w00t, got my font sorted out. Had some stupid where trying to apply css to someone else’s code meant I was getting some errors, but managed to suss out where the problem lie and get it close enough.
It would be really nice if the preview also used my custom css, so I could see my post in progress in the ubuntu font too, and with my paragraph indents and all that shit. Oh well, that’s what the preview button is for, I guess.
Playing with the Cover Template on the Twenty Twenty theme. Picture from a random excursion for Ingress purposes a while back.
Welp, WP pushed an update that came with a new theme that’s supposed to take advantage of the newer features of their system. So, gonna give this a go. We’ll see if I find enough focus to really play with tweaking it, but for now at least it’s purple. I need to spend a little time finding all the bits I need to target to get the font switched, because I already miss the ubuntu font. >.>
Been having a hard time articulating anything in writing beyond chat, “witty” little quips on the fucking bird site, and my Trek RP lately. Will see if I can find a thread to grasp on that front again. Should start forcing myself to spend time with a notebook on my lunch break or something, and see if that maybe helps. While polishing my writing on my phone or laptop works pretty well, I’ve found that the things I enjoy the results on the most tend to start out their life written on actual paper even if they get a major overhaul before they’re finished, so I need to allocate time to that. I also have a couple of notebooks I bought from Red Bubble like a year ago and still haven’t done anything with… so, yeah.
Speaking of the Red Bubble, I put up some random stuff with my photos on it, but I don’t think I’m marketing anything correctly because the only sales I’ve seen has been the stuff related to my Trek RP — mostly stickers of our logo to crew members. If you’re curious, you can check it out? diziara.redbubble.com
Used to be, I was constantly writing shit on my LiveJournal. Just whatever the fuck was on my mind. I’m sure a lot of it was shit, but it was a thing I did. And I followed other people who did the same, and they wrote awesome things or mundane things, and I enjoyed reading and commenting.
I mean, I guess I could do this on some of the newer social networks, but they don’t feel the same? And I can do the writing here, but I don’t even know if anyone reads any of this shit I post. Especially since I do so infrequently.
It feels like just yelling into the void. At least when I post my stupid like quips on the bird hell site, or in Discord, I see emoji and shit to tell me people are there.
I just feel so disconnected these days.
Wasting time on Pinterest takes too much of my time. I should probably stop doing it… but every once in a while I stumble across something pretty cool. This pin I’d come across before, but this time when I saw it, it started a ball rolling. TL;DR if you don’t want to click through: but US Naval tradition refers to submarines lost at sea as being on eternal patrol. There’s even mention of radio operators hailing all the eternal patrol subs on Christmas just to tell them they’re still remembered. Some people find it creepy, others find it a sweet remembrance of those lost, and some people turn it into a writing prompt. I totally support all of these… but since I’ve got Star Trek on my brain so much, I couldn’t help but wonder, what if a human caused the tradition to make the jump to Starfleet?
I picture someone who comes from a family with a long history of Naval service. They grew up hearing about the Christmas hails to the submarines on eternal patrol; it was something their mother whispered in their ear as they were tucked into bed on Christmas eve each year, talking about her time working the radios when she served. They grow up to join Starfleet—much to the surprise of the rest of the family—and go into communications. Their first patrol on a starship, and they happen to be working communications on the bridge Christmas eve. So they tell their crew mates of the naval tradition, and somehow they convince the officer on duty to let them place the hail out to the starships they can quickly find listed as missing in action.
Next year, their captain presents them with a list. It includes many of the ships from last year, though some have been removed because they found their way safely home, and others added; new ships include those who’d gone missing in the last year, or ships buried in higher security clearance than this lowly ensign had access to. The Christmas hail goes out again, with some other ships in the fleet picking it up and repeating it. There’s a lot of chatter both within Starfleet and without. Admirals express confusion, particularly those who aren’t human, but in the end the ensign is given official clearance to continue—with the understanding that certain ships require secure channels for their hail.
In time they get promoted and eventually assigned to HQ. Every year, they get an updated and carefully organized list of ships and registry numbers, frequencies and encryption keys to use; no one ever appears to have put any on duty time into the effort but the list is always ready in time. It eventually takes over operations of HQ’s communications hub for Christmas eve and day, with people volunteering for the shifts and expressing preference for being on when certain ships are being hailed. The original ensign retires from the fleet, tucking their grandchildren in on Christmas eve with the stories of the new tradition; one of them even joins Starfleet and gets into the regular rotation of volunteers working the holiday hail shift.
So, I recently decided to re-purpose my brassfrog.net domain for something roleplay related (project still in early progress, so no idea when it launches), which mean the whole two galleries I’d had up there aren’t posted anymore. So I’m moving those pictures here. I’ll make an effort to post more pictures here too, new stuff that hasn’t been posted anywhere yet. I got a bunch of stuff that I’ve never edited, as well as random crap on my phone. Since I can’t seem to follow through on writing here, maybe I can at least make the space useful for something.
These pictures were taken behind the deli I grew up going to regularly, where one of the houses with a backyard that was backed up to the parking lot behind the building had their passion flowers spilling over the wall. I couldn’t resist taking the pictures. These were taken on an old Casio point and shoot that was probably 3MP? Hella old. I still like the pictures.
misterroque
[09:07] Oh hey! I missed word day
[09:07] Sowhatwhocareswannafightaboutit
deathkitten
[09:08] pulls out her fountain pen and takes a fencing position
[09:08] I’ll fight you!
misterroque
[09:08] Aw shit
[09:09] Bringitbringitbringit
[09:09] En garde!
[09:09] ⚔
deathkitten
[09:09] lunges, driving the sword pen fight into #random
misterroque
[09:10] falls over a chair, dizzy from pushing through the channel membrane. Drops sword
deathkitten
[09:10] chases @misterroque into the channel, brandishing her fountain pen as if it is a sword
[09:11] kicks the sword away, and bops @misterroque on top of the head with the pen
[09:12] That’s one point for me.
[09:12] 😀
misterroque
[09:12] scurries under a table, whimpering pathetically
deathkitten
[09:12] 😕
misterroque
[09:14] uses confused sympathy as a distraction, reaches out and grabs dk from under the table, tripping her. Steals pen and runs into #general
deathkitten
[09:14] grabs the discarded sword and gives chase
deathkitten
[09:15] swings into the channel on a chandelier
misterroque
[09:16] tries to get into a good fighting stance, carefully stepping around all of pathics birthday cakes
[09:17] throws pen like a knife at dk’s head as she lands from the chandelier
deathkitten
[09:21] ducks, the sharp nib of the pen leaving a slice across her forehead as she almost doesn’t duck fast enough
[09:22] gives chase, seeing her foe is unarmed save for his wits
misterroque
[09:27] surprised the thrown pen didn’t finish her, roque falls back into an absurd pile of birthday cakes, sending collateral confectionery flying everywhere
[09:27] realizing he’s unarmed, he takes a candle, still somehow lit, and sets fire to the channel drapes
deathkitten
[09:28] Ooo, fire
[09:28] is dazzled
misterroque
[09:29] flees into #ididathing closing the door behind him, attempting to seal dk in the burning channel
deathkitten
[09:30] remembers she’s supposed to be the second most responsible person in the slack, and the first most responsible is probably still sleeping off birthday celebration, so she should probably put out the fire
[09:31] drags out the firehose and rinses the channel clean
misterroque
[09:32] comfortable in what he assumes is victory, roque begins grabbing handfuls of cake off his person and eating it
deathkitten
[09:32] sneaks in through the air vent
misterroque
[09:33] nom nom nom
deathkitten
[09:38] silently sneakily sneaks up behind @misterroque and holds the sword to his throat
[09:38] Drop. That. Cake.
misterroque
[09:41] swallows one last bite, then invokes Rob Roy and grabs the sword with his bare hand, cutting himself deeply but creating just enough space to escape. Flees into hatch leading down to #submissions
deathkitten
[09:42] Curses!
misterroque
[09:42] takes the pool cover off the bog of eternal sadness that lives in this channel, setting a trap for dk
deathkitten
[09:44] takes a shortcut, chasing a swan over a fence. The swan gets caught in the trap
misterroque
[09:46] carefully pulls the now Very Sad Swan out of the bog, and begins swinging it by it’s neck as a feathery club at dk
deathkitten
[09:47] Swan abuse!
[09:47] pulls out a citation book
misterroque
[09:52] pauses to grudgingly accept the citation before sticking his tongue out, blowing a raspberry, and poking dk in the eye
deathkitten
[09:53] Ow! Hey!
[09:53] smacks roque up side his head
[09:53] That hurt!
[09:54] puts on eye patch
misterroque
[09:58] realizing the eye patch makes her look way more badass than he does, he flees through the bog of eternal sadness (immune to its effects from a lifetime of exposure) into #political
misterroque
[09:58] Aha! Let’s see if you can survive The Shitstorm!
[09:59] gets into a ready position for fisticuffs (queensberry rules, of course)
deathkitten
[10:00] bursts into the channel now dressed like a pirate, even with a parrot on her shoulder
misterroque
[10:08] feints with a jab at dk, and then throws a right cross at the parrot
deathkitten
[10:11] dodges the jab as the parrot goes sailing across the channel and into #playlists, yelling “YOU JEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK, SQUACK” as it goes.
[10:13] It was Jackson’s last day before retirement.
misterroque
[10:16] laughs, then prepares to throw an uppercut, but ducks and rolls for cover just as The Shitstorm of the channel rolls in, like a veritable haboob of shit
deathkitten
[10:19] pulls her billowing pirate coat closed around her to protect herself, pulling her hat down over her face. She silently bemoans the death of the peacock feather in her hat
[10:24] fights her way to #playlists
deathkitten
[10:12] a parrot comes tumbling into the channel
[10:25] stumbles in, disposing of shit covered jacket, hat, and boots just outside the channel in the in between.
misterroque
[10:36] crawls into the channel through a hole in the wall of harsh noise, starving for air, his body now covered in a slurry of shit and old cake. He realizes the best way to win the combat is through love, so he pulls himself to his feet, looking like some kind of marbled monster, stumbles toward dk with arms outstretched screaming “HUG ME!”
deathkitten
[10:37] pulls out the fire hose and sprays all the shit cake off roque
[10:39] picks up the poor punched parrot and tentatively approaches the drownedroque for the offered hug
misterroque
[10:44] the offer is genuine, and roque embraces dk, hissing at the parrot behind her back and mouthing the word “SOON”
deathkitten
[10:46] hugs it out as the parrot squawks “roque is a parrot hater!”
First step was easy, grab the install image for the Pi via BitTorrent — it was well seeded, so I had that in no time flat. Next step was writing the image to the SD card, which I am ashamed to say was probably harder than it should have been; considering that I’ve been using one flavor of Linux or another as my daily driver OS for 13 years now, I shouldn’t have had such trouble figuring out how to use dd in the terminal window to write the image to the SD card (GUI makes me weak). My first attempt to fit the Pi into the case that was included in the starter kit made me afraid I was going to break it, but after setting it aside a minute, I did eventually figure out how it fitted into place. From there, everything else went pretty smoothly: put the sd card in, powered it up, and connected via wifi from my laptop. Followed the last few steps of setup via ssh, and now I have a default set up working.
I need to do some customization now: need a way to power it off without ssh for those times I’m using it on the go without a devices that I can access it via the shell to tell it to halt, and need to decide if a physical switch added to the case or a hidden and protected webpage will be a better solution. Want to customize the pages it serves to connected users for chat and file sharing. Want to set up bluetooth to connect to a speaker to play back audio. Need to be able to get it on home wifi network, to allow me to be connected to it for shell access while still having access to the internets for irc and forums to access help and tips. Maybe add a QR code sticker to the case that’ll direct people to the landing page since it doesn’t always auto-redirect on my phone (though it does on my laptop),
Overall, I’m pleased that I was able to do a thing and it works. I may buy a larger USB drive and a higher capacity external battery pack, but for now the 16GB drive I already had, and wasn’t using, is enough space, and I don’t expect to run it mobile very much yet, so I can use the existing battery pack I use to charge my phone on the go (ingress eats all the batteries!). Eventually I may upgrade it to a cooler case, or get a second SD card to set up another project.
Sunlight filtered through the tree as Ronan lay on the quad lawn with his textbook.An ant crawled along the spine and Ronan flicked it away before turning the page — smashed ant might further lower the value of the book when he sold it back at the end of the semester. A shadow fell across the book and Ronan looked up. It was that geek with the camera, always hiding behind it, contorting himself to get the perfect shot — today that was the sunlight filtering through the tree above, by standing not a foot away from Ronan’s book.
“Hey.”
Glasses emerged from behind the body of the camera, looking around. Finally they looked down.
“You’re in my light.”
“Oh, uh, sorry.” He raised the camera again, turning his attention upwards. Ronan grunted. “It’ll only be a moment more, sorry.”
Ronan grumbled, rolling over to sit up, drawing the large textbook into his lap instead. The fringe of his hair fell across his eyes, providing almost a curtain to divide him from his surroundings and shading everything but the book. Movement through the fringe, followed by the soft sound of the shutter, caused Ronan to look up in time to see the guy with the camera standing up. Ronan brushed aside his hair and fixed a glare on him as the guy reached into his camera bag.
“You can see how the shot came out,” was all he said as he dropped a postcard on Ronan’s book and walked off. Ronan picked up the postcard, ready to wad it up, when the clocktower chimed four. Time for his next class, book shut quickly, trapping the postcard inside to mark his spot, and the encounter nearly forgotten.
