#same user as my tmblr

[statuetochka]

alone time 2

[aprilsd0eeyes]

Intro

This is an 3D blog, I'm not pr0 4n4 i just use the tags.

I have a twt acc w/ the same user, if you want to follow me there (I'm more active there) then dm me and I'll send you the user.

Not new here just a new acc, my last acc was banned

I have aVt1sm, anxiety and depression. Was never diagnosed for my 3d but it's there.

I'm a non-binary lesbian, I'll post about that sometimes.

Aries

I'll also post about music, clothes, makeup, etc. Things I'm interested in. I won't tag those posts though because I don't wanna get banned again lmao

Non-4n4 tmblr DNI. Just block!! If you're not disordered then don't interact or go on this side of the internet!!

[mrfellsans]

In tmblr fandom chaos pizzeria 5 accounts got deleted on the same week* the original users couldn't find the accounts again or say there last goodbye

(Fnaf reference bc that's all my brain can think of after balling my eyes out for hours)

I deleted my account on accident 🥲

what

YOURE THE FIFTH PERSON IVE SEEN THIS WEEK 💀/hyp

[fiendishpal]

To the anon having problems: My phone does the same thing, just copy the link and open in a web browser and it works then! :)

oh! thank you tmblr user tsumomii!!!!! (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

[yutadori]

i left twt after like, 2 weeks because The Discourse felt inescapable... even here it's hard to dodge entirely as someone who unfollows people who Participate, but on twt it's like. a person you follow liked a thing. it's trending. the format of the platform makes everyone more likely to impulsively add their two cents. it blows up. it's short-lived and forgotten. basically the same argument comes back in 2 days but JUST different enough it's not filtered out by my muted words...evil

omg you left after two weeks i admire you i really wish i’d left that early because it feels like i’m stuck there now x__x ive been on twt (derogatory) for like... 2? 3? years SADLY and it honestly feels like it gets worse and worse )): 

oh my god yes yes EXACTLYYY like i dont!!! understand why twt tries to show people’s likes in as many ways as they possibly can??? like . we do not need to see it!!!!! oh god i know i hate when i can see certain hashtags trending and when you click on it it’s like 99 percent hostility and arguing like???? how are all of you people this angry all at the same time??? and i feel like the aggressiveness spreads and rubs off on others so easily.... like i feel like because such a good amount of ppl are always negative, then it’ll affect others and so on like.... hhhhhh 

and oh my god dont even get me started on how everyone feels the need to add their two cents like?!?! im not saying that it’s wrong to express your opinions but like.... i agree with you it feels like twt is set up for that in a Bad way . i feel like on tmblr, you can speak your opinions in your tags and just the people that follow you/op of the post will see it. BUT on twt if you add your opinion onto someone’s tweet/thread then like.... the people who decided to read that thread will see it and have the ability to comment on THAT person’s opinion and get in a fight and it just . makes me want to scream!!! because like why do people feel the need to push their opinions onto Strangers like that and in such a harsh way like if you disagree then move on...? you dont need to fight with a stranger online i prommyyy hhhhhhh 

omg I KNOWWW TWT’S MUTING SYSTEM IS SO BAD...... like at least when i blacklist a hashtag on here i Know that it won’t come up?? with twt it’s a hit or miss and it’s like!!! if you’re not going to be fully functioning then what’s the point?? i really wish that twt would listen to their users like we don’t need twt stories can you like actually fix the problems on your site!!!!! 

[cheesecake12]

I'm thinking of making a twitter account for my art. Can you give me any tips, or pros and cons? I'm trying to get a few people's opinions before I make a definite decision.

i was gonna say i have no idea how to use twt still but then i typed all this up so ig that’s not true. hope it helps!

tips:

image ratios: 16:9 (single image), 7:8 (2 images), 7:8 + 4:7 (3 images), 2:1 (4 images). this can save you from weird/awkward cropping, i know some artists will also post a closeup or just the same image twice if they're posting a portrait orientation piece

twitter crops focus on text i think?

idk how useful tags are, i feel like how much attention my art gets isn't really correlated with using/not using them, but it doesn't hurt to tag. sometimes i do check hashtags for content

ways to organize/collect your art in one place: moments (what i personally use, i think this is the most common method), pinning a thread in which you quote rt your own art, using a personal hashtag

honestly you should use tweetdeck for the better UI, it's run by twitter so they're not gonna steal ur info or anything. it's got a ton of useful features like scheduling tweets, being able to manage multiple accounts at once, turning off notifs on things you've retweeted, etc. but also be aware that things crop differently on the main site and on tweetdeck which baffles me to no end

privatter is a great way to limit who can see a tweet (you can limit to signed-in users only, followers only, following only, password protected, only ppl on a list you create, or yourself only). how it works is you link your account, post on privatter, and then tweet the link. you can add a preview image if you'd like too. i see a lot of ppl use this for spoiler art or nsfw art. oh, also, did i mention you can edit privatter posts??

this is more of an etiquette thing, but DO NOT QUOTE RT OTHER PPL'S ART (when you click retweet there's an option to retweet with a comment - DO NOT DO THIS!!) it basically creates a new tweet, and all of the interactions with the QRT do not count toward the original tweet. i've seen cases where QRTs get more attention than an artist's original tweet and it sucks so bad. most artists (including me) don't like QRTs of our art

also, if you're going to comment on something someone rt-ed, untag them before you do so (twitter auto tags the person who rt-ed it which is kind of annoying...)

pros of twt:

idk why bc i have more followers on here but i get SO MANY more interactions on twt. am i just more approachable there?? who knows. i'd ask for feedback but i doubt i'd get any

ppl are more willing to share art on twt. i get MUCH BETTER share to like ratios on there (generally 1:4 - 1:5) than on here (around 1:10, many times much worse). it's really disheartening and one of the major reasons i'm no longer very invested in tmblr

POLLS I LOVE MAKING POLLS

cons:

character limit sucks but you get used to it

no dedicated tagging system :C i like to monologue in the tags and that's like the one thing i miss abt this site

no ask system. a lot of ppl make and link a curiouscat as a replacement

you can’t edit tweets if you see a typo ur just gonna have to live w that knowledge forever

[codematurgy]

hey jayce i have a q regarding the npf plugin. i only know the most basic abt html so idrk how to study the code on how to use it. im currently using a theme with pxu photosets. is there anything else i should do aside from copy-pasting? sorry if this is too broad of a question and thanks!

hello, and don't worry about it being a general question! i think it is a proper moment to just write a full tutorial on it, since my instructions may be rather vague at times.

i should point that i might speak directly to theme makers in some aspects of this, but i will try to get back to common users as well.

first of all, which is something not everyone might have thought of at first, make sure your theme is not using any CSS(the name for the code inside the <style> tag) !important rules where it shouldn't, since adding !important beside any value makes it hard to set another styling to neutralize it. i'm saying this because the latest version of this plugin does not use style directly applied to the element itself(that is, instead of adding the styling code inside the <style> tag where it commonly belongs, it is hard coded into the element it refers to, which is located inside the <body> tag, where the mark-up for your blog goes). hard-coding styles into an element made that style harder to be broken by unrelated CSS styling the theme maker might have add, but made it less flexible to people's own styling, which i considered quite a downside. the !important rule was often misused by myself to the point that earlier themes of mine looked wrong with my script because them. therefore, make sure no element involved in the photoset structure, such as .tmblr-full, is abusing of !important styles in your CSS! a quick search for ".tmblr-full" and "figure" should do the trick, though it's very likely these aren't affected by these rules at all; this is just a cautionary step. you may skip it, check your blog and return to it in case it looks weird.

now, we copy all of the code available for copying, which is both the external link to the script and CSS to make it look right as well as the function call(the whole bit with npfPhotosets(...) and a bunch of options inside), and paste it after the entire theme mark-up but before the closing <body> tag, which should appear as </body>; the function call is what makes the script you linked before run, as the link to it alone will do nothing. i want to reiterate that everyone should always look at the original post when doing so since reblogs don't automatically update, and you might be left with an older, buggy version of the script if you're looking at an old reblog.

for the options, some of them are easily ignorable(such as rowClass, since this is a class defined by Tumblr structure itself and not the user, so you'll be using the one i wrote there), but others are a bit more personal. the most important thing is to correctly fill the post selector with whatever selector you're using for your posts. if you're unsure about what you should use as the selector for your theme's posts, look for {block:Posts} in your theme. this block is specific to Tumblr; anything written inside it will appear for each post displayed in your blog. there is where theme makers write all the mark-up for a post, taking into consideration if it's a text, photo, video, etc. it is very likely that one of the first things you'll find inside {block:Posts} is the wrapper used for posts, since a wrapper is something you'd want to exist every time a post is displayed. for example, it might be a <div class="post">, so your selector will be ".posts"(the dot before the name refers to a class), or it might be an <article>, in which case "article" alone will do.

since you mentioned you're using PXU photosets, i'm assuming you mean to keep using PXU for the old photosets and only use npfPhotosets() for the new photosets, and this is easier for general users unfamiliar to HTML. in this case, do not worry about HTML structure whatsoever, since these plugins do not crash into each other or anything; at this point, you're done!

what follows is perhaps of more use to theme makers, so feel free to ignore. if you'd like to adapt from PXU to npfPhotosets() in regard to legacy photosets(since PXU only works with the old format), the answer is: change the classes in the PXU HTML structure to match the ones you're using for npfPhotosets(); if for example you use the exact same classes as the ones i've used, this means the image tag itself will be npf_image, its container will be tmblr_full, and the photoset container will be npf_photoset. since the rows haven't been generated yet(and this is for the script to do), you shouldn't worry about npf_row. you may notice that the PXU structure adds a link tag around your image, as a trigger for the lightbox function; this is, however, unnecessary for using the lightbox function in npfPhotosets(). i do realize now that i never pointed out how you need to include several attributes alongside the image URL to your <img> tag in order to make the lightbox function work; these are data-orig-width, data-orig-height, and data-highres, which should be assigned values regarding the photo's original values through Tumblr's variables(as available in the photo section of the documentation) which are respectively {PhotoWidth-HighRes}, {PhotoHeight-HighRes} and {PhotoURL-HighRes}.

hope this was of any help! if you had trouble either way, do tell! i don't mind helping find the post selector if it's too troublesome.

[yahooeny]

#The Year of the Linux Desktop is Further Away Than Ever Before ##An incredibly long diatribe of my struggles moving back to Linux I'll say right off the bat that Windows is the not the ideal OS. I recently set out to put a Linux distro back on my laptop after growing frustrated with my Windows install, mostly stemming from the GTX 1050/Optimus setup on my Asus FX53D. GeForce drivers have been incredibly buggy, Photoshop and other Creative Cloud software would crash multiple times an hour after switching back and forth between the Game Ready and Creator Ready driver lines. Also even when it is "inactive" the 1050 seems to stay engaged at all times even though the iGPU is supposed to be the main composite, so battery life is often little more than an hour which is too low even for a gaming laptop. Obviously there's nothing on the open source side that could replace the Creative Cloud suite so I'm stuck with the Windows install but the general instability with Optimus was enough for me. After several years I was going back to the Linux desktop. But what distro? Last I used Linux regularly I was using a combination of Ubuntu and Chromium OS Lime (RIP) so obviously things would have to change. I was opposed to vanilla Ubuntu because even back in the day the amount of bloat in the default install drove me away from the distro. And while the goal of this install was to have a light desktop for mostly web browsing and messaging, just a lone web browser was a little too far for me. I was interested in Manjaro but decided an Ubuntu-based distro was going to be more familiar territory. I wanted to run Linux, I didn't want to fix Linux. I've heard good things about Linux Mint, uh sure let's go with that.

Except Linux Mint never booted for me. I couldn't get the install flash drive to actually make it past a black screen. And I coulda sworn I was able to boot into GParted when cloning my SSD so it's not like this thing refuses to boot to any Linux distro... Uh I dunno. Maybe Pop OS will work better. It *is* maintained by a system builder so it's gotta have better hardware support than the competition...

...Hm. Still black screen. So after hours of smacking my brain it turns out this was my problem.

So I guess in the intervening years since I last used Linux UUI has become complete bunk. I don't know if it's because the way install ISOs are formatted have changed, I don't know if it's because UEFI has introduced new incompatibilities. I was able to put a Windows 10 ISO on a flash drive fine with this so who knows what its problem is but it's no good anymore. People recommend Etcher... *Why?* This thing runs on Electron. Why the hell would you want a system utility to be run on Electron? Last time I tried Etcher it couldn't even detect that my flash drive ran out of space and left me with a broken install. Don't use Etcher. Rufus is pretty good though. Pop OS's installer tries to simplify some things about Ubuntu's installer but there is one giant deal breaker...

Where the hell is the dual boot option? Your average user is not going to get rid of Windows. I'm certainly not going to get rid of Windows, not so long as Adobe has me by the balls. The "Custom Install" is not self-explanatory at all. *I* managed to resize my partitions but I also messed up and didn't properly turn on disk encryption. How is your average user supposed to figure out how to manually repartition their drive for multibooting. (We'll get back to the topic of partitioning and idiot-proofing later...) So finally we're installed. Hey man beyond partitioning that was pretty painless. I wasn't trying running around installing my NVidia drivers, I wasn't stuck on my ethernet adapter because I have to separately install my wifi drivers. And with a lot less bloat! Ok, some bloat. Who actually uses Libreoffice? I've been using nothing but Google Docs for the last eight years. At this point Google Docs' only real weakness is that nothing will ever compare in power to Excel. Certainly not Libreoffice. But that's easy enough to uninstall it seems like it's smooth sailing from her- ##GNOME 3 Sucks. I have some questions for the designers of GNOME 3. I'm sure they tried their best to modernize GNOME. Anything's better than Unity (according to the majority consensus, I don't necessarily agree but I can't exactly install Unity anymore so oh well...) and it's not all bad. However... * Why does the Super key take me to an exploded view of all my open applications instead of something useful? If I need to switch between applications I'd rather use alt-tab or the taskbar. Moving the applications dashboard to Super+A is a terrible idea because I'm going to use the dashboard a lot more often than I'm going to need this Win+Tab exploded view. * Why is the taskbar useless? 99.9% of all applications I use are not going to show me any useful options in the taskbar dropdown menu unlike in Windows where developers disciplined themselves around Windows 7 to put quick actions in the taskbar. So if I don't even get that, then why does by default the taskbar only show me one application at a time? There's so much unused space at the top that could be used to show all my open applications instead of me having use up even more space at the bottom for some extension that gets proper taskbar functionality back. *Where is 150% zoom? I guess this complaint is more towards System76 since other friends have assured me that there does indeed exist a level of application scaling between the puny 100% and the ginormous 200% but on this install I ain't seeing it. I'm also not seeing a way to control application scrolling per-monitor like in Windows. *Notifications are a boondoggle. Well, they're bad in Windows too but that's no excuse. I don't know who both at Microsoft and GNOME decided "oh yeah, applications should be allowed to keep a notification on screen indefinitely that's totally good UX and not abusable at all" but they're morons. And so is whoever worked on Chrome that thought the same thing. Chrome, Google Hangouts in particular, is the #1 abuser in indefinite notifications. It's incredibly annoying, I don't want have to stop what I'm doing to wave off a toast. GNOME however gets the slight edge because for some god damn reason Windows disables interacting with anything from about a 10 pixel radius around the toast. And also won't let you move the toast away from the bottom right which is *right where a bunch of apps tack on really important buttons!*

Alright this is a big one.

Why is the mouse so god damn awful?

Maybe this isn't a GNOME problem but it is a big fat problem. Using a mouse or touchpad is just a pain in the ass in Linux. No, specifically scrolling with a mouse or touchpad is a pain in the ass. I use a Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000. Maybe not the best mouse but it's ergonomic and nice to use. Except in Linux.

See the Microsoft Comfort Mouse has an optical scroll wheel with smooth action instead of a traditional scroll wheel with discreet clicks across the wheel. Bad for games, sure but for web browsing it is a dream. I can fly through webpages without losing tracking accuracy because Windows' mouse driver tracks the scroll wheel at a higher resolution.

Scrolling is a giant pain in Linux. For one it's slooooooooow. There's no way to change scroll speed. Well, not elegantly, at least.

imwheel is a mouse service you can tack on top of the existing mouse server that lets you change things such as how many lines one wheel click scrolls through. But there's limitations to this. For my purposes, I can't figure out how to change the resolution of the mouse scroll itself for mice like mine that are linear instead of discreet clicking wheels. Worst of all...

It breaks the trackpad! Pop OS does get trackpad scrolling mostly right (except for the lack of scroll inertia) but imwheel completely breaks it because the trackpad scrolling and mousewheel scrolling are operating on completely different tracking resolution. (By the way, this is what trackpad scrolling should look like.)

(...But trackpad scroll inertia does work in a bunch of system GNOME apps. Why in the world would such a fundamental part of the user experience be application dependent? Why aren't other applications implementing scroll inertia?) I'm not the only person to make these observations on Linux's deficiencies in its mouse input. There's a great blog by Pavel Fatin called Scrolling with pleasure that goes into much much greater detail into the ways mouse I/O can be much better. It's from two years ago and the fact that many of his observations haven't been implemented yet is a shame. It seems with some sects of the Linux userbase, using a GUI or desktop manager as little as possible is some point of pride and elitism. As if people who use mice and need graphic interfaces are noobs who just aren't smart enough for Linux. This sect is really small but they are vocal nonetheless and it contributes to the air of elitism around Linux. Ah speaking of graphics... why am I getting a black screen again?

Well that's not good. Far as I can tell the last time I booted up my Pop OS partition it wanted to upgrade the NVidia drivers among other packages but ran out of space. See, I was under the presumption that 10 GB of space was enough room for a light Linux install in 2019. Clearly I was wrong. I don't know why being unable to upgrade packages due to disk space should brick a system. If I run out of disk space, shouldn't apt stop trying to upgrade it and leave it be? My system shouldn't die on me just because I can't upgrade to the latest packages. Ah well no more bitching. Let's install this thing again...

The installation process when making a multiboot partition should really be a lot more idiot proof. It's not unreasonable for a user to want a light install especially when they are using Linux only as a secondary OS and want to keep as much space on their drives as possible for the Windows install. Maybe the installation should soft-enforce a minimum size for the /home/ partition, or at least when I tell it I want /home/ to be 10GB it should tell me "Hey dumbass! Your install is liable to break from updates if you make it this small!" It also really should not be this hard to encrypt a multiboot partition. I tried to get my /home/ partition encrypted this time around but when I made it an encrypted partition in GRUB the Pop OS installer kept complaining that it couldn't decrypt the partition, even after I gave it the decryption key. I give up, any information I need securing is already file encrypted or on a cloud account I don't care anymore. Hmm... Maybe I didn't make the install light enough. I mean I made it as light as possible, downloads were going to my Windows download folder instead, I removed a shitload of apps including the mail client which I have no use for since I use GApps. But maybe GNOME is not light enough... And also I fucking hate GNOME. What's even lighter...

Oh yeah I should install xfce instead since it sips memory and disk space. I've used lxde before back in the day when PC manufacturers were desperately trying to make netbooks a thing, this should be easy to slip back to!

...What? I had to reinstall Pop OS for the second time because for whatever reason installing lxde broke my install. I don't know how. I don't know why. I tried to follow System76's guide on installing additional window managers... Now here's a problem, the guide says to choose lightdm on Ubuntu 16.04 and not to use gdm or sddm. It says it's fine to choose those on later versions. I don't think the lxde installer gave me a choice of using lightdm and why is this article talking about Ubuntu anyways. isn't this guide specifically for Pop OS? Clearly there is documentation that needs to be revised. So I guess I'm stuck with GNOME 3 now. It's not... horrible. But it took some elbow grease (and a lot of extensions) to get there.

Too many actually. A lot of these things shouldn't be extensions, they should be default. Desktop icons should be default, otherwise why even still have a desktop? The Window is ready notification is the most annoying thing on earth. Even Windows 10 has a clipboard history by default now, that shouldn't have to be an extension. While I'm still bitching.

How hard is it to disable an audio device once it's disconnected? I connect my laptop to my monitor and speaker system through HDMI and whenever I disconnect it I'll move out, try to play some video, get confused as to why no audio is playing, and discover it's still trying to serve audio to the HDMI device. * I disabled the login screen since I'm the only user of the install but how it logs you into your session is so slapdash it makes me actively worried for my security. The keyring popup is often the last thing to show up once GNOME is loaded. The desktop, Teamviewer, and Discord, all load *before I'm prompted to login. In the process of recording video for this blog I logged into Pop OS and managed to open Chrome and browse to a tab all before the keyring prompt finally took its time to stop user input before I ever logged in. What? This is incredibly stupid. The login prompt should be the first thing to load before anything else. In fact, nothing else but GNOME should be able to load before I've logged in. Sure I could re-enable the login screen but that's to me unnecessary steps added to booting up to a single-user install. Why even have the option to begin with? * Can Pop OS please stop moving my NTFS mounts between /dev/ and /media/? Stop that. I can't use my Steam install folder without readjusting it every time I reboot. * I have no idea why the disks in my external USB enclosure keep spinning even when they are connected but unmounted in Pop OS. It freaks me out to the point I keep the enclosure powered off until I actually need it. * I don't get why Pop OS's auto timezone detection seems to think I live in LA. I don't. I live in Atlanta, three hours ahead of LA. When I turn off auto timezone detection and manually change it to EST it's messed up my BIOS clock so that whenever I open back up Windows I'm three hours ahead.

Going back to Linux has been more of a pain than a solution to my existing problems in Windows. Every time I boot it up it seems I find one more frustrating thing to nag about or one more part of the system that breaks out of nowhere. Some people find constantly tinkering with their OS appealing and it does to me but not anywhere to this extent. GNOME 3 has numerous UX deficiencies compared to Windows 10 and Mac OS, many of them regressions compared to predecessors like GNOME 2 and Unity (RIP). It is so frustrating to use I cannot recommend it despite its more mature device and software support. It's been years since the meme of "The Year of Desktop Linux" first became popular that I'm skeptical that this mythical day that Linux on desktop becomes mainstream will ever arrive- even with exciting initiatives like Proton for software compatibility and relatively easy to use distros like Pop OS. I mean, I can't even get Proton to work on my Steam install because it doesn't seem to like sharing the same install folder as Steam for Windows. Ugh. Does this mean I'm removing Pop OS from my drive? No. I get that I've spent 2.5k+ words bitching about it but there are things it does that I cannot live without.

Being able to remove my 1050 from the equation entirely means I get a (still kind of pathetic) three hours of battery life instead of the measly one hour I've been getting lately. *apt-get is godlike. Updating is so fast, so easy, and often doesn't require a reboot. apt-get is what every auto-update OS function should strive to be. Windows Store has got jack shit on it.

Guake is so good man!!! I love being able to pop open the terminal anytime and hide it quick. It's such a giant productivity boost, someone should have the balls to make default in a distro.

Disk and partition management is still leagues better on Linux than on Windows. Drive recovery is a cinch, being able to bypass the permissions system on NTFS is a godsend, imaging partitions is a snap. Of course ext4 isn't and probably will never be natively supported in Windows... A flash drive with GParted should be in every technician's toolbox.

For all my headaches, Linux is still much leaner than Windows. It sips battery, it changes less stuff behind your back, and it's usually easy to know how something broke even if you often can't fix it without reinstallation. But is it the Year of the Linux Desktop? No. It probably will never be.

[musescore-com]

MuseScorer of the month: Takernikov

And here comes August’s MuseScorer of the Month!

In case you missed it, each month we pick one of MuseScore.com’s brilliant members, featuring him or her in an interview available to all MuseScorers. Last month we introduced you to flutist and composer Robin M. Butler.

Now, please welcome: the MuseScorer Of August, Takeru aka Takernikov from Fukuoka, Japan.

“I love the words of my professor at the university. He said, that good music has ‘consistency’ and ‘variety’; If no consistency, it would be confusing. If no variety, it’d be boring.”

The following interview is featuring Takeru and is conducted by our staff member Alexander T.

- Hi, Takeru.It’s a pleasure to meet you! Tell our readers, please, a few words about yourself.

Hello, Alexander, nice to meet you too. Well, I’m from Fukuoka, northern side of Kyushu island, Japan, and live in this city with my wife and a little son (three years old right now). I studied acoustic design at the university, i.e. solving room acoustic issues with physics. Actually I wanted to study at conservatory but my musical skills were not good enough to pass the examination. Luckily, I had an opportunity to take composing classes at the university. So, I learnt music theory, notation, how to compose, and musical forms like sonata.Now, I’ve been an IT engineer specialized in networks for a decade, I like this job. My experience as a musician includes playing: - tuba, double bass and clarinet at high-school; - bassoon and contrabassoon at university; - piano - since I turned 15 years old.

- Cool, such a variety of instruments ! Did you come a long way to learn playing them?

Actually I was kinda tone deaf when in junior high school. There were lotta choral classes sadly, the music teacher pointed out my tone deafness every time, some students teased me. But, finally, I overcame that so-called “tone deafness”; I got interested in music, I began to play piano, which had been bought by my mother when she got married. Then, I played in a brass band in high school. As far as I remember, at some point I came across a really attracting piece called “El Camino Real”. First time I saw the score, I was confused about the key signature for transposing instruments, but I found my own way to read it. The skill I got at that time has helped me a lot later, when studying from the other composer’s work. I was also playing contrabass for a year, clarinet for two months and tuba for about two years. When I entered university, as I have already said, I began to play bassoon and contrabassoon in the “Orchestra club”. I’ve played symphonies (Brahms No.1, 4, Beethoven No.5, 7, 9, Tchaikovsky No.5, 6, Rachmaninoff No.1, 2, Dvorak No.5, 7, 8, 9, Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique, and so on), overtures and suites. I tried to perform in a rock band as a keyboard player, but sadly it wasn’t good…

- But, anyway, trying something different is always (or almost always) a nice experience...Well, let’s talk about your composing experience: what is that about for you, and what or who helped you to start composing?

Apart from the composing classes at the university, I took part in picking musical pieces for upcoming concerts as a member of the council of the university orchestra (I was a leading bassoon player). We listened to all of the ‘candidate’ scores to decide whether they are playable for our orchestra, worthwhile or not. So,I read a lot of scores from Bach to Shostakovich. Especially I’ve been curious about the orchestration, I tried to understand, how do composers notate their music to make it sound really nice and beautiful.

At first, I tried to compose something with Finale when in the university, about eleven years ago, but quitted composing after I graduated. As I dislike using a mouse, I felt it was inefficient to notate with drag and drop, so I lost some motivation. Then, when I was searching for sheet music from Final Fantasy XV soundtrack for piano, I came across this amazing MuseScore notation program. I remember, that I was greatly impressed by the features MuseScore had (and still has, of course). It has intuitive UI for me, mostly I can notate with keyboard quickly as if writing a document. Till that day I hadn’t composed a piece for about ten years. But now almost everything motivates me to compose, but especially natural landscapes or some exercises (sports) I did or things happened to me...

- ...and now, as I can see, you’ve got a plenty of your own pieces on MuseScore.com Can you describe at least some of them?

All-right. Let’s start with Snow Run - one Sunday morning I did a trail run with friends through an urban forest park and some ranch, the duration of the 3D map movie generated by my GPS log data on the run was 52 seconds, so I decided to compose this piece in 2/4, 52 measures with 120 bpm to make it easy to count. Composed this piece within an hour or so - I realized I could compose quicker than imagined...

- Sorry for interrupting, but I wonder - do you often compose these “GPS-log” pieces after your morning runs, and is that the only reason why most of your compositions are short?

Basically there are two reasons for that: 1: you are right about the “GPS compositions”: after I do some endurance exercise like cycling or running, there’s some service which can create some short movies by my GPS logs. Usually the duration of the movies are short, less than 1-2 minutes; I compose for this ‘movies’ on the same day and share with my friends. 2: I said “compose on the same day”. I set a deadline for myself and try to accomplish that on time. Kind of repetitive practices, it’s a good way to express my feelings and to ‘improve productivity’ in my opinion. I feel, this affects even my job activity in a good way as well.

- So, let’s continue with your compositions…

Ok, then I’ll tell you about a couple more. La Chute D'eau élargi - inspired by French impressionists, deliberately titled in French, however, it includes some pentatonic scales, so for me it sounds like some Japanese folk music. Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa - an attempt to create minimal music from my original phrases I came up with, after I was reading a picture book for my son. That sounds a little weird, but I ended up with clear and refreshing atmosphere in this piece.

- Nice pieces, the second one reminded me of Steve Reich. And now, here is our “traditional” question: what have you shared on MuseScore.com that you’re most proud of (and why are you proud of it) ?

It’s Symphonic Poem “Mamacoco”. This is the most emotional and dramatic one I have ever composed. Although I’m generally a short piece composer, the duration of this one is about 14min. and it contains almost everything I could do as a composer. Attempted to fill it with beautiful melodies and counterpoints in the tonal slow part, and to make it exciting in the quasi-atonal fast part, naturally “covered” the previous slow melodies with different instruments (brass). I was surprised what I did actually, huge resolution followed by very tensed atmosphere before the recapitulation. The last part starts with almost sad flute’s phrase, it gradually changes to a kind of brilliant sounding.

Symphonic Poem “Mamacoco” by Takernikov

- I love the melodies in it, for me “Mamacoco” sounds like ‘pastoral’ music. I wonder what composers/performers influenced you. And, generally, what are your favorites?

I love Russian composers Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and that’s why my MuseScore account name is “Takernikov”, like a Russian surname. I don’t mean that I’m limited by the Romantic era, I also respect Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Debussy, Ravel, Liszt, even Steve Reich. In film composing, Hans Zimmer is the first composer that comes to my mind. Generally, most of the film composers affected me: James Horner, Steve Jablonsky, Joe Hisaishi, Ryuichi Sakamoto, etc..Honestly saying, the composer I can’t even imitate is Don Davis. His music, especially the orchestration and atonality in it, is outstanding in my opinion.

Would like to admit, that Takernikov is the first composer I met, whose beautiful music is often inspired by morning runs and whose pieces’ length really depend on the time he devoted to his physical exercises. That’s an interesting fact and Takeru is a really nice composer, it was a pleasure for me to do this interview and to meet him.

Thank you, guys, for reading.

Yours, Alexander T.

P.S. Following the nice tradition - I am adding here a piece I really enjoyed , this is a kind of “spanish sketch” composed by Mr.Takernikov.

Él irá a España by Takernikov

[seedtreedb]

Motto: "Automation literacy for all peoples."

SeedTree DB

build [event-driven] software you never thought possible

SCRIPTS-AS-DATABASES

Drastically simplifying event-driven programming with a lightweight module: easy-to-use JavaScript Object Notation with Function Objects included. The structure of JSON. The functionality of JavaScript. A bridge between stateless (halted) and stateful (non-halting) objects. This site is still under development. Please visit again soon for an improved experience. Or, sign up to our newsletter for updates. Thanks! Jump to: EXAMPLES | TEAM | LINKS

ABOUT

Hi, the SeedTree DB founder here. Event-driven programming is an incredibly powerful and extremely popular GUI and Web app software paradigm: well over 90% of all websites use JavaScript and JavaScript is event-driven. If an app is user controlled (has a UI) or communicates on the Web (uses APIs), it probably relies on event-driven scripts. However, event-driven development comes with major downsides. As Wikipedia puts it: "the event-action model leads programmers to create error-prone, difficult to extend and excessively complex application code." A few years ago, I made my first sophisticated event-driven program. It was an interactive e-contract Web app with jQuery to handle UI and REST events. I stopped working on the program when it became so complex, it was error-prone and difficult to extend. It became complex because it lacked unified hierarchical structure. I couldn't make another program like that. There had to be a better way! After years of first principles R&D, I've come up with SeedTree DB as the solution. SeedTree DB is a JavaScript add-on with a very small footprint that lets programmers adopt JSON-like tree structure within a program whenever they want. => SeedTree DB scripts are JavaScript Object Notation files/modules with working Function Objects; JSON document stores are JavaScript Object Notation files without Function Objects (unless stringified). We're in the process of conducting research to empirically show how much SeedTree DB lowers complexity and improves efficiency compared to the alternatives. In my experience, SeedTree DB drastically lowers complexity by giving each function the regiment necessary to fit into distributed-state compilations with simplicity and ease. As such, my SeedTree DBs don't have definition scope issues or control flow timing issues. Apps are fast to extend with very few and quick-to-fix errors to debug. With SeedTree DB, I've been able to build parallel, multithreaded event-driven order on top of order sans namespace collisions or problematic unmet promises/callbacks, far beyond what I was able to do without its graceful constraints. As soon as possible, we'll open up sliding scale subscriber Git repositories so you can start using this groundbreaking proprietary technology in your projects. The repositories will include working modules that you can use as-is or as templates to get you started.

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Why is it that SeedTree DB is the first to develop something as fundamental as script/database hybridization? => Scripts define change whereas databases define order. We had to reimagine "irrational" number theory to find a way to harmoniously marry these two "opposing" concepts as one before we could properly visualize SeedTree DB.

EXAMPLES

Please visit this GitHub repository for an example of the grammar SeedTree DB uses. Though SeedTree DB was removed from this repository at publication, SeedTree DB scaffolded the code flow during construction. These examples are of the runtimes, not the scripts. Runtimes and scripts reflect each other. The scripts are easy to make. We'll have script demos ready soon. If you want, you can expand the following videos full-screen as well as pause on specific frames. Each video is at or under 1 minute long. Click here for a playlist with additional and real-world demo videos, including a Twilio/Raspberry-Pi e-ink programmable SMS pager example.

(1) In the above example, we show the "x" tree-app and its children. Then we show the "x.tool" branch and its children. We show how the "x.tool.example" branch applies its schema and gives the user feedback about an input value that conflicts with its schema. Finally, we show a successful "x.tool.example" branch input. Note how each "x.tool.example" output is recorded as a greater than zero "$#" child leaf object in the "x.tool.example" namespace stack.

(2) In the above example, we attempt to add a data object input to the "x.tool.example.$2" database leaf. The database successfully adds one of the data object input's key/values to a matching key/null leaf-destination cell in the database. The database refuses the other data object input's key/value because the key/value leaf-destination cell is already occupied in the database.

(3) In the above example, we try to add a key/value without a preexisting key leaf-destination in the "x.tool.example.$2" database leaf. The database gives us feedback about our error. We respond by trying again with an 'o' option that overrides the default requirement that an entry can only be added to the database if the database already has an empty key/null cell available. We then try the previous example's key/value with an already occupied "x.tool.example.$2" key/value leaf-destination but use an 'n' option that overwrites the already occupied leaf-destination's cell-value.

(4) In the above example, we make a successful "x.tool.example" branch input. After that, we lookup the output by entering its "x.tool.example.$3" leaf address. We try to do the same for "x.tool.example.$4" but, since the 4th "x.tool.example" output hasn't happened yet, the database returns no leaf. We try it for the "x.tool.example.$2" output, which has happened, and the database returns the leaf. We then lookup the "x.tool.example" branch and observe its "x.tool.example.x" key/value. We change its "x.tool.example.x" value to a different value. Finally, we make a schema-successful "x.tool.example" branch input and "x.tool.example" uses the new "x.tool.example.x" value to calculate its "x.tool.example.$4" output object.

(5) In the above example, the "x.twil" progammable-database branch is a GET server calibrated for Twilio Programmable SMS Webhooks. When Twilio contacts the branch with an SMS, the branch's "x.twil.chat" child determines the SMS is a number and then, using the "x" namespace, sends it to the "x.tool.example" branch. "x.tool.example" processes the SMS input like any other input: applying its schema and additional calculations, then recording the output as the next "$#" child leaf object data entry in its stack.

(6) In the above example, we look up the "x.tool.example.$0" metadata-header value determined by the database's kernel-module. We then change the "x.tool.example.$0.show" database metadata-header setting to on. After that, we try an input improper for the "x.tool.example" schema and the database gives us feedback about it. Finally, we lookup "x.tool.example" and see that, now with the show setting turned on, the "x.tool.example.$6" output we just made with our failed input attempt is visible in the "x.tool.example" namespace.

(7) In the above example, we lookup the "x.tool.example" namespace constructor function, the namespace constructor function for each of the greater than zero "x.tool.example.$#" child leaf output objects of "x.tool.example" and, finally, the instructions "x.tool.example" uses to calculate the values of its greater than zero "x.tool.example.$#" child leaf output objects.

(∞) In the below example, a walkthrough of the above (1) to (7) examples.

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TEAM

Kyle MacLean Smith B.B.A., J.D. Founder & Inventor Victoria, BC, Canada For more about me, please visit my personal website linked directly below. besta.pe

LINKS

Facebook + Instagram + Twitter + YouTube

SeedTree DB

Motto: "Automation literacy for all peoples."

[system76]

GNOME UX Hackfest 2017

Designing the future of GNOME Shell

I just got back from a week-long design hackfest in London focused on GNOME Shell and related components. It was a fantastic week with friends from GNOME, Red Hat, Endless, System76, and elementary working together to help make GNOME even better.

In the end we generated a lot of designs that will need to be refined, thought through more, and tested before implementation. But I’m confident the issues we raised and solutions we arrived at will positively affect GNOME Shell in the future. I look forward to the designs getting better hashed out and sharing them as soon as we can!

Photos by Jakub Steiner unless otherwise noted.

Attendees

I was joined in London by Cosimo Cecchi, Mario Sanchez, Robin Tafel, Allan Day, Florian Müllner, Jakub Steiner, and Tobias Bernard.

Cosimo, Mario, and Robin are from Endless; Allan, Florian, and Jakub are from Red Hat; and Tobias is a student at TU Berlin. I attended on behalf of System76, but also brought my experience and knowledge from elementary.

We were all there, however, as GNOME community contributors and designers to work together on the future of GNOME Shell.

Tuesday, Nov 14

Tuesday morning we headed to the first room Endless booked at a hotel and it was super fancy. Lots of wood textures, interesting glass and stone artwork, and nice ambient lighting.

Tuesday room, photo by Cosimo

Shared Agreements

First, Robin ran through the Shared Agreements that Endless uses at events to help create a welcoming space and arrive at an mutual understanding from participants:

Bring your full, honest self

This is a safe space

Assume good intentions from each other

Be open, listen actively

Speak your mind & heart

We all agreed to operate under these guidelines, wrote them on a large piece of paper, and posted it at each venue. I really liked this opener to ensure we’re all working together and getting the most out of the event!

Agenda

Next, we hammered out our agenda for the week, which you can check out on the hackfest wiki page. In summary, we decided to focus on three main areas for the four-day event:

Activities Overview (2 days)

First-Run Overlay/Tutorial (1 day)

Login/Lock Screen (1 day)

We also decided to fit some of the other items in from the list in between if we were stuck, burnt out, or just had extra time. With the agenda decided, we dove straight into the Activites Overview.

Activities Overview

One of the first points that came up is whether people think in a more app- or window-centric way, or if that depends on the context. We also questioned the effectiveness of a big grid of alphabetic apps as the main way to see apps, and talked through potential user-customation ideas like being able to craft your own space for work and using drag-and-drop and folders to let users map things to their own mental model. We also talked about not making the default case be the overwhelming wall of apps, and ensuring a spatial model with both the pagination and how different views are connected to one another.

The first day of discussion was largely high-level and unconstrained. It ventured, at times, into tiling window managers, window switching, larger OS-wide spatial models, and “using the Z-axis.” We eventually did spend some time generating a lot of sketches and mockups of potential ideas, and Allan shared an idea he had been working on. We kind of settled into two main areas we needed to tackle: how to get into this “app picker” view, and how this app picker view would operate.

We had less consensus on how to get into it, but had started arriving on a few shared concepts with how it would operate:

Provide a “favorites” area that is the default view with user-manipulable icons and folders

Have a sort of “app basement” (thanks for that term, Robin!) where all apps live and can be brought out to the favorites area

Have a “suggested” area that would surface frequent/recent apps plus recently-installed apps to proactively prevent users from having to dive down into the basement

These concepts would help make the app picker more immediately useful to users than a paged list of everything on their system, and would help make folders actually behave how users seem to expect to based on their experiences with mobile OSes.

Other Concepts

During the exploration and generation of ideas, a few otherwise uncategorized ideas were brought up. These aren’t necessarily things that will happen, but stood out to me as interesting concepts.

One was using app icons to badge windows and workspaces in the Activities Overview; this is something we do in elementary OS and can be a boon to glanceable recognition of tasks. Another idea was revamping the Super + Tab window switcher to basically utilize the existing window spread as its UI.

Some concepts we briefly touched on

These ideas weren’t fleshed out in detail, but I think they would be interesting areas to explore. Badging windows and workspaces, for example, could be a relatively small change that greatly increases the usefulness of the overview.

Wednesday, Nov 15

The space Wednesday was larger if slightly less inspiring than the venue Tuesday. We spread out and got to work on refining our ideas. Thanks again to Endless for booking this space!

Wednesday room, photo by Mario

App Picker

First, we regrouped around the app picker view itself. We found we were generally in consensus on what should be there, but still had questions around how exactly it should look and work. We also started generating ideas for how to get to it: Spatially on the same layer off to the left of the window spread? Behind a button that expands into the picker? From a sort of Dash that slides over on top of the existing view?

Sketch of the existing mouse travel for launching apps

Getting Spatial

Something Tobias brought to the hackfest was the constant push to think spatially — that is, organizing interface elements into a sort of virtual physical space, keeping animations and locations of items consistent within the rules of that model.

Thinking through spatial models and layers with paper, photo by me

We seemed to arrive at a consensus that workspaces should continue to operate vertically and live to the right of the window spread, meaning for balance reasons the app picker should probably live to the left. This negated some of the more radical ideas like having it slide up on a sheet from the bottom (because it would be very unbalanced). Apps living to the left also keeps the general mouse travel from existing versions of GNOME Shell, meaning it would be an easier transition for existing users.

We ended the day wanting to sleep on the ideas we’d had and to give some of the designers opportunities to mock their ideas up in a higher fidelity.

A sketch of how the app picker itself could work

Thursday, Nov 16

Activities Overview Wrap Up

Thursday we met at the Red Hat offices to wrap up our work on the Activities Overview. We shared some higher fidelity mockups and basically arrived at a consensus of the way forward. I don’t want (nor do I have the authority) to announce anything official, but my feeling was that several of the ideas we brought up earlier would need to be fleshed out and tested a bit more, then GNOME will need to decide when to implement them. It won’t likely be in the next cycle, but our work hopefully provides the foundational design work and a path forward.

First-Run Overlay

Next, we dove into the First-Run Overlay. We started with Robin showing us what Endless plans to ship in Endless OS, including the design process and thinking that went into it. Endless OS isn’t vanilla GNOME, but many of the same concepts could be adapted for GNOME itself.

My rough translation of the Endless overlay to a vanilla GNOME Shell design

I brought up my reservations with first-run tutorial patterns, but I think if implemented very basically (with only a couple of screens), it could work. Ideally it would also be implemented per-session, meaning that downstreams like Endless OS, Pop!_OS, and Ubuntu could choose to implement it and extend it or pare it back to match their experiences if they so choose.

We agreed that there are really five different components to the idea of user education and help as far as a GNOME-based OS is concerned:

Help Guide (which is launched on first login in GNOME today),

First-Run Overlay (like what Endless wants to implement),

A sort of feature gallery in Initial Setup to show some features and how to access them,

On-demand videos or tutorials that apps or the shell could call over some API (eg. in-context “help” actions that pull up a help UI focused on that feature), and

Progressive disclosure/education through something like tooltips

None of these are mutually exclusive, and each one could be worked on. We spent a small amount of time working on some designs for a first-run overlay, but the tricky part there is more implementation than design.

Progressive disclosure of actions and keyboard shortcuts, photo by me

I also plan to file issues for progressive disclosure/user education through context like in my sketch above.

Starting on Login/Lock Screen

In the afternoon, we moved on to start discussing the login/lock screen. Allan started by writing up the goals of the lock screen, along with the issues that have cropped up with it since its release and the constraints that it has to operate within. The idea was to guide the discussion and design process by solving the issues while still addressing the original goals.

We ended the day after a bit of discussion, and rough sketches of how space could be better utilized, but nothing concrete.

Some rough initial ideas, photo by Robin

Friday, Nov 17

Login/Lock Screen

Friday we devoted to the login/lock screen. We started iterating through ideas, looking at how other platforms operate, and mocking things up. We ended up with several really interesting concepts that were very different from one another visually, but shared some things in common:

Iconified notifications (not the entire contents) to tell users there are notifications to be seen when they unlock

Reducing the number of clicks/actions to log into the last-logged-in user

Using the user’s desktop wallpaper instead of a separate lock screen wallpaper

Making stronger use of user avatars (and thus doing something intelligent in Initial Setup to ensure all users have a uniquely recognizable avatar)

One of my favorite concepts shared was by Tobias. He mocked up using the user’s wallpaper as a stronger identifier combined with their avatar as cards in the user list, then expanding that wallpaper out to the full screen when the user is selected. I’ve reproduced the gist of it in this terrible sketch:

At the end of the day, we didn’t have a single clear path forward, but had many concepts that we want to explore further. We did have a consensus of the key goals and some converged ideas around notifications and user avatars, which was productive. I look forward to seeing these ideas more fleshed out!

Food, Sights, & Social

GNOME Beers

What would a hackfest be without a little bit of food and socializing as well? Allan led the way to several delicious food venues throughout the week including Malaysian, Vietnamese, Australian, Thai, Ethiopian, British, Spanish, Italian, and probably half a dozen others I forgot. We also spent some time in the evenings at a handful of local pubs, and met up with more members of the GNOME community at the GNOME Beers event on Wednesday night.

Borough Market, photo by me

Walking across London Bridge, photo by me

Out on the street after lunch

Millenium Bridge and St. Paul’s Cathedreal, photo by me

We spent one long lunch grabbing food at Borough Market, walking along the River Thames, and crossing the Millenium Bridge doing a small amount of sightseeing. After a different lunch we briefly stopped by the British Library.

“How far does this go down?” at the British Library, photo by me

St. Pancras station, photo by me

We ended the week at a big band jazz performance by Beats & Pieces as a part of London Jazz Week, and got what I’m told is a traditional British cuisine: salt beef bagels.

Beats & Pieces big band jazz, photo by me

Summary

Overall, the event was a huge success in my eyes. We iterated through a lot of ideas, generated quite a few designs that can be refined and eventually implemented, and also just bonded as a community of designers within GNOME.

I am sure I missed some things we discussed, and I purposefully left out any higher-fidelity mockups (since these ideas are in no way set in stone). If you want to dig into things on your own, be sure to visit the hackfest wiki page for more details. Also feel free to tweet at me and I will try to answer any questions.

Thanks to GNOME, Endless, and Red Hat for making this event possible, and System76 for sending me out to London on such short notice! I look forward to our continued collaboration.

[lesbianrobinnbuckley]

Ok, so, I applaud what you're doing, wanting to get info and educate yourself. Being careful about language and words is important, and there is my problem with a lot of tmblr users (and with your argument as well slightly) You asked us to think the following "and do you think reclaiming the word is going to do any good?" Now, do you see the problem here? You, and SO MANY OTHERS, are hung up on specific words, tranny being just one of them, and forget to consider language as a whole - yes, some

words are bad, but look at your own language. You have already established in your blog that the word tranny shouldn't be used and the way your question comes across, at least to me, shows that you have already formed your opinion and are assuming a certain type/kind of reply. It is not always about a specific word being bad, or it's connotations being bad, it is how we use them and the ideologies behind them - and I think a lot of people don't get that. Do we need some words to be "reclaimed"?Yes and no. Depends on context, but if someone chooses to reclaim something, why is the society allowed to say that it is better to let some words just disappear? This relates very closely to th disappearance of Queer culture in our society as we have equated queer liberation with civil rights and assimilation to heteronormative society. I'm not saying civil rights and equality are bad things, I'm just wanting the queer community to consider what is there to be lost, when webecome part of the heteronormative constructs of today's society. And it is ALL to do with language, it's these conservative gays wanting to live heteronormative lives, not that there is anything inherently wrong with that, but the gay liberation on the 70s and 80s was not about that, it was about acceptance, and accepting the weird, the freak and the sexually deviant. what we got now, is something completely different and leaves out a lot of queers that dont want heteronormative livesheteronormativity ; so to answer your question about whether or not tranny is an offensive word. Yes and no, the point is, "teaspoon" is offensive word is used incorrectly - so stop thinkign so much about the actual words but think about the ideology behind the words and the CONTEXT of the words. That is my opinion as a FtoM tranny. Peace! P.S. love your blog

----------------------------------

thank you so much for your response!! please bear with me (bare? idk) it’s 6am and i haven’t slept. so i’m gonna word vomit a lil bit and i hope you won’t take offense to anything i say (but please let me know if you do)

i completely agree that context and the way words are used make a huge difference. and yes i have formed my own opinions on the term, and that is due to seeing trans people being hurt or offended by it, and growing up in a household where my father would call gay men/drag queens/trans women tr*nny. it has always held a bad connotation with me. i have the same feelings for the term queer due to the same reasons. and because i’ve seen pedophiles trying to claim the word queer. these are the reasons i have issues with language. many people have been harmed by the word queer and it’s like a slap in the face when i see heteros trying to steal the word and put it on things like pedophilia, furries, bronies, or having sex with fat people. it’s things like this which make language a huge deal to me, and has gotten to the point where i would rather not see the word queer anymore. just like i’m sure many other trans people would rather not see tr**ny. i have definitely thought about the ideology behind the words though, and i know that drag queens and trans people used the word before being transgender was really known about. and in the instance of why this whole debacle was started was from a trans woman saying she didn’t like rupaul using the term she-mail on her show, and a drag queen(who has never stated that they were anything other than cis) made a disgusting comment which was this  “Maybe she should take what’s left of her dick and stick it in her mouth and shut the fuck up,” i never commented on the use of the word, just what bianca said in regards to Carmen’s feelings about it being used. and from my experience and what i’ve seen on this site, people are offended. obviously i know it doesn’t bother some, but like i said before many people are harmed by the word. 

idk if any of that made a bit of sense but hopefully im at least somewhat coherent. thank you for your input, and once i’ve slept i’ll be sure to read over again to make sure i got everything. but for now it’s time for bed

[penup]

[Story] HOF of March 2017 @eun

This is an artist who PEN.UP has been keeping an eye on for her use of diverse colors and fun characters. In particular, she really expresses “female” characters in a very interesting and unique manner.

It is not only the female characters that are interesting; the pieces of animals are also extraordinary. That is probably why she was designated as the HOF.

Recently, she became more active as she uploaded wallpapers on Samsung themes.

Through careful approach in interview, we want to peek into her art world.

Let us begin the interview with @eun, our HOF for March.

Q1. @PEN.UP : Hello^^ We are PEN.UP team. Congratulations again for your winning HOF of March.

Our first question for the interview is always the same, as it is a must question to ask. Please introduce yourself and tell us your comments about winning the victory. A. @eun : Hello. Thank you for your interest. I haven’t expected this and now I feel very honored.

Q2. @PEN.UP : Let’s get into your world of art. As said previously, you mostly draw “female” characters. Is there any special reason for it? A. @eun : There is no particular reason for my character being a woman. It’s just that because I am a woman myself, making an approach to female characters is a bit easy and natural. Especially, using different length of woman’s hair and vivid color to talk different stories was another merit; so I unintentionally drew a lot of women characters.

Q3. @PEN.UP : Personally, I felt that you may use “PC tablet”.

It was quite surprising to know that you draw with your tablet. I got the feeling that your pieces have details as well as a harmony among colors. Have you ever studied drawing before? A. @eun : At first, of course, it was quite unfamiliar for me to draw in a small screen. So I used computers more than Note (mobile phone). But, as I got accustomed to it, I use Note (mobile phone) most of the time since it has better portability. Before coming to PEN.UP, I used handmade water color illustrations, which have been eventually reflected in my later drawings on PEN.UP.

Q4. @PEN.UP : We keep saying this; but, you have a very strong character. Your style somehow reminds me of @NanNi, who was a HOF last year. But, when we take a closer look, you two have very different styles.

While @NanNi’s drawing has some attraction coming from emptiness, @eun is just the opposite; your full-drawn space comes as an attractive point. Where do you get all these inspirations from? A. @eun : Whenever I have a theme that I want to draw, I go searching for it. But, most of the time, I get the inspiration from magazines. When I see a photograph that I like, I combine the entire look by thinking about some parts that need to be added and parts that need to be removed.

Q5. @PEN.UP : I especially like this drawing of yours. The character in the drawing is sitting down in the train with her shoes off while listening to music. She somehow seems to feel happy but also not happy. Her sort of anticipation or fret on the face comes as a bang. Could you please explain about this? Is this you? A. @eun : No, it’s not me. When I watch a movie or stay in a cozy place, I often sit like that. The weather during that time was similar to these days’ weather, where there is a breeze that makes you want to go on traveling. I couldn’t go on a trip that time; but I imagined a place I want to go for traveling. Then I came across this photograph where it resembled my feelings. So, I somehow ended up with that drawing that reflected my inspirations. Q6. @PEN.UP : We briefly said it before; but expressions are very attractive. There are many drawings where the facial expressions are very unique: lonely, happy and fun. There is some fun to seeing your characters’ expressions. Do you also pay much attention to these expressions of mood?

A. @eun : The facial expression is the very initial feeling of humans, animals and everything. For this reason, they are very simple way of delivering the feeling. So, although I don’t pay much attention, somehow I quite cared about it much. Q7. @PEN.UP : By any means, do you have any drawing tip you may want to share with us? We really thought you drew with your PC! A. @eun : After using sketchbook app, which wasn’t available before, I was able to make compositions similar to the ones drawn with Photoshop on PC. I don’t have particular tips. I believe anyone could draw cool drawings with good leverage of layers and S Pen’s pen pressure. Q8. @PEN.UP : The recent drawings are also uploaded on Themes store. How is the response from the users? Are there many downloads? A. @eun : Grateful enough, many people get many downloads and leave messages. Especially, it’s so good to see how people from the opposite part of the world download the drawings.

Q9. @PEN.UP : We are almost at the finish line. This seems to be our official question. When do you feel the happiest when drawing? A. @eun : Completing the drawing in a way that the whole composition makes me feel satisfied as they turn out to be the one that I wanted to draw when I first came across the element. Also, I feel really happy when I get to interact with the people who enjoy these drawings of mine. Q10. @PEN.UP : Thank you for your time for this interview. Please share with us any comments you have about PEN.UP. Also, say hi to our users. Thank you again for your time. A. @eun : I have long been drawing with a lot of artists in PEN.UP and coming to interaction with them, which is indeed very meaningful and thankful time for me. Let us continue to keep this.

This was our interview with @eun in March, when there is a bit chills left.

The winter is almost gone, and the spring is about to come in this blissful 2017. I believe that many people are starting to become more geared up. (PEN.UP is also one of the many.)

Spring is indeed a season of stretching after saying goodbye to winter to meet summer. For this upcoming spring, why don’t we do some stretching to freshen up?

Don’t forget to leave a congratulatory message to @eun, our HOF of this month.

Thank you.

Artwork Sharing Social Network, PEN.UP! http://www.penup.com - The PEN.UP Team

[infiniteundo]

Software-as-narrative 12/n: What Dijkstra said about the novelty of software complexity

Edsger Dijkstra was one of the first computer scientists, along with Hopper and Knuth he is a "Wizard Of The Age Of Legends." He was also salty af and had amusingly controversial opinions that still have the potential to offend software engineers and designers today!

Dijkstra's lectures are free to read online and back when I was a self-teaching junior front-end Web developer, I read Dijkstra a lot.

The Combinatorial Explosion Problem

Dijkstra spoke of a complexity ratio by which we measure the ratio of the number of "parts" to the whole — the total number of "parts" needed to create the product.

In the case of a bicycle there are perhaps 30 or 50 parts, yielding a ratio of 1/30 or 1/50.

Dijkstra thought it significant that the ratio of the number of parts to the size of the whole in a computer program is far larger by many orders of magnitude than any machine ever seen in human history.

In one example, Dijkstra considered a functional allegory where each microsecond of computer time was considered a "part" of the program. This seems fair to me because (in a running process) at any microsecond an instruction could execute.

The Halting Problem

Because of The Halting Problem we can not predict in advance whether an instruction will or will not execute in any given microsecond. You cannot generally predict it. Even given knowledge of system state, including source code, including whatever you can include: it doesn't matter because that's what NP-Hard problems are like.

Now consider that supervisor processes should certainly run for longer than a microsecond. The social contract about how long-should-this-run that exists between user and process in fact implies an undefined in the very far future. In other words it is hard to even form expectations about computational processes let alone predict their behavior, which has been shown to be generally impossible.

Any program has to halt eventually or does it?

Although no program could run forever, there is no functional difference between a program that stops-then-starts and reloads a good-enough backup of the previous state. So time is extremely fungible. That is a lot of microseconds. That is a mighty big ratio of parts to the size of the whole.

If that ratio matters, if Dijkstra was right then software is a hierarchically complex entity on a scale usually only seen in extremely large animal colonies, massive flights of migratory insects, human cities seen from space. The same scale of complexity exists in even the simplest program… given that program runs for a half hour or so.

Risk can be modeled according to the ratio of the size of the whole to its parts

The complexity "risk" that Dijkstra was pointing out here is orthogonal to what any program ought to be doing. For a real-world reference see Knight Capital and also ma.gnol.ia, the short-lived social network that died along with what turned out to be the only copy of its production database.

The longer a program runs and the more users it has, the more unpredicted (though not necessarily harmful) behavior said system exhibits. This is a well-known phenomenon reflected in the programmer joke that:

> "on a Web site, the one-in-a-million event happens every Tuesday."

No matter how you characterize the number of "parts" in a running, interacting program, it is obvious the ratio is astronomically larger than any previously-experienced machine in human or indeed in natural history. One has to look at things like planetary ecosystems to find something on the same scale as a non-trivial Web service as measured by the ratio of parts to the whole.

A Web site running for a half an hour calculated as (30*60)/(1/1000000) results in a staggering ratio of one billion eight hundred million potential ways that microseconds can be strung together as larger increments of time to form "parts" of the program.

It is ridiculous to point out how much more complex this sounds than a bicycle, or than a passenger jet or than a mega-city. By comparison a Boeing 747 has around six million parts.

1.8e+9 as it is expressed in scientific notation, is a number we are more used to considering as the population of a mega-city (and even then it is rather large, certainly New York has not nearly this many people).

"The software is not finished until the last user is dead."

Web systems are complex beyond the level normally recognized. OSI stack complexity for instance does not begin to hint at the billions of opportunities for intended-or-not behaviors that exist inside every process not to mention anything about concurrency but did I mention concurrency? Yeah. Staggering numbers of "parts."

At the current scale of distributed systems, the mechanical metaphor completely fails. The metaphor of software-as-edifice (as cathedral or as bazaar, say) also has failed.

So is not even fair to call software systems machines. They are organisms in the teleonomic sense.

Evolving modern software movements like Agile and Devops reject more and more the idea that Web systems even should be as machines and my intent here is to reject the view entirely. These web systems we manage are organisms by any teleonomic definition. Our machines have become critters, as Cliff Moon and Donna Haraway and many others have suggested over the years.

[googlemapoptimizationtips-blog]

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[backslashn]

Cultist Simulator, Day 3

Continued from Day 2

12:26 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Got my complaints about Cultist Simulator's user experience, but I'll say this: it hasn't crashed once in 25 hours of play.

12:57 PM - 3 Jun 2018

RIP Elridge. The Lanterns will guide you beyond the Mansus.

Elridge, skilled in the Edge aspect, had seen us past countless enemies on expeditions, and captured or dispatched at least half a dozen Hunters who imperiled us. But this time he never returned, and the Hunter remains.

1:08 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Oh no, we're fucked. After Elridge failed, I sent Victor after the Weary Detective too.

Victor has not returned.

Fuck.

1:16 PM - 3 Jun 2018

I am hiring Professional Muscle now to deal with this tenacious Hunter. I ought never to have risked my Disciples on such mundane errands.

I have learnt this harsh lesson now, but too late.

1:37 PM - 3 Jun 2018

And now the Professional Muscle also has failed to return! Has the Weary Detective defeated him too, or merely bribed him? Does it matter?

I, too, am Weary: of this Hunter and his seeming imperviousness. But I have no more earthly forces to send after him.

And so I shall have to use Unearthly force.

I have summoned a demon of Edge and Winter. This detective will not survive. Of this I am certain.

3:05 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Did the demon seek to twist my words and subvert my commands? The detective still lives. But captured, now. I shall leave him sweltering in my dungeons.

3:07 PM - 3 Jun 2018

While one weary detective lies shuddering and forgotten in a blind cell, another has arisen to trouble us.

What ardour drives these fellows? Why do they recklessly ignore the fate of their forebears? With a sigh, I send my demon out on the errand again.

This one did not survive. My demon returned grinning, matched by the rictus of the detective's corpse.

3:33 PM - 3 Jun 2018

I have rearranged my cards so I can see what Lore I am missing, and what Lore I can upgrade or subvert. And also to align the many Tools and Ingredients I have with the Lore of the same Aspect.

And only now do I realise that they are colour-coded by their Aspects.

Another thing I've learned recently: send demons away on expeditions, they're really good at dealing with obstacles 😅

3:44 PM - 3 Jun 2018

But not quite good enough.

O my arch-demon of Edge and Winter! O slayer of Hunters and devourer of shins! O ice-cold eyes and frozen heart! You have vanished in the forest, and gone wherever lost demons go.

3:58 PM - 3 Jun 2018

And what became of the detective I imprisoned? I woke one night whelmed in exotic cravings. An urgent need to speak with the prisoner. All through the night we talked: debating, reasoning, arguing. When dawn came my mind was once more at rest—and the prisoner no more to be seen.

4:06 PM - 3 Jun 2018

And the second demon I sent on the expedition? It also failed to return. These vertiginous blundering diaboli are as useless as my feeble craving disciples. If they had not already perished, I would vent my wrath upon them now!

The funniest thing about that is I only sent them on the expedition because it was there, and because I could. I didn't have any need compelling me to. 😂

4:10 PM - 3 Jun 2018

I have now learnt a fifth dead language: Phrygian. Three books written in it are awaiting translation.

Meanwhile I dream through the Stag's Door in search of powerful Influences; and continue my slow and painful exegesis of the lesser Lores in search of the key to the next door.

4:43 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Another weary detective is dogging my steps, somehow tirelessly. I hired a hulking fellow to go bother him, but without much hope of success.

Yet the fellow returned, bearing a body.

4:45 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Now I begin a newly-learned rite: I am calling on the Cartographer of Scars to animate the thing into shambling half-life. Perhaps it will be useful for odd jobs around the house.

4:53 PM - 3 Jun 2018

The rite failed. The corpse arose, but could not be controlled. Not allowing myself to panic, I used my intellect to banish it.

The rite was a failure, but nothing of value was lost. Perhaps my next attempt will succeed better.

5:09 PM - 3 Jun 2018

I tried to summon another Maid-in-the-Mirror to take on dangerous tasks. The ritual wavered; I continued the invocation more passionately, but to no avail. The creature is loose. It seeks something mortal to devour. I may have only seconds left.

5:13 PM - 3 Jun 2018

I am spared! It whispered past me, fluttering through the air in search of sustenance. Of all the disciples it could have taken in its jaws, it has chosen the most powerful, who was deepest initiated into our mysteries. It has taken Cat Caro, my Seer, and is devouring her.

I shall have to get the health and safety inspectors in to see if there's a better way of containing these demons. I can't afford to lose disciples like this: what would become of my cult without followers?

(This is actually a very significant loss: there are very few followers who are able to be promoted to Seer. Cat Caro was one; another perished in an expedition before I had discovered the ceremonies to uplift Seers. There is one more: my last Seer. I hope he lives.

5:21 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Wait, what is this? The demon has been entrammelled again, and banished. And Cat Caro lives! What occulted power does she wield?

And here I was thinking "Seer" was not much more than a ceremonial title.

6:12 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Grinding, grinding, grinding.

Upgrading and subverting lore to try to find the one I need.

Passing the time by summoning more demons and hiring more thugs, and sending them on expeditions.

It's all quite tedious.

Who'd have thought being a cult leader would be so unglamorous?

6:22 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Have I said much about the writing in Cultist Simulator? It's rich and intense, even though it's not drenched in words as Sunless Sea was. Not a full buffet, but a platter of delectable treats.

6:48 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Cultist Simulator protip: if you ever feel stuck and don't know what to do next, do the ritual to summon one of these:

It won't actually give you any clues, but maybe the summoning will go wrong and you'll end up with a different problem to distract you 😈

7:36 PM - 3 Jun 2018

I have uncovered a new source of vitality that had hitherto been hidden. It's of uncertain reliability and takes a somnolent quantity of time to pursue, but may be of value if utilised on top of the usual fresh air and exercise.

At around the same time, I chanced upon a marvelous, delicate technique that can preserve a little vitality far beyond its normal duration!

Using all these things in concert, I have succeeded in increasing my health to a robust five. I fancy I can increase it at will in future.

Even more vital than that, I have—after long and arduous research and cross-referencing—discovered the entrance to the Spider Door. I wonder what biquadrupedal revelations are preserved beyond it?

9:23 PM - 3 Jun 2018

I have found my way from the Spider Door to the Peacock's Door. "The Peacock's Door does not open, exactly." What, exactly does it do?

I am afraid to find out.

9:47 PM - 3 Jun 2018

I've encountered a bug in Cultist Simulator about five times: if autosave happens to kick in while a window is being opened or closed (it was Talk this time, but happened with many), then the game stops responding to mouse clicks. Have to save then reload to fix.

In more detail: when the bug happens, the window (if it was opening) disappears. And the game doesn't stop responding to mouse clicks entirely: it just thinks every mouse click is for info on something in the window, so just shows an info window.

So I can't click on any cards, or pan around the desk, or anything like that.

The HUD still works, so I can save & quit. Then when I reload the game, it loads with the window in question visible, and everything's back to normal.

9:56 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Anyway, bugs aside…

I've got a pretty strong team for this expedition, although it seems they forgot to bring matches.

10:07 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Odd. My hireling and my demons came back from that expedition with their timers rounded up to the nearest minute: two of them were back to their full 180s timers, one at 120s, and one (that had been close to expiry) at 60s.

10:20 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Oh no. I'm fucked, aren't I?

10:30 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Maybe… maybe not? "I Am Seeing Things" finishes collecting the third Fascination in 3.6s. Meanwhile my desperate dreams of Reason have led me into nightmares, which will deliver a Dread in 6s. Will that be what I need?

And right this instant the Moth principle has served up a Restlessness for old unhappy far-off things: which in another 60s will decay into Dread too.

Maybe, just maybe, I can survive the Visions? I am about to unpause and find out.

10:33 PM - 3 Jun 2018

In 1.9 seconds my Dream will end, delivering the Dread I need just in time. I'm not dead yet, thank the Hours.

I will still need to find at least one more dread. Time for more reasonable dreams—and hope they don't end in Fascination. It was one such not very long ago that supplied the second Fascination for those visions, in fact! 😱

10:41 PM - 3 Jun 2018

The crisis is over, but the danger is not yet abated.

Even as I dream, I continue my translations from Fucine (the sixth dead language I learned, the language of witches) as my minions pursue their expedition in The Rending Mountains (three thousand mile—or was it years?—away).

I guess I should count myself lucky that this was the first time my Visions had encompassed three Fascinations.

And even more lucky that the Moth principle turned up (I'm not sure where from) with that Restlessness while the Visions were rising, and that my Dreams rolled the Dread I needed.

All in all, that's the closest I've come to death in about 35 hours of play (yes, this is still my first game of Cultist Simulator).

From what others have told me of their games, death usually comes much more often, and much sooner.

10:59 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Well, I'm still trying to get more Dread, and meanwhile another Fascination has turned up. So I'm back to two! 😢

11:01 PM - 3 Jun 2018

And another Moth has flown by, delivering another Restlessness. There is something more than chance at work here, I am sure of it.

11:06 PM - 3 Jun 2018

While I was working on the Visions crisis, yet another Hunter turned up on my tail. I ignored him for a while, since my minions were busy and I had more important things to worry about.

But he's still there now, and I was about to send a nasty demon after him—but first I looked up other ways to get Dread [yes, 35 hours in I'm okay with looking up the odd tip], and turns out—I'd even done this earlier in the game but forgotten!—that talking to a Hunter about Winter lore has a chance to terrify them. And doing so will always produce Dread. Bingo!

11:14 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Oh dear. I was so caught up with the Visions, that I failed to pay attention to my Affliction getting worse. It has now matured into Decrepitude, decreasing my health.

Fortunately I know of a ritual that can help here…

11:15 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Haha, my latest dream of Reason has also descended into a nightmare which will produce Dread. I'm going to have too much of it 😅

At least the odd Dread is easy enough for an artist to deal with.

Right, that's enough talking specifics of the game. Back to vagaries!

11:34 PM - 3 Jun 2018

So I managed to dispel those Visions, but more have arisen. And the rite to defeat my decrepitude is feeding them.

Whoops.

Maybe that excess of Despair I have is also lucky! 😂

11:35 PM - 3 Jun 2018

Oh wait…

These new Visions are of a different sort. Something I've never encountered before. Something I don't begin to understand.

1:03 AM - 4 Jun 2018

I have passed the Peacock's Door. I have seen the Worm Museum and the Red Church. I have learnt a sixth dead language, although perhaps one that does not die: "Before gods arose from blood, before ever ape stood upright, this was the language heard in the House of the Sun."

1:10 AM - 4 Jun 2018

The slowest and painfullest grind in Cultist Simulator is the Lore upgrade. Six 30-second stages, three of which demand a perishable resource—Erudition or Glimmering—or Reason. If you can't meet the demands of each stage as it arises, you usually fail and must start over.

It's definitely easier to obtain Lore from books, if you can find them, and if you can read them. But high level Lore is rare even from books.

And it's never been clear to me which Lore I'm actually going to need: so I'm trying to get the highest level of each. Perhaps overkill.

2:43 AM - 4 Jun 2018

Whoa whoa whoa! I have just discovered that you can PREDICT when things like Despair and Visions are coming up in the next minute.

Click on the Time tile and the next thing due is shown on the right hand side! My mind is blown.

And it only took me 40 hours of playing to notice!

5:12 AM - 4 Jun 2018

I just summoned my first Percussigant, and its description made me laugh aloud.

I'm not telling you what it was: you're going to have the joy of discovering it for yourself. 😄

5:22 AM - 4 Jun 2018

I've hit another huge plateau. For I-don't-know-how-long I've been pretty stuck. I've passed the time with expeditions and upgrading Lore as much as I can, but I'm not making forward progress towards anything.

I want to try to find the Tricuspid Gate, but haven't a clue how to get there. The Peacock Door doesn't seem to lead there, cause the only cards I can use with the Peacock Door just take me to the Mansus.

There's two other hints of something I'm missing: I have discovered just one book in yet another dead language, but no idea where to learn how to translate it.

And I found a Gold Spintria, but have no possible use for it. Oh, except as a mediocre ritual ingredient I guess.

I can't believe this is still going on in Day 4