13 March, 2010

I'm awkward and I'm too polite and I want two stars for arms like Orion

I can't remember who first linked me to this but it's brilliant and deserves to be seen. YouTube's closing broadcast of an evening.

Miss Muse Carmona tipped me to this next blog, and I'm in particular reading through "A Fine Line Between Cowardice and Courage" on't. From Bonfire Madigan's (who I'd recommend in general: she describes herself as a folk-punk cellist, and she's another who does things with a cello that shouldn't be possible) essay in the work Live Through This: on Creativity and Self Destruction by Sabrina Chapadjiev comes the concept of the crisis/wellness plan for strongly emotional events. For example, this one I've been toying with for the last hour or so:

1) For when I feel...

Inadequate Misunderstood Stupid Worthless Enraged Hurt Naïve
Depressed Incapable Weak Abandoned Imbalanced Numb Grieving


I can...

Read a new book Ground and center Practice belly-dance moves Go swimming
Write stories Listen to good music Put together another blog entry Bake something
Start another texture project Organize my desk Track down new recipes Research
Quilt something Mend something Go through a box Watch the glitter lamp


3) My game plan is to...

a) Identify my feelings. See if I can track why I'm feeling them.
b) Acknowledge I have a right to feel this way, that it is okay and part of the process.
c) Allow myself to sulk, to rail against unfairness, to cry if I need to.
d) Let myself feel what I'm feeling. If I'm feeling it, it is not wrong. No FEELING, by itself, is WRONG.
e) Allow myself to breathe and get through these things without feeling weak and useless.
f) Allow myself to experience what I'm feeling in full. No rushing, no pushing things aside. This will just cause more rebound later on.
g) Understand that there is no one way I "should" be acting for this. In world or out of it, I am not going to over-analyze my height, my attire, my hairstyle, my appearance, my color, or my species.
h) Repeat a) through g) as needed or required. As often as it takes.
i) Remember this is a process, and there's nothing wrong in being slow about it, just don't STOP MOVING. Keep moving, keep growing, and I will get through this. Keep moving, keep growing, and one day I will feel better.

Miss Chapadjiev says on her site for the book:

Live Through This is a fearless exploration of [womens'] silent rage, the power that can come from internal struggle, and the possibility of transforming this burning force into fierce and enlightened work.

Absolutely. I think I need to track this one down.

There will be a third year of the Make Him Over hunt! There's not a lot of information past that, save for when it starts (1 Aprille) and it runs through Aprille, so plenty of time. They're planning on restricting the hunt to 100 stores only, and they're going to make it circular--the last stop on the hunt will direct people back to the start, so if you find something at store #72, you can just keep on going the rounds until you get to store #71. This is nothing short of inspired.

I'm amused that Michael Masnik was the fellow that prompted Lily Allen to rage, rage against the dying of her profits, but still, this is pretty sharp coverage of an annoying new spasm on the part of major newspapers. Not only are they going through their old published stories and remarketing them to receive better search results, but now they're hiring folks to do this for them.

According to Ben Metcalfe (in the comments for this entry by GigaOm), there's a ton of very large newspapers engaging in this deceptive practice. The LA Times (obviously; they hit directly their former columnnist, Violet Blue; she took her rights back when they abused them); the Orlando Sentinel; the South Florida Sun-Sentinel; the Baltimore Sun; the Hartford Courant; the Allentown Morning Call; the Virginia Daily Press; and the New York Daily News. Is it even worthy of the additional note that most of these papers are Tribune papers?

This may well have started as a last-ditch frantic (and stupid) dodge on the part of the Tribune overlords to keep them financially soluble. Insanity.

In grid-based insanity, among the many (and sometimes weekly varying) groups to which I belong, is the group for DV8 Designs. So on occasion chat will pop up. It's usually about what letters are on the lucky chairs, if a riot vend is going down, if parties are happening, new release announcements sent into chat by Vasha Martinek or Dysturbed Sin, the co-owners.

Tonight there was something slightly different:

[21:47] Gidget Quartz: Does anyone have a script that makes an item Swing, for like, a swingset?
[21:48] Deej Coakes: Think that'd be handled with a rotation script settled inside of the rootprim of the object set. @_@
[21:49] Gidget Quartz: Not total rotation!
[21:49] Gidget Quartz: Just a swing back and forth. @.@
[21:49] Deej Coakes: That's what it'd do. One state makes it go to this rotation, and another state makes it go back.
[21:50] Reparata Nightfire: And this relates to DV8 Deviants how?
[21:50] Gidget Quartz: Was just wondering, Nevermind then. ._.


Miss Nightfire's comment seemed needlessly snippy, and I thought a moment, then typed this:

[21:51] Emilly Orr: Are there any restrictions on DV8 chat, Reparata?
[21:52] Deej Coakes trundles off to do nerdy things.


Needless to say, Miss Nightfire never bothered to reply. But this brief interchange gained me a reply from someone else:

[21:54] Dragon Fang: yeah DV8 chat is aboout DV8 stuff
[21:54] Dragon Fang: hunts lucky chairs riot vend runs sales that sort of stuff
[21:55] Emilly Orr: And, you're speaking on the part of Vasha and the store greeters by saying this?
[21:55] Dragon Fang: I am a live model yes
[21:55] Emilly Orr: And you're sure that's the restriction.
[21:55] Dragon Fang: yes
[21:56] Dragon Fang: ive worked there for almost 6 months


Good to know. So, hypothetically, let's say, if a builder who's thinking of entering their store in the next DV8 Twisted Hunt, and needs a bit of script help, and figures since they also allow hunting hints and tips in this chat group, she could toss in a request for script help.

You know, for the item.

That she might be thinking of making as a prize for finding the Twisted Cube-of-whatever-color-then in her store.

According to Dragon Fang, that's not allowed in the least. Interesting. Well, I'll be sure to keep that in mind, Dragon; because of course, with your vast six month experience at DV8, you know what is and isn't allowed at DV8. Pff.

At any rate, one last thought for the day, before I traipse off for food:

"The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things."

Henry Ward Beecher said that. It's worth remembering. Along with the crisis plan.

5 comments:

Alexandra Rucker said...

The lindens removed the back-code that originally allowed existing swingsets to work as swingsets btw, somewhere around viewer 1.16 or 1.17.

Not sure if that's relevant or not, but there ya go.

Rhianon Jameson said...

Sometimes it's a fine line between what goes and what doesn't in a group chat. Sometimes the line isn't all that fine. For example, the other night in the Caledon Oxbridge group chat, a gentleman (?) all of zero days old announced, "I'm drunk." Gee, thanks for sharing. But a scripting question? Seems awfully harsh.

Emilly Orr said...

Alex,

True, which is why a lot of makers now use unlinked rotating prims, to get the same effect. It's trickier, though.

Miss Jameson,

Well, and that was once the perpetual habit of a gentleman I promised not to refer to by name on these pages. That's not the province of new fellows alone.

That aside, how'ver, it did seem an odd place to draw the line. And, while I'm not going to bring the incident up to Vasha Martinek--yet--I am not entirely convinced that that is the rule of chat at DV8.

Advertising someone else's business? Fine. Telling people the products of that group are worthless? Absolutely, not allowed. Trying to make land sales? Not good at all.

Scripting questions? We're seriously getting snippy over this? It's insane.

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Yeah, so...remember that thing I was recovering from? You know, last year ? Yeah. I did it again. So this is Em Faw Down Go Boom part ...