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Wed, 24th Aug. 2011, 10:26
It was a while back that I moved over to using Dreamwidth as my main journalling platform. The catch is... not many folks knew what Dreamwidth was back then. It's gained a little more visibility since, so I'm putting out a crossposted call for folks to get involved, since I will be posting some personally important stuff here over time.
If you'd like to continue reading my posts, you have options:
Read via RSS. You'll see all public posts, but none of the privately-locked ones. Most of my posts are public unless they're particularly sensitive anyhow, so you won't miss much. You can also do this via the LiveJournal repeater. You can comment anonymously on posts, but I'd really appreciate identification of yourself just so I know who I'm talking to. (You don't even have to use a "real name"!)
Log in to Dreamwidth with an OpenID. This can be as easy as using your Livejournal login (http://username.livejournal.com) so it's easy to keep track of. This lets me add you to filters, and you can comment non-anonymously.
Create a Dreamwidth account. They're free – actually free, not fakey throw-ads-at-you free – and the good folks running the service won't pull any sell-your-info-to-the-Russians bull. You'll need an invite code, but I'm swimming in them, so let me know via the above means (or any other) and I will gladly send you one.
Thanks in advance for reading.. and don't be afraid to nudge me for more posts. Journalling is a good way for me to keep my thoughts together, so I definitely wish I keep at it!
This entry was originally posted at http://electrickeet.dreamwidth.org/22392.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Thu, 3rd Mar. 2011, 09:32
I'm not so simple as to lack complex, contradictory influences on every action I take.
I'm not so vigilant as to be able to reason every single step of my decisions.
I'm not so naïve as to remain unbound by a difficult set of priorities and principles.
I'm not so willful as to unwaveringly obey them.
I'm not so cruel as to wish harm on anybody.
I'm not so strong as to be able to prevent harm to everyone.
At every single step of the way, I've given everyone – every single living being I've ever known – the benefit of doubt. I've advocated for their positions. I've attempted to view the scene from their perspectives. They don't have to thank me for it or even return that decency in full; I'll keep doing it because I want and need to.
Stop assuming anything extraordinary about me. Just stop assuming that I am anything, anything at all. I'm a human being, just as you are, and thus I am flawed, struggling, wandering mud – a chemical mess amounting to a waking dream, a fleeting notion, an infinitesimal speck, nothing at all in the illusion of the next moment. I want to be happy with that. I'll continue to want to be nothing until all of us nothings together can be something wonderful.
And if you think I'm calling you mud, calling you nothing as some way of pushing you below any other being... then rest assured that I'm referring to many, many other puddles of mud at the same time – each thinking they're somehow separate – and I want none of them to suffer either. There's just no need for it.
We're all the same sort of mud, and we're all doing our best.
This entry was originally posted at http://electrickeet.dreamwidth.org/21272.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Tue, 11th Jan. 2011, 23:47
It rolls like this. My wife, Kristy, has written one heck of a novel entitled Beautiful World. It's about a handful of people who visit – and in some cases live in – a virtual world named Irokai that's undergoing some significant growing pains. It debuts at Further Confusion in its fully edited and completed form (epilogue and all!) in both dead tree and e-book formats.
To celebrate this fact, I wrote a short story set in the world. As far as I can tell, it doesn't require having read the novel, but it will give away a couple events that happen without spoiling them too much. If you've read the novel as it was posted online, I hope the short story brings you right back to that world. If you haven't read the novel yet, I hope it serves as quite the appetizer.
The name of the short story is "Mojibake". I hope you enjoy it, and thanks in advance for taking the time to read!
This entry was originally posted at http://electrickeet.dreamwidth.org/21084.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Mon, 9th Aug. 2010, 09:50
Dear friends, I find myself breaking my self-imposed exile from LiveJournal for something more important than the ideals which inspired it. Cutting to the chase, I say:
I need someone, anyone who is near enough to Norristown, Pennsylvania to get there and acquire legal paperwork for me.
Long story short, I'm getting my passport updated for a trip in about six weeks (it'll be expedited, so I'll get it in time... hopefully) and it turns out that the actual useful part of my name change paperwork is missing. Despite having every bit of legal evidence that it happened – state I.D., Social Security account, and voter registration – they need to see the name change order directly. This will involve handing slightly over five dollars to a notary. I could send an SASE and hope that it showed up sometime soon, but this seems risky. The application is already filed, and when they call me to ask where the paperwork is, I can't just tell them to look at the public record in Pennsylvania, no matter how easy it is to do.
So what am I offering? The cost of the document, the cost of travel, the cost of mailing the thing to me in Seattle as quickly as feasible, and I can even throw in the cost of a decent lunch or whatever. I'm easily extorted at this point. Make me an offer; I'm too desperate to refuse.
Thanks in advance.
Thu, 6th May. 2010, 14:06
Remember, friends, if you're not reading my journal or its RSS feed (http://electrickeet.dreamwidth.org/data/rss, or
electrickeet_dw) you're missing out! It's easy to do, costs you not a single penny, and you can use an OpenID login to comment there. (Try "ljusername@livejournal.com" – it's that easy!)
C'mon, folks. Don't leave me out in the cold here.
(No, this doesn't count as another post. It's just a reminder.)
Thu, 4th Mar. 2010, 10:48
Dear LiveJournal people who convinced me to stay:
I appreciate your gifts, your worship (of my feline perfection, of course) and your rationalisations (of LJ's behaviour), but if you'll take a moment and look at this support ticket (or this post, and thank you, 
shatterstripes) – you can even easily verify the issue as described right there – you'll see why I can no longer trust LiveJournal for anything whatsoever.
This comes as no surprise. It's the smoking gun and the final straw. Somebody from LiveJournal's executive staff is going to have to personally convince me to stay – but they'll also have to give a lot of people back their money. Actually, I'm past that by now. This will be my last entry on LiveJournal, regardless of how they apologise for their theft. That they even did it is just plain immoral.
Meanwhile, I can be found as electrickeet at Dreamwidth. Dreamwidth has the bulk of LiveJournal's functionality and some rather sane additions that LJ does not, and they are dedicated to not censoring and not stealing from and not screwing over their users. I've been posting there this whole time, and you can set up a functional account using your OpenID from LiveJournal (or Facebook or whatever other places.) Also, the LJ RSS feed for Thirteen Ribbons will probably continue functioning so long as LJ keeps going, or maybe only as long as I have paid time. I'm not too worried either way.
Remember, that's electrickeet at Dreamwidth – and I'll be upgrading my account there to a paid one (I've been putting it off) so you can even RSS feed it if you like. I have three account invite codes, but I honestly don't even recall if they use those now since the introductory period is over. If they do, ask me for one here and I'll gladly offer.
718 posts, seven and a half years (over half of 'em paid, as I recall), and this is where it ends. So there I go.
Wed, 3rd Mar. 2010, 12:58
Colour me annoyed.
See, Thirteen Ribbons runs on WordPress. WordPress is great for being able to easily install plugins to extend its functionality, except that there are a few places where WordPress itself lacks something useful and the plugins to add that in are hackish and difficult to properly install.
My users want the ability to edit their own comments. Heck, I'd love to be able to do so. (As an admin, I can edit every comment, but I have separate logins for each of the main characters so they can banter with themselves and the readers.) I figure this is no problem; I use the really slick WP plugin find-and-install interface to bring up a list of plugins that'll add the ability for a non-admin user to edit zir own comments. Thirty seconds and no more complaints, right?
Except, all but one of the plugins has detailed instructions for how to hack stuff into the code to actually add the edit link to make it work, because they apparently can't scratch this one itch themselves in the installer. Then I find out why. It all depends on the theme in use because the code for comment display is part of the theme. None of the given instructions work conveniently for me because I'm using an advanced theme that let me configure some other awesome stuff. (Of course, I had to hack the crap out of that to get rid of all the bloody font references scattered everywhere, but CSS hacking, I can do. It's even on my résumé.)
So now, I'm faced with learning PHP and doing a lot of digging to make this work, or picking a theme that's not quite so obscure. The look of the site may change in not too long....
even in the future nothing works right
Thu, 28th Jan. 2010, 22:35
Valentine's Day islove heart *bleep*
Valentine's Day Quiz (stolen from
samwise_fox1.Are you single or taken?
Singtak.
2. Chocolate or flowers?
Chocflow!
3. Will you do anything special for Valentines Day?
Valspec.
4.Do you like anyone?
Anylike!
5. Were you dating anyone last Valentines?
Valdate?
6. What would be your dream Valentines date?
Valdream?
7. Do you make a big deal about Valentines?
Valdeal!
8. Have you ever had a secret admirer?
Secadmir....
9. Would you ever write someone a love letter?
Writelov.
10. Do you believe in Cupid?
Cupbel.
11. Do your parents give you presents on Valentines?
Valpres?
12. Do you still send out Valentines cards?
Valcard?
13. Do you like candy hearts?
Heartsweet!
15. Is Valentines day depressing?
Valmood. *bleep*
16. How do you feel about PDA?
.|.|.... .|...|.. .|.....|
17. How is your love life?
Lifelovelovelovelovelovelove--]
18. Have you ever been dumped on Valentines?
Valval*val**val.
19. How many roses would you want?
eseoseroserosror
20. Will you have a boyfriend/girlfriend next Valentines?
BOYGIRLBOYGIRLBOYGIRLXYXYXYZXYZXYZOXYZO))%^(+++ATH0No carrier
Thu, 28th Jan. 2010, 09:02
I have an appointment with my Dave (long story) at 13h00. This means that I'll be sort of in the Capitol Hill area in downtown Seattle just before that time, most likely having gotten there by bus unless something more interesting comes along. (Jet-pack? Prius? Everyone here has a Prius, it seems.) I also have some blood tests to be done which require fasting, and I will have been going on somewhat more than twelve hours without any food so I will be pretty significantly hungry. Anyone want to join me for lunch around 13h45 or so?
man I starve right now and only a large glass of ginger rooibos tea sits between me and doom i tell you doom
Wed, 20th Jan. 2010, 15:31
Remember the stuff about typing accented letters? That whole changing the keyboard map thing that wasn't working consistently? The system simply needed a reboot to install the more flexible keyboard driver, and I missed the dialog that said so. It works great now. Life is good!
Now to learn what all is in the keymap. This shouldn't be too hard.
Tue, 19th Jan. 2010, 11:30
I discovered a new annoyance yesterday. It started with a small joy, as these things often do.
For the Thirteen Ribbons source files, I have been keeping the text to 7-bit clean ASCII. The reason for this was solely because of FurAffinity, which didn't take the codepage into account at all and didn't even bother converting ISO 8859-1 to UTF-8 properly. I suppose that was my fault as much as anything, though they don't mention the situation anywhere in their FAQ.... Anyhow, the point is, I use jEdit to write in. I have a macro set up which converts straight quotes to proper ones, multiple hyphens into dashes, and other such, just before I copy the text into the WordPress post window – the file doesn't even get saved that way.
The catch is, I'd been leaving accents off of things the whole way because I knew FA wouldn't display them correctly. This means that, for example, every instance of "Flosadottir" was actually supposed to have been "Flosadóttir" but didn't show up that way. The part I'm working on has a character with an accent in his first name, and I figured this would be a good time to make the proper shoft of everything to UTF-8 and start putting the accents in. Traditionally, I haven't had to type a lot of accents, so I only have a small handful of character codes memorised, and I key them in like that when necessary – you know, like Alt+0150 for that en-dash. I didn't want to have to add yet more to my repertoire, and I found myself wishing for a Compose key or the like. Then I noticed that my lappy had an "Alt" key and an "Alt Gr" key, and the intuition struck. That's got to be what that's for.
So I gave it a try. And it did nothing that a standard Alt key wouldn't. So I searched online and found a few hints. I actually opened up Windows Help and looked for where to change the keyboard layout, because it wasn't quite obvious at first. I switched it from "United States" to "United States - International". On a test in Notepad, it worked! AltGr+O gave me "ó" as I wanted. Then I went back into jEdit and... nothing.
It turns out that this input method doesn't use the same system as the old Alt-and-character-code system for generating characters, but something new that pretty much no software in the world seems to recognise, so it just plain doesn't do what I need. So... now what? Better system of entering accented letters? Have a character map open at all times? Replace all my software? Give up?
Fri, 15th Jan. 2010, 13:35
I've been working on another project behind the scenes.
Prismatic Media is a brand new creative collective of writers, artists, designers, programmers, philosophers, and other fascinating folk. It's also the new hosting site for my personal website and Thirteen Ribbons. There will be more showing up in the near future, oh yes.So, I'd like to ask everyone to not only poke at the main Prismatic Media site but to check out everything hosted there and linked from it. It's all quality stuff from good people.
Also, please let me know if there are any glitches on the site (that don't start with "In Internet Explorer" unless you have a specific way to patch for it in compliant CSS 2.1.)
Wed, 13th Jan. 2010, 13:02
If you read Thirteen Ribbons – and if you don't, quickly catch up before I post the next part! – you'll recognise the rather egotistical character of Eekay, a snow-leopardess who simply can't imagine not being the apple of everybody's eye. Now zie'll be showing up in my usericon, thanks to the awesome talents of Azrin Derat! If you'd like to see a larger view as part of the badge I'll be wearing at Further Confusion, take a look at the image on FurAffinity. Also, while you're there, commission her for some art! She's got reasonable rates and, as you can see, she knows how to get an expression dead-on. Check out that grin.
Wed, 13th Jan. 2010, 12:51
Further Confusion... it's coming right for us!
Some of you may not be terribly familiar with me and are eager to know more before we meet in person at Further Confusion 2010. Here are some helpful answers to some helpful questions!
What is your badge name?
Electric Keet, but you'll likely see the one that says "Eekay" first because that one has a pretty snoqiti on.
Are you hosting any panels?
Yes. "Giving Cookies to Qitis". It'll be in my hotel room and it'll run from Thursday evening to Monday morning.
Where are you staying?
In a hotel room, as previously mentioned. Keep up with me here, okay?
Who will you be with?
Crazy people. Crazy, do you hear me? They think they're animals!
Do you do trades?
Sure. Um... I think I have a couple granola bars here, maybe some homemade beef jerky... and I can whistle pretty good! Trade you a tune for a cookie, eh?
What is your gender?
Philosphers have asked this since time immemorial.
How old are you?
Technically, my age is negative because I'm really from the future.
Can I touch you?
Wow, man.... My hands can touch anything bot themselves.... *waves hands around randomly*
Can I talk to you?
All you wish. In fact, with the small donation of some cookies, I may deign to respond.
Can I buy you lots of drinks?
Absolutely! I love trying new wheat or red ale microbrews, and I'm a sucker for whiskey sours. (Note: Neither does this guarantee that I will speak to you, though it's a positive step.)
Can I give you lots of money?
I'm trying to imagine the defect in a person that might make one say "no" to this.
Can I hug or snuggle with you?
Unclean! UNCLEAN! Back, agent of filthy filth! Wait, do you have cookies?
How tall are you?
a) three apples
b) 5'15"
c) a million ladies
d) 190cm
e) Other (please specify:)
Are you nice?
I'm the goddamned Electric Keet. I'm not just nice... I'm the best.
Are you cliquey?
Yes. Nobody gets to hang with me but me, except with my permission. And you – whoever you are, I don't care how famous or adoring of me – don't have it. Nyaaaah!
Can I stalk you?
Yes, but expect to be occasionally savaged for fresh meat. I have needs.
How long are you going?
Oh, about 190cm— damn, did I give away a previous answer?
Do you have an artist table?
Oh, crap! I left it at home.
Do you like parties?
The ones I can grab a handful of cookies from and then disappear out of, yes.
If I see you, how should I get your attention?
The best method is to sound exactly like the alarm on my cell phone. For those of you without pitch-perfect polyphony, the second-best method is to shout very loudly, "Hey! Keet! Over here! Yes, I'm trying to get the attention of that sexy sexy snow-leopardess, Electric Keet! Yoo-hoo!" but it has to be just like that, verbatim, and at top volume, preferably when I'm not actually there to hear it.