Hello 
I'm Siobhan Curran/Kisa Naumova, and this is my weblog. I tend to write about stuff like crossdressing, Macs, code, cats, wine and Second Life, but in general it's just an ongoing conversation about all sorts of stuff. If you'd like to know a little bit more about what this all is, I recommend starting on this page which has a little bit of info on who I am, and what I'm trying to do — or you could dive into my five years worth of archives if you like.
Otherwise, feel free to close this box and explore...
Issues/Dilemmas
Somebody help me out here OK?
I've reached a certain point in this little map-making-fiasco of mine that I've got to make some decisions. And it's hard on my own.
#1 Gwendolyn Anne Smith
I had thought that the link from Joanna to Amy News would be the source of a lot of my problems — but I wasn't quite right. I'd thought that that link was some kind of uber-link from the UK to a hot-bed of US transgender-weblogs — the link between two hubs of excitement. Which is why I thought I'd name it the Trans Atlantic Link
Not so 
Turns out Amy News is just your every-day hub of a few TS girls who like to keep in touch. But she links to w3bgrl.co.uk, and w3bgrl.co.uk happens to link to Gwendolyn Anne Smith ... who for some reason unbeknownst to man links herself to every Single Livejournal On The Planet
So, what do I do? Do I follow all those links and try and work out who lives in The TrannieSphere? Or do I, um, ignore them?
Please say "ignore them"
#2 Ms Latrina Occupado
This is a Drag Issue™ Ms Latrina is about to fill the other half of my map with a hundred million links to drag girls all over the place. Part of me is tempted to use the map to hint that there's another Sphere just there, on the right, called the DragoSphere™ — but I'm having a bit of ethical soul-searching going on.
#3 Jen Burke
It's not the weblogs that Jen links to that are the problem — it's the weblogs that the weblogs that Jen links to that are doing my head in.
Jen has a link to Musings On Life Law And Gender — and something inside of me tells me we've left the TrannieSphere at this point. There's nothing intrisically inside of me that says there's anything wrong with the slightly over-politic transgender weblogs over in the states — I just, well, I dunno.
I feel like we haven't just left the TrannieSphere — we've left Planet Earth.
...
This thing is going to be a fudge I should have done it three years ago — that would have been easy:
building it isnt going to be half as hard as maintaining it.
Did I say I was going to maintain it? 
It's a one-off to distract my head for a bit.
I'll look into the image-thingumy 
...
April — my bad. I got my ANDs and ORs mixed up, and you had a GIF instead of a JPG as your picture
Drag O Sphere — I don't think any of the DQs over here would object to being given their own galaxy with limited overlap into the Trans* sphere. (see Venn diagram discussions #101).
Few DQs are trans* — it's more a case of gainful employment and way to meet nice pretty young boys, for delightful gay men with a feminine kink.
And of course, no members of the TrannieSphere meet nice young boys, do they?
Maybe you need a new colour or something to say 'it’s the badlands beyond this point'. Or erm, an infinity symbol or something to show 'there’s just too many bloody links from this site'?
Second option might be slightly less contentious! (Which hurrah, I actually spelt correctly first time!)
I think Katya's spot on; I don't think there’s that much overlap between T and drag. You can always come back to it at the end if you've still got the energy.
BTW, I've just finished tweaking my site so you can now add comments. Does that make it a proper grown up blog now?
I think three years ago my icon would have been saying: "Blog? I've just been thanks."
I think it sounds like there's too much manual labour in the process — you need to write a script that does all this for you. Something that crawls links and detects the presence of XML feeds, which is a pretty good indication of a well formed blog. The news sites you can knock out in the next bit..
Then your job would be to pick through a basket of results and set follow or no-follow flags.
Then the script generates the map on the fly for you.
Sounds simple. Can I have two please? 
something to say 'it?s the badlands beyond this point'
Karol, I was thinking of drawing a little picture with a caption of "Here be Drag Queens"
you need to write a script that does all this for you. Something that crawls links
Yes honey. And then I could change the name of my site to, um, I dunno, Google or something?!
Damm Snails
(via flickr.com/people/si08han) 
Little bastards have decimated my Hostas 
Apparently if you surround the plants with a ring of oatmeal, it stops the little buggers- they eat it and it swells up, plus when they try to slime across it, it dies them out.
Mind you, if you're not organic, smochter 'em with slug pellets!
They're a real problem. You'll also note that they prefer the most expensive plant in your tub too!
Just remember that some slugs are beneficial to the garden. As Bill Oddie says, "If it's black, put it back". Black ones feed on dead material. It's the sandy brown coloured ones that cause the damage to living plants.
Selina Morse
"Here be Drag Queens"
That reminds me of a workmate of mine who seem convinced that most asian countries were swarming with ladyboys. He asked me if I'd seen any when I came back from Hong Kong.
We guessed that his mental map of the world was the US, Europe, and a big grey area marked "Here be Ladyboys"!
Here be Drag Queens
Look, if you're going to make puns, could you at least get them out of the way early? I was all excited about adding "Here be Drag-On's", only to find you'd got there first .
Anyroad, like the map idea (and yes, promising to maintain it would be a bad idea — unless you want to give up on all other forms of activity).
B.t.w. Did you get the email about spam-bots?
Alli' Cat'
"Here be Drag-On's"
Love it 
Did you get the email about spam-bots?
I did hon — I liked the idea. At the moment, my flimsy spam-storm-break is holding, but if it starts to get worse I'll try out what you said
Hoorah for slugs! At last, something I understand! All this IT stuff...phew, hard work! But slugs....I've got em! And Hostas! (I knew they would pay dividends eventually.)
Forget the map thingy (don't even know the technical term)...lets have some pictures of action tranny gardening....
Finished
I will be making a PDF of it soon — with links to each of the weblogs. But for now, I think I've earned a brew
Oooh.... purdy!
Wow! Well done, make that two brews, you deserve them!
Now just wait for all the 'you've missed a link from me to so-and-so' msgs to come in!
Becky, is that a New Improved way to spell your surname, as we'd just about got the hang of how to pronounce the old version?
Finished (#2)
The Trannisphere v1.0 (416K PDF)
OK, all done One great big happy PDF of the Tranniesphere, complete with clickable icons for each and every weblog I've come across on my little journey the past couple of days.
I'll be making a special home for it — but, in the meantime, if you know anyone who's on it, perhaps yous'd be a complete darling for me and let them know.
(Don't be fooled by the "v1.0" bit — I have no intention of doing a "v1.1" or a "v2.0" or whatever of it )
It looks really good — a bit like that new version of the periodic table made to look like a galaxy I found a few days ago. (Memo-to-self — is there a periodic table for trannies?)
I'm sure statisticians could perform a random walk analysis on this to find out how long, on average, clicking on the blog links presented on any particular site, it would take before one eventually leaves the Trannisphere™. Alternatively, sociologists would probably be able to shed some insight into what sort of things link persons inside (and on the fringes) of the Trannisphere™ (a passion/hatred for a particular football team, for instance).
I think it demonstrates that university lecturers have far too much time on their hands.
I'll get my coat...
Selina Morse
Far too much time. (PS, why are you in Edinburgh today Selina?)
Actually (but not wanting to slip into too much of an analytical mine-field), what's rather interestign is what it looks like without the icons.
You can clearly see the little hub of Angels, and that little enclave of friends at the top left. The right-hand side is made up mainly of links that don't seem to join back up.
(I didn't fallow all the LiveJournal 'friends' things — no doubt some of those link up with each other, but I really can't be arsed to read through what everyone had for breakfast this morning...)
That's fucking awesome.
Why thank you
How modest of you to resist putting yourself at the centre of it all.
Keep this up and you'll have us believing that the Tranniverse doesn't revolve around you!
Nice work.
Alli' Cat'
Sorry. That was me. I got my flickr id wrong. That's my id from another online thang.
Oh, I thought I'd made a new friend
Alli, I very nearly did put myself at the middle — it was only the thought of having to shift everyone round that made me not
Amazing work Siobhan...
Now go have a lie down in a darkened room for a few days
and a large bottle of wine
Edinburgh?
(Memo to self — either Siobhan is utilizing some very off-the-wall humour here or she really has been overdoing it with her blogmap.)
Selina Morse
Pretty Darn Cool.
Version 2.0 will have to be 3D, of course.
Karol, I don't know what happened to my name! 
Just found this quote on a newsfeed, i know it's not related to "The Tranniesphere" but i thought it was interesting.
"
President George W. Bush dismissed Zawahri's threats, saying the United States would stand its ground in Iraq.
"The comments by the number two man of al Qaeda make it clear Iraq is a part of this war on terror, and we're at war," he told reporters at his Texas ranch.
"People like Zawahri have a ideology that is dark, dim, backwards."
"
Err. yeah, they are Conservatives!
Becky (not EnVérité)
Wow what a great diagram or whatever it is shure looks neat, wonder what else would look neat done like this...
Davew
Nice. If I link to it, will it cause some weird loop that 'll tear the fabric of the universe apart, do you think?
That looks awesome, I cant open that pdf file link up there, what do I need for that.
Pity I nuked my apology-for-a-blog before I noticed Joanna had a link to it in her links
Made an msn spaces one if anyone wants a look or has any suggestions
http://spaces.msn.com/members/Lana-Gianstefani/
so nice, siobhan, to be included on your trannisphere. (oatmeal)
"Don't be fooled by the "v1.0" bit — I have no intention of doing a "v1.1" or a "v2.0" or whatever of it" — thank god for that! You do realise you've created the ultimate time thief for us trannies — we could "disappear" for hours inside the darn thing — I will not be drawn in, I will not be drawn in, I will...
groovy stuff...would a 3d version use the Z axis to display a sum of frequency and amount of content perhaps?
Thanks guys
Like I said, I'm not going to update it — the thing's eaten into far too much of the time I should be working already. But if I was someone who had All The Free Time In The World™ (like some people think I am ), then I would try and write something — rather like what Miss K was talking about scraping XML lists — that did it automatically. And maybe made people bigger depending on how many links they had.
Ack, I can see it now — you click a link on someone's site, and it takes you to their own personal Tranniesphere, and the more you click the the people they link to, the more the Tranniesphere grows to accomodate the new links in Smooth Flash Yumminess™...
...OK, so I'm not exactly sure how that would work — you'd either have to have some uber-intelligent web-crawler that understood the difference between a trannieblog and a normalblog (based on the number of animated GIFs? ), or you set up some kind of central repository that requires human input.
Maybe one day OK?
What worries me is what happens if all the sites featured all link back to the chart. Will this set up some self-replicating feedback loop, fracturing the fabric of space-time and causing the end of civilisation as we know it?
well, following the theory of general relativity, the fabric wouldn't be fractured it would merely be stretched so far by the gravitational effect of the feedback loop as to create a black hole which in turn would drag all the trannie websites into a pit of nothingness...until it encountered a 404 error where upon it would neutralise (my theory — a 404 which is an absence of something touching an overwhelming heavy and small mass of everything — either we all die or everything goes back to normal — I prefer the latter).
anyway I dont think it would happen as the feedback is very finite based on current technology (its dependant on the maximum output of the entities in the loop) and black holes require an almost infinite (though still finite) amount of mass in a certain space to be created. For it to happen we would require global broadband speed to equal or exceed the data throughput of reality. I dont know what that is — but it must be big.
Currently, rather than the end of civilisation happening, the internet would just get a bit slow, forcing you to make another cup of coffee.
What do they put in this coffee.... :-/
And people say that all we do is talk about frocks and make-up
I was wondering when you were going to get back to the "frocks and make-up" — thought they'd disappeared down a black hole. Anyhows, I'm off for a week sometime soon. So have fun and don't even think about being good, afterall you have your reputation to think of. Ciao.
can someone please tell me why I cant open the pdf file, I have acrobat reader
I can't get the links to work but that's probably cos I've got an Arse Computer TM but wow what a fantastic representation.
Lana, try right clicking the link and saving the file then opening it direct from Reader.
Thanks Miss K that worked
WOW. Just.......wow... what an amount of work that is! Fantastic!
very, very cool. and i just love it that i'm in the "little hub of angels"
great work!
Ivan Vasiljevic
by the way, i'm not ivan vasiljervic — i must have copied my blogger id incorrectly. doh!
i entered my name and stuff manually this time as i seem to be numerically disadvantaged...
Wow, great site!
This is the coolest thing ever!!
Lilac
my feeling is that building it isnt going to be half as hard as maintaining it. Is this something you'd considered? But to answer you question...
If in doubt, leave it out.
P.S. your script still doesn't seem to be picking up my avatar from my angels id (6926). Not that I mind so much, but just thought I'd point it out.