#but the way i got asked if i know how to work with linux...... girl. ive been using linux for years at this point...

[cute-chamomile]

I need to learn how to do hardware stuff by myself because I went to the computer repairs shop today and got asked if I know how to work with Linux and got a lesson on how RAM works,

[remakethestars]

Being Batman’s Daughter Would Include:

Headcanons.

❝Listen, Robin. At their core, people are cowardly and self-serving. Trust no one until you know them. And even then, never completely.❞

— Bruce Wayne, “The Lesson Plan”

TRIGGER WARNING: Plant murder. Mentions of drugs/tranqs (stopping dealers), violence/physical harm, broken bones (knee cap), limb dislocation (shoulder), (Jason’s) death, smoke, waterboarding/drowning?

Headcanon masterlist.

You know how every teenager has that paradigm shift because as much as they love the people around them, they’ll never know the inner workings of your psyche? And they realize they’ll never truly be known? And it makes them feel really lonely?

Yeah, you never come to feel like that because you know Bruce digs so far into everyone around him he probably knows you better than you do.

Honestly, he probably reads your diary. At least, he reads the fake one you hide under your mattress. And the second decoy in the A.C. vent above your dresser.

If you’re as paranoid as Bruce, you probably don’t have a diary, and the aforementioned “decoys” are just to mess with him.

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War was practically your Bible growing up.

You’re torn between giving yourself the tactical advantage of being underestimated & being non-reactive, which — besides giving you the lioness role in the lion–gazelle dynamic — gives you the advantage of having time to think carefully on the repercussions before speaking.

Because, as Sun Tzu said in chapter seven, verse twenty-one, “Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.”

Seeing as Bruce and Damian both have eidetic memories, I’m guessing you do too. 

Which means you totally read the dictionary when you were young and whip our big words nobody’s heard of.

Bruce always assured you it’s okay to be scared. As a matter of fact, like he told Dick (seen in flashbacks in “The Lesson Plan”), he taught you to “Let terror embrace you. The better you know fear, the better you can use it against others.”

And we all know Bruce is the paragon of using fear against people.

Take that, Scarecrow!

(See, I chose that gif because earlier in that move, he displays a fear of bats, & in that scene, he summons them to use as a distraction and walks through them completely unperturbed. No? Okay, I’ll see myself out.)

You started into the vigilante business young, a little bulge under the back of Batman’s cape that made the rest of the Justice League in the meeting think Bruce was host to an alien parasite until your little mask-covered eyes poked up over his shoulder.

The League’s known you since you were young, so they kind of all see you as their niece. That just quadruples the amount of people who are overprotective of you.

Eventually, in your tweens, you think enough’s enough and start out on your own — being underestimated may be an advantage, but it’s getting ridiculous — and you tackle unsolved cases.

You set up various safe houses around the world for your own disposal (using the zeta tubes) and anyone who sees the inside of one in an emergency is always surprised. You don’t really understand why; what serious vigilante doesn’t have secure, state-of-the-art safe locations scattered across the planet?

Sometimes, it gets you into danger, but you always get yourself out of it. If there ever comes a time you can’t, well, you’ve got a direct link to Batman, and if communications fail, you can always yell for your Uncle Clark at the top of your lungs.

If the latter ever comes to fruition, you ask Bruce if he’s disappointed you had to call for back-up or that you called Superman instead of Batman, and he says, “It takes a strong person to admit when they’re weak, [Y/N]; if anything, I’m proud of you. Besides … you’re not the only one who yells for Uncle Clark when they get in over their head.”

Your training entailed hacking and mechanics, so you like to fix computers and sell them on the internet Hugh Jeffreys style. It started out with Macs from the dumpster behind Gotham Academy and turned into a surprising side hustle. Large portions of your profits go into either savings or funding your extracurricular activities. 

You’re using a MacBook that’s running Linux and an iPhone 4 that’s running your own program. 

At some point, your phone falls into the wrong hands, and someone asks why it has such high security. You deadpan and say, “I have three older brothers.” No further explanation required.

One such solo case led you to a ring of drug dealers working in a small town outside of Gotham. You made some tranquillizers and heavy-duty smoke bombs and busted out your shinobi-iri training.

After sliding on a mask covering the bottom half of your face that filtered out smoke, you set all of the bombs off at once in the ventilation system, filling the building and using the infrared in your domino mask to sedate everyone before the cops arrived so no one got hurt (because there would inevitably be a firefight if the cops got involved).

You never go into a situation expecting to go hand-to-hand with someone; you always have a plan to take our your targets quickly an efficiently.

One night, when you’re working on a cold case in Gotham, you stumble across some intel that Poison Ivy’s been stockpiling chemicals and is going to wipe out all human life on Earth.

Luckily for you, Bruce’s paranoia is hereditary; you just happen to carry some white kryptonite in your belt, so you won’t have to go all the way back to the cave to obtain some.

You type out a quick debrief on your wrist computer in case you end up needing to send out an S.O.S., pop on your bottom mask to filter out spores or pheromones she might send in your direction, and bust out your shinobi-iri training again.

Of course, you try the peaceful approach, explaining to Ivy that you agree with her on the tree-hugger front to build rapport (T.B.F., who doesn’t?), but it comes to physical confrontation. You kill every vine that comes your way with a quick punch from your kryptonite ring, toss an expanding polyurethane foam bomb (see Batgirl #38) at her feet, and manage to get an inhibitor collar on her.

Gordon takes her away, and by the next morning, it’s on the news.

“You took down Ivy by yourself?” Bruce asks when you come down for breakfast.

“… Yeah,” you say after a moment, expecting a tongue-lashing.

“Are you hurt?”

“No. She didn’t get a hit in. And before you ask, I had a contingency set up in case things went sideways.”

“… Good job.”

Your dad has the article framed in the batcave, which is the bat-equivalent of having your drawing on the fridge or getting a sticker back on a test.

You’re fighting a grin for the rest of the day.

It bugs you you can’t tell anyone why you’re so happy, so you visit Dick in Blüdhaven while he’s on patrol and give him a play-by-play. You even get a hair-ruffle!

Deathstroke targets you at some point. One of Batman and Nightwing’s worst villains, and he targets you because he knows they love you. You’re the smallest bat at the time, the weakest; he thinks you’ll be the easiest to take.

Boy, was he wrong.

He was trained by the League of Assassins, so you know dropping a smoke bomb’s not going to give you cover (and his mask probably has infrared). His brain processes faster than yours, so tricking him is improbable. He’s probably done enough research on you to know you favor foam bombs and has fast enough reflexes to dodge before they go off.

And he’s jammed your comms so you can’t call for backup. You’re worried he’s got kryptonite on him and will hurt Superman if you call for help.

It’s just you and him.

He has enhanced stamina, so he tries to wear you out. You maintain distance to avoid taking damage and wearing faster.

You always admired Tim for his ability to plan ahead (see, like, the entirety of the Red Robin comics). He doesn’t know how he does it; he just does. He can’t really teach you, so you just watch and learn.

You realize your fight with Slade is just a matter of managing the distance and immobilizing him, so you strike. You duck behind a pillar or grab onto a railing or something and shoot him through the thigh with your grappling gun, reeling him in. He, of course, draws his sword or a knife to cut the line, but you’re already throwing high-density expanding polyurethane bombs.

And, just like that, you’ve single-handedly taken Deathstroke.

It sends a clear message to the rest of the Gotham villains, Blüdhaven’s villains, the League of Assassins — don’t mess with the bat’s little girl. She can hold her own.

Now it’s time for you to come up with another plan to take him down; you doubt the same method will work twice, and you’ve just made a very powerful enemy.

As Wonder Woman’s said, “Do not mistake a desire to avoid violence for an inability to deal with it.” You might go into most situations with a plan to take down your opponent already in motion, but when it comes to an all-out brawl, you’re perfectly capable and don’t pull your punches.

You’re working on an unsolved case in Blüdhaven (Dick’s got enough on his plate) when you get an S.O.S. from the aforementioned along with the feed and recording from his mask. You listen to the mission briefing while you ride back to the cave and then the audio from the Young Justice mission. They got jumped by the League of Shadows in an abandoned factory, and Talia’s trying to coerce Damian into joining the League or whatever.

The usual dropping some smoke bombs and tranqing everyone isn’t going to work on thirty armed League assassins who were trained to fight blind, so you load up on polyurethane foam bombs and call Jason and Cassandra.

The three of you take out the guards outside before splitting up and taking either end of the building (Cass stays with you). You meet in the middle, in the room the team’s being held in.

You highjacked the speakers, so they’re blasting AC/DC’s “Shoot to Thrill” upon Jason’s insistence. You wanted Zayde Wølf or Alice Cooper’s “Hey, Stoopid,” but big brothers will be big brothers.

Jason pops them with rubber bullets from above to slow them down for you while Cass demolishes them and you drop foam bombs, slinging your signature custom shuriken, bonk them over the head with Tim’s staff you picked up along the way, dislocate their arms, or shatter their kneecaps. 

You and Jason get a couple slices from swords that got a little too close, but it’s nothing compared to what you’ve had before. 

When the fighting’s done and the building’s quiet, the team’s, like, “Who the heck are you guys?” 

And Dick’s, like, 😏 “They’re our siblings.” 

Speaking of siblings, you’re older than Damian, and as such, you take upon yourself the honor of teaching him all things pop-culture.

“I have a lot of amazing older siblings. I want to be a good big sister.”

First things first, you give him one of your refurbished e-waste phones and take him to Target to pick out an OtterBox or a LifeProof case or something that’ll keep it safe in the pocket of a vigilante.

Vigilantes are always coming to you when their phone’s broken anyway; you’ve got a stack of spares you’ve repaired.

Then you help him set up a Spotify account (follow me at @remakethestars 😉) and try to help him find his rhythm.

Poor child’s never had Oreos before, so you drag a pack of Double Stuffs out of the cabinet and a glass of milk and show him the best milk-dunking method you know.

You think about handing him a cookie and telling him to waterboard it until the bubbles stop coming up, but cookie-dunking is something every kid does; it’s sacred, and you don’t want him to associate it with violence.

You show him how you and Alfred feed the bats in the batcave.

And you show him Vine compilations and your favorite shows and movies and as many classics as you can, and you put up with him pointing out the inaccuracies and calling them stupid.

Every time he doesn’t get a reference, you write it down so you know what to show him later.

If anything ever happens to you, Damian finds your list and makes it his personal mission to watch/read everything on it. It makes him feel close to you.

You build a relationship with him that’s similar to his and Dick’s, and he comes to you with things he might not be able to come to anyone else with.

Plus, since you live in the manor still and he doesn’t want Bruce to think less of him, it’s you he comes to after a nightmare.

If you know Alfred has pictures of him curled up in your side, you ask him to send them to you. Not for blackmail purposes; just to have.

You’d never use the need of comfort or the sharing of emotions against him because (A) it’s perpetuating toxic masculinity and (B) you don’t want him to think it’s wrong or confirm any of the stupid “strength” things the League of Shadows taught him.

You gave him a stuffed cat that looks like Alfred (the cat, not the butler) with some of your perfume spritzed on it. He verbalized his revulsion when you gave it to him, but on nights he has a bad dream and you’re not home, it brings him comfort.

Titus comes to get you when Damian’s upset. 

Even when he’s not with Damian, he seems to know. Pets are like that.

You’ve learned to trust Titus’s instincts. Damian thinks it’s suspicious when he’s feeling down and you just happen to call.

You never realized it until a long time later, but Ace was acting weird the day Jason came back from the dead.

And he was acting weird the day Jason came back to Gotham too. He ran to the door and began barking. Alfred swept security, but nothing seemed to be off. The whole family was on edge that day.

You were the reason Jason knew he wasn’t completely forgotten; he spotted you through a café window, and you were wearing his jacket.

Visit my headcanon masterlist.

[margoshansons]

The Killing Kind (7/?)

Part Seven: 01. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06.

Summary: Instead of calling a drone to eliminate Brad, Peter simply had Y/N do his dirty work for him.

Warning: Mild swearing (does taking Jesus’ name in vain count?), maybe some miswritten hacking skills.

Notes: I am not a tech person, so this is kind of out of my league, but I tried my hardest to make it seem realistic. 

She didn’t know how, but Peter was to blame for this. When Harrington told them that they had made the last minute upgrade to Prague, that was the first thought that popped into (Y/N)’s mind. 

She approached the young superhero, crossing her arms as she leaned in, “Did you just hijack our summer vacation?”

Peter turned to her, apologetic, “Not on purpose, uh, Nick Fury really needs me to help out with these Elemental situations--”

“And let me guess,” Y/N cut off, “The next one’s in Prague?”

Peter nodded his head sheepishly before grasping his suitcase, “I’m sorry?” was all he could muster up before the two of them followed the rest of the class onto the bus. Y/N shook her head before settling down next to MJ, the two girls tuning out the world as the European countryside passed them by. 

Y/N gazed out the window, allowing the exhaustion from yesterday to settle over her, allowing her to slowly, gently, give in to the wave, closing her eyes as the green field passed her by. 

When she woke up, she knew she wasn’t in Prague. As if the strange behavior of the bus driver could’ve helped alleviate the situation. 

It was a bathroom stop, a chance to stretch their legs before continuing the bus ride for the next few hours. 

MJ had disappeared, and as far as Y/N could tell, so had Peter. A yawn escaped her mouth, alerting the girl to her newly revived state. Her eyes caught movement near the Men’s restroom, watching as Brad opened the door ever so slightly. She heard a scuffle of voices as he walked in, and as she crept closer, she could hear the unmistakable voice of Peter protesting something. 

By the time they had loaded back onto the bus, Y/N had no doubt that something awful was about to go down if the way Peter was shaking was any indication. 

After making sure MJ was asleep once again, she moved over to join Peter in the front seat. 

“Hey” She offered, “Is everything okay? You seem a little...on edge”

Peter shared a worried look with Y/N, stumbling over his words. “Brad, he um...he has....”

“Jesus, spit it out Peter,” She asked exasperated with his nerves. 

He leaned down, whispering the secret, “Brad has an embarrassing picture of me doing something that I definitely didn’t do but looks like I did, and now--”

“Say no more” she cut him off, pulling her laptop out of her bag, connecting it to the bus wifi. “It’s on his phone right?”

Peter nodded. 

“iPhone or Android?” She asked, pulling up the program her father downloaded several years ago.

Peter placed his new glasses on his face, turning to look at Brad, eyes scanning the kid. “Um, iPhone, I think.”

“Great” Y/N began to type away in Linux, programming the necessary functions, “I need his Apple ID and password.”

Peter nodded, “EDITH,” He whispered, “I need to access Brad Davis’ Apple ID information”

Y/N paused, in awe of the glasses, “Those are Stark’s glasses” She whispered, jaw open. “That gave him access to half of the world’s private information, those are a work of technical genius!” She rambled on, current task forgotten. 

Peter turned back to her, too distracted by his own hormonal problems to recognize the amount of work that went into the glasses staining his face. “Huh, oh yeah, it’s pretty cool. Mr. Stark left them to me.”

Y/N tried to ignore the irritation spinning in the pit of her stomach at the thought of a kid younger than her being left something so important. “He created the world’s most technically advanced AI, and he just...gave it to you? No explanation needed?”

Peter nodded, absentmindedly watching Brad in hopes of gaining information. 

She laughed mirthlessly, holding back her anger at the thought of Peter having so much power. He was a child, not even a full adult, and he had one of the most powerful AIs at his disposal. 

“Okay, I got it!” Peter announced, turning back around to face the front of the bus, “his email is bdavisbasketball@icloud,”

She began to input the information into the program, coding around it. “Password?”

Peter glanced back at the hidden screens in front of him, “bradsthebest, all lowercase, no spaces”

Y/N shook her head, disappointed in her peers for choosing such an easily hackable password. Even without the highly advanced program, she’d be able to hack his phone in a nanosecond. 

“Alright, I have access” Y/N smiled inwardly, feeling like a character in a heist movie, “You said it was a picture right?” 

Peter faced her, pulling the glasses off and leaning in. “Yeah, it would be among his recents”

“I know how phones work Peter.” Y/N snapped back, mostly as a joke, but she knew some of the irritation was real, that she really was upset with Peter’s use of EDITH. Or at least, she knew that was part of the reason for most of her irritation, the other part was because she could feel his breath on her neck, his arm hovering over her head, torsos practically touching. It drove her crazy. She could almost smell the body wash he had no doubt used that morning after last night’s events, mint radiating off his frame. 

“There it is!” Peter shook her out of her thoughts, and Y/N hoped he didn’t notice the amount of blood rushing to her cheeks. She clicked on the picture, deleting it from Brad’s phone for good before closing the program and shutting her computer. 

Peter collapsed against the bus seat, a sigh of relief emanating from the two teenagers for completely separate reasons. 

“Thanks” Peter’s gaze met hers, shoulder’s relaxing.

“No problem” Y/N smiled tightly, a jealous knot forming in her stomach at the sight of the glasses in Peter’s hands. She hated feeling like this. Like her dad. 

“You can try them sometime if you want” Peter offered, handing the pair of spectacles over to the student. “You, uh, you probably know more about them than I do anyway.”

Y/N’s awed gaze fell to the AI in her friend’s hand. All that power...and he was just giving it away. “You should keep them” She swallowed, her stomach growing tight, “If I need them I’ll ask.”

Peter nodded, tucking the glasses back into his backpack before drifting off for the rest of the trip.

Thanks for the love!

MASTERLIST. 

TAG LIST

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If you wanna be tagged or removed let me know!

[phonaesthemes]

a list of asks

@padawanyugi tagged me in this, but Tumblr decided to eat any notification that I got tagged, so I’m glad I saw it on my dash because I like filling these things out. Thanks for tagging me! I may have typed A Lot.

Favorites: What types of books do you enjoy? Tell about what you’ve read recently (Or maybe about a book you hated recently!)I like spec-fic and sci-fi, although less “hard” science fiction, and I also enjoy fantasy. I read a lot of YA even though I’m in my 30s just because it seems easy to find a story I want to read and I’m not usually in the mood for dense prose.

I’ve been rereading the Wheel of Time series since it’s getting an Amazon TV show; it was my first non-LOTR fantasy series and I love it to death, warts and all, although I love joking about the weak points with other people who’ve read it. I think the last other thing I read was A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, which was a queer YA historical fiction, and it was a lot of fun. I wish I’d had access to all these queer stories when I was an actual teenager, but better late than never.

What types of music do you like to listen to? Share five songs from your music library. I really do like a bit of everything, although I gravitate towards certain genres more often depending on the season or time of day, so I’m going to cheat and pick 5 per season. Summer for me is lots of peppy pop (pride playlists!), punk and rock and punk-adjacent stuff, just upbeat stuff in general. -Weekender, by The Royal They -Break My Heart, by Dua Lipa -Toutes les femmes savent danser, by Loud -Ruby Soho, by Rancid -Womanarchist, by Bad Cop, Bad Cop

In the fall, my inner goth kid craves darkwave, goth rock, dramatic folk, roots rock, and also anything that reminds me of Halloween. -Iuka, by the Secret Sisters -Bela Lugosi’s Dead, by Bauhaus -How’s It Gonna End, by Tom Waits -Under the Milky Way, by The Church -I Put a Spell on You, by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins I could go on about the Christmas music I like at length (Boney M’s Christmas album slaps, ngl) but I’ll just skip that and say that I listen to more classical and piano pieces in the winter. I’m terrible at remembering names, so artists only: -Ludovico Einaudi -Chopin -Debussy -Saint-Saëns -Dvořák And in spring I’m usually just depressed af and listen to whatever. -FML, by K.Flay -Weird Part of the Night, by Louis Cole -Juodaan Viinaa, by Korpiklaani -P.O.H.U.I., by Carla’s Dreams -Marryuna, by Baker Boy

Do you have a show or movie that you can just put on anytime and it’s your comfort? Definitely Star Trek. I’ve rewatched the various iterations (except TOS) so many times. Also Mean Girls and Bring It On, idk why.

Do you have a favorite dessert? Tiramisu or creme brulée! Or macarons. I don’t eat dessert really unless I’m at a restaurant.

Do you have a favorite cold drink? Sparkling water, hands down.

Do you have a favorite game? The hours I have put into the SIms in my lifetime is probably shameful, although I haven’t played in a while. Don’t Starve is another contender for hours played, but I am also really fond everything by Amanita Design

Do you have a favorite part of your self care/beauty/health routine? I haven’t been doing it much lately since I’ve been dealing with some uncertain health issues with my joints (actually have a rheumatologist appointment later today), but savasana after a long yoga workout is borderline ecstasy.

Do you have a favorite type of take-out food? Indian for sure.

What’s your favorite type of exercise/physical activity? I have a love-hate relationship with running. I don’t actually love it but I love how I feel after. I really enjoy yoga. I love playing in the water at the beach, bodyboarding and swimming.

Pick between: (you choose the context)

Cook or bake? (I love cooking A Lot)

Space or ocean? (Hard to pick, but I grew up by the ocean and it’s 100% my happy place)

Chocolate or vanilla?

City or suburb or rural? (I grew up in an isolated rural village and I miss the quiet and the slower pace of life, but I do not miss the lack of amenities and opportunities, or the smalltown gossip. I also don’t drive bc of epilepsy, so I’m fucked as far as transport in rural settings.)

Past or future?

Shower in the morning or evening?

Mac/Apple or PC/Android? (Linux in general!)

Sing or dance?  (I don’t have an amazing voice but I can carry a tune without it being painful, and I love singing along with songs.)

Get up early or sleep in? (I actually love sleeping in but with two kids, early morning is my only time to myself, so I wake up before 6 most days AGGH.)

Shoes, socks, or bare feet? (Hate socks. I’m barefoot at home all year round.)

Marker, crayon, or pencil? Pen!

Tea, coffee, or hot chocolate? (Coffee in the morning, tea later on.)

Random questions:

Have you ever had any pets? (Had dogs and a cat as a kid, and as an adult I’ve had betta fish and cats, and I have a cat currently.)

What is your academic background/job field? I did my undergrad in linguistics, and I am currently a stay-at-home dad lol. I do freelance editing and transcription on the side. I don’t think I’ll ever work in my field bc I really don’t have the energy to go to grad school.

What’s something random that you’re into (even if you aren’t good at it)? I signed up for a Cape Breton step dancing class in university and I loved it.

Are you good at putting away your clean laundry right away? It depends on the day, but generally yes. Mine and everyone else’s. When I lived alone? Absolutely not.

What’s one of your pet peeves? Someone trying to have a conversation with me when they have the radio or TV on. I can’t follow what you’re saying if someone else is speaking! I hate having that stuff on as background noise in general.

What’s something you’re pretty good at? I’m a great cook.

What’s the most recent nice thing you bought for yourself? A new conditioner ig? lol

Can you sew? I can mend a small tear or sew on a button, but it’s been years since I did more than that.

What’s a chore you hate (or a chore you enjoy)? I hate vacuuming so much. So much. Maybe if I had a better vaccuum cleaner I wouldn’t mind it, but I just feel like I’m fighting with the stupid thing, getting caught up on its own cords, caught on furniture, can’t quiiiite reach a spot... HATE IT. I like shoveling snow sometimes, though.

Tell us a fun fact about yourself. I am 20 years older than my youngest sibling, and five minutes younger than my “oldest” sibling.

Never have I ever... Gone fishing, even though I’m from a fishing community.

What extracurriculars did/do you do in school? In high school, I played trumpet in band until the band got dissolved from lack of funding. I played soccer one year, was in a play another year. We had an art club for like a semester that I was in. In university the first time round, I did step dancing and intramural hide and seek  Second time around, I was in the linguistics club to help with assignments. (We were very much encouraged to work in pairs or groups for a lot of different classes. The only thing was that you did need to list your group members on the assignment so the prof knew who you worked with. My first morphology class in particular, we had a whole homework club where a huge portion of the class got together to work through assignments and help each other understand, and the prof would quite often show up. </tangent>

Deeper questions:

How’s your quarantine/last few months been? The cabin fever was really bad before the weather warmed up. I struggle with seasonal depression every spring, and it’s gotten much worse since we moved to Edmonton because of how long the winters are. (Snow from September to May/June? Fucccck.) It’s frankly horrifying to look at what’s going on in the US, but even though we have far fewer cases here, I’m really anxious that we’ll see another wave soon. Otherwise, I think I’ve adjusted. Home-schooling, hand-sanitizing, social distancing, masks...All feels kind of normal now, which should maybe concern me.

What do you think of human nature/society/etc.? I am like the least philosophical person you will meet so I don’t think I really have many thoughts.

What’s something you are insecure about? Writing my L2 if a native speaker is gonna read it.

What do you think is the meaning of life/reason that humans exist in the universe? I don’t think there is one, and that doesn’t bother me.

Do you think you’re better (whatever that means to you) than you used to be? Definitely. My adolescence and early adulthood was rough. I was dealing with a lot of trauma, untreated bipolar disorder, and I self-harmed for a very long time. I could not imagine making it to 30, let alone being stable and happy. I actively avoided thinking about the future because it made me spiral. But I was lucky enough to get help, consistent help from a doctor I clicked with, and it made a world of difference. I think younger me would be disappointed at how mundane my life is, but I’m thrilled to be boring because boring means no life-upending mood episodes. I have a happy partnership and two delightful kids and I couldn’t ask for more.

What are your thoughts on religion? I’m not religious and my own experience being raised in the Catholic church was frankly traumatic, but I know that it’s a source of comfort and community for many others and I think that’s awesome for them.

Do you think that there are aliens out there? I think so, although I think that we may not even know what other kinds of life to look for and may not recognize it even if we find it.

What’s something that’s been on your mind recently? We’re moving cross-country in less than a month (driving, no less, nearly 5000 km) and I still have so much to do to get ready aosjdoajdoasijdoaijsd

[goose1083]

These are my notes for the second episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’m so sorry these are so long this time. I had a lot of questions and long comments. Also, if you haven’t checked out the first one of these, go do that. I explain some basic things that would seem weird otherwise.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Notes

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Season 1, Episode 2: “The Harvest”

There goes the narrator again

Great teamwork, guys

Oh, RIP Jesse. F’s in chat for him, guys

Title still hasn’t changed to the iconic look we know

Quick question: everyone headbands to the theme song as much as I do, right? Cause like, this time, I feared I’d hit my head against the wall when I did it, so I just need to validate my actions

I feel that instead of having that depressed gothic teen, they just have Giles instead

Buffy, was that suppose to make them feel better, cause it didn’t really seem like it

Also, Buffy stole the words out of my brain, Willow you are sitting

Thanks Giles, that made complete sense

So I talked to my dad about Darla and he said that it seemed like they wanted Darla to be a teenager but then made her an adult instead unless that came from group chat I can’t remember

I totally thought the Master was going to say House of Mouse

Okay, but cutting back and forth for info dumps are really effective, especially for me, an adhd person who can lose focus fairly quickly

That right, Xander, don’t be stereotypical. Don’t assume vampires turn to bats. Dracula’s the exception, not the norm

Look at everyone contributing a little to finding the vampires location. See, Xander’s not all dumb, just somewhat

If Scooby-Doo taught me anything, it’s that being bait is just as bad as being food

Also, what’s this advanced technology in the 1990s

Also, thanks Joss for saying mentally challenged. There are so many worse words you could’ve put in but you didn’t👏👏👏👏

Now there’s the reality of public schools

But seriously, who’s he kidding? I bet kids leave campus all the time, they did at my high school

Also, why is the gate open if it’s a closed campus? Why was it left open? Is it so close to the beginning of the day that the custodians hadn’t quite gotten around to closing it yet, and if it’s not, then that raises so many more questions

I thinks it’s cool how Xander’s character develops over time. Like, I can see him struggling with the idea that a man is supposed to be doing the hard work and saving, but later, he’s very content with staying on the sideline for the most part and letting Buffy do all the work

Hi Angel

They already set up the tension between the two, don’t they?

Again, Buffy, do you really think no one is going to notice the door?

I think Angel had friends once but once he got turned, he lost them through fear and time

Ah, of course, the harvest is going to start right under the school

Awww, he already cares so much about her

Wait, did Xander hear the conversation between Buffy and Angel, including his good luck?

Also, how was Xander able to leave but not Buffy? I smell sexism in this thing....and also the fact that Xander has been to the school for a year or two at this point

Also, what was the interaction between Angel and Xander like if Xander followed her?

Xander, don’t you dare disrespect chem class! Chem is the best science out of all of them, excluding computer science. Chem and computer are tied for the sciences

Interesting bonding moment between Buffy and Xander

Hi me

Omg they’re programming and in Linux no less!! Which makes sense cause they didn’t have much in the 90s

Okay, but she wasn’t screaming, the only one who screamed was me

I love how the guy just randomly joined in

Weren’t you just asking your friend to find out what Willow was doing, also she wasn’t talking at all???

Why is other me the complete opposite of actual me. She can’t code, doesn’t know what keys mean versus I can code kind of complicated things, knows how to do basic things like save, etc.

Also, my soul hurt so much watching her hit that delete key smh😔

That’s morbid, Buffy

Round of applause to my boy Jesse who feigned death to get a surprise attack on future attacker, though it didn’t quite work

Yes, I sure someone heard that

Why do their eyes and claws grow in the dark?

Oh, Jesse, you did suck her blood

Why is closing the door so hard for her? She’s supposed to be super strong

Don’t leave the door, Xander, you wait till the escape is ready

Of course, they end up at the power plant

Tbh that whole tunnel segment was pretty underwhelming. You’d think there would be a big fight but no, just some vent crawling

I know that Colin wasn’t gonna go by unscathed but damn, finger to the eye and no response to it. That a strong vampire. Also, thanks for sparing us the image of a finger to the eye. I can handle some gore but it still unsettles me, and many other people are more sensitive than I, so yeah

Only Giles would think murder is great

I rather wish it wasn’t coming together, either

🎵I can see what’s happening, and they don’t have a clue🎵

I’m sorry but isn’t that kind of cannibalism

Hey look, it’s Rafiki putting the blood on simba’s forehead, right? That’s how it goes in the movie?

Xander, don’t take it out on the recycling bin next to the copier/printer(?)

Also, Willow seems pretty non-phased hearing Jesse’s gone. Guess she didn’t really see him as a friend

Really, we’re already doing the end-of-the-world thing?

He has a fidget spinner on his head that or a bad ninja star, seeing as those have 4 points

Of course, the one good place in town, just where I’m gonna be, and all the action and drama is going to take place there, perfect

Oh look, it’s the leather jacket or at least a leather jacket. I mean with her lifestyle, I’m sure she went through multiple of those

But Joyce, it’s literally the end of the world

Is the word I’m looking for “je ne sais quoi–” oh no, it’s cars

Hey, this is kind of a good song

I love how vampirism give you an ultimate swag, even if you didn’t have it before

Hey, this song is also really good

Oh god, the slow mo walk

Apparently, vampirism also gives you the desire for theatratics

See, you can not tell me that was overly dramatic

Why is he groping her while he feeds

Come on, let him have me

How did no one hear the glass?

Buffy’s so cool with those backflips and roundhouses and all of it

Giles, how could you lose that easily to a girl? Granted, he didn’t know she was there but still

Shouldn’t Darla be dead and like not look as pretty in the future cause of that holy water?

Wow, they really just gave Jesse the accidental death, huh?

Nice deception, Buffy

Nice power shot, Buffy

Aww, Angel’s impressed

Is it just me, or is the wrap up of the fight lacking something? maybe singing

You’re right, Xander, nothing’s ever gonna be the– oh okay just cut to a perfectly normal day at school. That’s fine

Why does Willow sound kind of off here? Like, it’s not her voice or they had to redub her lines cause it didn’t pick up right when they recorded I don’t know it’s just seems weird to me

Yup, Giles is the gothic depressed teen

I love these ways of getting kicked out

Omg the mummy! Did they not have that in the first one or is it just me

No, they did. I went back. I guess I just missed it or just didn’t react to it the first time

Taglist:

@highonbandcandy @calraisin @really-really-slowly @towersofsong @morespinach @therealmadblonde @bothersome-bitch

[leam1983]

Even in 2022.

Two weeks ago, the office got a notice that our regular IT tech would be on "forced leave" for a few days, citing medical problems. Okay, sure. Who came up to replace said tech, however, who is a single woman?

Two guys, one who clearly knew his stuff and another who had a weirdly clean-cut look for an IT tech and whose shoes were far too polished. I know my techs, and most of them are borderline-feral, in terms of appearance. They're tired, stretched at the seams, hirsute, wide-eyed and usually packed to the brim with meme and geek cred. They're basically vampires running on bad coffee.

New Guy? Didn't engage with anyone. Didn't note anyone's desktop toy, didn't comment on the one guy in the Graphic Design team who insists on running Linux Mint. Very, very suspicious, to be honest. Plus, why bring in two guys if one of them's only ever going to sit there and watch the other guy term into our servers?

I managed not to look too inconspicuous as I asked him why. It felt like he quickly sideloaded a personality and gave me a sudden and incongruous grin.

"I'm in training," he says, "I'm just here to observe."

Right. You're fifteen years older than your colleague and you look like Patrick Warburton. No way you're actually a helpdesk drone.

Now, the office isn't doing too hot, of late. Some old colleagues of mine were let go, and the executive pool is being shrunken down. I've seen this happen before, and one of the usual symptoms of the general moroseness that follows in the wake of a downsizing is folks realizing the NAS used by the Graphic Design guys is wide open. It also leads to a few entreprising morons figuring they can save the office a buck by pirating whatever suite it is they need - when the Automotive sector is extremely regimented and self-regulating, when it comes to tool-related licenses. Edit sensitive files on a pirated copy of Photoshop? They'll know within a few weeks, guaranteed.

The fix for that is easy enough, especially for the Work-from-Home crowd like me, in that Honda can't track domestic use of pirated software, no matter how the metadata might change. For the morons who rip the Adobe suite off of a Torrent tracker and load that at work, however? That can, and certainly has cost us a fair bit in the past, and it's led to past colleagues of mine getting fired.

So I and a few other colleagues put two and two together. Someone in Graphic Design probably had to work off of another computer for a few days while the network architecture was being downsized, and figured they might just squeak on by. Nobody at work is especially savvy apart from the earlier IT girl, so they probably hit Delete on Photoshop's directory at the end of the day and figured that emptying the Recycle Bin works the same way as dropping an OSX program folder in the Trash. Cracked drivers were left behind, the gutted Adobe suite tried to phone home a few times, logs were generated and a nice lil' incident report landed on the desk of some Security and Confidentiality goon's desk at Honda of Canada.

Enter Stage Left: Cleaned-up Forgotten Character from The IT Crowd and Office Rat Kronk.

I missed seeing or hearing the guy getting verbally flayed, I've been working from home for the past week. A coworker messaged me yesterday, claiming they'd had enough balls to approach Kronk in Slacks after the culprit got his. They told him his angle isn't all that convincing.

"I'm just a company rep," the guy replies, "I'm not paid to look like an IT worker."

Colleague's a bit stumped. "So why'd you pose as one?

- To blend in, you know; not make much of a scene until we'd have proof."

Colleague's got a set of brass balls, so he adds that they failed, considering how the entire office knew. Dude's apparently surprised. "Can I jot a few things down? We're trying to update our mystery review policies..."

The comments went as you'd expect. Real IT specs wear sneakers, stonewashed jeans with frayed edges, a Metal band's tee-shirt dating back to the eighties or nineties, and never miss a chance to break off from work and discuss their hobbies. Real IT specs drool when you casually mention that you're running Windows 11 off of a Linux container, and treat common areas of interest like markers of instant friendship.

Real IT specs will swear up and down that they're "super busy", but you'll hear the fanfare for World of Warcraft's Login screen, in their call's background.

So the Police State isn't just institutional, it's also corporate.

Losing my mind remembering that pic chelsea manning posted of the extremely undercover and not at all obvious fbi agent who was tailing her after her release

[daianymargarita]

The scariest move in my career: "I do devops now"

Bob: (Developer from the neighbor team): Hey Daiany! I see you are closer to us now (he and his team sit across the hall next to my new desk)...

Me: (With a normal-natural smile) Yes, I sit next to M. now (a.k.a. "the devops guy")...

Bob: (With a surprised face) Yes I can see that, but, are you in the devops team now? Really?

Me: (With a smile turning from proud to nervous) Well, yes, I am in that team now..

Bob: (smiling, incredulous) Nahh, come on you gotta be kidding me...

Me: (now definitely with a nervous smile) Yes, look, my stuff is there, I sit next to M. now...

Bob: (With eyes wide open and a slightly higher volume in his voice) You do devops now as well? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!

Me: (Confused by his reaction) No I am not. I am in that team now as well...

Bob: (Turns to Tim, another colleague from the "devops" team sitting diagonally to me) Hahaha hey Tim! It seems you guys finally got someone who knows stuff here uh?! .... (laughs and goes away for lunch)

Me: Confused, I go back to my desk, wondering what the hell that was...

Tim: Do you work with Linux?

Me: Nope.

Tim: Haha, of course you don't ! I just wanted to make some jokes! (and turned back his eyes to the screen in front of him)

First day at the new school

That's pretty much how I felt that day, as the new one in the class. That story happened when I moved to the area where my new team is sitting. It hit me, probably ways more than it was supposed to, but I think it was because I had a wild mix of emotions on those days. I had just jumped in the cold water. I had just left a team where I felt like in a family, and we performed amazingly well together, to change to a very different setup, in a field of work where I literally never did anything before. Technically, I had voluntary run away from my comfort zone: I decided to change to the team in charge of the infrastructure automation, a kind of service provider for all other development teams in my department, a.k.a "the devops team".

 Me & DevOps

I started getting my nose in this "devops" thing in 2016 after my previous team managed to implement a delivery pipeline and be the first ones in our department to start doing continuous deployments. I joined the team when the work in that pipeline was going on in paralell to the business requirements and experienced first hand all changes needed to establish such a process, especially the cultural ones. The "devops" mindset, where we as a development team had the possibility and responsibility now of taking care of our deployments and operative aspects of the software we were creating, was a fascinating thing for me. So I started going to conferences and discovering a big and amazing devops community, where I even started telling our own stories.

And all of that happened while I was working as a system analyst at my previous team, a development team. I wasn't coding myself but taking care of the requirements, acceptance tests, design, etc, in close collaboration with the developers and our Product Owner. So I never really took a closer look at all the magic behind the scenes that enabled us as a dev team, to overtake all these responsibilities and change our mindsets toward software operation. That was some interesting stuff that our local "Infrastructure Automation Team" was doing for us (as well for all other dev teams in the department).

That "magic" always seemed interesting to me but I never had (or found) time to learn what exactly it was. I was busy with my stuff as an analyst in my team. 

Until it was time for a change.

 Rescuing my technical skills

Early this year I took the decision to go back to software development (check my post on how and why I came to that conclusion). It was a very good opportunity in a new project with my previous team and I was very inspired and excited about it.

Unfortunately, that project was stopped shortly before we started with the development. It was a dramatic death of the initiative, a real pitty. And that moment coincided with a bunch of other changes in the department that ended up with a big restructuring, where some new topics arrived while others (like mine) where stopped, new teams appeared and old ones were modified.

I had the feeling that it was time for me for a bigger change, somehow. Partly due to the disappointment I had because of the cancelled project, partly due to a gut feeling that told me I should dare and go on a totally different path.

And there it was, the opportunity just waiting for me to dare and take it.

 The cloud calls

It turned out that the so-called "devops" team in my department is planning a migration of the runtime architecture of all our applications from VM-based to Container-based on the cloud with OpenShift. And the management was looking for at least one more person to participate in the process. So I followed my gut feeling and asked my manager if I could join them. Even though I wasn't really sure of what I was getting into.

  An Alien on the infrastructure-team's earth 

That's exactly how I feel now. Management somehow trusted me on being able to get myself to the appropriate technical level where I can truly help the team. Not only on the OpenShift migration, but on all other regular topics taken care of by the team. Well I guess at least I deserve some credit on having been able to convince them that I would be a good choice for the team.

Everyone in the department was surprised for this move, just like Bob, from the story from beginning. At first I was rather proud of being the one swimming against the current, and felt brave and unstoppable. Until that story from the beginning happened.

I ended up in tears on the bathroom telling to the stupid crying girl on the mirror that she needed to calm down. That she is strong and more than able to learn and adapt to new things. I was under an attack of Impostor Syndrom.

Leaving the comfort zone is scary, but I had already taken the step on my own. No one forced me into that, so I had to just face my fears and get my hands to work.

 Challenge accepted

Well there is a loooot of stuff I need to learn now. But I am step by step developing a plan on how I will achieve all of that, while at the same time working on some team-building, getting to know my colleagues and how to get along with them, helping to establish a process that will support the team to achieve its goals till the end of the year. I am learning how to deal with the feeling of being an alien while actively doing my best to "get onboarded" and eventually start adding value to the team, just like a trainee.

I am confident that this experience will bring my professional career to a whole new level. It's just a question of a couple of years. Every day I get more and more conviced that I took the right decision.

Now I am "oficially doing devops" :-P

[wunkolo]

ASKS!

I use Visual Studio 2015 for pretty much all my programming work and VIM when I'm on a linux environment. For general text editing I actually really like Visual Studio Code. In fact I'm typing replies to all these asks in Visual Studio Code right now using its markdown editor(tumblr supports markdown btw)

AAA THANK YOU!!!

Oh man for sure. Pretty much all the reverse engineering and I do now is related to games or malware or "software improvement" or just having fun deciphering an entire file format or something. It's a lot more fun than, The Other Stuff.

(this is related to the video I made about the anime girl eating the mush really weird) I had to skip through like 7 episodes of the show to find that part in HD and the entire anime is so dry and weird and that character is the reserved "shy" girl that they had to make sure they fan-serviced at some point or something like I'm glad I only had to get shallowly involved in that anime for the sake of that video because sheesh....

I'm not sure what you mean? Do you mean my theme? Tumblr's font? I'm not sure what you're refering to... My theme uses the css font family "MS UI Gothic", "Meiryo UI", "MS PGothic", "HiraKakuProN-W3", monospace. Tumblr uses Helvetica Neue, HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif.

This is a snarky opinion but: That dumb dragon-maid anime made sure to use "D-CUP" as a selling point and has all the tropes that appeals to people that always have /a/ open on another tab or heave that channer-talk or those anime-blogger people that will militantly defend any anime that tickles their primal instinct to mate with any fictional character that is even implicitly female. It's cashing in on the Monster Girl flavor ever since the feedback of shows like Monster Musume got some studios to change their model up and it's gonna probably be something you'll be seeing over and over for the next few seasons but I mean good for those people that are in its target demographic. They can watch what they want though and whatever panders to them to fuel their wet dreams or whatever "the usual" people get out of it. A lot of the "anime was a mistake" meme-ing comes from using quotes of people much higher up and involved in the industry that share similar opinions about the same drum being beaten over and over again so it's kind of a meme that encapsulates a much larger feeling to express that "ugh" scope of disappointment targetted at certain trends in anime especially when the first half of the PV fools people into thinking it was going to something different for once(which is was the original discourse-causing-post was about I believe. Using the "YOU HAD US AT THE FIRST HALF" image attached to it).

I started when I was 11! I had an interest in it at a much younger age when I was getting into modding the Halo PC Trial on my dad's laptop but I like to say it really started when I had Pokemon Ruby for the GBA and an Action Replay. I messed around with the "hold L while walking through a door" and it warps you to some place different and I didn't know hexadecimal at this point but was just looking at the patterns between codes that warped to different locations and manually edited diffent numbers and wrote my findings down. Before this I wanna mention a little story that involved me buying a lot of bionicles and inputting the codes that come with them on the bionicles website that allowed you to redeem stuff like screensavers and wallpapers at the time. I was a little shit and noticed the pattern in the codes. All of them started with "1644" and four numbers after it. So I started coming up with random codes and some of them worked. I did this while I was at "work" in the library at my elementary school and racked up a shit load of points since Lego didn't think its target demographic was smart enough to do this apparently. A few weeks later seemed to have discontinued the code system from what I remember since plenty of other people probably ran into the same thing but curious little pattern-finding me really kicked off around then. I was programming in visual basic by 12 and taught myself hexadecimal by age 13 because of action replay codes.

BOY. ElDorito is now totally finished after 2 years. The project is now moving on to Anvil to replace the old shitty 2-year-old API that I programmed since ElDorito was originally just a research framework I made that was re-geared to be a P2P-enabling toolkit. Anvil is totally oriented to be P2P enabling for multiplayer and not just a refactored research framework.

I havent used DEElekgolo in so long and honestly I had a lot of other little names I used across the net but I figured it was about time to change my Halo-Fandom name "DEElekgolo" into something else before too many people became to know me strictly as it. Those of you that don't know the "Lekgolo" in that name refers to the intelligent worm colony species that makes up the Hunter and Scarab and other of some of the strongest enemies found in the game.

Full CGA is a 16-color palette. Here's how PixDither handles that.

I have the 2-bit palette that you're probably referring to named as VGA-2bit since VGA somewhat encapsulates EGA and CGA within it in different color modes. I should probably rename it actually as CGA-Mode4 and include the high-intencity color options.

THANK YOUUUU

This is a kind of morbid question out of the blue but I don't think knowingly having a shorter life span would cause someone to probably a lot more apathetic of their environment so I can't imagine there being that much enjoyment to not having many regrets when interfacing with their surrounding.

THANKS I thought it was cute too it's my avatar everywhere now.

THANK YOU SO much! Once I'm done with this commission I might make some fanart of some of my favorite pokemon from Sun/Moon!

Thanks! I'm so glad I can inspire you

👌👌👌 2016 ended very well for me as well as the beginning of 2017 (I'm going to be going to Florida to see my gf! and I got a lot of xmas money recently and I'm gonna be going to a shit-film festival to most likely win BEST EDITOR for the THIRD YEAR in a ROW!

Patience.. for sure helps. I don't give up on myself.

I don't think it's a lost cause it really depends on how you digest information to make it more memorable. A classroom setting is a medium that works for some people but what really matters is knowing what works for you and makes it easier for you to digest information. Self-teaching is on the rise in this day and age especially due to the internet and such. Learning how you learn will for sure help you remember it better in the same manner that everyone kinda studies in their own way. Look back on how you might have taught yourself how to do something else in your life and try and find patterns that have worked for you during the times you realize you've gotten better at something. I personally read a lot and put information into practice by making it "mines". I learn C++ by programming tools that make small-time computer tasks easier like renaming a bunch of files at once or does a cool image effect or do some little code-golf challenges that allows me to put my information into practice and at the end of my fingers as soon as possible so it doesn't just fizzle in the back of my mind as something I read from a text book or off the internet. This way I "ground" knowledge into something other than a concept and it makes it that much easier to remember the more I "attach" to it. I call that process of attaching a bunch of things "making it yours" a lot but it certainly helps turning things into muscle memory.

It helped with learning to draw perspective and programming and such because all that information I took in is now bookmarked in my head with "I programmed ___ one time and it made ___ easier" "that one building you drew that actually looked really good because of ___" etc. Make it yours.

What is this ask.

Hash tables are cool because of how it uses hash functions to index and bookmark much larger sums of data for fast lookup. Hash functions are interesting and hash tables are sosososo useful for caching.

Cry when you need to but don't give up on yourself. Reach the finish line crying if you have to.

Thank you! This ask is a little old but this kind of compassion helps a lot.

Nothing too elaborate really. I frame form with gesture and construct on from there. Here's some simple sketches.

For environments I get really gestural too. I relate pretty much everything to the horizon line/eye-level. You're either looking up at something(above the line) or looking down at it(below it) or straight-on(very close or intersecting with the line). After that it just relates to your vanishing points.

Javascript is an okay syntax but I hate the ecosystem. Any kind of web development out there involves a stack of 5 or 7 or 12 javascript frameworks with dependencies of their own including a whole mess of other crap.

Dojo Toolkit, jQuery, midori, MooTools, Prototype JavaScript Framework, React, YUI Library, AngularJS, Backbone.js, Cappuccino, Chaplin.js, Echo, Ember.js, Enyo, Ext JS, Google Web Toolkit, JavaScriptMVC, Knockout, Meteor, Mojito, MooTools, Node.js, React.js, Rialto Toolkit, SproutCore, Wakanda Framework, the list goes on and on and on and if you ever go on a place like stack overflow to try and get help you're always going to get some dude telling you to drag in an entire framework into your project.

Just read this

I would never bet my living on javascript and I only use it as a hobby language when I have to. The creator of cookie clicker himself told me that Javascript is the result of an eval function being turned into an entire language.

https://soundcloud.com/louielastic/close2u-2 !!

THATS SO GOOD I hope you do well!!!

That's exactly the kind of fascination that got me into comp sci. To be honest I was fascinated with the work that goes into fashion design at such a young age that seeing the passion involved inspired me to get so into comp sci. I almost got into fashion design myself but now it's just background radiation that finds it's place in my drawings sometimes.

NICE!!

Proving yourself wrong a bunch of times!

Nope!

[hydrus]

Version 325

windows

zip

exe

os x

app

tar.gz

linux

tar.gz

source

tar.gz

I had a difficult week, but I got some great work done. Save for some final help revisions, the downloader overhaul is complete.

final downloader work

So, I managed to finish 13 of my 15 final jobs in the downloader overhaul. All that remains is a help pass for subscriptions and a better intro to gallery and watcher downloading, which I will fold into normal work over the coming weeks. This has been a longer journey than I expected, but I feel great to be done. This final work is mostly unusual stuff that got put off.

For instance, subscriptions can now run without a working popup (i.e. completely in the background)! It works just like import folders, as a per-subscription checkbox option, and still permits the final files being published to a popup button or a named page. I recommend only trying this after the initial sync has completed, just so you know the sub works ok (and isn't accidentally downloading 2,000 garbage files in the background!).

Also, subscription queries can now take an optional 'display name'. This display name will appear in lieu of the actual query text in most display contexts, like the edit sub panel or a popup message or a publishing destination. A query for pixiv_artist:93360 can be more neatly renamed to and managed as 'houtengeki', and 'xxxxxxxx' can be renamed 'family documents, DO NOT ENTER' and so on.

And subscription queries now have individual tag import options that only support 'additional tags'. So, if you want to give a particular query a blog-related creator tag or a personal processing tag, this is now simple.

If you 'try again' on a 'deleted' file import, the client will now ask if you want to erase that deletion record first (i.e. overriding it and importing anyway)! This is obviously much quicker and simpler than having to temporarily edit the file import options to not exclude previously deleted.

Gallery and Watcher pages now have quick 'retry failed' buttons and list right-click menu entries.

advanced stuff

If you are in advanced mode, subscription edit panels now have a 'get quality info' button. If you select some queries and hit this (oh fug, I just tested it IRL and discovered it does it for all queries, not just selected, wew, I will fix this for next week), the client will do some hacky db work and present you with a summary of how many files currently in those queries are inbox/archive/deleted, and a percentage of archived/(archived+deleted)--basically "after processing, you kept 5% of this query". This should help you figure out which queries are actually 'good' for you and which are just giving you 98% trash. I can do more here, but this is just a quick prototype. Feedback would be appreciated.

The downloader easy-import pngs now support custom http headers and bandwidth rules! This is a bit experimental, so test it a bit please before you roll it out for real. If you have custom headers or specific bandwidth rules for the domains in your export downloaders gugs, they will be added automatically, and there's a button to add them separately as well. Exporters and importers will get detailed previews of what these new 'domain metadata' objects include.

If you are in advanced mode, file import options now have options to turn off url- and hash-based 'skip because already in db/previously deleted' checks. They are basically a "I don't care what you think the url is, just download it anyway and see if it is a new file m8". If you have a particular url conflict that was causing an incorrectly skipped download that I have previously discussed with you, please try these options and reattempt the problem file. Don't use them for regular downloads and subs, or you'll just be wasting bandwidth. Advanced file import options now also allow you to turn off source url association completely.

full list

added a 'show a popup while working' checkbox to edit subscription panel--be careful with it, I think maybe only turn it off after you are happy everything is set up right and the sub has run once

advanced mode users will see a new 'get quality info' button on the edit subscription panel. this will some ugly+hacky inbox/archived/deleted info on the selected queries to help you figure out if you are only archiving, say, 2% of one query. this is a quickly made but cpu-expensive way of calculating this info. I can obviously expand it in future, so I would appreciate your thoughts

subscription queries now have an optional display name, which has no bearing on their function but if set will appear instead of query text in various presentation contexts (this is useful, for instance, if the downloader query text deals in something unhelpful like integer artist_id)

subscription queries now each have a simple tag import options! this only allows 'additional tags', in case you want to add some simple per-query tags

selecting 'try again' on file imports that previously failed due to 'deleted' will now pop up a little yes/no asking if you would like to first erase these files' previously deleted file record!

the watcher and gallery import panels now have 'retry failed' buttons and right-click menu entries when appropriate

the watcher and gallery import panels will now do some ui update less frequently when they contain a lot of data

fixed the new human-friendly tag sorting code for ungrouped lexicographic sort orders, where it was accidentally grouping by namespace

downloader easy-import pngs can now hold custom header and bandwidth rules metadata! this info, if explicitly present for the appropriate domain, will be added automatically on the export side as you add gugs. it can also be bundled separately after manually typing a domain to add. on the import side, it is now listed as a new type. longer human-friendly descriptions of all bandwidth and header information being bundled will be displayed during the export and import processes, just as an additional check

for advanced users, added 'do not skip downloading because of known urls/hashes' options to downloader file import options. these checkboxes work like the tag import options ones--ignoring known urls and hashes to force downloads. they are advanced and should not be used unless you have a particular problem to fix

improved how the pre-import url/hash checking code is compared for the tag and file import options, particularly on the hash side

for advanced users, added 'associate additional source urls' to downloader file import options, which governs whether a site's given 'source urls' should be added and trusted for downloaded files. turn this off if the site is giving bad source urls

fixed an unusual problem where gallery searches with search terms that included the search separator (like '6+girls skirt', with a separator of '+') were being overzealously de/encoded (to '6+girls+skirt' rather than '6%2bgirls+skirt')

improved how unicode quoted characters in URLs' query parameters, like %E5%B0%BB%E7%A5%9E%E6%A7%98 are auto-converted to something prettier when the user sees them

the client now tests if 'already in db' results are actually backed by the file structure--now, if a the actual file is missing despite the db record, the import will be force-attempted and the file structure hopefully healed

gallery url jobs will no longer spawn new 'next page' urls if the job yielded 0 _new_ (rather than _total_) file urls (so we should have fixed loops fetching the same x 'already in file import cache' results due to the gallery just passing the same results for n+1 page fetches)

in the edit parsing panels, if the example data currently looks like json, new content parsers will spawn with json formulae, otherwise they will get html formulae

fixed an issue with the default twitter tweet parser pulling the wrong month for source time

added a simple 'media load report mode' to the help debug menu to help figure out some PIL/OpenCV load order stuff

the 'missing locations recovery' dialog that spawns on boot if file locations are missing now uses the new listctrl, so is thankfully sortable! it also works better behind the scenes

this dialog now also has an 'add a possibly correct location' button, which will scan the given directory for the correct prefixes and automatically fill in the list for you

fixed some of the new import folder error reporting

misc code cleanup

next week

Now I will finish a simple login manager. Fingers crossed, I hope to spend a total of three to four weeks on it. I don't expect I'll have anything interesting ready for it for v326, but maybe I'll have some dummy ui for advanced users to play with.

Thanks everyone!

[be21zh]

Mar 11, 2018

Dreamt in class where my once junior middle school language teacher offering his lecture. While his speech too boring I cheated to cover my reading my own material. When he stepped down to check our listening, my heart beat heavier. But fortunately he didn’t found under my text book there was another book I hid my pleasure. I felt shameless the middle aged male teacher demands students so much to catch his lesson up while his teaching so boring and meaningless. This week half waiting my alumnus’ aid which never happened to buy my own another chromebox. I previously planned to equip my son a new convertible chromebook, but on Wednesday I was attracted by chromebox which cheaper and its ethernet interface card more powerful than a wireless card. I was inspired by the idea and pains brewing me in wanting upon which I knew on my own I can’t realize. So I resorted to my senior middle school alumni for fundraising 2000 CNY. One of them once the best scored and enrolled by most privileged PRC university, Beijing Univ, and visited my campus in Tianjin and slept my bed, to whom a year ago I entreated for aiding me to flying to visit my kid brother in southern China and got his ambiguous refusal. So this time I thought there was still cherished memories in our friendship, and his job likely earns much more than mine, for his major is international law or economics and worked in stock market after graduate. But this time, 1000 CNY as I expected solely, he again refused me and blacklist me without any word exchange, after my 4 sms and 3 buzzes sinked. I didn't bother contacting any other alumni after the denial. In the day after International Women Day, a snow continued after days break in my clueless reaching out. I still didn’t understand after looking into why someone put money before friendship and moral kindness. Is PRC economy turns harsher day by day for the once academic leader turned so mean? Or my enviable cyberspace harvest in a decade's blogging as well as holy missionary under God’s shine turns the wellbeing alumnus hatred and bitter to turn his back indecently to me? After the refusal I busy yesterday all day on my raspberry pi, preparing it more liable and useful. God sharpen my sight that my workspace already spacious and reliable, after all attempts constraining. In this dawn I felt hard to sleep, and bliss ahead so thick. So I got up before 6am to blog, for today would be a blessing exciting day with my son, woz, in our busy agenda learning and studying. Dad God, in your holy guide I got to know weakness among highly succeeded people include my alumni. Guard me to steer through wasteland in PRC where cheap souls compete to extinguish heroism. Bring me sooner my Royal China, bring me my Crown Queen from Japan, Asoh Yukiko for clearer vision in eastern Asia landscape. Grant us happy weekend reuniting as usual.

Mar 6, 2018

dreamt my publishing career gets happy ending: my novel published or my literature awarded. my passed mother accompanied me to return to my hometown, where new houses building. quite some villagers congratulated me while myself also enjoy my success: my narrative style studied by scholar and critic. This is a sunny morning. I still feel not prepared to utter anything. Last week is interesting: I first time settle up arch linux, whose heavy command based renew my experience of Microsoft dos decades ago. Linux really amazing! And by chance we also experienced raspbian, another wonderful linux distribution. Both speedy on our raspberry pi 3, which turns into a full functional pc from educational toy. I really enjoy the gadget. Arch linux so impressive that I decided to install it after my old chromebook’s EOL met. This breakfast is satisfying, while the operative man frequently coughed and spit during serving let me anxious his illness infectious. His wife promised to wash my clothes but likely now the task shifted to a mid aged woman works there. They kept my dirty clothes for 3 weeks there intact. And yesterday the woman washing claimed she brought my clothes home to wash, not within the dorm nor its canteen. So they cheat me, and let my clothes more vulnerable to virus, privacy more looser. God dad, this week my alipay credit debt amounts to near 700 CNY, help me in these 2 months, whose income usually inclines lower due to corporate earning less after lazy lunar holiday. Dad God, time turns much harder to kill in my aging, my life more miserable in waiting, waiting for gathering, waiting for glories, even waiting for a better meal with my son. Bring me sooner my Royal China, bring me sooner my Crown Queen from Japan, Asoh Yukiko, to accomplish my earth life. Grant us another child, whose cyberspace I preparing since last year, billingzhu.com. Thx dad God.

Mar 1, 2018

dreamt doubting printing technology, how woodblock picture prints color accurately represented by oil. then through a magic hole, I entered a legendary world where I turned from tiny figure to a hero with sword to revenge. he refused help but judge by his own to murder his historical enemies. I was astonished by dangers and thrills in the master protagonist encountered in his brave world. Lunar 2018 first snow lasted 2 days. This morning when I went to dorm canteen for breakfast, its cover much thicker than yesterday. Quite some dorm administrative women outdoor cleaning road. Its so beautiful! And my breakfast is satisfying, esp sugar pie served first time after spring festival holiday. The day before yesterday, I worked continuously near 40 hours to rebuild portable workspace on my ssd and raspberry pi. After successfully got new oses ready and backups sound, I slept in chair when watching episode which lagging due to internet under PRC surveillance. In the night I slept sound, till next noon I got up directly to canteen for lunch. PRC tyrant attempted to rewrite rubber constitution to pave for his life time dictation, which arouse large scale debate among Chinese as well as world stage. Chinese people usually begging their living tiny space, not much social storm. But the communist tyrant wanted to humiliate Chinese now that the rubber constitution didn’t ban unconditional ruling power, as ghost communism put into fake republic leader. Chinese is a tribe that respects their interface. But their harmonious face torn by shameless power stealth tyrant now dominating the stage, who also challenges all PRC citizen with its death or wealth for last bet. Chinese in long brutal conflicts with nomad and historic lessons taught them not to expect government to good behaves but this time its fate again put in attest, God or Godless, Jesus or their folk pantheon. Review last decade’s poor western China gang’s public show on PRC lawless cheap square, I felt much sure that holy spirit leaves me prepared for monkey mimics carnival for superficial glory. Their social achievement and economic robbery turning PRC a hell of prey and nightmare of smash of minimal, failing most sinful Chinese indifferent of their outer space but their tiny live sphere, bloodless hatch and hopeless survivor. God, dad, its a sunny morning now. Yesterday I talked with my son online for arrangement of last dining out celebrating the end of spring festival. Bring me sooner my Royal China, and my Crown Queen from Japan, Asoh Yukiko, for the rest of my earth life. Bring me with my son new study of arch linux and new ultra convertible chromebook. Grant us a smooth year for steady growth, and larger web of world democracy of sustainable.

Feb 21, 2018

First dreamt of my university alumni, Wenxiong, who recently has been a bureaucracy in his hometown province, Hunan. Then I brought my son following someone in night street. My son asked for snack then slept in my arms. I felt so sweet and full of live meanings with him. Then dream we in a wedding ceremony team moving to some places, half way we passed a relatives’ village where 2 cousin girls debated with me in English and trying attracting me or condemned my keeping single so far. Their kindness left me relaxed. This is lunar new year 6th day. Still there are firecrackers explode in air, far away. Yesterday I felt hungry after 2 box of instant noodles my younger brother sent me, so I lately around 5pm ate some rices & dumplings in nearby restaurant and felt satisfied. Tomorrow I will brought my son dine out buffet, where I hope I can eat more. The dorm administrative woman said QRRS will resume to work on next Monday, while national holiday arrangement online claims tomorrow will be workday. My younger brother buzzed me dusk before eve of lunar new year when I jogging and missed his call. When I called back twice, he refuted it. He is posing to ignore me to feed his ego. All my old family, ie, my elder siblings, called by me once before lunar new year. None of them call back. In the lunar holiday I didn’t feel lonely, but enjoy quite sometimes solitude and joyful bountiful of time space. Internet in those days especially stable and usually I let podcast playing all day long. USA gun control debate after massive school shooting arouse students protest didn’t bother me. I saw many familiarity between Chinese 8964 event and what’s on US. Young lives and social motivation on large scale don’t move me much. I more confident in God’s bliss, which more making sense in believing life, from naive souls. God, dad, these days starving left me more close to Christian calendar, and world in crisis of food and water, and separation they bring about with hatred and murders. In this view I am ready for selective survival, out of brutality and cleanse large scale among human cattle. Dad God, bring me sooner my Royal China in better world under Christian, bring my Crown Queen from Japan, Asoh Yukiko, for life sustainable and gracious.

[orahachi]

Khulthum's Muse

Just last week, I was locked in a serious argument with a military major. How I met this man and how we got into that debate is a story for another day. Summarily, he was saying that the Nigerian youths of today are just a little less than useless, he said and I quote, “completely brainwashed by vanity and pop culture, you all want to become musicians and footballers, you are all sheeps with no direction and trend is your shepherd". He claimed that he’s was a generation that fought for independence, a generation with purpose empowered only by the sheer power of values and morals. He said we are shortsighted, selfish and with our eyes veiled by screens, we have become fully entrenched in the practice of sodomy. All along, watching the passion with which this soldier spoke, I was scared of countering his accusations. I personally, see no problem with vanity, as long as it is contained and what is wrong with wanting to be a footballer, I asked myself. I also wanted to let him know that the screens he so readily condemned has turned the world into a global village. I wanted to let him know that his generation planted and propagated the seeds of corruption in Nigeria. I wanted to tell him all this, but maybe because he is a soldier and we were in the barracks, or maybe it was the fact that I knew deep down that some of his points had merit, I decided to latch onto the most controversial of all the things he said. I found my usually bold and very opinionated self, humbly raising up my hands and waiting to be given the permission to speak. When allowed, I quickly asked of what his thoughts were on racism, he condemned it to it’s core. I then asked of why a person’s sexual preference should have anything to do with his ability to be effective in nation building, I asked if he didn’t think that it might be with the same passion that he spoke against sodomy that the slave masters of yesterday spoke against black slaves. I said just as one has no power to decide the color of his skin, homosexuals claim to be born with their sexual preferences, what right do we have to judge? I asked heatedly. I finished by adding the fact that it might be the same way that we charge our fathers of yesterday for being racists and backward, that the generation unborn would charge us for being homophobic and backward. Having said this and seeing how quiet the major had become, I sat back down and gave myself a mental pat on the back. It seemed I celebrated too early,as he started by quoting a surah in the Qur’an, sprouting verse after verse of some chapters in the bible, backing all these up by some traditional sayings. At this point, the extent of he’s knowledge shocked me, he was obviously a learned man and I began to cower. What really got to me, was when he looked straight at me and asked if my moral compass was broken. He said today I accepted homosexuals because they claim to be born that way, tomorrow I would accept rapists and pedophiles when they claim the same. He said that the world our generation is building is one without order, morals or limits. After hearing this, though I was ashamed, I raised my head high because I figured rape and homosexuality are on two opposite spectrums. I let him drone on about all the things wrong with the Nigerian youth. Until yesterday I didn’t really think much about my debate with the major. My sister is part of the organizers on an NGO project called Django Girls; what they do basically is go around the country teaching interested young ladies, programming. So between Friday and Saturday last week, they were in Lokoja, my home town, the Kogi state capital. Having no interest whatsoever in programming, I dissed my sister when she asked me to attend the two day workshop and signed my cousin up instead. After they were through, my sister came home saying they were going to have a get together, the organizers and tutors. I really couldn’t care less about their get together, but immediately she mentioned the existence of an “item 7” I decided to tag along. Entering their hotel room, i was surprised by how many of them were present. I sincerely did not expect that that much people would accept to do something like this, as there was no pay, neither for the organizers nor tutors. I sat down patiently waiting for what I came for, when they began to speak. The first man I met speaking was talking about how ‘coding’ could be used to change the future of Nigeria. Seeing as I didn’t know what coding was, I would have put on my ear buds and continued to wait, but the fervor with which the young man spoke stopped me. He went on about how someone used coding to hack into a highly secured and passworded apple system in just twenty minutes. They threw words artificial intelligence, html, pedreos and others I have forgotten, like one was automatically supposed to know the meaning. Whilst I was trying to remind myself of the topic in the data processing I did in secondary school, under which I heard html, someone threw python at me, and then I began to think of a way I could ask if they were talking about the animal python without looking like a fool. Needless to say, I began to feel like Alice in wonderland, trying to make sense of my surrounding but not really succeeding. Now and then, they decide to speak in English, and the attention I paid at such times shocked me. I was so absorbed when one of them began to talk about the program he worked on for the NIGERIAN AIRFORCE, and that the program was supposed to help a drone-missile hit its target not only faster but also however far. They talked about dreams of building machines that satellites won’t be able to detect. They condemned the urgings of the Nigerian society today, asking them to take up skills like tailoring and shoe making. They laughed at professional careers like law, saying it puts them in a box. To cut the long story short, they spoke in a language I have never before heard even though my sister was one of them. They made me look down on Chloe O’Brian. It was then I realized exactly how wrong Major Ahmad was, exactly how wrong I was. Sodomy wasn’t the issue. I let my generation be called vain, brainwashed, sheepish, purposeless and an assortment of other names because that is what I believed we are. I didn’t want to argue it, because I wasn’t sure I could defend it, I latched on a controversial topic in order to take light from the matter on ground, which was the ‘uselessness’ of my generation. I behaved every bit as shortsighted and purposeless as the Major accused my generation of being. I had never met Adewumi, who worked in the simulation of an aircraft defense system using simuly to try to improve on the distance and speed of the missile; I had never met Frank, who loves biscuit and pedoras, planning n developing his own OS whilst leaving linux and windows in the wind. I didn’t know a Joshua who studies Law and History (both degrees at the same time) and taught himself java script but is now obsessed with coding, existed. I didn’t know the sister i have lived with for almost 18 years of my life is obsessed with Space and satellite communication and dreamt of working in the cockpit of a spacecraft, although she was one of the organizers, claims she can’t program to save her life. I didn’t know Mopah, Yinka, Mary, Benjamin, Usheninte and others whose names I didn’t quite catch, who were ready to travel from Minna, Calabar, Abuja, Kaduna, Lagos and a lot of other places to Lokoja to do the work they love without pay. These young men and women showed me how hungry, how starved my generation is, and not for money or vanity as the Major seemed to think; they are starved of support, hungry to prove themselves. They are world standard and could prove it too. They have dreams, big dreams and also showed raw kindness and dedication. A kin desire for nation building. I begin to wish I could see the Major and start that debate all over again. So I could tell him all I have learnt and let him know that within that in the midst of that large mesh of brainwashed and vain wannabe musicians and footballers, are real talents just waiting for the right time to shine. plus amongst all the ‘sheep’ following trends, are my Nigerian brothers and sisters, setting trends. And with our eyes glued to screens we make, we dictate, we tailor a world so different from what they’d known, a world that fits us. I sincerely believe that if given a place to stand, there are Nigerian youths who could lift the world. along, watching the passion with which this soldier spoke, I was scared of countering his accusations. I personally, see no problem with vanity, as long as it is contained and what is wrong with wanting to be a footballer, I asked myself. I also wanted to let him know that the screens he so readily condemned has turned the world into a global village. I wanted to let him know that his generation planted and propagated the seeds of corruption in Nigeria. I wanted to tell him all this, but maybe because he is a soldier and we were in the barracks, or maybe it was the fact that I knew deep down that some of his points had merit, I decided to latch onto the most controversial of all the things he said. I found my usually bold and very opinionated self, humbly raising up my hands and waiting to be given the permission to speak. When allowed, I quickly asked of what his thoughts were on racism, he condemned it to it’s core. I then asked of why a person’s sexual preference should have anything to do with his ability to be effective in nation building, I asked if he didn’t think that it might be with the same passion that he spoke against sodomy that the slave masters of yesterday spoke against black slaves. I said just as one has no power to decide the color of his skin, homosexuals claim to be born with their sexual preferences, what right do we have to judge? I asked heatedly. I finished by adding the fact that it might be the same way that we charge our fathers of yesterday for being racists and backward, that the generation unborn would charge us for being homophobic and backward. Having said this and seeing how quiet the major had become, I sat back down and gave myself a mental pat on the back. It seemed I celebrated too early,as he started by quoting a surah in the Qur’an, sprouting verse after verse of some chapters in the bible, backing all these up by some traditional sayings. At this point, the extent of he’s knowledge shocked me, he was obviously a learned man and I began to cower. What really got to me, was when he looked straight at me and asked if my moral compass was broken. He said today I accepted homosexuals because they claim to be born that way, tomorrow I would accept rapists and pedophiles when they claim the same. He said that the world our generation is building is one without order, morals or limits. After hearing this, though I was ashamed, I raised my head high because I figured rape and homosexuality are on two opposite spectrums. I let him drone on about all the things wrong with the Nigerian youth. Until yesterday I didn’t really think much about my debate with the major. My sister is part of the organizers on an NGO project called Django Girls; what they do basically is go around the country teaching interested young ladies, programming. So between Friday and Saturday last week, they were in Lokoja, my home town, the Kogi state capital. Having no interest whatsoever in programming, I dissed my sister when she asked me to attend the two day workshop and signed my cousin up instead. After they were through, my sister came home saying they were going to have a get together, the organizers and tutors. I really couldn’t care less about their get together, but immediately she mentioned the existence of an “item 7” I decided to tag along. Entering their hotel room, i was surprised by how many of them were present. I sincerely did not expect that that much people would accept to do something like this, as there was no pay, neither for the organizers nor tutors. I sat down patiently waiting for what I came for, when they began to speak. The first man I met speaking was talking about how ‘coding’ could be used to change the future of Nigeria. Seeing as I didn’t know what coding was, I would have put on my ear buds and continued to wait, but the fervor with which the young man spoke stopped me. He went on about how someone used coding to hack into a highly secured and passworded apple system in just twenty minutes. They threw words artificial intelligence, html, pedreos and others I have forgotten, like one was automatically supposed to know the meaning. Whilst I was trying to remind myself of the topic in the data processing I did in secondary school, under which I heard html, someone threw python at me, and then I began to think of a way I could ask if they were talking about the animal python without looking like a fool. Needless to say, I began to feel like Alice in wonderland, trying to make sense of my surrounding but not really succeeding. Now and then, they decide to speak in English, and the attention I paid at such times shocked me. I was so absorbed when one of them began to talk about the program he worked on for the NIGERIAN AIRFORCE, and that the program was supposed to help a drone-missile hit its target not only faster but also however far. They talked about dreams of building machines that satellites won’t be able to detect. They condemned the urgings of the Nigerian society today, asking them to take up skills like tailoring and shoe making. They laughed at professional careers like law, saying it puts them in a box. To cut the long story short, they spoke in a language I have never before heard even though my sister was one of them. They made me look down on Chloe O’Brian. It was then I realized exactly how wrong Major Ahmad was, exactly how wrong I was. Sodomy wasn’t the issue. I let my generation be called vain, brainwashed, sheepish, purposeless and an assortment of other names because that is what I believed we are. I didn’t want to argue it, because I wasn’t sure I could defend it, I latched on a controversial topic in order to take light from the matter on ground, which was the ‘uselessness’ of my generation. I behaved every bit as shortsighted and purposeless as the Major accused my generation of being. I had never met Adewumi, who worked in the simulation of an aircraft defense system using simuly to try to improve on the distance and speed of the missile; I had never met Frank, who loves biscuit and pedoras, planning n developing his own OS whilst leaving linux and windows in the wind. I didn’t know a Joshua who studies Law and History (both degrees at the same time) and taught himself java script but is now obsessed with coding, existed. I didn’t know the sister i have lived with for almost 18 years of my life is obsessed with Space and satellite communication and dreamt of working in the cockpit of a spacecraft, although she was one of the organizers, claims she can’t program to save her life. I didn’t know Mopah, Yinka, Mary, Benjamin, Usheninte and others whose names I didn’t quite catch, who were ready to travel from Minna, Calabar, Abuja, Kaduna, Lagos and a lot of other places to Lokoja to do the work they love without pay. These young men and women showed me how hungry, how starved my generation is, and not for money or vanity as the Major seemed to think; they are starved of support, hungry to prove themselves. They are world standard and could prove it too. They have dreams, big dreams and also showed raw kindness and dedication. A kin desire for nation building. I begin to wish I could see the Major and start that debate all over again. So I could tell him all I have learnt and let him know that within that in the midst of that large mesh of brainwashed and vain wannabe musicians and footballers, are real talents just waiting for the right time to shine. plus amongst all the ‘sheep’ following trends, are my Nigerian brothers and sisters, setting trends. And with our eyes glued to screens we make, we dictate, we tailor a world so different from what they’d known, a world that fits us. I sincerely believe that if given a place to stand, there are Nigerian youths who could lift the world. Author: Khulsum

[allmybadmemories-blog]

What a day yesterday. I'm not even sure what to cover. Well. Husband had been having a bad week at work and we decided in advance that Friday night we would just get drunk together for fun. We used to be Mormon so we only started drinking in the past 6 months and i have never been drunk, he has gotten low- level drunk. So we just wanted to see what that was all about. Well i had been working on editing a video in all my limited spare time and it was rough trying to find a video editor for Linux that doesn't crash non-stop but i finally did and worked on this video for like 6 hours over a couple days. Then for the final time i opened it, the video clips were somehow all screwed up beyond repair, so i was pretty frustrated. Husband comes home and I'm like, "can you believe this? Ugh!" just venting. And he says (totally straight) "i guess the world doesn't want you to be a YouTuber." i just stared and said something like "why would you say that" and i don't remember his response because my emotional fog was getting too thick, i just know that he got defensive. I took it all as him saying my aspirations are shit. That i should give up. After a lifetime of the people who are supposed to support me always trying to stop me from trying new things or making any progress, i don't take it well. I cussed him out real bad. He of course got offended and felt like this was an overreaction and an unwarranted attack. I ran away to as far from him as i could get and just crouched down and sobbed and starting having a panic attack. Idk it sounds so stupid but what he said really hurt me. It was so personal. After a while he came out and asked if i was ok, if there was something else going on because this seemed like too much for what had just hastened from his perspective. I told him that it really hurt that he would say i shouldn't do the things I've been trying to do and then doubled down on it when it clearly upset me. He said that he meant it jokingly. since it was a situation where we were so helpless, he always tried to laugh it off when things are like that. Man it did NOT come off as a joke AT ALL. There was NO HINT that it was not serious. Oh well. I have to believe him and if it wasn't quite as joking as he is now claiming to save face, he at least knows i have a boundary around that subject. So i calm down and i think we're ok... But he's getting worse throughout the day. He starts acting like my ex when he was angry depressed. I'm getting terrified. He's not violent but it's that brooding demeanour, trying to be stoic but obviously incredible emotionally volatile underneath. I'm just like TRIGGERED TRIGGERED TRIGGERED and acting half the time like super trying to make it ok and half the time like equally broody and cut off. We took off kid to a park and at some point he (kid) went running off and i just stayed with him, and i looked back and husband's head is on the table, then we go where i lose sight, then we come back to the table and husband is gone. And as a matter of training I'm freaking out thinking about all the places and ways one could kill oneself right here, that fast. And I'm pissed at him for acting like this because i never wanted to be in this situation again. I logically know He's probably not suicidal but this situation is too strong of a replay of weekly occurrences in my fist marriage. Well he had just gone back to the car to be angry depressed in there where no one would see it. He says some vague things about stress and having to make some tough decisions and some of then only have one option. I'm just like wtf he's going to dump me for not being perfect today. Fuck. I'm just sill freaking out inside. I try to apologize for sweating at him. I try to act normal or extra good and caring. And I'm like, is our drunk couch date off? He's like really mad...i was hoping we could get back to normal.. We go home. I'm taking care of the kid. I go downstairs and see husband lifting weights and doing pushups and it seems like he's going hard. Then he goes upstairs and i see him outside a couple times. Eventually he comes back and said he just ran an 8min mile (this it's the 1st time He's gone running in like 6 months at least) and that now that he has physically destroyed his body he's done giving any fucks and can be honest with me. And basically it hurt HIM really badly when i swore at him. But he's a dude and "can't" process and express emotions properly or whatever. Idk basically we both said the exact worst thing possible to each other that day. We rarely fight seriously. Then he decided we should still get drunk so we picked up some liquor and stuf and put the kid to bed. Well we drank too much too fast with too little food so it worked and it was terrible. Absolutely terrible. But anyway while drunk he was telling me about his girlfriend before me that he had sex with (despite ring to bee a good Mormon boy otherwise) which doesn't bother me because i already knew and have no hangups about his part relationships. Or so i thought. But later (still drunk) he told me that while i had fallen asleep for a bit he was talking about this other girl (who he has only mentioned in passing before). He met her on his mission and apparently, they fell in love but were being good mormons, missionaries can't date of course or even pretend to have a life or interests beyond preaching and converting. They would sit by each other and try to hold hands without holding hands. He said "we really loved each other." and that they were REALLY compatible. at first i thought this was heartbreakingly cute and sad. At this point i felt mentally fine, like my brain was rejecting metabolizing any more alcohol and i wad only physically sick. So i was perfectly aware, or at least it seemed like it. It was so sad to me, this person i love so much, in love and couldn't do anything about it. I wanted past him to be happy. I mean I'm not seeing i wish he ended up with her instead of me (though he probably would have :\) but i just like... Really wanted him to have had some good experiences and happy memories further down that path than pretending to hold hands. He also said He would have sex with her note if he had a chance, but only if i gave permission first. (This doesn't really bother me.) But today it is bothering me more. I'm just obsessing over her. It's not jealousy and it wasn't insecurity at first although i think that has started to develop after all day thinking about it. It's just like... My brain is chewing on it nonstop because it's a big new development about someone i love but i don't know very much about it. It's this giant question mark. I know she's incredibly gorgeous (or was at the time) like she is his idea of physically perfect and i know that im not. He says he loves me and is crazy about me anyway but. This isn't negging, i think, though it comes off badly with limited context. Then we talked about it a tiny bit more today and he did that a thing i missed while asleep was his confessing that she is his 'one true love' like if i was gone he would go for her. So i guess that's bothering me without more context or i don't know... Assurance? I am not afraid he will cheat on me. And i know that he chose to marry ME and that doesn't mean nothing. And we got married at a time that we believed in marriage for eternity, so it's not like he was biding his time with me til something better came along. And he has told me a hundred times that i am who he wants forever. And it was fairly innocuous, i think we all have this "i love my spouse so i don't want this to happen, but if one day I'm alone again, if really like to have a chance with " kinda thing. It's just my brain is chewing on it nonstop because it's new info and it's incomplete info. This girl lived across the world but a few years ago we saw her at the grocery store. So i know she moved to here and even lives nearby. But she is married (to a dumpy guy, he says) and "her nose got weird with pregnancy" I'm not worried about her. I'm just having nonsensical stress about this new info i guess. And i really love him and sometimes i think he deserves better than me. I need to be better. I need to be perfect. I should get in better shape. I need better style. He's so gorgeous. I need to match and when people he used to know see me, they think 'that makes sense he would have a wife like that' not 'oh.. How did that happen' I need to show him more that i love him and show him and do more things for him and just be more perfect I guess I'm a little scared he'll one day realize I'm not good enough for him. This feeling has been around before. It wasnt caused by this event, but maybe just brought up again by it. And i hate that i hurt him. And i always assume bad intentions when he does not have them because im just so used to being used or stepped on or derided. He's not like that. I should be past assuming the worst by now. Sometimes he is a little callous or careless though and those scattered instances reaffirm the bad conditioning so much stronger than all the good things.

[binarytinker-a-blog]

really  LONG  CHARACTER  SURVEY.     RULES.  repost ,   don’t  reblog  !    tag  10  ! good  luck  !     TAGGED.  @vrepit-sa     TAGGING. @shurimanisms, @flareforged, @greenestxpaladin and tbh i can’t be arsed to tag more after all th a t

BASICS.

FULL  NAME :  Katie Holt / Pidge Gunderson NICKNAME :   Katie / Pidge AGE :  fourteen BIRTHDAY :   unknown ETHNIC  GROUP :  caucasian (the holts are probably some complete disaster of lineage lbrh) NATIONALITY :   american. LANGUAGE / S : english, morse, binary if she thought about it, a scattering of several different programming languages (nothing low-level like assembly languages though), a smattering of altean quite literally scared into her SEXUAL  ORIENTATION :  asexual. ROMANTIC  ORIENTATION :  might be aro? tbh she’d be happy with just someone to sit and do tech/geek things with so yeah, aro makes perfect sense. RELATIONSHIP  STATUS :   nope HOME  TOWN / AREA :  is central northern america a thing because that’s the feeling i got from the little we saw of the holt’s plae. CURRENT  HOME :   the castle of lions PROFESSION :  general technologist? of the paladins, stealth and infiltration

PHYSICAL.

SKIN:  very pale, easy to sunburn but still a healthy shade despite how much time she spends indoors/out of sunlight EYES :   highkey amber, gold in the sunlight and almost brown along the inner edges. FACE :  it’s round and soft, but also thinly lined, easy enough for her to be mistaken as a boy (and used very well against the Garrison) LIPS :   they’re the kind that don’t reveal their curves until she grins, cheshire in manner in that they don’t draw attention away from her face. they’re thin but not to the point of not existing. COMPLEXION :  surprisingly, given her age and habits, pidge’s face remains pretty clean and clear. BLEMISHES :   any birthmarks she has are tiny and hard to notice unless you’re looking for them. for the longest time, she’d had one on the arch of her foot, but it faded away at some point during her childhood and almost none of her others have. SCARS :  she’s got a couple fine lines on her hands (old motherboards were notorious for having sharp solder points on the underside and pidge has torn her hands up on quite a few during disassembly). from taking apart tech on earth. she’s thus far managed to avoid collecting new ones since becoming the green paladin. TATTOOS :  n/a. HEIGHT :   5′2 ? i think WEIGHT :   she probably weighs 110lbs soaking wet. BUILD :   her build is slim, very nondescript. the curve to her waist and hips are easily hidden in clothing and any curve to her upper body disappears once she’s geared up. FEATURES :   glasses. round ones that perch on the tip of her nose and manage to serve as a way she can look severely at someone without being blind. ALLERGIES :   greening the cube doesn’t give any details, but i imagine pidge deals with quite a few allergies to outdoors environments; pollen from multiple sources, making it difficult, if not impossible, for there to be a season that affects her less than normal USUAL  HAIR  STYLE :  she brushes her hair, but otherwise leaves it be, letting it be a slightly messy mop that hangs around her face. USUAL  FACE  LOOK :   n/a USUAL  CLOTHING :   if not in her armor, pidge prefers loosely fitting clothing for ease of movement, but doesn’t have much preference for the colors of such.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR / S :   she doesn’t have specific fears, mostly, but at this point in time, she’s scared to death of not being able to find her father and brother. scared of finding out that they died. scared of not being able to put her family together. scared of losing the family she’s made in the castle. ASPIRATION / S :   she wants to find her father and brother, yes, she wants to go home, but... she also wants to see the universe. she wants to explore. she wants to see what’s out there. POSITIVE  TRAITS :   intelligent | excitable | quick-witted NEGATIVE  TRAITS :   stubborn | irritable | insensitive MBTI :   Logician (INTP-A) ZODIAC :   gemini? i think? it fits, anyway, so i’ll keep it for now TEMPEREMENT :   melancholic. SOUL  TYPE / S :   thinkier | hunter | helper ANIMALS :   beaver. VICE  HABIT / S :    picking her fingernails, chewing on the ends of pens while thinking, absently picking at scabs or new calluses. FAITH :  theistic but not ascribing to a religion? GHOSTS ? :   until there’s proof, nope AFTERLIFE ? :   ^ see above. REINCARNATION ? :   maybe there is, maybe there isn’t, no one knows yet ALIENS ? :   voltron is literally an alien weapon piloted by five. POLITICAL  ALIGNMENT :  not the galran empire. EDUCATION  LEVEL :    probably took some college level courses for kicks and grins before getting into the garrison. probably lied about her age for the garrison; definitely dealt with college level classes there.

FAMILY.

FATHER :   samuel holt MOTHER :   colleen holt SIBLINGS :   matt holt EXTENDED  FAMILY :   unknown NAME  MEANING / S :    katie is diminutive of kate/katherine, most commonly means pure. holt comes from wold/wald, and means a small forest or forested upland. pidge is likely a borrowed slang word short for “pigeon hole”, a place for messages to be left for later/a home for a pigeon. gunderson is a patronymic name derived from several different sources, but “son of "gondri" or "gundric", a once common old French personal name from the germanic elements "gund", battle and "ric", poser” is the commonly accepted meaning. HISTORICAL  CONNECTION ? :   old english for katie holt, norwegian/german/french for gunderson

FAVORITES.

BOOK :  she can’t just pick one. pidge had a library of books she left behind at home. it’s a combination of scifi, fantasy, and textbooks. she has a handful of in-depth guides for common linux/unix distros and for android in general. MOVIE :   again, she can’t just pick one. while her movies are as varied in interest as her books, katie didn’t keep nearly as much of a collection. 5  SONGS :  considering her music library spans several tens of gb, there’s no way to pick five to be favorites. it varies from month to month DEITY :   n/a. HOLIDAY :   she’s always loved christmas. snow outside, the windows frosted over, hot chocolate in hands. she and matt deep in concentration over some project or another MONTH :   december SEASON :   if she had to pick, she didn’t mind fall and early spring. her allergies kicked up a mighty fuss, but the weather was nice. PLACE :    green’s hangar. WEATHER :   even though pidge didn’t mind typical fall/spring weather, she much prefers the dark clouds and heavy rains. it’s soothing to ear the rain pouring down while she curls up with her newest project. SOUND :   rain on the roof over her head, the gentle hum of a computer well functioning, that single solitary bios confirmation beep. SCENT / S :    you know that smell when you first open a package of electronics? it’s crisp and almost burns the nose, but not quite, and quickly fades as you maneuver it into a system. a book freshly opened after being on a shelf for years, the dust, aging paper, and ink. petrichor. TASTE / S :    fresh strawberries, just red and not quite overly sweet yet, milk chocolate FEEL / S :   smooth and cold, machined metals emblazoned with coppers and plastics, faint vibrations under fingertips as a fan whirls to speed or a motor settles into a steady rotation. ANIMAL / S :    cats. felines in general. NUMBER :  she likes too many numbers, but to fall back on anything would be ones and zeros. COLORS :   golds and greens, dusk meeting a forest as the sky fades from orange to dark blue-violet. the stars shining in the sky.

EXTRA.

TALENTS :  hand to hand combat, computers and their defenses, stealth, understanding the gist of unfamiliar systems in moments. BAD  AT :  being sensitive of other people’s feelings, being tactful. TURN  ONS :  lmao what TURN  OFFS :   see above HOBBIES :    writing programs, modifying green, dissecting altean and galra tech to find out how they work, find out if she can make them work for her, and reassembling them to find out if she can make them work again TROPES :   deadpan snarker, hollywood hacking (something i’ll try not to overboard on bc i actually Hate it), motor mouth, military brat, teen genius QUOTES :     “I know.”, “That’s me.”, “Nice work, Tailor.”, “I got him! [beat] I don’t got him!”

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1 :   if  you  could  write  your  character  your  way  in  their  own movie ,   what  would  it  be  called ,  what  style  would  it  be filmed  in ,  and  what  would  it  be  about ?           A1 :  honestly? it wouldn’t be chronological. it’d be bits of life, scenes you’d see in passing. moments of bonding between her and her teammates, moments of family time, little background things. i love just seeing a peek into lives. not the whole life, just.... bits and pieces, parts of the whole that make the whole easier to understand. Q2 :   what  would  their  soundtrack / score  sound  like ?           A2 :   it probably wouldn’t make much sense put together. a mishmash of anything and everything under the sun, from enigma to icon for hire to linkin park i guess Q3 :   why  did  you  start  writing  this  character ?           A3 :   i got hooked on voltron. binged the first season. binged the second the day it came out. started rewatching it with the bf, decided to take the plunge Q4 :   what  first  attracted  you  to  this  character ?           A4 :   a tech geek. a tech geek that was, yes, still somewhat stereotypical but not made fun of. mostly just a tech geek. and then the girl bomb right as i decided ‘ok so pidge is a really girly looking guy’ and that was it  it was over i was caught Q5 :   describe  the  biggest  thing  you  dislike  about  your  muse.           A5 :   i actually.... like pidge just fine the way she is Q6 :   what  do  you  have  in  common  with  your  muse ?           A6 :   too much. though she’s probably smarter than i am (i can bs a lot of her basic knowledge though..... soon. ) Q7 :   how  does  your  muse  feel  about  you ?           A7 :    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Q8 :   what  characters  does  your  muse  have  interesting  interactions  with ?         A8 :    almost any character. pidge will run her mouth if talking with fellow tech geeks, probably still will with people who aren’t tech geeks, tends to ask too many questions even of people she probably shouldn’t be too friendly with (sendak). Q9 :   what  gives  you  inspiration  to  write  your  muse ?         A9 :   right now? everything. engima’s ‘the gate’ is what kickstarted it all, so there’s a lot of that in her specific writing playlist. Q10 :   how  long  did  this  take  you  to  complete ?           A10 :   two hours lm a o i get easily sidetracked.