Black Dog Blog

Archive for March, 2009

So, on the downside, a total LEGEND is retiring. He's been the kind of overboss of my team since I've worked in Religion, boss of my immediate manager (I think; never been shown an actual map). And he's a great dude, esoteric, brilliant, equally at home converting philosophical texts to plain English and working around SQL Server's inanities. Would come into our office, back when we still worked physically in the Religion department, and ask us random ethical questions from whatever article he was writing. Great dude.

I'll miss him. On the plus side, I got to rifle through the skip(!) of books he's chucking out in preparation for leaving. Adoptees are sitting on my desk by the names of The World of the Polynesians, Dominion, The Art of Deception and On the Art of Writing Copy.

I also have a slim paperback named Geometric Patterns from Churches and Cathedrals, quite rightly wondering why I picked it up. If none of my artsy offliners wants it, I'll offer it to you lot.

Tomorrow there will be goodbye luncheons and drinkypoos and presents and speeches, which'll probably embarrass the poor sod. If I ever stop working here, there'll be very specific instructions…

I became so repeatedly mildly irked by the skewed placement of the collar on that profile view I did of Weft (I've had it set as my desktop wallpaper for a couple of days for a laugh) that I've decided to make it An Undocumented Feature instead. This way, it can be fixed right now instead of waiting for me to get home and open Photoshop. You perceive that my reasoning is coldly logical.

So there you go: the Offwhite citizenry now fastens their shirt collars on the right. Slaves and monks button to the left. I think the political (aristocratic) class buttons to the left too, but that's not to say they're equated with all those holy men and convicted criminals, heavens no.

You see, they've this concept of things alternating as they ascend, shown also in the malarkey over which hand you pass with. Someone one position above you would merit a certain hand, while for someone two positions above you'd pass with the other hand, for three positions above you'd go back to the first hand, and so on. (Before anyone asks, for a spouse you'd use both hands… but one would hope you'd be on close enough terms to pass cheeks instead.)

Aliens would be expected to button their collars to the right. >:)

Now to finish off my peas and chickpea paste and have another look at Commissioning.

I think we can all agree that this is a true message for our times.

Just remember, everyone, that Lord Jesus Christ rescues you with love from the worsest.

Hey! Hey! Cynics of the world, what's the point in uniting! *fistpump*

So anyway. This chap, Stewart Lee, is my hero (of the stand-up comedy world). Dorian Gray jokes, murrrr.

Where he talks about the funniest moment ever on telly (beginning 7:47 here and continued here), it's… yeah. Don't look at me; I don't like Only Fools.

Oh, and it's quite funny to see him doing what looks like a Lee and Herring routine without Herring (Del Boy, Stew: David Jason!). Miss Herring, though. He had a wonderfully grating voice and enthusiastic manner, great for the red nose partner.

Funniest moment on British telly evar, though… I honestly would have thought people would vote for Fawlty Towers or something. That one scene in The Germans pretty much says it all. Insanity, xenophobia, talking loudly and clearly to people who have accents (Bau help me, I do that and cannot stop), obsession with past glories, behaving 'simply awfully', and the butt of the joke is the awful Englishman, never the (quite normal and dignified) Germans.

Sadly, we're obsessed with past glories to the point of not making anything that good in decades.

Just gone back tweaking a previous entry after the obvious realisation that people reading my LJ mirror on their LJ friendslists, using their own stylesheets, won't see my custom "spoiler" CSS class. And no doubt the same goes for the feeds.

Not sure what to do about that. Any thoughts? Right now I've just duplicated the styles inline, which completely defeats the object of making 'em. (And of course whenever I change my style, I'd have to change a bunch of individual entries, which is ludicrous.)

Here's what the "spoiler" style looks like, if you don't know what I'm talking about. It used to be a redacty black-on-black until I decided that was needlessly hard on the eyes when viewed under my default styles.

An autistic lad is rescued by Spider-Man.

And now more idiots trying to make the world fit into their little boxes, to the detriment of all…

Despite the stupid stories you may have heard about windmills slicing birds up, the RSPB is in no doubt: we need more wind farms, and we need them soon.

Actually we need them twenty years ago, but hi, media outlets, welcome to the 08 Is Too Late bandwagon anyway.

Now that was miserable. So here's some happy power metal: Iron Fire – Bridges Will Burn

Bolt was good. It is about a puppy! In fact, it's pretty much a puppy Truman Show, which is pretty much a winner.

I was a bit uneasy about how the animals emoted, though. They didn't use their ears at all; it was rather confusing. For example, when the cat had her back to the dog, telling him to get lost, her ears should have been tightly back and her tail doing some conflicted lashing, and his ears at least somewhat flattened and tail down. No doubt it was the same all the way through the film, but that was the scene that actually broke the WSD for me. Kind of disturbing, like someone smiling and grinning while telling you they're horribly depressed, you know? I need cartoon expressions to be right, because they're a stepping stone to real ones.

I'll not get onto the lazy bit of characterisation that always makes cat = female and dog = male. ;) We dogs may be simpler and dumber, but girls have the right to be simple and dumb too, if they want.

Squee, a Basaltine pic! (safe for work)

From someone on the Jack art exchange (Kendime, for whom I drew this pic a couple of weeks ago (That wonky spine sweat-line and the foot still bother me, and as for hands, well. Good job I'm not a perfectionist. *looks around surreptitiously*)).

The hellhound adoption saga continues with Suitov helpfully pointing out all the apparent plot holes so far.

When I considered how to approach this story, which is an alternative telling of Basaltine's version of events, I considered writing until the point at which Basaltine's tale ends and then stopping. But that really would be pointless, because, other than some divergences in detail and a heavy difference in style, they're telling the same story.

Besides, it's in Suitov's character to question everything, even when it's potentially to his own detriment, and I rather wanted to work one particular detail in (namely the dog's name. Sometimes I think if I don't use some of the random facts and backstory in my mind, I'll drive myself nuts with frustration). So on we go, and hope that I can work out where I'm going to end it before the end…

Probably ought to have named the housekeeper, because it's far more in Suitov's character to think of people by name than as 'Servant Q', but I haven't thought of a name for her yet. So it's actually me giving her short shrift, not him…

edit, 13:13 24/03: Leaning towards Bryony Navesink or Neversink. I first thought of Catriona, but that's both Gaelic and the name of a schooldays friend of mine. Oh, and I just glanced up at the big flatscreen telly that plays muted on the wall all day, and there was an advert with a brief shot of a calico kitten that had had a ball of wool put on it. SRS BZNS.

Another artwork post. This stuff is by someone called Jesse McGibney, whom I found through some random Google or other. Here are some nice ones.

Dog tags

Gryphon for Anke and another gryphon too

Lionfish!

Fisher Dragon (never let it be said that I'm a pushover when it comes to blues and greys… oh, all right then)

Some kind of Roman or Spartan cat or something for Vespers

For Ree SHE KNOWS WHY

Hatchling for everyone. Everyone must love.

Butterfly for Anke

Coffee for Snog

Succubus NSFW (nudity, not sexualised, or I wouldn't be linking it at all!)

Some fighty dude in a swamp, I dunno

Funny gunner

Chell and Cube for Slen

I recommend you browse Jesse McGibney's gallery for yourself: he has more, including sketches.

Robin McKinley: In which it is demonstrated that there is more than one kind of hellhound

The hussy! Because, well, clearly she has been looking at my site and reading my ongoing stray hellhound story. Because all Real Authors steal stuff off random unpublished amateurs on the internet. This is known.

Nice coincidence, though. Have to admit I've never read any of her books, because they have names like The Hero and the Crown and summaries like Aerin is the only child of Arlbeth, king of Damar, and his second wife, a foreigner from the North. Aerin inherits her mother's pale skin and fiery red hair, setting her apart from all other Damarians (who are dark-haired and dark-skinned) and causing her to be feared and ostracized by them. (from Wikipedia)

Thanks to Ree for sending me the link. It can go in my hellmutts collection.

They've added an 'oscillate' (fade up and down rhythmically, basically) option at SimplyNoise.com since I visited last. Very cool!

I like the pink noise setting on oscillate mode, and the brown even more. The pink is halfway between radio hiss and ocean, whereas the brown is mostly rainstorm, and a lot 'softer' on my ears than white noise. Unsurprising. I have a tendency to hate treble and cleave unto bass as one from a womb with a cardiac abutment untimely ripp'd. Bass nice.

The difference between brown and white noise, from what I gather from Wikipedia, is that with brown noise there is progressively less volume (amplitude) towards the higher end of the frequency range, whereas white noise has constant volume across all frequencies. Pink is halfway between them, its name explainable by the fact that brown noise is also called red noise. (Or Brownian noise, after the guy who discovered Brownian motion.)

Here's a graph of brown noise and a graph of pink noise (you can see the pink falls off more gradually); the corresponding graph for white noise would be flat.

That suggests you can't really have 'true' white noise, because it'd have to have the same power at ALL frequencies, which'd take an infinite amount of energy (except for absolute silence, I suppose?). The same goes for pink noise, because the power keeps decreasing but never quite reaches zero however high you go in frequency. However, it is possible to make pink or white noise across a limited range of frequencies, which, I presume, is what I'm listening to. My ears only have a limited range of frequencies*, so that's fine.

*20Hz–20kHz is the typical range of human hearing (optimal/for youngsters).

Am I — blast it all, I'm trying to educate again. TELL ME WHEN I START DOING THAT.

One of the regular commenters on Platitude for the Day has got me into clerihews (wikip). An example from me this morning follows (with some peculiarities, following her trend).

THE REVEREND TOM BUTLER:
"Jesus said¹ be subtler
Than the snakes to whom Saint Pat gave the shove.
Unfortunately everyone in Northern Ireland seems to have forgotten the second part about the doves."

¹ Matthew 10:16, New Testament, Bible

You can therefore blame Dinah for the tombs of the Suitov lords' "friends and family" mausoleum being furnished with a clerihew apiece.

edit: Oddly, come to think of it, if you wanted something that defines Englishness and the English sense of humour, I reckon the whole clerihew thing would have to be an excellent example. Dry, irreverent, quirky and wordy. Mine's not a great example, but look at the ones on Wikipedia to see what I mean.

The "original" ending to The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Quite good, if silly. The Americanisms hardly show. The various neologisms are rather more pronounced.

Also, Sirius > Betelgeuse.

Progressiveness quiz (Flash, 40 questions)

"Your ideological score is 319/400. This makes you extremely progressive. The average score for Americans is 209.5."

Holy grief, I'm way above the Lib Dems there. I guess that makes me everything that's wrong with this country today.

(Screw the rabid Republican religious right, though, seriously. May they all be hoist with their own petard.)

Nice to be back at work.

Sad, I know! But when I'm off for extended periods I always seem to do nothing but sleep and don't get much creative work done. I need the routine.

Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell is a very silly film with a very good doggie in it. It's quite schlock made-for-TV horrorish with atrocious special effects and mostly low-key acting and production, apart from some scenes ostensibly in Ecuador (complete with bowler-hatted people).

There isn't much surprise to the plot, and the acting (of the dogs) is pretty bad.

I enjoyed it.

It gets minus points for the old "woman possessed by the devil becomes sex-mad because sex is evil" trope. And minus a squillion points for equating my Barghest with Christian mystical junk, but that was a given; said so right in the title.

The DVD has won a place in my hellmutts library, along with Zoltan, Hound of Dracula. (Which was even worse.)

Another Twine Wars prequel, what I am mostly calling Baine's Resignation.