Black Dog Blog

Archive for June, 2009

Overtures

I lick my nose and turn my head askance
to let you know I mean you only well,
and duck my head in playful bow: let's dance.
Oh no? Your choice. So, care to have a smell?
Well, let me sniff your bottom — what's amiss?
I'm friendly, look: my tail is whizzing round;
let's — gracious me, whatever was that hiss?
You heard that, right? Extraordinary sound.
So anyway, you want to see my toys?
Or run around and bark and bark at bikes?
Why, there it is again, that hissing noise.
Ignore it; let's play chase. I'll get you — yikes!
I didn't know you had a bunch of those!
That hurt, I — Mummy, help, she got my nose!

I'm currently listening to one of cubicgarden's trance mixes. If this thing rickrolls me, I'll have to vanquish him on Monday.

Oh, and as soon as the healing springs faerie heals my Lupe I'm painting her Spotted, because I just got the PB and the spotted Lupe looks just like an African Wild Dog, for which I'm a sucker. (So she'll be a literal Painted Dog, then…)

The image is Media Response to Celebrity Death from picturesforsadchildren.com. I love it. (Also see the LJ entry if you fancy starting a flame war or being scarred by image macros.)

As for Jackson, all I'll say is that he was cleared of all child abuse charges by a court of law.

edit: All right, all I'll say is the preceding and also the first few seconds of this (0:55-1:05). It's hard to find that scene on the tubes.

I seem to have become addicted to posting 'microfiction' on Twitter. This must be how they get you sucked in. #Brains.

Question: Would you like, dislike or be indifferent to seeing my Twitter updates mirrored on my blog (probably in a single post per day from some tool like LoudTwitter)?

If I found a thing that would only collect and post updates that contained certain user-defined hashtags, I'd use that for sure.

I get my two week placement with FM&T soon. Looking forward to it. I think they want to keep me on for longer.

Seen a cool video that will interest Altivo and other fur-types.

That's randomly got me looking at paw glove tutorials on YouTube. I'm not a furry or fursuiter and don't have any interest in the whole full-body itchy-plastic-fuzz deal, but I would love a properly awesome pair of paw gloves with proper pads, like so (but Black Dog, or Grey Dog, instead of Red Fox).

I saw some leatherwork gloves that are nice-looking, but far too fetishy and immobile. I'm nervous about my manual dexterity or movement being impaired in any way. (The shoes are awesome, though.)

I suppose fingerless fursuit gloves would be object-defeatist. I do like my fingerless gloves, though. Shame it's too hot at the moment to wear them.

Blossoming hatchlings
teeter, flutter, tweet and fall
to fly or feed cats

Songdog's written a post about Haiku Day on Twitter. Seeing his updates (and others') is what's got me doing a bit of haiku'ry there myself. Twitter's character limit lends itself well.

Hence, today, the above in response to this from Altivo. "Tweet" not an intentional pun. Title of post is.

Removing my cap
the passing of the cortège
sham solemnity

(Not based on an actual event, but could be.)

edit: Also, as I remarked to SongdogMI on Twitter,

Algorithm 5
cryptographically digests
into sixteen bytes

Slen and I played Arkham Horror round at someone's house last night. It's great fun! We had eight players plus the host, who GMed (doesn't need a GM, but it was very helpful because some of us hadn't played before). In fact we stayed so on top of things that it was really easy to win, despite the GM doing his best to, erm, 'liven things up' for us. Also, I got some odd looks from cooing in delight over the Hound of Tindalos.

During the game I went and talked to the Black Man for a laugh, seeing as my character had a sanity bonus so couldn't die during that encounter. I failed the roll but couldn't be devoured, found it much funny and didn't think much more of it.

So later last night, erm, I had some dreams.

Very, very whacked-out dreams. And I woke up with a non-existent and horrendous pop song in my head, a song that IMO could have come from nowhere but R'lyeh. It seriously took me about ten minutes to stop being very very confused. I was glad of that sanity bonus.

Am now in perfect frame of mind to have a go at fixing mum's Inspiron.

EDIT:

Read the rest of this entry »

I have been jumped upon by a Staffie on the tram. The Staffie should not, strictly speaking, have been on the tram in the first place, but I wasn't complaining. Any contact with dogs fairly sets me up for the day. I miss them a lot. Besides, he is a friendly Staffie and my trousers are now patched with dog slime. Good Dog. Annoying owners, though.

I think I eye people's dogs in a way that confuses the owners. They jerk the dog away or step off the pavement as if thinking I'm afraid of it, when in fact I'm conducting a leisurely exchange of looks with the dog oblivious to its walking assistant. Guess I should smile too, or say something to the owner. I'm not all that good at smiling to order, though; people occasionally seem to interpret them as angry grimaces or nervousness. And I'm worried people might realisesomehow think I want to kidnap their dog. Honestly, relax, we don't have room at home!

Walking among real people reminds me of being a GCSE French student in France, where attempts to speak the language can be met a little rudely and you occasionally get the feeling they'd rather you didn't bother trying. Yaknow, at least in Germany I was generally spoken to politely and slowly, as if they were pleased I'd made the effort.

Therefore, I present to you Hellmutt's Eurospecies Law:

Humans are from France; dogs are from Germany.

Bill Bailey last night was awesome. Highly recommended. I particularly like his musical skits.

We ate at the Eighth Day before the show. I've been in there several times to buy stuff, but never gone to their restaurant. It's a simple and cheerful canteen-style affair, and they get mega points from me for… their toilets! It's something as simple as putting "Unisex" instead of "Disabled" on the third door, but it made me feel so welcome.

Possibly playing Arkham Horror round at someone's house tonight if we can work out how to get there. Hastur la vista, baby!

(edit: I've been #followfridayed on Twitter. Give me a moment to pick up my jaw off the floor.)

I'm pleased to report that I have seen not one, but two Aibos, and that I still want one.

Aside possibly from hypothetical robot pangolins and Razer from Robot Wars¹, robot dogs are the undisputed coolest thing in existence.

I've also witnessed a Pleo attacking a Sony Rolly.

I want one of these.

Seeing Bill Bailey tonight, woo! I bought Slen a ticket for his birthday.

¹ OK. Dead Metal is awesome too. I so want the thing.

New-turned and porous
scent of my border
Earthworms in chorus
like the first dawn.
Praise for the chirping,
praise for the churning,
praise for the slurping
of my wet lawn.

I have much <3 for Cat Stevens' setting, but it does lack squelchiness!

</hoping this doesn't count as Cat Stevens fanfic>

Droople Droople Droople? Drupe Drupe Drupe! *waves flag*

I'm back from DrupalCamp UK, where I was helping out – partly because I'm interested in Drupal (it and I will do Great Things together, yes, my pretty), partly because it was held at my workplace and partly because I know Ian and some of the other GeekUprs who organised it. It was nothing to do with the pizzas (70 of them. Seriously. Between just over 80 attendees), although those were nice, and provided an… interesting challenge trying to get enough people who would take the leftovers home.

Really, really good weekend. I have a stressball in the shape of the Drupal droplet and a USB stick with DAMP on it. Those plus a couple of stickers are about it for schwag, although there was also a prize draw giveaway thing for lots of books. (All fully compliant with BBC competition guidelines, of course.) I've also been lionised and ego-stroked by slightly drunk developers, which my psyche apparently interprets as a Good Thing. In fact I'm evidently so awesome that everyone's desperate for me to help out at the next northern Droople event. Provisionally yes, depending how I feel tomorrow morning and what becomes of the one or two blister startups on my feet.

So, I've learned a lot from the (parts of) talks I saw, even when some things were over my head, met lots of neat people whose names I of course instantly forgot, and generally Organised Things. This meant everything from chucking a napkin in the direction of a spilled pint, through whisking round with spray cleaner on the morning of Day Two, via making sure windows and doors were open to counteract the broken air con and roomsful of sweaty geeks, to telling people which talk was happening where and what they were likely to be about. Also seen some coooool modules and stuff in action, such as Administration Menu.

I'm all fired up about making Profusion work niceynicey on Drupe now. If only there were a halfway house between Drupal and a messageboard system (that ISN'T a phpBB clone *blech*), that would really be ideal. Either that or we could stand to reimagine our play-by-message-board dynamic, and, well, Change is Scary.

Forays into Twitter don't seem to have harmed my usual pointless verbosity.

Poetry!!1!

And now I'm tired. And it's a normal work week starting tomorrow!

*droops*

Guess I know what I'm doing this weekend after all; I'd forgotten until this morning (yay Outlook reminders!) that I'd agreed to help out with DrupalCampUK.

That also answers any questions I might've had about what to do this evening. That's right: get my V6 on and then see if I can get NodeProfile to do what I need it to… namely provide 'child profiles' for main profiles, call them 'character' and 'author' if you will, effectively allowing the author to post in-character. (You see? Everything I do, I do it for you…)

Am now itching for one of these. And a netbook to use it on. I do rather like being technology-lite, being naturally inclined to hold out until direct neural interfaces are available, but the drawbacks of being disconnected from the mothercloudwebnet in the meantime are starting to outweigh the benefits of not being mugged.

We've taken down our Ethics of Same-Sex Marriage section. Yes, I'm afraid it's already gone; I wrote the 410 redirect myself.

It was judged to be not high enough quality to be worth keeping and updating. Shame, but there you go.

BBC News provides coverage of the latest gay marriage news. Other news websites are available.

Newly-elected British National Party MEP Nick Griffin inflamed racial sensibilities once again this afternoon when he insisted that protesters not throw eggs at him unless they had first separated the yellows from the whites.

People in the audience vocally disapproved of this, and as a result Griffin was hit by a boo meringue.

edit: OK, this is nuts. If this joke ends up on t' telly – 8 out of 10 Cats, recording Thursday evening for broadcast Friday night – it's all down to one of my colleagues retweeting it on Twitter. It will be stolen rather than credited to me, but I can confirm that I originated the joke over email and that I am awesome, and that you should all buy my book (chapter 1 free to read on the web). ;)

I've finally given in and started tweeting. @suitov

edit2: Didn't make it into the show, apparently. Hee. Clearly I'll have to start broadcasting witticisms to the world more often.

Herm: In vain my lap you knead (Piper: prrrrrr) – Don't purr.
Your prayers I do not heed (Piper: prrrrrr) – Don't purr.
'Tis true I smile, but don't suppose
A curling lip forbearance shows.
Oh no.
I'm very cross indeed – yes, very cross. (Piper: prrrrrr)
Don't purr.

Herm: Your disrespectful cheek (Piper: prrrrrr) – Don't purr.
Provokes my dogly pique (Piper: prrrrrr) – Don't purr.
You break my Law. You are my foe.
I smile because I hate you so.
You know.
You very portly freak. You portly freak. (Piper: prrrrrr)
Don't purr.

Piper: My disrespectful cheek (Herm: Don't speak!) – rub rub -
Prrovokes your dogly pique (Herm: Eek!) – rub rub -
If that's your frank critique -

Herm: Don't purr.

Piper: Purr purr.

Herm: Uurgh.

What's Weft saying? Suggestions for caption, please.

*readers should not infer from the word "competition" that there will be any 'prizes' beyond the awesome honour of seeing this heartbreakingly awesome work of ART

(First more-than-quarter-assed attempt at a Shade dragon in a SMALL variant of its polar, pedestrian form. Despite being huge, armoured monsters, they're about the only thing alive that can sneak up on a Weft. This is because they are epic.)

omg omg omg omg omg omg omgeekgasm.

squoo.

Just getting that title pun out of the way so I don't have to use it anywhere else in my writings.

As I understand it, it's normal for creators to be pleased when their creations cause reactions in onlookers. I think that's meant to apply to negative reactions too, sometimes. It certainly does for me in this case.

I was talking to Vespy this morning before leaving for work, and mentioned in passing one of the worlds I built for our little interplanetary ding-dong known as the Twine Wars. The world is called Instar and it's… I suppose you'd call it on the unusual side for generic fantasy, despite being populated by humanoids with pretty few differences from your generic sapiens. They're not especially nice humanoids, but then, humanoids tend not to be, so this is all within the bounds of sensibility.

Anyhoo, I believe the term Ves used to describe lovely little hemispherical Instar was "fucked-up", and in response to further questioning from a fascinated writer he said its inhabitants, and I'm paraphrasing, creep him out. I was kind of surprised, especially as they're somewhat caricatures of a type of animal he likes, but I suppose it's not too surprising on the whole. Ves comes across as a pretty honourable, easy-going and sane sort of chap, while Instarrians, well, produced Weft. (Who is not a typical Instarrian, but rather an extreme worst case scenario.)

I'm rather delighted by this reaction. As long as everyone doesn't feel that way and avoid interacting with them, because then I'll just be sad that the silly-billies are all missing the joke. (Because joke it is. Right now the thing I find funniest is that my ethics force me to view Instar as the good guys for being neutral.)