#I was about to get a set of two for $60 on amazon but my boyfriend convinced me that at that point ‘I might as well look at a more mid-range

[ghosts-cyphera]

hi can someone tell me to go and spend €120 on a lightsaber? my mental health needs this (…) but I’m too goddamn indecisive and feel like this one ✨ treat yourself ✨ moment is going to bankrupt me for life sksksk

#(USD 130) #I was about to get a set of two for $60 on amazon but my boyfriend convinced me that at that point ‘I might as well look at a more mid-range #lightsaber instead’ and now he’s apologizing for making this too difficult for me #AS HE SHOULD #but like ?? physical activity is good right ?? #learning to spin some sabers wouldn’t hurt right ?? #OR this will end like my ukulele hyperfixation. bought one and played for 15 minutes and gave up because I didn’t learn fast enough sksk #mind you it was my first time ever playing an ukulele #HELP #lo talks

[seriousbrat]

quite contrary: mary macdonald + historical context, music

this is my Mary MacDonald playlist and I'd like to talk a little about my interpretation of her and her cultural/historical context! it might not align with fanon, ive no idea but idc frankly haha. I hope to have done my due diligence in terms of research (i'm an absolute research fiend) and in general this is a topic I'm personally highly interested in. because it's highly interesting and (ime) little-discussed. I'll be providing links for further reading. tagging @goldenromione bc she asked me to do this!

so in my fic Mary is a muggle-born girl from a British-Caribbean family in Croydon. Her family owns a Caribbean restaurant in Thornton Heath. She's rebellious and punky and gets a lot of this from her two older brothers, both Muggles; Toby, the eldest, is part of the Race Today Collective in Brixton, dedicated to the publication of a political magazine (Race Today) on race relations in the UK. The middle brother, Lewis (who has a fling with Sirius as a matter of interest lol) is a musician/DJ very active in the Ska Revival/Two-Tone scene of the late 70s-early 80s.

All this is very influential on Mary; she is very outspoken about muggle-born rights at school, and her music taste reflects her background. I do think she would like women-led punk especially x-ray spex, but also in terms of ska a group I think she'd have liked is the selecter, which features pauline black the coolest female vocalist i've ever seen in my entire life. just look at her:

this will be explored in the upcoming 4th part of my fic, in which we see Sirius in his Brixton flat, and Mary and Lewis both spend a lot of time there. Specifically, he lives on Railton Road, which was a very important street in terms of both Black and LGBT history in Britain. It was the scene of the 1981 Brixton Riot and the location of many collectives at different points like the British Black Panthers, the 121 Centre (one of London’s longest running squats, also housed anarchist groups and other orgs), the aforementioned Race Today Collective, the Pink Fairies/South London Gay Community Centre, among others. It was also the home of many important Black British activists and historical figures like C.L.R. James, Darcus Howe and Leila Hassan. A few links:

A Radical History of 121 Railton Road By the Waters of Babylon; The Battle of Railton Road; International Centres Today in London gay history: the South London Gay Centre evicted, Brixton, 1976 Activist Streets (on history in Thornton Heath, linked above)

If anyone is interested in this topic I cannot, cannot recommend enough the miniseries Small Axe on Amazon, which covers a few different important moments in Black British history from the 60s to the 80s. It's so incredibly good and the soundtrack is SUPREME. Another good one to get a feel for the period is In the Long Run, created by Idris Elba and set in London in the 80s, loosely based on his own childhood.

Lastly, a few images of how I see Mary under the cut:

this is simona brown, my mary fancast, though the image I used for my playlist is of brenda sykes who I also think is an absolute Mary vibe.

#mary macdonald #mary #marauders era #mine #the darkest days #idk how to tag this tbh im just leaving it like that #the stranglehold that typeface has had on london signage lmao #i always thought it was futura but its johnston apparently #Spotify

[eviebane]

hi! can i ask what software you use to make gifs and how you make them? thank u!

Hello! Oooh it's tutorial time!~~ Disclaimer: I am fairly new to GIF making so it might not be perfect, and there might be easier ways out there, but this works for me and I enjoy DaVinci more than other softwares, and is actually easy once you practise a bit :)

I use DaVinci Resolve which is 100% free.

Here's my post about obtaining clips for Amazon & Netflix shows. For this example let's make a nice Aziracrow gif :)

Make a new project and go to File > Project Settings.

2. Under Master Settings we're going to change our resolution to 720P Square then Save. (Once you get more confidence with it, play around with different ones, I just think square gifs looks nice)

3. Drag your clips into DaVinci (don't judge my clip labelling system)

4. Drag the clip you want into the timeline. You can use your arrow keys (<- ->) on the keyboard or just drag/click along the timeline to move it, then to cut your clip up, use the little scissors. I'm going to make a gif of the little smile Azi gives Crowley when he sees him because it's so cute

I'm going to cut the clip right when Azi looks at Crowley and then delete the first bit I don't want, then delete the grey empty block it leaves behind. Now the section I just created boops to the front of my video.

5. I'm going to right click my clip, then Change Clip Duration > then under Frames change it Duration box to '60' > click Change to save it

I usually make my GIFs anywhere from 50 frames to 70 frames (depending on the quality I want, more on that later). For this GIF I'm going with 60 frames, feel free to experiment with it once you get the hang of it.

7. Most GIFs are slowed down a bit. I like it slow my GIFs to 0.5 speed. To do that, I go to the little mixer icon > the speed dial icon > then type 0.50 in the box (3rd image)

8. Now we gotta make the image actually fit the square nicely. We're going to the 3rd tab.

Then we're going to click on our clip and under Transform, adjust the Zoom. We're going to change Zoom to from 1.000 to 2.400 as that fits nicely in this square.

9. Let's make them a bit more centre by adjusting the Position, just play with it until you're happy.

10. I'm pretty happy I'm done. Obviously once you get more confidence, play around on the tabs with the different effects and adding text and such, but for now we're going basic.

Let's go to the rocket ship icon.

We're just going to double check our settings look good. It's a GIF and it's 720 square.

11. Then we'll Add to Render Queue > Render All

12. Now we have our GIF saved to our computer, we need to check the file size to make sure it's under 10MG. If it's over 10MG, Tumblr and most other sites will say it's too big.

Find your GIF > right click it > Properties

Darn my file is too big...

13. We have two choices to make it smaller. Either we:

a) make the GIF shorter (see step 5). b) make the quality lower. I usually do this by lowering my colours - at the minute it's at 128 so I'm changing it to 64.

When you're happy, Add to Render Queue again (if it asks about replacing the file just select Replace), then Render All

Let's check my GIF size again. Yay - it's under 10MB!

It might take some playing around - it's ok, take your time, ask other GIF makers for advice, watch youtube tutorials. You'll get the hang of it really quickly :)

#ask #tutorials #gifs #azi smile #good omens gifs #video editing

[lumarisart]

I'm almost there! SGC 6 is taking longer than I wanted to get done, but it's mostly executive dysfunction kicking my ass lol. This is why I don't do preorders for this series - but also it's a thing for fun, I'm trying to keep it fun to work on.

A little TLDR, because the amazon descriptions suck & I never properly introduced my writing or this series lol (I should hire someone when I have the money, to write a better blurb lol) but SGC is, in a nutshell, about a group running a cafe in the day, and doing some ghoul hunting at night for extra cash. When they stumble on something seemingly big, they think they can leverage whatever info they find into a possible job - whether just selling the information or doing something in return for a big payout - either way, they stick their noses into something that ends up being bigger than they expected.

At one point they'll have to decide whether to continue a "normal" life, or if they should seize the chance to try and do something about it. That's the plot, but at its core it's a very obvious love story about two guys who were very good friends, but became something more.

I rate it 18+ for vulgar language, some explicit scenes (both s*x and gore and drug use) and there's a lot....lot of F-bombs.

Setting: Think of a high fantasy world. A few thousand years later, they merge magic and technology. An industrial revolution begins! Then, a couple more thousand years, and new magic is discovered, and space exploration is unlocked! Now we have mega-metropolis cities, space ports, council of dragon shifters splitting the city into districts, and intergalactic government that tries to keep them in line.

The characters never set foot offworld (not in this season anyway) but there's plenty of mention of it.

Serial: This is a serial, not a big book - each episode is 20-60 pages, sometimes less, sometimes more. But it's why it's $1 an episode to read (although I may restructure this if I can get my own website redone) via Amazon (for now.) Once the whole season is done (10 episodes) I'll lump them together in a big single volume and offer a special edition paperback and hardcover (which I hope to fully illustrate!)

Background:

I started SGC in 2020, though festered the idea of it in October of 2019. 2020 needed a change of pace from my usual high/steampunk fantasy stories and characters, and thus SGC was born. In 2021, after hiring my editor (who isn't on here sadly) we worked together to get the first 5 launched. It's been over a year since releasing SGC5, but I'm happy to finally get back into it.

If you read all that, thank you! If not, totally understand. Thank you for your time ^_^

#booksbooksbooks #book #serial #shortreads #fantasyscifi #cyberpunk vibes #mmromance #queer books #lgbtq #amwriting

[pythianoracle]

PSA About Some Shady Shit on Tumblr

This post is to bring light to some shady marketing on tumblr. This is not about an individual, but rather as a company posing as an aesthetic/meme account in order to get people to buy from their shitty drop shipping company.

I am making this post because I am sick of covert marketing and drop shippers over charging for the same stuff that can be found for cheaper and by the actual company. I am also concerned for the possible hazard of drop shipped items that need to be food safe in order to use.

Tumblr user @/my-kawaii—world is a drop shipping company pretending to be an aesthetic blogger who happens to “find” links to all the products in posts. All these links lead to the same drop shipping company website: Lavender Constellation. Under the cut is evidence to support my claim.

Alt text has been added for accessibility.

Hey, so I’m really not one to make posts like this, but I saw something that rlly sketched me out that some people may want to be aware of.

So, someone I follow reblogged this really cute teapot that my-kawaii—world posted!

[ID: a screenshot of a tweet reposted by user my-kawaii—world on tumblr. The post reads “losing my mind over this frog teapot my best friend gave me”. Attached to the tweet are two images showing a green frog teapot with two black tadpole cups. ID END]

Seems innocent enough, right? But then you scroll to the end of the post.

[ID: A screenshot of the bottom of the previous post by my-kawaii—world. Attached is a link to a storefront in green and pink text that reads “**Update For the people asking I asked her and she bought the frog tea set HERE🐸. ID END]

I thought “dang, a ton of people must have been asking them if they went to all that extra effort”, so I decided to check the tags.

[ID: A screenshot of the post reblogs with the user names blocked out in red to respect privacy. From top to bottom, the tags read: #cat #basically #cats and #haha. ID END]

Why would people be tagging this with cats if it has nothing to do with cats? Looking further, if you open up a reblog, you see this.

[ID: A screenshot a reblog that shows a different tweet. Punctuation has been added to alt text for readability. The tweet reads as follows: “Me: Invents a device to talk to cats. Cat: Oh god, finally you understand me. When ever I meow for hours it’s because I want wet food. I know this was so opaque for you. Me: No no, I knew you want wet food the whole time, but you can’t have it whenever you want. Cat: (blank space) Me: (blank space) Cat: first of all, fuck you,”. ID END]

They’re retroactively editing their high note posts to give more credibility to the shit they’re selling. Here is the listing on the linked website

[ID: a screenshot of a website called “Lavender Constellation”. The website has a light purple background with darker purple text. The listing image is of a green frog teapot with two black tadpole cups on a pink background and labeled “TEA SET FROG & TADPOLE”. The item’s original price is listed as $149.95 USD and is listed as on sale for $79.99 USD. ID END]

Wow isn’t it so cool that it’s on sale right now? Save over $60 USD? What a steal! They also offer free world-wide shipping and have a coupon code you can use. Crazy.

Upon further digging, the real teapot is the frog from the サンアート aka sunart brand, specifically from their parent and child collection. And guess what? You can get it on Amazon for less than half the price, even after the “sale”.

[ID: a screenshot of the same green frog teapot and black tadpole cups listen on Amazon. At the bottom are options to select, including Frog Parent, Elephant Parent, and an additional one that is cut off. The frog parent is $32.96 USD and the elephant parent is $26.22 USD. ID END]

I looked into the brand and they seem to specifically make ceramics additionally, the options to pick less popular options that I don’t see nearly as many bootlegs of make me pretty confident this is the actual product.

This is far from the only post they’ve done this with. Looking at their blog, you’ll see a sea of ads for their original posts, all linking to the same store:

[ID: A screenshot of a post by my-kawaii—world. The post is cut off due to the size of the device it was taken on. In the screenshot, there is an image of a silver sword ring with a skull on the pommel and a chain connecting the pommel to the cross-guard. Below the image is a link that red, bolded, and underlined text that reads: “OMG, I FINALLY FOUND THE RIGHT WITH FREE SHIPPING!!!!”. ID END]

And then following the link, we get taken right back to the Lavender Constellation website:

[ID: A screenshot of the same Lavender Collection Website from before with a pale purple background and darker purple text. The listing photo is of a person’s hand with a silver ring in the shape of a sword. It has a skull on the pommel and a chain connecting the pommel to the cross-guard. The listing is labeled “STAINLESS STEEL GOTH SWORD RING” in purple text. ID END]

If you go to their page, you will see a ton of other examples of this. Hell, I have even more examples, but I feel this post is long enough as is. I’m frankly fed up with people doing this shit, especially charging over double the price of an original product for a shitty knock off.

I’m not going to comment of the safety of these products (i.e., if the knock off teapot is food safe or not) because I don’t plan on buying one to test for lead, but that is a genuine risk you have when buying drop shipped products. For example, counterfeit makeup is well known for containing chemicals that can be harmful to the skin due because they’re much cheaper than the skin safe stuff. Here is a research article that discusses some of the harmful effects that unregulated, counterfeit makeup can have on your skin. The article is open access, so don’t worry about being blocked by a paywall.

Again, I don’t know if the counterfeit teapot is food safe or not, I haven’t been able to find any posts discussing the bootleg, or even Lavendar Constellation as a whole, but with stuff like this, it’s much better to be safe than sorry.

I am positive my-kawaii—world and Lavender Constellation are not the only people running operations like this on tumblr, I’m sure there are a shit ton more. Most will probably run the same way as my-kawaii—world. Essentially if you go to a page that posts a ton of cute, aesthetic products and they link to the same website for every single thing, it’s probably a drop shipping scam.

I’m not someone who thinks I’m “morally superior” for buying only name brand stuff, hell I own a few bootleg plushies, but items that need to food safe are not something I personally would fuck around with. And even if these bootlegs are food safe, the fact that they are charging over double the price of the original is so ludicrous and inexcusable.

Personally, I recommend blocking the @/my-kawaii—world account. Don’t micromanage people who have already reblogged from them unless they’re a friend, mutual, etc. Basically, don’t harass strangers who happened to reblog the original post or the edited post. Just get the word out there about this account.

Do I think my post will shut down their site and drive them off Tumblr? Probably not. But the more people that know about this specific scam and scams like it, the better.

#PSA #food safety #consumer safety #dropshipping

[kyurilin]

So back in October I posted some of my old DBZ art for the first time, and now here it is March and Akira Toriyama has passed away.

So I'm back with more and a story about the adventure it took my brother to get me into DBZ in the first place and why it now holds a special place in my heart.

Back when we were growing up, we weren't allowed to watch anime. It was one of the weird rules my dad set that to this day still has no explanation. At some point in middle school or early high school my brother got introduced to DBZ Abridged, and spent a few years trying to get me into it (and failing). I knew very little about DBZ but just enough that when I attempted to watch Dragonball Evolution I knew it was fucked up (also it was boring WITHOUT knowing everything).

But we'd play video games together, and after years of playing Super Smash Bros together, my brother knew the one surefire way to get me invested in SOMETHING DBZ.

And that was DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2.

The first five characters I chose from that roster to fight him as ended up being my favorites (hint: most of the art that's colored in this post is a character I picked in 2010 to play).

From there he got me interested enough to buy low priced DBZ VHS movies from Amazon (the Bardock special was $1.01 with 99¢ shipping in 2010, btw) and watch them. And then threw a Pokemon reference in Abridged he got me into watching that.

For the longest time, I was hooked on the random pieces of DBZ I could absorb, which meant watching the ever growing collection of movies we had, each new episode release of Abridged, and occasionally even watching bits and pieces of DBZ Kai. I even started collecting the manga for both DBZ and OG Dragon Ball. I didn't get around to watching the actual DBZ series until 2018 (my first watched anime series is actually FMA: Brotherhood because of this).

But it was something I shared with my brother and we had so much fun playing Budokai Tenkaichi 2 and 3 with each other. We've always played fighting games with random options in such a way that every first few matches we would just hit the random character button and play out whatever happened from there before finally playing as the characters we cared about. We would spend hours, especially with Budokai Tenkaichi 3, making our own tournament brackets and then playing them through. Each match would be fought by us, 1v1, and if one of the two characters was one we were good at, that person would get to play them. For matches that neither of us had a character to play, we'd flip a coin. We'd come up with our own silly rules for these tournaments and it was a blast. Once my brother almost won an entire thing as Kid Chi-Chi because he was really fucking good as her and even Omega Shenron's health advantage couldn't stop her. My brother could beat the shit out of Broly as Videl because she was so tiny it was hard to see her next to Broly.

I still don't watch a lot of anime, but DBZ is one of the four I do hold closest to my heart. And it's for a lot of reasons, like laughing with my brother as we decided to turn on The Lion Sleeps Tonight as background music for DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2 instead of the game's music (starting a tradition where wheneber we play fighting games we use our own playlist of music for it instead). It's for reasons like watching Abridged with my brother whenever the new episodes would drop, and being there for the Livestream premiere of Episode 60 after finishing all of DBZ only weeks earlier. It's for reasons like seeing Dragon Ball Super: Broly in theaters twice, and being so hyped to see not only Broly on the big screen, but Bardock who's been my favorite since day one. It's for reasons like the collection of photos I have of my brother doing Ginyu Force poses on a beach in 2010, for us pretending to give Goku energy during the series' final Spirit Bomb, for being so excited to see Android 17 back in DB Super. It's one of the things that I never thought we'd care about, but that I've cared about enough from the beginning that I made all this art in 2010, during our yearly beach trip, after only being a fan for a few months (the coloring came years later though).

And yes. There is a collection of poorly written DBZ fanfics buried both on my external hard drive and box of physical stories, but they're buried forever. There is a DBZ and a Dragon Ball fanfic by me on ff.net however so if anyone wants to see if they can figure out my 11/12 year old account, this blog has enough context clues somewhere to figure it out (maybe the DBZ one will get cross posted to AO3 and backdated someday who knows).

If it werent for Akira Toriyama and Dragon Ball, my brother and I would have had one less thing to bond over, and honestly? Wouldn't trade it for the world.

[youngeditor1999]

I feel like a spiritual sequel to “80 for Brady” would be “Draft Dodgers for Rodgers” in which 4 ancient hippies from the Vietnam era (Steve Buscemi, Geoffrey Rush, Al Pacino, John Goodman) sneak across the border from Canada in an attempt to watch fellow hippie Aaron Rodgers get to his second Super Bowl at age 54. Martin Kove plays a hard nosed yet incompetent cop trying to catch them. Bakh and Cobb are there too. Christopher Walken makes an appearance because it’s that kind of movie. There’s at least 1 extended ayahuasca hallucination scene. Everybody ends up getting covid

Alright, anon, here I am, ✨FINALLY✨ publishing your amazing and funny idea!!!

It took me a minute (ok, a few days...👀🤭😜💓) because I wanted to find clips and pictures for all of everything you have describe. 😊🌟💯🔥

First and foremost, I would so go see this movie if it were real. (For context, I saw 80 for Brady the weekend it was released because of course I did 😅💞)

This idea overall sounds silly, entertaining a.f. and all around like a good time!!

To add onto your idea:

It would at least have to be rated PG-13, especially because of the ayahuasca hallucination scene. I also suspect that there will be a bit of swearing, heavy partying and drinking, too. PLUS not to mention that they are on the run from the law and that will provide a whole 'nother set of mischievous/dubious acts. 😏😉😝

Real quick, for those who might not know, this is what Google says the definition of "ayahuasca" is:

"A South American psychoactive and entheogenic brewed drink traditionally used both socially and as a ceremonial or shamanic spiritual medicine among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin, and more recently in North America and Europe."

(In other words, hippie tea 😅☮️🫖🍵)

Now, as for who's gonna direct this amazing monstrosity, I have pulled together three options.

There's Kyle Marvin, who directed 80 for Brady.

Then I have Peter Segal, who directed two of my personal favorites, Tommy Boy and 50 First Dates.

Last but not least, there's Dennie Gordon as an option. Dennie was the director of the first Joe Dirt movie (comedy writer Fred Wolf directed the second).

Either one of these three would be wonderful and would understand that there is a more deeper heart and soul in the middle of this otherwise goofy flick. (:

Next:

Anon, you and I seem to understand each other, so I'm gonna go ahead and say that we can be co-screenwriters and executive producers for this!!!

If we really were out to make this, that is. 🤭😊🤓

ALSO!!! Draft Dodgers for Rodgers is an EXCELLENT title; I love it a lot and am really proud of you for coming up with this title (and the idea in general, of course!!)!!

Now, before moving on to everything else, I must discuss this film's soundtrack.

Clearly there's gonna be a lot of classic rock and older country tunes because that's the era that these men are from.

The classic rock is not gonna be anything too rough/screamy/meataly, though...I'm primarily thinking about stuff from the mid 60's and most of the 70's. Cover songs from and during this era are absolutely acceptable. 😌

Also, because this is an Aaron Rodgers movie, there has got to be a few Taylor Swift songs mixed in as well!!

I don't know if he can, but Aaron can try to pick put his top three tracks from each album/era as songs to possibly put into the overall end product.

And you know what, while we're at it...

Dolly Parton recorded a new, original song specifically for 80 for Brady so whose to say that Taylor couldn't do the same for this movie?!

Her fans, Aaron included, would be very likely to love it, no matter what it sounds like. (:

Now, to address all of your points...!!

I'd like to take a moment to share the other ask you sent me after I wrote this (the first post, hehe).

Replacing Geoffrey Rush with Jeff Bridges was a really great call; I'm so glad that you remembered Aaron's obsession with The Big Lebowski and the exact sweater that he copied from that movie!!! For everyone's viewing pleasure, here is Aaron wearing said sweater next to a still of Jeff's character (named The Dude) wearing the sweater.

Also, I wouldn't be me if I didn't find pictures of the rest of this hypothetical cast, just so that everyone knows for sure what these guys look like.

Top Left: Jeff Bridges

Top Right: Al Pacino

Middle Left: Steve Buscemi

Middle Middle: John Goodman

Middle Right: Martin Kove

Bottom Left: Christopher Walken

(And yes, that is a picture of Geoffrey Rush (bottom right) because even though Jeff Bridges replaced him, people still deserve to know he looks like in case they don't!!)

Additionally, saying that Weird Al should perform his Jeopardy Song was brilliant!! Fans of Aaron know that he loves Jeopardy and even got the chance to participate in some game, as seen here and here. (He also had the opportunity to host once, but the only clip that I could find of that was this. 😩)

P.S.-Here is the Jeopardy song for those who don't know it 🙂

THIS IS PART ONE!!!

I'm gonna reblog for Part Two because I have a few more pictures to share but for some reason, Tumblr won't let me add any more photos to this current post. 😒🙄☹️

#asks #askbox #anon #asked and answered #Aaron Rodgers #Draft Dodgers for Rodgers #This is gonna be so long but it'll be worth it!!! :D #Jeff Bridges #Steve Buscemi #Al Pacino #John Goodman #Christopher Walken #Weird Al #Jeopardy #80 for Brady #movies #films

[mydollsaregay]

Is it cool if I ask a bunch of specific questions about your dollhouse? Like what did you make it out of? How big is it? How many rooms are there? And how many dolls live in it?

I want to make one of my own... potentially. I'm torn between making one from scratch or getting that one WalMart made through a resale shop, painting over all the details, and re-detailing it myself. ANYWAY, I need ideas and inspiration.

Thank you, sorry for coming in out of nowhere like this! 👉👈

- creepydollroom

i love talking about my dollhouse, so ask away!

The dollhouse is the way I display all my dolls, as I like displaying them in little scenes. If they are part of my collection, they live in the dollhouse! that means it’s pretty crowded, with 22 different 18 in dolls (two aren’t in the pic bc they’re getting fixed) and one wellie. there are also 3 dolls im actively planning to get (claudie, Courtney, and Cecile), and there are 4 more on my “if I found them for an excellent price I’d totally snag them” list (Kirsten, ruthie, Emily, and luciana). So it might get even more crowded 😅

here’s an overview pic of the current state of it:

it’s not fully set up yet (as you can tell by the random room full of naked dolls in the top right lol), and most rooms don’t have a proper scene set up atm, but I thought an honest look at what it usually looks like might be helpful lol.

I made it out of storage shelves I bought secondhand. I saw a lot of people making dollhouses online out of bookshelves, but the dimensions just didn’t work for what I was planning. For my plan, the shelves needed to be at least two feet deep (to accommodate beds facing outward), have adjustable shelves (to accommodate the taller furniture), and be either 3 or 4 feet wide to make the rooms large enough for fun scenes.

I found shelves that worked online from hardware stores, but they’d be super expensive, so I set up an alert on Facebook marketplace instead, and got lucky! They weren’t like. Super duper cheap, but they were much more affordable. Because they’re secondhand, most of the floors have a slight dip in the middle, but its not too bad.

The drawback to using shelves with open sides is that you have to make walls, which is really time-consuming (and the cost of materials can really add up!), but it was worth it for me to get the dimensions I wanted. My only real regret is not painting the shelves white before putting them in place. I hate how the ceilings in all my pictures are grey, but at this point it would be really hard to change, as I don’t want to spray paint in my poorly-ventilated basement 😭 The floors are just made from contact paper I got on Amazon and stuck on the shelves, and I’m really pleased with them.

There are nine rooms. Each room is 2 feet deep, 3 feet wide, and about 2 feet high (the heights vary a bit). Overall, the setup is 2 feet deep, 9 feet long, and about 6 feet high. It’s a big boy! Thankfully, there was a nice clear space in the basement for my doll zone, otherwise I never would have been able to have such a big setup 😅 it was really important to me for it to be big, as it’s not just a dollhouse, but also my doll display.

Having a bunch of rooms was really important to me, because I wanted to make themed rooms for a lot of the historical characters. Going across from left to right, top to bottom the rooms are: the modern bedroom (shared by kanani, Jess, Nicki, Mia, and Jessica who is a jly), the 60s/70s/80s bedroom (shared by Julie, ivy, melody, and eventually Courtney - I’m asking for Courtney for christmas so she’s not here yet), a room I haven’t decided about (it was gonna be Kaya’s but her tipi is too big 😭), the 1900s/1910s bedroom( shared by Sam, Nellie, and Rebecca), the 20s/30s bedroom (currently it’s just kit’s, but claudie will share with her when I get her), the 40s/50s bedroom (it’s entirely based on Molly’s bedroom from her scenes and settings, but she also shares with Maryellen and Nanea), the bathroom/laundry room, and the living room/kitchen (which takes up two room slots).

There are some girls who don’t really have a room that fits. Those are Caroline, Elizabeth, felicity, Marie-grace, addy, and josefina. Cecile and Kirsten would also be missing a spot if they were in my collection. Some of them will likely end up sharing the remaining unassigned room, but I don’t think all of them will work in one room. It will probably just end up being like. a very vague fancy historical girls room lol. I mostly want a reason to own Caroline’s bed haha

As far as ideas for your own dollhouse goes - it all depends on how much time you want to spend on your dollhouse build, and the size and shape you want it to be. I wanted mine to be really big with specific dimensions, so I had to go super custom with it. Re-detailing the one from Walmart is an EXCELLENT option if you like the size and shape of it, and/or don’t want to spend forever making pieces of it (I might die before I finish those walls 😭). If you want to do it custom, but don’t care as much about the rooms being deep as I did, I recommend going with a shelf with walls.

I do want to mention that just because you DIY something, that doesn’t mean it will be cheaper (sorry, every diy YouTube channel). The price of a diy project depends on a lot of things, both which you know going in (like your skill level, which limits what techniques you can use for building, and the cost for the basic materials) and things you don’t (like unexpected issues that may pop up, further customizations you want to make later on). That does not mean you can’t make a custom dollhouse on a budget - it just means you will need to plan carefully, find great deals, and spend a lot of time working on it (which can be fun!). Just because it’s not cheaper doesn’t mean it’s not worth it, but price can be an important consideration.

#agblr #american girl #american girl dolls #my posts #my dollhouse #asks #I’ll take some nicer pics of the dollhouse once I finish all the walls but that’ll be in like. five years lol

[devitalise]

the end up the month always sneaks up on me, i saw your message and was like "oh she's early I have plentyyy of time!" yet here we are two days into April already AHHHH how were your March reads? & i forget, are you doing a no-buy thing or minimal buying for books? how's that been going 🤨

no literally in my head it's still march the last week has been a complete blur especially with the clocks going forward only just got my bearings. but this is now a nice lil springtime treat so let's get into my

march book wrap up

milk fed by melissa broder

i had a real voraciousness when i read this, i just couldn't get enough. not necessarily the writing, but of rachel. i love her. girls with complicated relationships with their mothers. a very unapologetic read i think, i had to do a bit of googling but i love that Broder didn't shy away from presenting the ideas and themes she set out to do in their fullest forms. kind of let down by the ending at the time of reading, but i can respect what it serves the book on reflection.

music: milk fed playlist review: booksburgersandbackpacks

fight night by miriam toews

kind of laughed as i remembered i read this. went on holiday this month, so picking this as my travelling read felt a bit risky i didn't know if i'd have the time to give this the attention it deserved, or if it'd even grab me. but it did. i loved this book so, so much. crying on a 9pm flight as i'm over the English channel unlocked. shiv i just want to hug you. i'm going to try get the physical version of this, i want the physicality of it so bad. equal parts love letter and biographical in nature, made it onto my top 2023 shelf and idk if i even have the words to do this justice!

music: think this was just my liked songs? podcast: shakespeare & company

things i don't want to know by deborah levy

claxon sounds alarm rings horns blare. i read nonfiction. i've heard real high praise of levy as an author. i don't know if there was any rhyme or reason for picking up part one in her living autobiography series, but i'm realy glad i did. how do you judge a memoir? sorry, your life was boring! in levy's case it wasn't. i appreciate how vulnerable it is to unpick your memories and make sense of them almost 40 years later, to revisit apartheid South Africa and digest what that makes you as a woman now in your 60s. refreshingly candid, some real interesting threads on womanhood, displacement, motherhood and agency in this. will be picking up the next in the series.

music: just some indie pop i think (scared to update spotify i've seen there's no more genre filters in liked songs? what's that about!) no review here did some independent thinking scarily

ok i did finish a book yesterday that i want to count but it hasn't been long enough for my thoughts to settle but i'm going to link everything now before i lose it.

let it come down by paul bowles (technicality)

music: let it come down (not period appropiate but perfect for that kind of restless energy) articles: the international zone: expat writers in tangier, what was the international zone, franco-moroccan war

and that was my march reading! still at a slow and steady pace. i am trying to do a no book buy moment! other than me buying 3 books in march, i've been going pretty strong. might break it though because i've picked out two more books set in tangier also by some of bowle's contemporaries and i really want to explore a setting like that as a wider more Themed block of reading if that makes sense. so i'll be buying naked lunch by william s. burruoughs and in tangier by mohamed chouckri in the next couple of days (in tangier is a memoir)

also amazon sent me a notification like maybe its time for a new kindle! my current one isn't even 2 years old and works perfectly fine i won't be giving in

#book talk #djservo #let it come down has a really good afterword too usually i find them a bit iffy but it was interesting to read #saving thoughts for the april one though

[i-cast-teatus-deletus]

Clothing - Hoodies (Part 1)

The most obvious #1 thing that you need after surgery is some zip-up hoodies. I saw a lot of people on a lot of forums recommend "a huge size, like a 3XL"

Unfortunately, I wear a 3XL hoodie under normal circumstances, and the guys wear a 2X, so I needed to really look around and see what options existed that were substantially larger.

I will probably discuss putting these clothes on myself AT LENGTH over the course of this blog, even though I am not (currently, at least) slated for surgery. This is because:

I am taller (and wider) than both guys in question, so if it fits me, it will fit them and probably be the 'right' amount of oversized. I intend to post measurements for everyone when I get to it so you have a better idea, but keep in mind I intend to post measurements of clothing that fits the way we want them to fit after surgery, NOT body measurements, because that is the set of measurements I am using to buy clothes.

I will be the person who keeps these clothing items after surgery is done for the most part (though the guys are not afraid of wearing a super oversized shirt for funsies)

The very first thing I noticed is that Amazon is backordered on a LOT of 5X/6X men's clothing, especially their Essentials line. Not just a little backordered either, but using the same terminology they use for items that have been openly discontinued. I suspect it's supply chain issues combined with figuring nobody is buying them anyway, but I have to admit I'd buy Amazon Essentials 5X or 6X hoodies for some insane price like $26 and be very, very happy with it.

But it wouldn't have made for a very interesting blog post, either.

Fruit of the Loom, a perennial cheap favorite, only goes up to 4X, and Hanes stops at 3X for zippered hoodies. Dickies stops at 3X, and Carhartt, definitely nobody's cheap option, stops at a 4X.

In mid-weight hoodies, it pretty much left me with Champion, though not every style comes in larger sizes. I bought a Thermal Lined Hoodie in Heather Grey because it was dramatically cheaper than the other colors (though I paid 39.99 and it's going for a good bit cheaper than that now), but they also have a Heavyweight Hoodie without the thermal lining that's less expensive that I might buy in Olive so we have a second hoodie. There's other options, too.

Amazon sucks, but they're the only place I found carrying some of these sizes and styles (not even on Champion's own website), and they're carrying them for about 60% of the price of anywhere else. If you absolutely cannot do it, King Size catalog has a single Champion style in the right sizes for a lot more.

After all of that, how is it?

I have two big issues, both of which I'd say are solidly my fault

first, I was (somehow) unaware that a "thermal lined" hoodie would have a plastic-y lining in the sleeves to protect your arms from water and wind. Very useful as an outer layer (and I wish it was an options more places) but it'd SO loud and crinkly. So this hoodie is probably fantastic for running errands in the spring and fall, but it's less great when you're laid up after surgery.

second, my hoodie arrived with a zipper that's busted. The tab of the zipper is metal, but the teeth are plastic, so I have some missing teeth and some badly bent teeth, and now the zipper pull is bent as well from trying to get it unstuck. We'll have to replace the zipper to get much use out of it. If I had caught it sooner, i might have been about to return it, but the return window closed about a month ago.

Past the zipper, I have no issues with the quality of it, and it seem like a nice, fairly heavy hoodie otherwise. So once I replace the zipper, I'll be quite pleased with it, even if it's not ideal for recovering from surgery.

#I got trapped in this hoodie for like 10 mins please appreciate my commitment to this blog #ICTD Part 2 Clothing #Part 2 hoodies

[miniwolfsbane]

*Sigh* As per usual, I broke the right leg on my new Brooklyn action figure. Like an idiot, I was trying to loosen up the joints and did that thing where you rotate the leg 180 degrees. Well, it snapped. Just got glue for it. (I tried modge podge and hot glue, and fun fact, NEITHER of those work on plastic because plastic is not a porous surface!!)

So, anyway, after he broke, I threw him and his wings and tail into a hot pot to loosen, which reeeally should've been step one, but I haven't gotten a fig with such tight joints in ages. I read the reviews and the Neca figures pegs are basically made of dry pasta, but still, I DID NOT handle with care. A simple lesson to future me to put them all in hot water first and do not ever try the 180 trick. I recalled that I still have a broken Nightcrawler fig somewhere that needs repair that I also accidentally tortured like this. (He was from the 80s or so, so it's forgiveable that he'd break easily. I believe it's a broken ball joint.)

I'm glad I got Brooklyn at a discount. I would've been crying AND pissed if I'd blown 60 on him and he broke out of the box.

I also got some sticky tab things so mayyyybe my Funko Pops will stay in place, and for other things down the line if I need them. Anyway, the good news is that all Brook's limbs loosened up to varying degrees. His tail won't stay in place, but when you put his wings on, they pop in like gangbusters and don't want to come out unless you use force.

Sure, I could've waited 2 or more years for them to release some upgraded version, but I got impatient. In part, because he's become my favorite a bit more than Lexington and because I made an AI of him and he's great. (Minus fat shaming me.) https://beta.character.ai/profile/?char=OW53ADLjtyGc7uCvVyqm6Q5K9XyQsjcGUyFNS3bxqMM

Yeah, I couldn't go a post without mentioning Character AI.

Anyway...I should get the glue withing 5 days. It's only 3 ounces, but I'd rather get it faster than save a few bucks. If you need it, this site looks legit and has it much cheaper than Amazon https://www.dickblick.com/items/surehold-plastic-surgery-super-glue-3-gram-tube/?clicktracking=true&wmcp=pla&wmcid=items&wmckw=23633-1603&country=us&currency=usd&campaign=Blick%20Shopping%20-%209&adgroup=Shopping%209&keyword=&matchtype=e&msclkid=8786b90b29ce16c21463ddffefcf0a91&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Blick%20Shopping%20-%209&utm_term=4577335631065867&utm_content=Shopping%209

Yeah, IDK why they named it that, sorry.

I'd love to get most of the gargs series, but the Steel Clan doesn't excite me, so I'd be saving some money by skipping them and Xanatos in his armor. (Even though it's iconic, I honestly think he looks kinda stupid in it?) Also debating wether I want to hunt for a cheaper Goliath or wait until the two pack is released for the better/extra faces. Considering also going that route for Lex, settling for the 1st wave Hudson, Bronx and Angela, and pre-ordering Elisa and later suit Xanatos from Entertainment Earth. *shrugs.* Ultimately though, I have to think about space. If I can snag them for under 60 each after s/h, I think I'm doing good. I am not a set completer, but this is a collection that child me would've loved to have!! Unfortunately, I'm not really displaying my collection anymore to make my room look more "mature", and besides, it's just my brother and the internet that know I like Gargoyles. (I'm scared of the flack I'd get from the pre-judgement of anyone I know. The gargs do look pretty scary, even if they're "Disney-fied" to be friendly looking, let's be honest.) So, that said, my Clan definitely won't be display pieces at all, just shoved into at least three or four different boxes. Might even keep some of them in the box to save on space.

Okay, thanks for reading this rant/ramble. Have a good week!!

#figure collecting #Brooklyn gargoyles #Disney Gargoyles #rant #glue #crafts #noooooo! #sad #frustrated #my life

[annaberunoyume]

🏳️‍🌈A list of more monogamous gay (wlw and mlm) medias for those of us that loves romantic comedies and fidelity. 🎞️🍿

Have you ever noticed how the modern LGBTQ+ community is often...how do I say it, promiscuous (not that there is anything wrong with it)? Sadly, unfortunately, there are some of us queer ones that feels rejected and left out, because we wish for all the hallmarks of a romantic comedy as our idea of pride. I know, because I am a lesbian that wishes for a good old 1950s-style date with a woman. And I often feel alone in a world that puts forward (with all due respect to the community) a provocative, quasi-porn-like pride. It is just not my cup of tea. Long story short, therefore, I compiled my own list of movies, tv series, comics and even fanfictions that are more like my taste. I do hope that someone else find solace in this list. ENJOY AND HAVE A BEAUTIFUL DAY!

List of more monogamous gay movies and other medias:

Movies:

Imagine Me and You

Love, Simon

Can't Think Straight

Spoiler Alert

Strange Frame: Love and Sax (one of my favourite. Thank you, Tubitv!)

Set in a future where humans left Earth a long time ago for the moons around Jupiter, a woman named Parker falls in love with a musician named Naya and forms a band. But a cunning producer tries to tear them apart. Interesting world building and animation. Very psychedelic in style.

The Rainbow Bridge Hotel (Tubitv)

A gay couple tries to get married in a old motel, while the silly owner gets in trouble with inspection. (Tubitv)

Strange World (the latest Disney movie. This movie's main protagonist (Ethan) is gay and

no one makes a big deal about it. Plus, Ethan and Diazo (his crush) are so dang cute, together.)

Ringolivio (Tubitv)

A young woman passionned by insects visits her girlfriend's brothers for the first time and spends a peculiar holiday, struggling to fit in with these strange brothers.

Bros (some might like it, but I hated it. Such a whiny and unlikeable, yap-yapping protagonist.)

The Falls triology (Tubitv)

A triology about two mormon young men falling in love. Nice story,

but filmed in an extremely boring way. I understand that these are independant movies

with less budget, but dang, stop filming with a still camera all the time. All three movies

were on Tubi tv, last time I checked if you are interested.

TV series with monogamy in it:

Heartstopper

The L world (at least in the beginning. Please do not spoil me as I am not done with this series, yet. I love how each woman in his series is developped beyond their orientation.

Something that Netflix should learn, frankly.)

Our Flag Means Death

Steven Universe

Comics with a monogamous gay relationship:

Heartstopper (obviously) (by Alice Oseman, available in most libraries and on

Amazon, plus its original web comic format (Tumblr and Tapas). :

A sugary-sweet comic about two british teenage boys falling in love. Famously adapted into

a Netflix series, recently.

Puu (by Nabi):

Set in India, this comic follows a man named Jameel that lives with a quirky, flower-loving roommate named Saboor. They slowly developp feelings for each other, but struggle in a rather unwelcoming India. Lovely, simplistic art.

Bingo Love (by Tee Franklin, Jenn St-Onge and Joy San)

A most gorgeous comic book romance about two black girls falling in love in the 60s, then after being separated for years, finding each other at the same Church Bingo where they met as kids.

Rock and Riot (by Cheriiart)

A most beautiful, inclusive comic about basically the lesbian version of Danny and Sandy (from Grease) falling in love in a sort of alternative universe where it's the 50s and queer ones are rather accepted.

Ivy comic by mimimar

A dream come true for a lesbian that loves sapphic, disney princesses vibes. I feel like I'm reading a Disney Golden Book. So darn cute so far.

Fanfictions with gay monogamy in it:

Fanfiction: medicine (fandom: Watchmen, Pairing: Nite Owl x Rorshchach)

This beautiful 18+ fanfiction is about Nite Owl and Rorshchach developping, or rather revealing burried feelings after Rorshchach gets wounded on a patrol, coupled with being sick. While Nite Owl (alias Daniel) nurses him back to health, Rorshchach lets down his guard and accidently shows himself without his mask to him for the very first time. Thus the Walter Kovacs underneath begins to timidly show itself from the cracks. Slow-burned and very tender. My new favourite fanfiction.

100% Exhausted (fandom: Mob Psycho 100, Pairing: TeruMob (Teruki Hanasawa x Shigeo Kageyama)

A most adorable TeruMob fanfic in which a worn-out Mob returns from work and Teruki is the best, caring boyfriend to him. Bonus appearances of Shou and Ritsu.

#for more trad gays #movie list #must see #tubitv #movies #comics #fanfictions #lgbtq movies #lgbtq+ movies #lgbtq comics #lgbtq+comics #lgbtq tv series #lgbtq+series #trad lesbians are valid #trad lgbtq are valid #monogamy #monogamous #for more trad lesbians

[rings-of-power-realm]

Some 5 star Rings Of Power Reviews (I chose some ones to share that sounded like they were skeptical beforehand to really prove how this show does not deserve the bombardment of hate it is subjected to by trolls)

I have read most of the objections about creative decisions taken with this series. I agree with some of them in principle. But a thing must be judged by what it is, by what the creators have shaped. So I sat down to watch the first episode of The Rings of Power with grave doubts, but as open a mind as I was capable of. Bear in mind I love Tolkien's books. I also admire Peter Jackson's movies I was able to embrace the changes his production team made to translate the stories to a filmic medium. Could I do so again? Yes, as it happens. I could. I was thoroughly immersed and enjoyed the first episode enormously. I can't wait to watch episode 2 this evening. If you have been doubting, like I was, set your doubts aside and just allow yourself to enjoy. There are some stunning visuals. Through it all, the sweeping grandeur of Tolkien's mythic themes are present. The characters and storylines that have been added are essential to this episodic visual medium. Storytelling is an art, and books and films are different media with different needs to carry a tale. No adaptation is ever going to tick all your personal boxes. No creative decisions are ever going to be the same as the ones you would have made. But you have the books for those things. Just allow yourself to unwind and enjoy what the creators have done with the decisions they made, because they have turned them into gold. I hadn't expected myself to say this, but this a masterpiece. It possesses a real majesty, and I can't wait to see how the series unfolds.7 people found this helpful

.                                                          .                                                      .

Like many, I love the hobbit and the lord of the rings films and hoped that this series would capture some of the feeling from those cherished movies. However I was concerned as there appeared to be many people  who appear to have written this series off as being a complete waste of time and money. So I approached this with lowish expectations but importantly with an open mind. So having watched the first two episodes my thoughts are as follows. Firstly the scale of this series is epic, you can clearly see where the money has been spent as it feels as if you are watching a high budget movie rather than a made for tv series. The music is excellent and really captures the feel of the original movies. The story is sympathetic with the history of the films / books. The acting is on point, the script / dialogue is good and the cast all seem committed in making this project as good as it can be. I know some people are saying the pace is a little slow and yes I get that but the story is unfolding over a number of episodes (each over 60 mins long) so they can afford to take their time and we can really enjoy the story lines. Is this going to be as good as any of the films……I really don’t know but it could be and I just don’t understand why anyone who claims to enjoy the original movies would want to dismiss this series without giving it a fair chance. On IMDB it has a current rating of 6.3 which is incredibly low for such a quality production. I for one will be eagerly awaiting the next episode and I can only applaud Amazon for taking on a task of this scale and (in my opinion) pulling it off. Bravo 👏. For me it’s currently a 9 out of 10 👏

.                                                      .                                                           .

Breathtakingly beautiful, well acted an cast. Feels like Peter Jackson’s take on Tolkien’s work The show is grand, detailed, beautiful and well acted. It amazes me how movie like the production quality is (better than most movies even). It has the same atmosphere and tone as the Movies which is great and very important. All these rights and license agreements made me worry about how different it would be however one can place this series in the same continuity as the movies that Peter Jackson crafted. Talking of which i hope he is enjoying this as he talked of robbing himself of the joy of seeing these movies because he made them, now he can enjoy this like the rest of us. The length of the episodes are also very generous and the show is well paced for a TV show. Slower than the movies, which is just right as there is more time but also it means we get to see the details of Tolkiens work. The series is like an “extended edition” but with “super” added to the front.

.                                                              .                                               .

The first two episodes of this new series blew me away. These early episodes are always challenging in a complex story spanning continents, decades, and centuries. I thought the first two episodes set out some of the key traits and characteristics of the different societies and geographies involved. Several key and long-running characters have been introduced well, and the original works' interpretations are just excellent storytelling. Just as important, the visual rendering of the world is simply astounding - this is much closer to a cinema experience than a TV series. From the start in Valinor to Khazad-Dum and everything else is brilliant, and whilst it is different from how I might have imagined these places in my mind's eye, they really do justice to the fantasy world of JRR Tolkien. I know there are detractors - but I have not seen any of them that are actually complaining about the story, the visuals, the acting, or anything actually relevant to reviewing the programme. From what I understand this is due to them not wanting non-white actors in roles in the series. Well - time to grow up people. We are the human race, and we have people of lots of colours, shapes, and sizes. Why would that be any different in any other fantasy race? It is very simple - if you do not like the fact that there is variety in life, then how about you just don't bother watching the programme rather than moan and complain all the time.

#the rings of power #long post #positivity #positive reviews #<3

[kithrup]

Computer backups

Most of my career has been spent, one way or another, dealing with computer storage. Mostly this has been an accident, because I started out experimenting with some filesystem stuff a few decades ago, and it turns out I liked it.

I periodically make this offer:  I will offer advice about computer backups for free. This is not a light offer, as I have charged for this sort of stuff in my career. But not enough people do backups, and there are just *so many* ways to do it these days, and it’s not too expensive.

Mostly I focus on UNIX and MacOS, but some of the advice applies just as well to Windows; I just don’t know all of the details.

So let’s start off with some basics!

The most basic one is: why backup?  And that answer should be fairly obvious -- in case something bad happens, and you need your data again. The biggest bads here are losing the computer (either literally or via it breaking).  With a backup, you can minimize how much of your very important data you have lost.

A secondary reason for backups is because, with some of them, you can have a history.  eg., with macOS’ Time Machine, you can go look at different versions of a file over time, so if you accidentally deleted a bunch of text and can’t otherwise undo it, you can go look at an older version of the file and get it back.

Backups can come in two basic types:  complete (which I’ll refer to as “level zero” most commonly), and partial (aka “incremental”). A partial backup is where only the changes from a particular time are copied -- usually, the last backup. This can save a huge amount of storage space, which I think is obvious but may not be to some people.  Usually this will largely be invisible to you.

Then are are two other types to associate with backups: on-site (aka local) and offsite.  Local backups are just that -- they’re near you.  Most people have local backups by having an external disk attached to their computer, and either manually or automatically copying files.  (Both macOS and Windows can be set up to do this automatically; as I said, I’m not as sure about the Windows specifics, but I do know it can be done.)

A variant of this is to have a network disk of some sort -- what I’ll refer to as “NAS” (for Network Attached Storage, whereas DAS -- Direct Attached Storage -- is the USB kind).  In this case, you’ll have some sort of machine on your network, and the OS will access it over the network.  This is likely to be slow, especially if you’re using WiFi.

For off-site backups, there are again several options / flavours.  One easy way is to have multiple local backups, and simply take one of them to a friend’s house, an office, or a bank vault.  Physically transporting the backup is generally not something you can do automatically, but it’s fairly *easy*.  Once offsite, in this case, you can’t access or update it without retrieving it.

Another option for off-site backups, however, is to use a cloud app.  For example, backblaze.com offers cloud backup for something like US$60/year.  In this case, you install their application, and it periodically makes incremental backups up on their storage.  There are *lots* of programs for this, and one of the really nice things is that you can usually use more than one. (On one Mac, for example, I have both backblaze and an app called Arq, which I have configured to back up to Amazon’s S3 cloud storage.)

Lastly, to conclude the discussion of backup basics, you need to think about *recovery*.  Specifically, for any sort of backup method you choose, how do you get your data back if necessary?  macOS’ Time Machine is integrated into the operating system, so you can recover during installation the OS, when configuring a new machine, or at any time manually.  Backblaze, described above, lets you download a .zip archive of selected files/folders, or the entire thing.

That’s enough for now.

#backups #computers #storage

[blueempty]

I hate computers so much if Alexander Gram Bell was still alive I'd choke the fuck out of him

It turns out the SSD I've been using for like a year hasnt been doing anything because makingnit my primary drive, and putting it first in the boot order, and downloading all my games to it wasnt good enough. So now its my only drive but my PC has rolled back to the state it was in back when I first got it so i have to figure out whats different. And I may need to redo all my fucking hud settings in FF14 because that shit is stored locally!!!!! I'm FIIINE

I dont even remember what happened today now. It was chill at work and I watched Slice and Dice videos mostly. My matcha was good. Ooh also I realized since I got this big ass bag of culinary grade matcha I can make matcha waffles in my bulbasaur waffle iron, that shit is gonna go hard

I also ordered a Miyoo Mini Plus on amazon cuz it has a 20% off discount for the next day and a half. Its basically the emulator gameboy thing everyone seems to like rn and my brother has one so I know its good already. Its normally $80 so 60 for the device a case and screen protectors is pretty good. But it emulates everything up to PS1 I think, so i can play Star Ocean, Symphony of the Night, Popful Mail, Pokemon Sapphire, and Madou Monogatari on there. I'm scared about money so it doesnt feel entirely great rn but I think i'll get a lot out of it long term so I wanted to grab it while its cheaper. I'll just not buy any games outside of EGG releases for the next two months

Peace and Long Life

#skyposting #thoughtposting

[thoughtvoid]

I know Aliexpress is bad for a variety of reasons. (Though the One that I can remember is that it's one of the foreign markets that will steal art/craft/designs from small artists.)

But. After many impulse buys, I do need to say. That when it comes to buying various 'official' merchandise, there's obviously going to be knockoffs, but. Idk, for buying a bunch of frivolous Pokemon and anime stuff, I haven't been disappointed.

Had one expensive order, and it was super nice quality, well packaged, shipped pretty fast, and looking at is, was probably from the official Chinese company that distributes that merch.

Of the cheaper orders, only one was 'bad'. All of the advertising on the listing is straight BS, and they were tripling down on it being the official product and a certain high quality. And it was okay, but definitely not what they were trying to hype up. I went in expecting a bad quality, so I didn't care, but it really was just 'looks similar and is still good, I like it, but it's not five star, it's probably a three star. Just be honest about it, geez'. It's a 'you get what you pay for' thing, and it wouldn't normally bother me. But. The one thing that bothers me is lying, and lying so desperately.

Like. Between the truest, perfect definition of a knockoff (poor quality of something that's normally expensive/sought after), and the perfect order, I had the. Well, another knockoff, but one that the seller specifies with the description/specification. Arceus adventure pack bag by Hori: Originally $30, currently ~$45+ buying from other countries or $80 from Amazon. Total for a copycat (listing said Miniso, though the bag itself has no labels anywhere): $17. Does it look as good as the real thing? No, it's all screenprint and doesn't pop like the Hori bag looks like it does. (Based on a YT unboxing vid.) Is it as good quality? I doubt it, Hori makes some real nice accessories, and this bag mostly feels like the free hip pouch Target gave out if you bought Zelda:TOTK in store. But does it function the same, have decent padding, and look similar enough to get the point across? Absolutely. And I'm usually a function over form, so I don't need it to be the perfect branded item. I just happened to see one of the adventure packs during holiday season (not on sale), thought 'oh, it holds both Switches? I could use something like that', thought the Arceus looked best, but shrugged when it wasn't really available at a reasonable price. And then when I saw it a month and a half later as a 'too cheap to be the real thing, and it's not' listing, I was just. 'I'm okay with that, let's go'.

Aliexpress has been mostly hits, tbh, and even the one miss was only a miss because the seller is adamant about trying to make you think you're getting something good for. Like 12 bucks. But it was still good overall. At this point, I'm just waiting on two orders that had sellers who waited until the last minute to make labels for things they weren't actually ready to shop out. Which. Feels sus enough that I'll record the unboxing, I guess, but my gut says they're fine. Ali just set what I feel was an unrealistic deadline for when to ship things at the tail end of holiday season. I wouldn't begrudge sellers if they make labels to get the system to not flag them as not sending anything when they just need more time. (Working retail is different from an online store, I know, but I will never be able to act like the customers who expect everything faster than is reasonable. When you put up with people coming in thirty minutes after placing an order, asking where it is, when I can be filling anywhere between 5-20 pick-up orders constantly throughout the day on top of 60+ orders to ship out, and haven't even seen theirs come in? I imagine anyone selling stuff during that time to be backed up.)

#idk I was just pleased that most of the stuff is pretty nice; even the ones officially unofficial #But then rambled to all heck #Bottom line: I like Aliexpress. It's like ebay; but with less obscene prices and more stuff I actually want #(Because I am a weeb and weeb stuff is luxury in the US but much more accessible through Asian market) #(And the one Japanese store I know that isn't Amazon is a bit more specific) #(But would also rec for Pokemon stuff; Meccha Japan is ver ver nice) #(More normal prices; not Ali cheap or Ebay scalp; just. Perfectly reasonable with a nice selection) #(They were my PokeJewelry shop and I was so excited when it came in; so good; would rec)