal with extreme lag cause the host is garbage, have to deal with eye bleeding color schemes, etc. you can bet your bottom dollar 1 time is all that comic is going to get in terms of reading it. I can only subject myself to so much, and if I don't feel like reading a comic again because of the site itself, I'm going to quickly forget it in favor of comics whose sites don't make me cry. I do give more leeway to sites created by creators in many respects. But professional bigtime hosts like Tapas or Webtoons literally have no excuse for some of their garbage design choices. And some of their design choices are super duper garbage.

DaeofthePast

that's true yeah, there's a big distinction of the quality expectations between sites by small creators and those of big companies like Webtoons

RebelVampire

At the same time, though, I know from first hand experience that poor design choices are literally influenced by user data for bigger companies. So for every decision I consider stupid- at the same time they probably did the AB tests that showed crappy design A had better results for their conversion rates than user friendly design B.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Which boggles my mind

I wonder if there's some kinda causation-correlation thing going on that the A/B tests could not detect accurately

boogeymadam

Rebel mentioned sites that have eyebleedy color schemes and I'm in the same boat; will read the comic, just will be turning down the screen brightness a looot. Sites that have a huge space of extremely neon background that distracts from the comic make me reluctant to read on the site, and I'll look for a mirror before trying. That white background of the 2 big comic hosting sites can at least be affected and turned dark by nightmode when needed, while nightmode doesn't work on half the bright comic sites I've tried it on. u-u

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, December 2019

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across since the October report, although some may be older than that.

I am also missing a lot here, but pared it down somewhat to make more readable. The lead up to the holiday shopping season was a lot crazier than I expected 🙃

Given the time of year, please do not expect another report until January. However, I will do brief posts of important news/blog posts in the interim as needed.

There are going to be big changes to this report coming in 2020. Have any suggestions or feedback?  Leave a comment below, email me through my website, or send me a message on Twitter.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

You are going to need to add Etsy’s tax ID to customs forms on New Zealand orders as of Dec. 1. Etsy’s ID is: 122-669-18.

FTC issues huge fines for selling fake likes & followers on social media, and for posting fake reviews online. “The [likes and followers] case could pave the way for further legal action on the same grounds, using the Devumi case as precedent. Indeed, shortly after the initial finding by the NY Attorney General, Facebook announced that it was moving ahead with legal action against several providers which it had found to be dealing in fake social media engagement.”

Everyone should read this article, if only to learn what not to do: Using “priming” to convert more buyers/users is a crucial marketing tactic.”Priming works by using associations made in our subconscious, and are almost always unnoticeable to the subject.” Example: “During a study, researchers approached customers in an electronics store, who’d entered to buy a new laptop.Half of the customers were asked what their memory needs were, and the other half were asked what their processor needs were...The group who were asked about memory, bought computers with higher memory and the group who were asked about processor speed, bought computers with much higher processor speeds.”

Etsy removed the word “Bugs” from the Bugs forum, & admits they will only will be monitoring it from 9-5 Etsy time (ET) Monday to Friday. They won’t be replying, but expect “hundreds of sellers” to do that job for them, unpaid. If you have an issue, you will now need to email through the Contact page, use the new 24 hour live chat, or phone them. [Note the parts they aren’t mentioning - Support is taking over a week to reply to emails right now, live chat will only be able to help with the simplest of questions (e.g., how do I change my email address?) & it is possible to spend over an hour on hold when you phone. You could spend quite a bit of money on long distance fees, especially if you are in a country that doesn’t have its own phone number, all for something you used to be able to get for free in the forum, sometimes on the same day. This is Etsy’s definition of “major improvements”.]

Check out this proposed US legislation, which wants large internet companies [yes, Etsy fits their definition] to reveal their algorithms & offer visitors a version with no “filter bubble.” You might not like Etsy search now, but I can guarantee it would become impossible if they removed all of the algorithm factors. [This editorial is a bit over the top, but does cover some of the key questions.]

ETSY NEWS

Items have been disappearing from a small number of Etsy searches since July, & Etsy still won’t tell us what is going on. If you discover you are affected, please let me know.

There have been a few threads on Etsy sending threatening emails about shops being below Etsy’s customer service expectations, often for just a few bad feedbacks or cases, which has shocked many long time sellers (even though they have been sending them for years; it appears they have decreased the number of “problems” you need to have to get an email.) Without announcing anything, Etsy released a page of “seller service level standards” that can help explain what they are looking for, namely cases & 1-2 star reviews, as well as the exact formula they use. I started a discussion thread here, & in case Etsy deletes comments in the thread, here is the dashboard showing your score. (Some people cannot make that link work; Etsy says only shops that received a warning can see it.) My blog post is here.

I summarized the 3rd quarter report here, and Etsy summarized it here. The stock market is not happy with management at the moment, with Morgan Stanley this past week stating that they expected Etsy’s 4th quarter to be worse than originally predicted, due to state sales tax laws and Etsy’s reduction in its Google Shopping ad buying. Note Etsy removed the “priority placement” for US free shipping about a week after the 3rd Q report, without any announcement, probably due to the blowback about it reducing first page conversions. (They didn’t announce anything; it just disappeared.)

Cyber Week traffic on Etsy was more than double what they saw on the average summer day.

They did a Q & A thread on the new stats, which wasn’t particularly useful. They admitted they intentionally removed the keyword & other data prior to November 2017 because “older data periods are less comparable to current stats”. [I believe that is code for “we’re too cheap to pay for the storage; investors need their payouts.”] They did finally add YOY comparisons back in a few weeks ago.

Etsy has again changed a few category & attribute options, including more baby stuff.

They did a holiday gift shopping promotion where people could call Etsy & get suggestions for gifts on Nov. 5. All gifts shipped free, so non-free shipping shops were not included. “It could also be a case study for personalization efforts to come from the long-running handmade marketplace.”

You’ve probably already noticed that Convos are now called Messages, but here is the announcement with the details just in case.

Etsy ran an Etsy search critique thread on November 13; the thread wasn't particularly useful, as almost all the staff who do the critiques aren’t experts in search. Basically, they say to use all of your tags, avoid repeating words in tags & titles, have 3-4 short phrases in your title, use commas in your titles (”Buyer research shows that using commas instead of dashes helps titles appear more clean and readable”), offer free shipping, and use all of your photos. The big takeaway for me was - they think we all have unlimited photography budgets, models, and time to do different modelled photos for every listing (including at the beach! LOL), photos of each of our different pieces in progress, photos of us working, & photos of each type of packaging. Needless to say, none of those things are bad if you have gobs of time or the money to pay someone to do all of that. But if you are like me and are a one-person business, live in a small condo, don’t have the strength to take photos all day, don’t have an abundance of people to model when I am taking photos (i.e., people I know have real jobs & aren’t around when I work on photos), and don’t have anyone to take photos of me making things, then this is pretty laughable. I wouldn't even consider doing all of this for my 5 best selling listings, never mind all 430+. YMMV. [The repeated mentions of process photos makes me worry they will be requiring those for everyone at some point …but I am sure I am just being paranoid.] One notable error was telling someone to use “color” (the US spelling) instead of “colour” (the proper English spelling) because the shop’s language settings were US English - Etsy currently treats these both the same, so there is no issue at the moment. Are they trying to give us a hint about something?

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Introducing BERT: Google’s new technology to help organic search process natural language better. This isn’t likely a change you can optimize for, but it should help searchers get more relevant results for complicated queries. “Here is an example of Google showing a more relevant featured snippet for the query “Parking on a hill with no curb”. In the past, a query like this would confuse Google’s systems. Google said, “We placed too much importance on the word “curb” and ignored the word “no”, not understanding how critical that word was to appropriately responding to this query. So we’d return results for parking on a hill with a curb.” Moz’s Whiteborad Friday covered the basics. [warning - some bits are advanced. Just skip those if you need to.] A study said BERT still isn’t very good at understanding “not” and other negatives. The NY Times may be one of the sites that is affected.

If you were disappointed when keyword research tool Keywords Everywhere became a paid tool, a new alternative has been released. Note that Keyword Surfer is still in beta. I’m going to try it for a bit and write up a short report if I think it is worth using. (The traffic estimates are way off, as in almost 10 times too low, for the sites I have info on.)  If you try it, let me know what you think!

While we are on the topic, here’s 13 keyword research errors you don’t want to make. Short takeaways - not every high volume keyword phrase will work for your specific product, don't ignore long tail, and make sure you look at the search results for any keyword before you decide to use it.

Here’s another keyword and topic research tool that compiles questions people search along with a relationship tree so you can see how ideas are connected.

More common SEO problems with ecommerce sites.

If you code your own website, check out the new Google instructions on writing your organic search snippets. Note this is supposedly only about display & not about ranking.

Improve your Instagram traffic with 8 SEO tips for your profile and posts.

Which is better for SEO - Squarespace or WordPress? The results are likely skewed by the fact that “platforms like Wix and Squarespace tend to attract less SEO-savvy people than WordPress.” They agree with what I have been saying for a while: if you know what you're doing, Squarespace sites can rank just fine.

Excellent tips on how good SEO also helps you comply with US disability access laws.

The latest on Google updates - there was apparently one around November 7. This one may have hit affiliate websites more than other types.

The Wall Street Journal wrote an article claiming Google manipulated search results to favour its interests & those of its advertisers, including eBay. [The original article is behind a paywall; the link is in that news coverage.] However, many in the SEO community - most of whom are not usually reluctant to criticize Google when they are behaving poorly - feel the article is way off base, & demonstrates a fundamental lack of knowledge of how Google works. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land & Search Engine Roundtable even did interviews with t WSJ staff for the article, and was amazed at how much they got wrong. “Even a basic understanding of the difference between organic listings (the free search results) and the paid listings (the ads in the search results) eluded them…[Glenn] Gabe told us that not only were his conversations with the paper off-the-record but also that he was misquoted”

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Here’s something I don’t see discussed much: using templates (& other consistent branding) in your social media, blog and website posts.

Content hubs are a very useful way to increase your search engine traffic for a core topic while providing a landing page for social media, ads etc.

Good primer here for beginning social media marketing for your business. You’ll need to do more research depending on your target market and what platform/s you choose, but it is definitely a good overview of getting started.

If you think influencer marketing is right for your business, here are 10 places you can find influencers to work with.

Your email subject lines can change the open rates; here are 19 tips to make them more clickable.

Instagram started testing hiding “likes” on posts in the US as of November 11th, & then announced plans to try it out globally. A study on previous tests showed that there may be some effect on influencer engagement.

Facebook has introduced its own payment system, currently in the US only, for limited situations only at the moment.

Reddit is an often overlooked social media platform to use for business but the traffic is strong, so check out these tips on asking it work for your business. [infographic]

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Pay for online ads (outside of Etsy) but don’t know what negative keywords are? Here’s how to use them with Google.

Hubspot continues their massive rush of “ultimate guides” with everything you wanted to know about Amazon ads.

Facebook now allows you to have different text in the same ads, which can be adjusted for different groups of users.

Amazon is predicted to continue cutting into Google’s online ad dominance through 2021; Google currently has 73% of money spent on online ads in the US.

If you are interested in long term brand building in your advertising, you might be interested in this article, where Adidas admits it was ignoring brand ads & pushing instant returns for too long.

Just in time for the holidays, Google Merchant Center rolled out a bunch of upgrades.

Buying TV ad time is losing popularity; it will be less than 25% of all advertising spend in just a few years, while digital spending is now over 50%.

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Facebook changed how they count page impressions.

Everything you want to know about the Google Search Console. Oh, and also everything you want to know about the Google Search Console. Which one do you like best? [If you have your own website or freestanding blog and are not using the Console, you probably should be reading both of those. Seriously, just set the darn thing up, then learn how to use it later.]

Also, the Console now features a speed report, and has changed how they send you messages.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

Trend alert: many struggling or failed retailers sell clothing. “This sector is saturated with supply and is arguably over-stored.” … “For younger shoppers, as they choose which apparel brands do get their attention, sustainability and other cultural issues are often at the forefront.”

US sellers can now get discounted UPS rates through Shippo.

A bug is keeping suspended Amazon sellers from being reinstated.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Don’t use these common customer service lines. ...“there are studies that support the use of positive language in customer service. Instead of focusing on what you can’t do for a customer, focus on what you can do. No one likes to be told no.”

Another article on the psychology of colour; beware that some of this is a bit simplistic, as there are always exceptions.

Holiday shopping will push further into December this year, with half starting around Cyber Monday (Dec. 2). 62% of “high spenders” (over $2100 spent on the holidays) will shop on their smart phones. 25% of respondents to this survey said they already started shopping in September. It turns out most people want gift cards, among other stats. Nearly half of US shoppers are more likely to shop with companies that are socially responsible. Mobile shopping is expected to beat desktop shopping for the first time this season. And yes, most Americans expect to add to their credit card debt before January, men more than women.

US retail sales fell 0.3% in September; online sales fell the same amount.  

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour)

Trend alert - apparently Generation Z is not big on makeup, and it is affecting large companies’ profits.

Google’s co-founders hand the parent company Alphabet over to the current CEO. They still work for Google and will focus most of their time there.

Google Webmaster spokesperson John Mueller tackles the controversial question - is a hot dog a sandwich? [humour]

[seventeendeer]

I’m on Pillowfort.io!

Hey everyone!

So, tomorrow’s the big day. Tumblr is giving up its last pretense of sorta, kinda functioning as a web page meant for humans. It will still exist, but if things pan out the way staff intends, it will be an unreliable platform for hosting and sharing art, and staying in contact with people - which are the two things I care about the most on here.

In an attempt to escape the tyranny of badly-coded bots, I have set up a blog on a website some of you may know/have heard me talk about before - Pillowfort.io.

- About Pillowfort:

Pillowfort is a blogging site still in its beta phase of development. Huge amounts of tumblr’s users have already migrated to it (I think it was 10k new users just last week??). It’s run by an independent development team who are promoting it as a safer, better moderated alternative to tumblr, where creators will have greater control over how their content is viewed and shared. In the future, the site will be funded by premium subscriptions rather than by selling user information to third parties, which ensures that the creators will remain present and aware of users’ wishes and needs. AKA they can’t just dump widely-hated updates on their users and then ignore them the way tumblr’s staff does. You can read more about the site, its creators, its policies, and development progress on the official Pillowfort tumblr (I’m not affiliated with anything going on over there btw, I’m just a fan who naturally talks like an infomercial when I’m excited lol).

Currently, getting access to the site requires a 5$ entrance fee, which will earn you an invite to be a beta user. This is because the developers obviously still need to eat while they’re working on the project, and they can’t very well roll out premium features before the basic infrastructure is all there.

Invites are currently closed, as the staff works on buffing up the site enough that it can handle the sudden influx of traffic. I was one of the last people who got in before invites closed for the time being. As soon as they’re open again, I’ll give a shout to everyone else here on tumblr in case you want to follow me into this brand new world!

- About my new Pillowfort blog:

I’m taking a chance on Pillowfort and making it the new central hub for my online presence. This means that the rare art, photos and personal posts will appear there before they appear anywhere else. Other than that, my new blog will pretty much be all the same stuff I have on my tumblr right now - reblogging art, text posts, memery, etc. There’s obviously less traffic on there than there is here, but the only way to change that is to contribute things myself and help boost other people as much as I can!

On Pillowfort, my username is FloralMedusa.

- About my tumblr:

I’ll still be on tumblr. The only major difference happening here is that I will no longer search for new blogs to follow on this platform - which could, long-term, mean that I’ll be reblogging fewer things, and my stream of posts will slow down.

I will still be answering asks on here, and I still highly encourage people to send them! I understand that not everyone is ready to leave, or wants to move to another site, and I still want to see you around!! I consider all my followers my friends, and I don’t want to lose any of you, so please, if you have things to say, don’t be shy!

I will also be cross-posting my art to tumblr, though always with a link attached to its mirror on Pillowfort, which means that it won’t show up in search.

Basically, everything will be the same for my followers on here, my focus on doing More New Shit will just be elsewhere. I might even start sharing original content on Pillowfort, since there’s more control over who can see my stuff over there. Who knows!

- Closing statement:

I encourage everyone who can to follow me to Pillowfort. Those of you who already have accounts, please hit me up over there so we can stay in touch. Start using your Pillowfort blogs so we can help build something new. Those of you who don’t have accounts there yet - please do consider getting one when invites are open again. It’s super fun and already so much better than tumblr, even in its beta stage. Again, I’ll give you a shout when invites are open again.

As I’ve said previously, you can also find me on Twitter, under “thesketcherlass”, if you want to keep an eye on my stuff without bothering with either tumblr or Pillowfort. I will also be linking my art over there when it pops up once in a blue moon.

That’s it for today. See you around, cool beans. <3

[arielleyoga-blog1]

Earth-Loving Home in 4 Steps!

I believe growing up in Los Angeles has a lot of benefits, but I would say one of the main things I am so grateful for is how my public school education taught me about how important taking care of our planet is, and that it truly is every individual’s responsibility, and every effort counts!

Ever since childhood, I have turned off the water when soaping up my hands, my dishes, or brushing my teeth. In fact, my friend told me when she was in med school and was scrubbing for surgery, the doctor next to her asked “Are you from California?” She replied “Yes, why?” And he said “Californians aways step off the water while they scrub.” YEAH BECAUSE DROUGHT DUDE!

I’ve always picked up trash I find on the street: whether it’s a receipt that fell out of a person’s bag, or a soda can. As long as it isn’t wet (because it could be urine everyone) then I pick it up.

Every person’s effort counts!

I was trying to find ways to really help eliminate waste creation in my own home, much to my husband’s huffing and puffing over. “Recycling is a scam have you been to a recycling plant?” He grew up in the Midwest...I don’t think they talk about saving dolphins in Ohio as much as we do out here lol

I did research, followed bloggers, searched online, and eventually found some SIMPLE and effective ways to create an earth-friendly home. Here FOUR simple ways you can start living in a more Earth-Friendly home: 

1. STASHER BAGS

I registered for these for my wedding, I kid you not! You will NEVER need a ziplock bag AGAIN!!! Whether Anthony is traveling and throws his soap and razors in one, or I’m needing to freeze some left over soup: there is a stasher bag for EVERYTHING, and they are dishwasher and freezer safe! They’re also safe in the microwave, or in a pot of boiling water and conventional oven up to 400 degrees!!! YOU WILL NEVER NEED OT USE A PESKY ZIP LOCK BAG AGAIN YOU GUYS!

You can order them on their site (or also find where they’re carried near you) at https://www.stasherbag.com ! Even better: They’re a Certified B Corporation! They care about PURPOSE just as much as PROFIT!

2. Scott Tube-Free Toilet Paper

I mean, that’s pretty self explanatory! Those little TP rolls add up in our world! Think about how often you use toilet paper...

So instead of ditching the roll in your bathroom trash and NOT separating it to be recycled: Ditch it all together! The TP is still soft and lovely and what an easy fix to eliminate waste.

I ordered them on Amazon, before requesting my local grocery store carry it! You can always request at the manager’s desk or online at your local store for them to carry it: let them know you buy it elsewhere, but would happily purchase it from THEM if they carried it! They’re almost always happy to oblige!  3. Branch-Basics

I heard about this brand for a long time before deciding to give them a try. When I read The Woman Code, which I ALWAYS talk about in my blog and on my instagram, I instantly tried to switch my household over to natural products without my husband freaking out. 

I wasn't totally ready to trust BB, so I got an awesome cleaner suggested in the book. It’s been good..but isn't as easy to make, and isn’t as effective.

Branch Basics is AMAZING! Their all-purpose cleaner got out some old wine stains in a sweater, and their laundry concentrate with oxygen boost ACTUALLY cleans and DE-SMELLS my and my husbands gross work out clothes !

This way whether your cleaning a mirror, your bathroom, or your clothes: your using ALL NATURAL CHEMICAL FREE products THAT WORK! Happy home, happy earth! Use http://branchbasics.refr.cc/arielle to save $10 on your first order! 

4. Poop Bags THAT ACTUALLY BREAK DOWN! 

As a dog mom, one thing that has always bothered me is that when we pick up poop...something that will naturally break down into the earth, we put it in a PLASTIC bag that will rot in a landfill and destroy our planet.

I looked around at all types and tried dozens of “plastic-free” bags, but I wanted something that I KNEW would 100% breakdown in a landfill because I don’t compost...yet.

AND FINALLY! I found THESE! Earth Best Earth Rated® compostable bags! They’re not the color green: because guys that doesn’t mean they’re better for the environment! These bags are a vegetable-based alternative to the green-colored bags AND THEY WILL BREAK DOWN IN 45 DAYS!

I get mine at The Healthy Spot, although I will say...they’ve been running out a lot lately, so grab two or three boxes! Or of course anywhere on line! They’ve got a website and are also carried on Chewey and Amazon!

Hope you guys check these products out and let me know your thoughts! WE CAN FIX OUR PLANET: every person counts!

[imnoexpertblog]

Here's some stuff to do and listen to.

7/20/18

Are you ready to receive some suggestions to entertain your fine selves? ‘Cause I’m ready to give it.

For those who are local: My dad and brother run NYFO together for Green Bay. What’s NYFO? WELL. “NYFO 7on7 Football is the next generation of player development, no matter your skill set. NYFO is the NATIONAL GOVERNING BODY for 7on7 & Non-contact Football. Our leagues, camps, and training exist to ultimately transition better, safer, and more fundamentally sound knowledgeable players. NYFO is committed to helping every player in our program improve no matter their skill level. By doing so we will ultimately enhance the sport of football, from youth organizations through the NFL. NYFO is ‘Non-Contact’ For parents, ‘non-contact’ can be translated into ‘one-hand touch.’ Without the distraction of full-contact, players can focus on fundamentals. With so much negative media attention given to concussions and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), 7on7 offers parents a safer alternative for kids wanting to play football.” Quick additional info: They offer programs for age groups 8U, 10U, 13U, 15U, and 18U. Go to their website if you’re interested in signing your kids up! Okay but anyway, if you need something to do this Friday you should go to a Bullfrogs baseball game! Bullfrogs “Stars Of Tomorrow” fundraiser family & friend tickets are $18 and include your ticket (duh), a Bullfrogs hat, a hot dog, AND a soda! A damn steal if you ask me. It helps out NYFO and you’ll have something fun to do! All registered players from NYFO get in free with and a portion of the proceeds from family/friends tickets sales going to the NYFO by simply using code “NYFO7on7” at the point of purchase. Go to greenbaybullfrogs.com, click Buy Tickets Now in the top right corner, and enter the promo code (NYFO7on7). Gates open at 6:05pm and the game is at 7:05pm!  See you at the diamond on July 20th! Give them a follow on Instagram! @greenbay.nyfo

I never really blog about music for how passionate I am about it. I have mentioned before that I sing, too. I’d love music even if I couldn’t sing though. Anyway, everyone loves finding new music, right? I’m gonna tell you my most listened to artists and songs on my Spotify. First, I’ll tell you how I found this data. I found this question forum on this link: https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-way-to-see-my-most-played-artists-songs-in-Spotify. You’ll see in the answer that there’s Spotify.Me or there’s ManageMyMusic to see your most listened to stuff. Spotify.Me is intricate and gives you information like your favorites, streaming habits, and listening insights. Apparently, what I listen to the most is considered to be a bunch of different types of “pop.” I don’t know if I agree with that. They also tell me that “I know what I want” because 84% of my favorite artists are within my most-listened to genre. That I can agree with. It says I’m high energy lately in my streaming choices, but I don’t see it. I have been choosing really chill music, in my opinion. The other link in that question/answer forum is called ManageMyMusic and it gives you a ton of lists; Top artists and tracks for the “Short Term (4 weeks),” the “Medium Term (6 months),” and for the “Long Term (Years).” I’ll give you my top ten for each category, though I know there will be overlapping. I obviously love everything I am about to include so please give this stuff a listen. You’re about to get an intimate peek at my soul.

Top artists -- Short Term (4 weeks)

Jon Bellion

Drake

Milky Chance

Hozier

Andrew Belle

Bazzi

Aaron Carter

Roy Woods

dvsn

Troy Sivan

I didn’t realize that I listened to that much Jon Bellion lately. I mean, he is fantastic. I just didn’t realize I listened to so much of him in the last month.

Top artists -- Medium Term (6 months)

Drake

Blackbear

Tory Lanez

Marc E. Bassy

Jon Bellion

Bazzi

Post Malone

Hozier

Aaron Carter

Sam Smith

I can say for DAMN SURE that Baby has heavily influenced who I listened to these past 6 months. Drake has always been my man but I never listened to Blackbear, Tory Lanez, or Marc E. Bassy before I met him.

Top artists -- Long Term (years)

Drake

Sam Smith

Troye Sivan

Andrew Belle

Justin Bieber

Jon Bellion

The Weeknd

Jessie Ware

Hozier

Tove Lo

None of that even remotely surprises me.

Top tracks -- Short Term (4 weeks)

Jessie Ware, You & I (Forever)

Hozier, Jackie and Wilson

Sabrina Claudio, Orion's Belt

Jon Bellion, Overwhelming

Jon Bellion, 2 Rocking Chairs

Vance Joy, Mess Is Mine

The 1975, Somebody Else

Jon Bellion, The Good In Me

JAHKOY, Still In Love

Young the Giant, Cough Syrup

This is all very "me" lately.

Top tracks -- Medium Term (6 months)

Alina Baraz, Show Me

6LACK, Learn Ya

Tory Lanez, I Sip

Blackbear, moodz (feat. 24hrs)

Marc E. Bassy, 4am

Tory Lanez, Skrt Skrt

Ansel Elgort, Supernova

Bazzi, Mine

Post Malone, Psycho (feat. Ty Dolla $ign)

R I T U A L, Better By Now

This list is definitely Baby-approved.

Top tracks -- Long Term (years)

Justin Bieber, The Feeling

Troye Sivan, WILD

ZAYN, PILLOWTALK

Snakehips, All My Friends

Tatiana Manaois, Helplessly

Bryson Tiller, Don't

Chris Stapleton, Tennessee Whiskey

Sam Smith, Not In That Way

Hozier, Work Song

A R I Z O N A, Let Me Touch Your Fire

Honestly, the first 5 tracks do surprise me a little, but that was back when I had my music on constantly when I was single and home alone quite often. I remember keeping those on repeat for hours at times, so I’m not sure how accurate that actually is only because of that fact. This was all super cool to see, though. Some of it was expected, some unexpected. Either way, I hope I gave you some new stuff to listen to! And you should check out for own profiles. Nice opportunity to learn a little about yourself.

This past weekend, it was pretty warm out. Baby and I wanted to get Nugget a sprinkler so I took the little one with me to the store aaaaand they were sold out. Due to all the warmth. So I bought Nugget some water guns instead. We got 2 smaller ones and 2 larger ones for THIRTEEN DOLLARS, TOTAL. YEAH. This s’mom was shocked by that price, that’s for sure. We played and sprayed when we got home. Baby and Nugget had some fun together. The first thing Nugget did when we filled his gun though was spray me right in the (get ready) vagina. Yes. Then he yells, “I’M SPRAYING YOU IN THE PARTS.” I was like, “Uhhhhh, let’s not spray anyone’s parts and also let’s talk about anyone’s parts. It’s not polite and those are private” LOL. He’s never said anything to me about private parts or anything so that was new to me. He walks into my room when I’m changing a fair amount of the time and I know for a fact he’s seen more than I meant him to, but he has never asked questions, pointed anything out, etc. I think it’s important to set an example for your children in the sense to be comfortable with their bodies and such. This might be a whole new chapter with Nugget! We will see. Enough about my “parts” and back to the water guns. Baby said that on one of the weeks that we don’t have Nugget, that he wants to do a water gun race with me. I got 2 free beach balls from Sprint when I got a new phone last week (among a ton of other free shit, which I'll tell y'all about soon) and Baby said we should see whoever can get the beach ball across our backyard the fastest by spraying them with the water guns. I honestly think that sounds more fun than any idea I've ever had LOL. It reminds me of when I almost bought us both Nerf guns. So, if things are little mundane (or even if they’re not) maybe you and your love should find your inner children together! Get water-balloons and have a water-balloon fight, chalk up your driveway, set up obstacle courses, have a scavenger hunt! You can make it interesting by making fun deals. Whoever loses has to make dinner, for example. I think we will try all of these ideas eventually.

Speaking of shopping with Nugget, I am in the process of teaching him about not asking for toys every time we go. Baby went through a break up after a 3 year relationship before we was with me. He told me that he felt awful that Nugget no longer had two people raising him and Baby made up for that by buying Nugget toys every time they went to the store. I could tell there was a reason why Nugget would ask like clockwork what toy he would get every time we went shopping. I have been working on breaking Nugget of that expectation, as well as working on having him appreciate the things he has at home. I explain to him Daddy and I only have a certain amount of dollars and that its usually only enough to buy what we needed from the store in the first place. He actually understands this concept very well. He always asks why we are going to the store, so I always have the opportunity to tell him what we need to buy. When we went to buy the sprinkler he asked me, "Can we get a toy from here?" and I replied with, "Buddy, remember what we came here for?" He answered correctly about buying a sprinkler. I said in a very positive tone, "Yep and I'm pretty sure we only have enough dollars for a sprinkler. And you also have a bunch of toys at home that you love to play with." We walked by a few things that piqued his interest. As we walked by some bubble-guns, he goes, "Oooh, those look fun. But we only have dollars to get the sprinkler." I was so proud of him for making this connection and also proud of myself for explaining it to him so that he really does understand this. I was raised by people who didn't explain things. It was always a "because I said so" type of world and I learned to accept it. I won't put Nugget in that world, though. I want him to recognize reasoning and be able to grasp why things are the way they are. He is incredibly intelligent and capable of knowing this information. I also want him to trust me and be honest with me as we grow together, so the first step is me trusting him and being honest with him first. Just wanted to share my super proud s'mom moment of the week. I'll be back tomorrow with new recipes for you!

[olivia-studies-neuroscience]

Tips for a Carleton University Science Student

Textbooks

Don’t by used books until you’re sure that you don’t need an access code for a homework website 

If you need a $200 chemistry textbook that comes with the access code, and you buy the book used, you’ll probably only get the book for as cheap as $50 at a used quality, and the access code on its own is usually $150 anyway, so you’re actually losing out rather than saving by buying used books; buy books new if you need the access code with it

Make sure you actually need the textbook before buying it, if you look in the syllabus and there’s only one reading, you probably don’t need to shell out $100 for it

Email the prof if the textbook information hasn’t been provided for you ahead of the class and you want to get ahead in your readings 

Sometimes you can buy a previous edition for cheaper than the most recent and the prof is usually cool with this; the homework questions are different but the profs often have sample ones to give from the old textbook as well as the new, and important figures you need for the midterm/exam you can get from a friend with the newer version of the textbook

Carleton students: go to Haven Books instead of the Campus Book Store 

Be careful when looking for used books, not everyone is trustworthy to buy from, especially if you’re buying from someone on the Facebook used book group

Always flip through the textbook to make sure there aren’t any chunks of pages missing, and if it truly isn’t highlighted like said in the ad; check if there are separate booklets that usually come with the textbook when bought new and make sure you get those too

Try and bargain with the seller, often upper year students are just trying to get rid of their old books and if you ask for a lower price they will probably say yes

LOOSELEAF textbooks are the best!!!! They save you like $50-100 and all you have to do is buy a binder for like $10 (you need a sturdy one for heavy textbooks like for biology) 

Don’t open the plastic until you’re 10000% positive you have the right textbook (and make sure you have the one that comes with the access code if you need one for the class) because you can’t return it once opened (except if you return it as a used book)

If there is an electronic copy available and you can (legally) print it, do it! Being able to highlight it and hold it in your hands while waiting for the midterm hall doors to open is (in my opinion) better than just having it saved to your desktop 

Rent textbooks through the campus book store 

The (Carleton) library has a reserve section that has textbooks that you can borrow for a few hours (while still in the library) so you don’t have to buy them; however, not all prof’s put their textbooks on reserve and there aren’t endless copies so someone else may have it when you want to read it 

Take good care of your textbooks so you can sell them next year

Sell them back to students rather than the bookstore so you can get more money to help pay for your textbooks for the new year 

It’s harder to sell the books with highlighting and marking in them so an alternative is to use sticky notes in your book (a little costly if you want nicely coloured ones and such but pretty and keeps the textbook pristine)�� 

Personally, I use pencil because I can just underline important bits, which I actually find makes me engage in the material more than highlighting, and I could erase it to sell it again (instead I’m just giving the books to my sister next year so she gets them free, lucky her, lol!)

A word on e-books: they expire after the course is over, so you can’t sell them after and if you failed the course/want to re-take it to improve your grade, you have to buy the text again 

If you have friends taking the class with you, split the cost of the book with them!

Picking Classes

The Carleton Central website is not user friendly at all. I hated every minute I had to use it when I first accepted my offer; to combat this: I suggest going on the website and feeling around it to get used to it and figure out where all the important links are before going on it to set stuff up 

Set up your school email as soon as possible because if you have any issues figuring out how to use the website to set up residence/meal plan/etc. you can ask for help, but no one will answer your emails if they’re not from your Carleton email (this is for privacy reasons, they’re not trying to be difficult) 

At Carleton, you can set up your timetable in advance of when you actually have to register for classes; do this as soon as the opportunity arises because the classes fill up fast on registration day and you don’t want to still be figuring out which section and time and everything when you need to just click the “register” button and be done with it 

Speaking of registration, you will receive a time-slot based on your student number/last name (I forget which) so don’t worry too much about classes filling up before you get your chance 

If a class required for your program fills up before your time-slot opens don’t panic yet; several classes have online sections where they live stream the lecture and you can watch it that way, and if the regular section is full then you’ll just have to register in the online section.

You can still go to class rather than watching it online, and most people do this; my chemistry class had people sitting on the stairs and on the floor at the front of the lecture hall for the first two weeks before people decided if they’d rather watch online or in the lecture hall; the only thing this really affects is where you write your mid-terms and exams, and if you complete your teaching-evaluations in-class, or online

I hate to break this to you, but if you’re in a science program, having one day completely free in first year is not a reality (if you get one please tell me how). I can almost 100% guarantee that you will have lectures every day

Mental Heath & Self-Care

Allow yourself mental health days where you can skip your classes to recover without feeling guilty about it

Don’t take classes at 8:30am if possible, even if you’re a morning person, you will regret it

Especially don’t take 8:30 labs because you can’t miss those without a doctors note

Don’t pull all-nighters in the library when its open 24 hours during exams. Go home. Shower. Eat real food instead of just snacks you brought to the library with you. SLEEP. IN YOUR OWN BED

Try not to fall into that hole of all-nighters where you start rewarding yourself for completing an assignment with a shower or something that’s a basic necessity. You shouldn’t put getting work done above taking care of yourself, no matter how important the assignment or lab report

TAKE BREAKS. It’s okay every once in a while studying, you don’t have to just curl up with a textbook in some corner of the library and study it until your hair falls out, you’ll remember more anyway if you allow your brain some time to absorb the information (trust me, I’m here learning to be a neuroscientist)

Fun fact: you can cry from any emotion. Why is this relevant in a list of tips for new university students? Because you will probably get overwhelmed at some point and cry, and crying is good for you, and also natural. Emotions are chemical levels in your brain and your body is constantly trying to maintain homeostasis (equilibrium, balance, etc.); if your brain notices that there is a lot (or too much) of once chemical, it will try and get rid of it. One way to do this is to package up those chemicals all nice and neat into tears and flush them out. (hint: this is why we feel better after crying, because those emotions were essentially “cried out”). So don’t try and hold everything in because you don’t want your family or new friends to know you’re struggling, because not only is it okay to cry, but your friends are likely just as overwhelmed and your family must know how hard you’re working and how hard school is. You can cry because you’re overwhelmed or because you’re happy or because you watched a wonderful movie (e.g. Moana) and all this means is that you are beautifully and wonderfully human! (pro tip: drink water after crying)

Keep a clean room; I know this sounds annoying but it will help clear your mind and give you a healthy study space. Coming home from a long day of classes and labs to a messy room might only make you more stressed

Drink some water you fool

Naps are cool as heck

Instead of making a competition out of how high your stress levels are, brag about feeling whole and at peace (and if you aren’t, pretend until you believe it)

If you have anxiety, cut out caffeine from your life (even if you don’t have anxiety this is a good idea to do) (I know some really good caffeine-free teas)

Don’t beat yourself up about not getting everything done, just do your best to get as much done as you can (sometimes, mental illness means your best is only doing one of your two assigned readings, this is okay)

One of the biggest lies you will be told in your life is “don’t half-ass anything”; waiting around for the day where you can do absolutely everything you need to do when you have a mental illness or even if you’re still getting adjusted to your new responsibilities as a university student (and adjusting doesn’t just take a few days or weeks, it’s a continual process) is silly, that day may never come. Do as much as your illness permits you to do. If all you can do is make your bed while the rest of your room is a mess, just make your bed. If all you can do is type the heading for your resume, just do that. If all you can do is put the papers for your taxes in a pile, do that, and take a shower or rest. You don’t have to do everything at once, it is okay to just do a little bit

There are 5 things to ask yourself if you’re feeling particularly yucky and don’t know why:

Have I eaten anything substantial recently? Eat an apple or go to the school cafeteria/make something at home

Have I had anything to drink? Grab a bottle of water

Have I slept a decent amount in the last 24 hours, and in the days before that? Take a nap

Have you engaged in any exercise or movement recently? Go for a walk

Have I spoken to anyone at all in the last while? Text or call a friend/family member

Essentially: eat, drink, sleep, walk, and talk

The pomodoro technique is lifeeeee!!!!! Study for 20 minutes or so and then take a break, then repeat (after about three sessions, reward yourself with a longer break than before); if you can’t focus, this is a great way to get a little bit of work done

If you have an IOS device, I recommend the app Tide

Residence & Meal Plans

Apply for residence as soon as possible because although most schools guarantee an offer for first years, they really only mean before the deadline and after that you’ll be on a waitlist. If you get off the waitlist and get a room offer, it probably won’t be in one of the buildings with air conditioning, an elevator, or windows that actually open

If you plan on having a job while at school, you can ask to be in a residence building that remains open over the holidays (this does cost extra though, and for some reason, despite this being an option at Carleton, and that you’re not allowed a hot plate or other cooking device in traditional style rooms; virtually all the places to eat on campus are closed for the entire winter break, including the caf)

On holidays and reading week, the caf closes like, 2 hours early, this sucks. More times than I’d like to admit, I forgot it was a holiday and went to go get dinner at my usual time to find the doors were locked and it didn’t open again until 7:30 the next morning, with literally every other food place closed for the holiday, Mr. Noodles was the only option remaining. Don’t do this to yourself, please

At Carleton you have to rent mini-fridges through a company with the school called coldex 

The prices aren’t bad and you can always split with your roommate if you’re in a double room

A bonus of this is that if you order it before a certain date, the fridge will already be in your room when you arrive on move-in day

I haven’t heard of people sneaking in their own and what happens if the school finds out, but I still wouldn’t recommend bringing your own (you don’t want to have to hide a whole mini-fridge when inspections come around)

Move-in day is hectic 

Arrive as soon as possible to get it out of the way so you can start exploring campus, check out the cafeteria, and go to some events for frosh week

There are volunteers to help you bring your stuff up to your room so no need to bring your entire extended family (unless you want them all there, of course)

If you have prescriptions of any kind, then switch your pharmacy to the on-campus one and write down the hours somewhere

A few words on the dorms:

Most of the desks have a built-in lamp so don’t buy a desk lamp before you know if you need one

They also have a push-pin board so bring pins to hang your pictures and class schedule

Christmas lights go a long way to making the place more home-y 

Buy a coat rack that goes over the front door, and one of those shoe organizers to go over the bathroom door and fill it with all kinds of things 

 Bring lots of storage bins 

Buy one of those fabric shower caddies that go over the shower head so you can all keep your soap organized in the bathroom (the showers don’t have very much shelf space and it can be a pain to carry all your soap in and out, especially when it’s all wet from your shower 

The room should come with a garbage and recycling bin, but might not have one for the bathroom as a heads up 

Act like your parents are visiting once a week and tidy everything up

Labs

If you are a science or engineering student, you will definitely have labs, lots if you’re in science 

Most labs (i.e. chemistry and physics) are every two weeks, and sometimes they have a tutorial on the opposite week (chemistry doesn’t, you just have an empty three-hour slot on one week). 

Biology labs at carleton are every week, going from experimental labs one week to analytical labs the next week (sometimes theres a computer simulation lab the week before the experimental, so in that case the lab topic spans three weeks) 

You will usually have two weeks to write your lab report and then hand it in at the beginning of your next lab session, but sometimes they only give you one week (this is good and bad at the same time) DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE NIGHT BEFORE TO WRITE A FORMAL LAB REPORT

They take at least 6 hours to write and thats once you get the hang of it and 6 hours will probably still only get you an 80%

Informal lab reports (write-ups) you can probably get away with doing the nigh before but don’t be surprised if you get a 60% with only that much work put into it

Don’t forget to do the lab assignments online, they are usually worth a lot towards your grade for that lab (even if you do the multiple choice quiz real quick before the lab starts, it’s better than nothing) 

Go to the Science Store as early as possible to buy your lab coat, glasses, notebook, and manual, the lines are crazy long 

You can’t buy an older version of the lab manual to use for a new lab session, they won’t let you and if they find out you’re using an older version of the manual, they could decide to give you zero on everything. They change little things so you might end up doing the wrong thing in your experiment which can be very bad if its a chemistry lab for example.  

If you don’t know something, or are unsure, ask the TA. Even if you’re mostly sure, ask the TA. Most labs are designed to take exactly there hours if you do everything correctly the first time, so if you do something wrong, you can end up rushing to finish before the lab ends 

THEY WILL NOT LET YOU STAY LATE TO FINISH YOUR LAB 

If you do happen to finish your lab early, instead of leaving as soon as the TA signs you out, do some calculations you’ll need for the report, you will thank yourself sooooo much later I’m not even exaggerating. One time I started them at the end of my lab and then forgot about it and you better believe there were tears of joy in my eyes when I opened up my lab notebook to start the report later and saw that I had already started 

Decorate your lab coat!!! Spice it up!! Spell your name in the periodic table across the back, cover it in sharpie! Put your favourite science joke on the pocket! Have fun! 

Roommates

Roommates can be a blessing or a curse; if they’re a curse, switch to another room as soon as possible

If you can’t stand your roomate, then you’re only going to be more stressed when you’re at home on top of all the stresses of your new life as a university student, and that’s not good

All roommates and canmates have to sign a roommate agreement once you’ve settled in

A canmate is someone living in the room that adjoins your bathroom (most Rez buildings are designed with two rooms sharing a bathroom)

Reach out to your roommate once you’ve been told who they are so that you can meet up before move-in day if possible to get to know each other, get each other’s phone number 

If you’re thinking of renting a mini-fridge, see if your roommate wants to split the cost of one so you can share! 

Consider buying a silent alarm (its basically a watch that vibrates to wake you up instead of ringing) and earplugs so that you don’t have to wake each other up if one of you has an 8:30 while the other doesn’t have class until noon 

Make sure you both agree with the decisions made in your roommate agreement, don’t agree to anything that you’re not comfortable with. 

Remember that its just as much your room as theirs, and vice versa 

Understand that dorm rooms are small, so don’t be afraid to voice your preferences and concerns; communication is key and it keeps everyone happy

Try to be understanding; don’t give your roommate a hard time about something they have no control over 

When it comes to alcohol or other substances, be open and honest about what is okay and what isn’t

Officially you’re only allowed 2 guests per roommate in the room at once (so 6 total), but unless you’re being loud and disrupting the whole floor, nobody is going around and policing it 

As with room capacity, there is a set limit on how many times you can have overnight guests, but nobody is really counting (except maybe your roommate) 

Definitely give each other a copy of your class schedule 

Some people like to leave their door open so that you can go in and meet them, it may be awkward but you should totally go for it! Most people are really shy and won’t go in, but you can still leave your door open too 

Go to floor meetings (officially they are kind of required) to meet people, and also because they usually provide snacks or participation prizes (I won a $10 Tims card at my first meeting) 

If you’re going to come home at 3AM drunk with friends after a night of bar hopping in Quebec, then get a single room 

Your roommate doesn’t want to wake up to the sound of you kissing your S.O. 

Do the dishes as soon as you can, don’t let them fester and grow old because you hate washing dishes in the tiny sink Don’t snoop, we all have things we like to keep to ourselves

 If you’re going to hook up with someone in the room while your roommates away, make sure they’re not going to come back early. And don’t forget to dead-bolt the door and lock the bathroom so they don’t go through the canmates room thinking their key card is just broken 

Share emergency information with each other; do you have a history of seizures that they should be aware of? Any allergies like peanuts so they know not to keep peanut butter in the room? And if you’re unconscious being sent to the hospital, whom should they call?

Always use headphones/earbuds. Even if your roommate has the same taste in music or likes the same movies/TV shows, wear them for the love of all that is good in the world. Get a headphone splitter if you want to watch a movie with a friend on your laptop.

Meeting New People

Academic orientation day was honestly the best time for me to make friends; everyone I talked to that day was either in my faculty or a related program (if not the same program as me). My closest friend now is a girl I met on academic orientation day who’s in my program, and we got to study for all our classes together and since we had such similar schedules, we had the same blocks of free time to hang out.

Make friends with people in your program. You can keep each other on track with your studies, explain concepts to each other, quiz each other, work on assignments together, and so many more things; you can hang out and study at the same time which is a really great thing

If you have friends from high school going to the same university as you, but in a program nothing like yours, then you’re probably going to have a hard time finding space in both your schedules to hang out. Make the best effort you can to hang out anyway

You know those people you can see rolling their eyes at you from the corner of your eye? Don’t make friends with them. They don’t have your back and they don’t care enough to listen to you when you’re talking about your personal struggles. Don’t waste time on someone who wouldn’t give their time to you

disclaimer: the information provided here is based mainly on my experiences as a neuroscience student at Carleton University, as well as from other sources that I looked at for ideas on what else to add here. 

[stellaris-multiplayer-chek9]

Console Commands in Multiplayer | Paradox Interactive Forums

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥 Forum list. New posts. Paradox Forum. Developer Diaries. What's new New posts New threadmarks Latest activity. Search Everywhere Threads This forum This thread. Search titles only. Search Advanced search…. Everywhere Threads This forum This thread. Search Advanced…. Log in Register. Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries. Multiplayer cheating with friends. Thread starter Greeny7 Start date Nov 14, Jump to latest Follow Reply. Install the app. We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly. You should upgrade or use an alternative browser. Greeny7 Second Lieutenant 31 Badges. Apr 1, I've got a question: Is it possible to turn on cheats during multiplayer or mod it somehow? Before i get officially stoned to death i would like to explain myself. I really hate cheaters in competitive type of games like CS, LoL etc. The thing is, me and my friend would like to play the game with cheats turned on while we're playing together just the two of us. Is there any way possible to achieve this? Furleppe Capitaneus Prussiae Generalis 98 Badges. Feb 26, You can edit saves very easily. Well that's true but i was thinking about something more like console or some mod. Thanks anyway i'll give it a try. Apr 5, Greeny7 said:. Click to expand Last edited: Nov 14, Bernard95 Field Marshal 87 Badges. Apr 8, 2. You can use whatever mods you want in MP, so as long as you and your friend have the same mods. Off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure I've seen something on the Workshop awhile back literally called "Cheat Mod" or something like that. Rags17 Ludere Ludum 62 Badges. Dec 11, 5. If you REALLY wanted to get sophisticated then you could make it a decision that requires the approval of the other player s. Thanks for all the help. Editing save files really did the trick i don't understand why i didn't get the idea sooner but i'll look into those cheat mods. Anonymous01 Colonel 4 Badges. Nov 20, 1. Cheat mods are much better for multiplayer games than save-editing in my experience. For instance, I once played a game where I and the other player were able to customize the game world cooperatively and in real-time while in-game. It just made the whole experience more fun and interactive, not to mention efficient. Much better than discussing a few changes here and there and then having to exit and restart the game after editing or prepping the save file before hand. With cheats, you can really highlight those parts of the game that are most fun and interesting for you. And for multiplayer games, being able to modify the game together in real-time maximizes the experience. Rags17 said:. Anonymous01 said:. This thread got me thinking: You, me, and Azarias59 seem to have similar interests and play styles based on the mod and feature requests and suggestions we write about on the forum. I'm thinking the three of us should consider doing some multiplayer sometime, maybe using a cheat mod in the way I mentioned in the post above. Show hidden low quality content. You must log in or register to reply here. Top Bottom. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners who may combine it with other information that you've provided to them or that they've collected from your use of their services. You consent to our cookies if you continue to use this website.

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Here is a complete list of cameras and lens profiles that are supported for Lightroom Serial Number Desktop and Lightroom for mobile phones (iOS and Android).

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In Lightroom for mobile (Android), access the author profiles of people who have organized interactive tutorials on the home screen.

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Select photos and press Command (macOS) / Ctrl (Windows) + Shift + H for HDR merging and Command (macOS) / Ctrl (Windows) + Shift + M to create a panorama. For more information, see Merge photos to create HDRs and panoramas. Drag photos from your computer directly to a desired album in the Albums panel. When contributing photos to shared albums, you can now choose to include keywords, star ratings, flags, and GPS coordinates in the Add Photo dialog box. You can export photos contributed by others to shared albums. This is only possible if the album owner has granted contributors access to the download. how to get a lightroom premium for free now automatically completes keywords when you enter them. This helps avoid typos and duplicate keywords.

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The split-screen view is now supported on the iPad. In the “Learn” section of the home screen, you can start a tutorial and hold the screen at all times to see changes before and after the photo. Duplicate photos are identified as faster and better when imported. Experience smoother importing of photos from an SD card or camera.

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In the “Learn” section of the home screen, you can start a tutorial and hold the screen at all times to see changes before and after the photo. You can now specify keywords, star and flag ratings, and GPS coordinates when adding photos to shared albums. Export photos to shared albums if the album owner has granted access to the download. You can now download and install Lightroom from the Samsung Galaxy Store. However, you cannot install the app if you have already installed Lightroom from the Google Play Store. App updates in the Samsung Galaxy Store and the Google Play Store are exclusive. For more information, see Manage Lightroom subscriptions in the Samsung Galaxy Store.

System requirements:

Windows

Processor Intel® 6thGen or newer CPU – or AMD equivalent Intel® 7thGen or newer CPU – or AMD equivalent

Operating system Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit) version 1803 or later Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit) version 1809 or later

RAM 8 GB of RAM 16 GB of RAM for HD media 32 GB for 4K media or higher

GPU 2 GB of GPU VRAM 4 GB of GPU VRAM For a list of recommended graphics cards, see Recommended graphics cards.

Hard disk space 8 GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (will not install on removable flash storage) Additional high-speed drive for media Fast internal SSD for app installation and cache Additional high-speed drive(s) for media

Monitor resolution 1280 x 800 1920 x 1080 or greater

Sound card ASIO compatible or Microsoft Windows Driver Model ASIO compatible or Microsoft Windows Driver Model

Network storage connection 1 Gigabit Ethernet (HD only) 10 Gigabit ethernet for 4K shared network workflow

Internet An Internet connection and registration are necessary for required software activation, validation of subscriptions, and access to online services.*

macOS

Processor Intel® 6thGen or newer CPU Intel® 6thGen or newer CP

RAM 8 GB of RAM 16 GB of RAM for HD media 32 GB for 4K media or higher

GPU 2 GB of GPU VRAM 4 GB of GPU VRAM

Hard disk space 8 GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (will not install on a volume that uses a case sensitive file system or on removable flash storage devices). Additional high-speed drive for media Fast internal SSD for app installation and cache Additional high-speed drive(s) for media

Monitor resolution 1280 x 800 1920 x 1080 or greater

Network storage connection 1 Gigabit Ethernet (HD only) 10 Gigabit ethernet for 4K shared network workflow

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The disappearance of seemed to clear the market of competitors and seemed to be the conditions for Adobe to get Lightroom into the new subscription model. In the long run, this saves me time, makes my life easier, and hopefully benefits others using the applications the same way I am. Hướng dẫn trên dùng cho các bạn muốn nghiên cứu và tìm hiểu về Lightroom nhưng chưa có điều kiện mua bản quyền. All of your changes, adjustments and metadata additions will instantly be relevant to the originals. Click on ‘Having trouble connecting to the internet? You can also which is older version. The next screen is this, so click License This Software: 7. This application can be used to enhance the quality of your digital photos.

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We have used the cc cleaner to clean creative cloud desktop app and lightroom from the following link: After that we installed Lightroom 6. It is updated with new and advanced features and themes which are very interesting and innovative in appearance. If you have a serial number to enter, please sign out from the Help menu and sign in again, then click License This Software. When I sign out and then back into Lightroom, it acknowledges that I have paid for the software but it remains in the trial version. That means that like you, I’m in the trenches. Because of this occasional benefit and my personal relationships, I stick to creating damn good how-to content rather than purely journalistic Adobe product reviews. In addition to , I also provide consulting and feature feedback for Adobe’s Lightroom team, Adobe’s InDesign team, and PaletteGear hardware controls.

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