#so I'm hoping the learning curve isn't too steep

[chimerical-creations]

GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT

Yule has come a smidge early for me. :D

The makerspace has acquired a spiffy brand-new Summa S One D60 vinyl cutter.

Spent yesterday assembling the stand, then had to go home because of boring shit like "needs to eat food occasionally", but today?

Ohhh, today.

Today is PLAYTIME.

[tcfkag]

2024 and the Return of the To-Done List

So, after a year during which (a) our daughter ran full-speed (literally) into the trying two's, (b) I had multi-focal pneumonia that resulted in a week or two in the hospital (including a brief sojourn in the ICU), (c) I had bizarre, seemingly inexplicable seizures for the first time ever [which meant I couldn't drive for six months...right after we moved to a semi-"rural" town...for the northeast that is], (d) had an acute kidney injury, (e) had several bouts of unexplained pitting edema in my legs, (f) started a new job that I actually really like, even if there is a steep learning curve, and (g) lost my Mom after a long battle with mild to moderate dementia/Alzheimer's that then dropped off a cliff into end-stage dementia in less than six months (depending on how you count it), and (h) just generally felt like I was never managing my physical or mental health as well as I could or should be, I'm going to try to make some changes. These aren't resolutions because I truly think that New Year's resolutions just set you up to fail. Instead, I'd call them goals. Or, at least, hope that I want to support with action as much as I can. While still giving myself grace knowing that I can and probably will mess up along the way. But, the first step is that I'm going to try to bring back a kind of journaling-like activity (since I suck at journaling) that my old therapist recommended when I was feeling like this before. Each day I make a list, generally on Tumblr for at least a tiny modicum of peer pressure, and I just make a list of everything I've done that day. No matter how big or how small. As she put it "make it your base assumption that each day, you will do absolutely nothing, so you get credit for everything, even things as simple as showering. I frequently restart these lists when my depression and anxiety have gotten bad enough that I know I'm not taking care of myself, mentally and physically, so a big part of my goals are (a) to move more [in whatever form that takes], (b) eating healthier, and (c) to take care of several medical/dental appointments that I've been putting off for way too long. The beauty of the list is that, a lot of the time, I ended up doing stuff BECAUSE of the list. So that I won't be staring at an empty page as I try to make my list each year.

Things I'm proud of today...so far:

when we took Peanut to the trampoline park to burn off some of her "no daycare today suckers" energy and this time, I bought a jump pass for myself. I only made it ~30 minutes but it was a great work-out. 10/10 would recommend.

I took the dogs for the "long" trail walk out to the back of our property,

I did a core and flexibility routine this morning,

I decided to take one for the team and point out to my Uncle that the nostalgia he feels about Aunt Jemimah as a syrup mascot isn't as important as the company making money off the likeness of a woman who died 100 years ago who was used as a stand in for the generic idea of what an enslaved (or recently freed) Black woman did or should do, and (finally)

this one is a few days late, but not only did we drive 12+ hours to visit my in-laws for Christmas, but we also stopped in NJ in both directions to pick up Monotasker's Aunt who is 80-years-old, hard of hearing, and in the early stages of dementia or Alzheimer's and I didn't even lose my shit at a single person...even the ones who deserved it.

Happy New Years everyone!

"May the best of your todays be the worst of your tomorrows." (Jason Mraz) And even if the worst of your todays are the best of your tomorrows, I hope you can still find your way out and through by the light of the moon to guide you.

[super-kristuff]

I started playing Kingdom Hearts III recently, and I wanted to throw down a bunch of my thoughts so far. For some context, I replayed kh1 not too long ago, but I haven't played kh2 since middle school. I've played 358/2 and a bit of chain of memories and birth by sleep, but I haven't touched re-coded. Tbh, I thought re-coded was just a way from them to retcon the old games to make the plot more consistent.

Anyway, I've just finished the second world based on Toy Story, and like, the homoerotic tension between Buzz and Woody is crazy. Like, it is clearly an unintentional consequence of placing characters with a leitmotif of "You've got a friend in me" in a world built around the power of friendship. There are so many scenes where Buzz and Woody talk about their feelings and how much they trust each other to have their back. Its a major plot point that Xehanort steals Buzz, and Woody rescues him. Woody tells Xehanort off, and I quote, "Whatever you're talking about, I don't care. -- My guess is no one has ever loved you before."

Like, I can also go on about how Buzz, from the beginning, is like, we should just go home and wait it out. So in many of the feeling sessions, Buzz begs Woody to just go home with him. And how home is clearly a symbol of safety, normalcy, and comfort. And how Buzz wants Woody to be there. And in the rescue scene, Woody is the one talking about bringing Buzz home.

It's the second world in the game, but honestly it felt like a complete game in and of itself. God, the game has so much whimsy. There was a fight in a ball pit. There were toy mechs that you could pilot. One of the treasures was in a thumb-war mini-game. At one point, you're teleported into the video-game that the mechs are from, but they're real mechs instead of toy mechs with different abilities to match. One of the bosses is a creepy possessed anime girl figurine.

It's such a good game. And like, I could write pages on how the gameplay feels. Obviously, I've seen the kh4 trailer, and I had my doubts about how the parkcore floaty gameplay would feel. But playing kh3, it honestly seems like a natural extension to the current gameplay? LIke, the gameplay does have its weaknesses. I feel there are just too many options in combat. They game absolutely should have split the combat mechanics into unlocks that are worlds apart. Like, the game starts with form-changes, team-attacks, AND attraction attacks? And each of these will completely change how your controls interface with the environment. Most absurdly, is the shift from classic third-person kh controls to first-person microsoft flight simulator controls.

Which, like, isn't to say any of these are bad additions per-say. I just feel it gives the game a completely avoidable steep learning curve. Which in that vein, I also wish some of the combat mechanics could be turned off. It's just too much to keep track of.

But also, the game is amazing. Like, as long as you never press triangle, none of the above things happen, and you can enjoy a classic kh experience. Which, the game nails. I'm definitely thinking about trying to 100% it. Or at least playing through it a second time at higher difficulty.

Replaying kh1 made me realize how absurdly deep the game was. I found 4 secret bosses? And in preparing for them, I learned how the mushroom guys worked and how to properly farm for synthesis items. And I think it would be sick if kh3 had those mechanics as well. Obviously, I'll have to see, but here's hoping.

I'll try to post any more absurd details, but the Woody/Xehanort confrontation was too good to not write about.

[red1culous]

wonderign if you can help since you mentioned you teach photography. i hope you dont mind. im just starting into photography. what camera do you suggest? for a newbie heehee. also im getting it second hand i cant afford new.

Of course I can help out. Thanks for asking and no I don't mind at all. I really get excited about photography and cameras so this question is splendid! For a newbie I would suggest going for the Fuji x100's. They're great little compact mirrorless cameras. The learning curve isn't that steep. I am sure you'd be able to get one and start shooting immediately. I'm suggesting these because they've been around awhile (I'm not sure which is older the x100v or the x100f) and the prices should have fallen a little on the 2nd hand market scene. Depending on your location too. Here the older one is prettyyyy steep in price still. I was actually considering one of these but I already have too many cameras. If you can find a good deal on either one I'd suggest getting into it.

[theinbetweendoc]

Editing - Final Touches

Once I had added B-Roll to the sequence in the form of pictures and graphics, I showed the film to some of my peers to gain feedback. It was useful to get a fresh set of eyes on the documentary, as by this point I had been working pretty intensely on it! The general feedback was that despite having already added B-Roll to try and break it up, there was still a lot of dialogue sequences of Ros and that this caused them to lose focus. This is something that I too had picked up on, particularly regarding the middle section of the documentary, where Ros is talking about the brokerage. There was also feedback that despite Esther being a protagonist of the documentary, she did not in fact feature that heavily, and that maybe this was a problem regarding issues of representation. Again, I had been wary of this when I sent it to them and so had already begun thinking about ways to remedy it.

Regarding the Ros sequence, I took out some of the sections in which I felt the content didn't apply, or had been covered elsewhere. I aim to try and weave these clips back in to a longer cut of the doc, because they contained information that I would still like to include, but simply couldn't afford to in this case.

The issue I faced with Esther's interview was that it was made at a point in which I still believed that the doc's focus would be mental health. This, coupled with the fact that Esther responded better to more closed questions, meant that there wasn't that much to work off regarding the process of transitions. Also, Esther doesn't know about the details of her transition and so couldn't answer questions on such. However, what Esther could do was talk about the STEPs program, the next stage of her social care journey. In the STEPs program Esther will stay at Fairfield Farm College but her education will focus more on bridging the gap between college and supported living. At the time of the interview Esther had only just found out about this placement, and was very excited about it. Despite finding change stressful, this was just the right level of change to still be a 'new thing', and therefore be exciting. This provided a good ending clip of Esther talking positively about STEPs, ending the documentary on a hopeful note. It also meant that the doc was bookended by Esther, reasserting her as the central focus and one of the protagonists.

Despite saying in my presentation that I would like to make subtitles available, at this current point in time it is difficult to do on Premiere. I was able to subtitle the sequences of Esther, but to manually transcribe the whole thing would have been very time consuming. Fortunately, however, Adobe recently announced an Auto-Transcribe feature that is being trialled as a Beta on some versions of Premiere Pro 2021, with hopes to roll it out wider in the coming months. When this becomes available I will make it possible to have captions on The Inbetween, both the pilot and any future longer versions, as this issue of accessibility is very important to me. In the mean time, I will upload the video to YouTube where accurate auto-transcribed captions can be generated. On YouTube you can select whether to watch the video with or without captions, increasing the accessibility of viewing options.

After finalising the sequence, I had to go in and fine tune the colour. Both interviews were shot in different lighting conditions, and the rooms were very different colour tones. This caused issues with regulating the White Balance. The room in which Esther was interviewed was very warm toned, thus producing a picture that had a lot of reds in it. She was also positioned in front of a window and so the exposure was irregular, as in order to get her correctly exposed the background had to be overexposed. Ros, on the other hand, was in a room that was filled with blue and orange tones, and so these were strong in the picture. Also I interviewed Ros as the sun was setting, and so over the course of the hour-long interview the lighting quality decreased a lot and the shot got a lot darker. I did not have access to artificial lighting like soft-boxes or two-head lighting kits, and so had to rely on the lighting available in the room, which was also very warm.

To correct these issues I used the Lumetri plug-in on Adobe Premiere Pro. I do not have much experience with colour correction so this was a pretty steep learning curve, but with the help of some YouTube tutorials I was able to fix some of the major faults. I used the Vectroscope YUV view to work on the skin tones, as this allowed me to see the exact balance of colours, and how the alterations I was making was affecting the hue of the skin. I used the comparison view option to make sure there was continuity across the shots. The parts of Ros' interview that were shot as the sun was at its lowest were the hardest to correct exposure-wise. I attempted to correct it as best I could using an adjustment layer with an ellipse mask over her face, as this was where it was most noticeable. The tricky part was knowing where to stop, as by this point I was so immersed in the editing process and knew the clips so well that every time I watched it over I noticed a new thing that needed to be tweaked! Overall though I am happy with how the corrections turned out. Examples of some side-by-sides are below:

Esther - non-graded (left) vs graded (right)

Ros - non-graded (left) vs graded (right)

As can be seen, the grading made quite a big difference on the exposure and temperature of the shots, giving them an improved quality.

I decided to add in a music track because there were times when a graphic would be playing, without a backing audio track, and the silence felt quite jarring. I wanted music that was quite soft and upbeat, but not too noticeable. I searched several royalty free music sites and came across a track - Crowander's Who Would Have Thought - that fit perfectly. This track was free to use as long as it was not for commercial purposes (which it isn't) and that proper credit was given. I named Crowander in the credits, and provided a link to the track, which was also a condition of its use.

Again because of the difference in conditions between the rooms in which the interviews occurred, the audio levels were also affected. The room of Esther's interview was large and tall, and covered in soft furnishings, and so there was little background "fuzz", whereas the room I interviewed Ros in was a lot smaller and shorter, and had fewer soft furnishings to absorb sound, resulting in a lot of background "fuzz" and also disparities in volume levels. Using audio effects and the gain control I was able to normalise these levels against one another, and still allow the backing music to be heard. This was quite a fiddly and time consuming process but it paid off in the end.

To avoid these issues with lighting and audio in the future I'm definitely going to make sure that I have adequate lighting and sound equipment available before I start shooting!

[characterstring-game-design]

Learning How to Add Sound and Getting Started with working in Unlit/Low-Poly Style

Most of my last week has been spent three things: 

1. Actually thinking through how the game is going to work and how the story will support it 

2. Building some initial assets in Blender and getting the beginnings of a stage set up in Unreal to test my understanding of working in this style. Want to make sure I'm not committing myself to something too painstaking before I start building out the map. 

3. Learning how to add sound. 

Game Story & Mechanics 

Initially I was envisioning a more narrative game, but I want the end result to use as much of the mechanics we've learned in class as I can, so after giving it more thought and being more realistic about what I can do in the time we have, I'm making it more of a collecting game. My inspiration for this game is a mountainside Antique Mall in my home town in Vermont that also has a small Llama stable/petting zoo next to it. I really want to do a whole game set at this Antique Mall, but for now I'm re-envisioning it as a dedicated Llama petting zoo that's simply reminiscent of it. 

The player is going to discover that one of the Llamas can talk, and is very good at giving advice. The player has a problem they could use some help with but the Llama doesn't consult for free...you have to pay them in feed. The feed dispenser only takes quarters, though, and you have no cash. So you have to go around collecting errant pennies and exchanging them for quarters with several locals in the area. A few will only agree to the exchange if you can fetch things for them. It'll basically be three stages of collecting things, each time allowing you to continue your conversation with the llama. 

Game Assets 

The assets I managed to build successfully were the penny, a llama and the feed vending machine.  The llama is just a first attempt....I don't necessarily want to go for a completely blocky low/poly effect, but I need to take another pass at one to try out some other ideas. If I don't toy around with shape, then I at least want to explore hand drawn/illustrated material textures to make the visuals a little more interesting and not so typical of the aesthetic.  

I actually wanted to try importing a small animation with the llama (a simple chewing animation to go with a grazing sound effect I wanted to use), but though I was successful building the animation in Blender, I couldn't manage to successfully import it into Unreal.  Had to give up on it for now and just go with the static versions. There are definitely small animations and motions I want to include in the game (like with the feed vending machine) so I hope the learning curve isn't too steep for figuring out how to do it.  

The vending machine I'm especially pleased with. Took some time to figure out how to get the glass container to be transparent, but it was immensely satisfying when I did. Turns out there's a dedicated Shader Node for transparency: Transparent BSDF. You simply use a Mixer Shader to pipe an alpha-controlled version of your color in along with your primary one. The you just use the Alpha slider in your Principled BSDF node to adjust the amount of transparency.  

You also have to change the Blend Mode in the Material Properties Settings to one of the Alpha options. 

Color selection and management ends up being the heavy lift when working without lighting. You have to make every material emissive and you have to be clever about varying colors on objects that overlap, otherwise you'll lose all sense of shape, depth and distinction.  

Sound Design 

In my first attempts at incorporating sounds, I wanted to add a suitable effect to the coin collection, and I wanted to try out having several layers of sound to place you in a wooded setting with a pack of llamas.  

The coin effect was simple enough,  messing around with ChipTone, but I decided also to add in a small jangling coins sound effect that I coded to execute right after the first one. Wanted to make it sound like you were adding to a stash of coins, and I think it works.  

For the llamas I wanted the sound of generic woodland atmosphere, but then the sounds of the llamas just going about, so either light stomping, or huffing or something to that effect.  I found a generic sound effect of horses grazing in a stable that came pretty close to exactly what I wanted. Since some of my llamas are actually eating grass off the ground, I added in another sound of more audible chomping of grass, pulling the attenuation in close so that you only hear it when you're up close to them in particular.  

I put the coins around a body of water, so for kicks I added some splashing sounds that execute if you wander over it. I didn't actually tie it to the navigation event triggers, but I'm interested in figuring out how to do that.  

Also spent some time this weekend just playing around with the sound machine apps, which I was having a blast with and getting way more into than I was thinking I would, so I went ahead and just created my own music for this initial sound test. I think I'll actually keep pecking away at it and make it one of the custom elements of my game.  

This is the program I ended up using for the music I eventually included and a video on how to use it:

BeepBox -- Brutally Easy Music Software (Free & Open Source Too!) - YouTube

The challenge I envision for sound is working out the sound effect for the vending machine. That's a little more specific and I didn't find anything that would work online, so I think I'll have to go gonzo with that one and make a trip over to the Central Park Zoo to make my own recording. Luckily the weather has gotten warm just in time! 

[djmarinizelarecs]

Dear Friend,

I have a love-hate relationship with my Canon TS3300. It makes book printing a nightmare. Countless paper jams and missed pages had driven me nuts that I was so close to pounding that darn contraption with a hammer.

But in some ways, printer jams are also interesting. You don't really create solutions until you realize how broken something is. When you're into book printing, paper jams are inevitable. It's a trial-and-error to my hit-or-miss: I inspect the cartridges, make sure the rollers are working, print a sample copy of the signatures, make another test run, and then hope for the best.

Sometimes I still muse upon what got me hooked to this hobby in the first place. I remember seeing photos of fanbound books on Tumblr, and I thought to myself, how wonderful it would be to learn the art of bookmaking. So I joined the Renegade Bindery, a Discord group of guerrilla bookbinders who share tips and tricks with each other. There's a very steep learning curve in this field, and you need to have the right supplies in order to get started. But more importantly, you need to be very specific about what you really want to learn.

My boss is challenging me to be more specific to requests to my colleagues at work. I believe it's his way of saying, "Be demanding." I don't demand things; I happen to ask if it's possible or if it's not too much of an inconvenience for them to do something for me. I start my sentences with "hopefully" or "ideally," but my supervisor tells me to remove those words and say, "This has to happen." I train people older and more experienced in the footwear industry; I train them so they know how data analytics come into play. All of them are overseas in China, so I have to stay up late nights in the US so I could hop into meetings with them. I have to keep asking for a Mandarin translator for those who struggle with English. A week ago, I sent out an e-mail to the team that we need to reduce errors. but the company president corrected me and said, "We need to ELIMINATE errors." It's very corporate, isn't it?

One of the many reminders from him that had struck me was this particular statement: "In order to incite change, you have to eliminate choices." It's similar to what his other previous statement, although both contexts were all about data entry. My boss probably knows nothing about bookmaking or even literature, but his words hold power.

Which is why I am reminded of word choices and syntax. It's the same thing with the art of bookmaking: since I do everything from proofreading to typesetting to printing and sewing the pages to the actual case binding, I have to remember how words come into play in the stories that I bind. Maybe being a working professional in an industry completely different from the arts does help; I get to find out new ways to use my words; to speak of jargons and twist them in my own interpretation.

In the Discord group of bookbinders, you have to ask specifically for things you want to learn--say, for example, typesetting a multi-chapter novel that needs a "text messaging" format. Or, learning how many sheets you need if you want to do book signatures in multiples of four. If you don't, it's easy to be disregarded in the chat, else they point out to you that the search bar exists. More often than not, the community is very supportive, even in failed outputs like many of mine.

All I want to say is: I am trying. I may be struggling to keep up with all the things I want to do nowadays, but I also have to settle with the fact that I'm treading between two worlds--of art and science, of several cultures and languages, of moving on and belonging. And I'm making progress, one step at a time.

Always,

R.K.

[dxmedstudent]

Am I allowed to be a little terrified? In September I start my training to become an adult nurse and I keep seeing news articles about all of the stress placed on the NHS right now. I'm pretty sure this isn't going away. Nothing about my career choice scares me (I'm already a healthcare assistant) but the idea of being thrown into staff shortages, bed shortages and constant political criticism is a little much for me. Is it really as bad out there as the news is making out? Thanks :)

Hello! Congrats on starting nursing school :D The NHS can be a scary, stressful place, and I don’t think the articles are exaggerating that. You’re right, it’s not likely to go away, and I think we’re in for tough times for the forseeable future. Personally, I try not to think too far ahead in terms of where the NHS is headed, because there’s only so much stress one can handle! I can’t tell anyone how best to handle it, but thinking far ahead can get quite overwhelming; I prefer to try to focus on the next step rather than the distant future. You’ll have a lot of things to pick up as you learn your new job, and focusing on what you can do rather than the big stuff beyond your reach may help. Also, make lots of friends and keep in touch with your support network.  Look after yourself and carve out time outside of work where you don’t think about work and do things you enjoy. Take time to do small things that make you ‘you’.

As a HCA you’ve no doubt seen a lot of the problems firsthand, and I’m sure your nurse colleagues have shared their experiences with you. Even though we are busy and there are always pressures to get things done, we work together to make things happen.It’s not all bad news; the NHS is like a wonderful little family. We form friendships and bonds of mutual respect with so many people. I honestly consider working in the NHS a huge privilege because of the people I get to work with (many of them nurses!) and without their awesomeness I may well already have jumped ship to a 9-5 gig with less drama. But there’s good in the NHS and good things happen too. You get to be a part of helping so many people, and many of the interactions will nourish you in a way few other things do. Yes, it’s an intimidating place and our jobs have a steep learning curve, but it’s not all bad things, all the time. We may complain about the bad, and the news may focus on it (after all, who ever writes about the majority of cases where people are treated well and quickly? Who writes about times things go to plan? Almost nobody! Yes, we deal with things nobody wants to deal with. But we see good, too. We get to do good and see amazing things. I hope that the good more than makes up for the bad, for you. The political criticism is annoying, but what really irks me personally is the criticism from the public. Criticising care in one’s own experience is one thing ( everybody has a right to reflect on how a doctor or nurse treated them, even if they may be missing some nuances), but writing off all doctors as money-grabbing privateers, or all nurses as rubbish based on what a friend of a friend of a friend said, or what they read in some article written by some rich journalist with no real life healthcare experience is what frustrates me. Now that nurses are being ballotted for industrial action, expect the media to treat you similarly to how it treats us; youll either be deified as angels who sacrifice everything, or else blamed for poor care and systemic failings or the actions of a small minority. I’m afraid when healthcare professionals get political, we become fair game for the media and public’s frustrations.  And there will always be a vocal minority that say hurtful or ignorant things. You don’t have to engage with them if you don’t want to. Look after yourself, and leave the trolll fighting to those who find it fulfilling.Politicians may well blame nurses for not trying hard enough or not doing their bit (after all, they questioned doctors’ senses of vocation only about a year ago) rather than admitting to systemic problems. But despite that, many people (most people, arguably) know how hard you work. They know it’s not really your fault. During the whole junior doctor contract thing, when patients did bring up the strikes etc, they were supportive. Although not everyone understands everything that we do, most people understand that we are doing our best, whatever ignorant ‘think pieces’ or politicians may say. Try not to worry about bed shortages. The pressure for bed shortages mostly falls onto the matrons, ward sisters and senior docs, but as junior doctors and nurses we work together to do our bit to discharge people as soon as reasonably possible. That’s all we can do!There’s nothing wrong with gently reminding the doc looking after your patient that they need to go home, and the bed is very much needed; but just remember things can only go as fast as they can go. There will always be a pressure to make more bedspace, but it’s neither your job(nor mine) to police that or make it happen. We work together to keep patients safe, make sure patients aren’t sent home prematurely, and ensure well patients go home as soon as praticably possible. Just do your best. Because that’s all you can do. None of us are perfect, and sometimes we’re put in difficult circumstances. But, you’re much better than you give yourself credit for and you’ll be doing a lot more good than you realise. Good luck and see you out there in the field!