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...
Dammit
Normally, it doesn't really matter how much milk I have on a Tuesday morning, because by now, I'd be half-way to Skipton.
But after two days of being barely able to move without my back going into spasms, I've decided to rest it and take the day off.
Yesterday evening, I bought one of those 'self-heating' back pad thingies, and it's worked a treat — there's only a slight ache this morning. But I figured that two and a half hours in the car would probably make it just as bad again, so I'm not feeling guilty.
...
On Sunday, BTW, I was Googling for info and advice on back pain — and came across this (paraphrased) quote on some e-medical website:
Lower Back Pain. Symptoms: Pain in lower back.
Brilliant 
I had a lower back injury a few years ago that resulted in a trip to the osteopath, and he did wonders for me (I had a slipped disc). I injured myself in the same place again last year and took a cocktail of meds that did the trick (muscle relaxer, pain reliever, and anti-inflammatory). If you've been injured as opposed to having a chronic problem, I'd go the latter route first if I were you, before you let anyone crack you around or hit you with hammers. If you find anything interesting related to chronic residual back pain, let me know! Yoga is nice, and swimming too.
f601
OK, um, listen 
I probably really have posted this film before. But never mind, the film isn't really what's important...
(A while back, me and a couple of friends were trying to find a way to film beautiful smooth rotating objects — like the kind of thing you see when you get someone with a Rostrum Camera on the case. We tried all sorts of Heath-Robinson approaches — even building a complicated set of gears and stuff out of Lego Techik. "If only we had something that rotated as smooth as our float-head tripod" we lamented.
*doh*
Sometimes the obvious answer is staring you in the face )
...no, the important thing, is that I've hacked the code that I wrote to handle quicktime/MPEG4/AVI/3GP uploads to the course website that I wrote at the start of the year, and repurposed it so that I can video blog by email 
And all before lunch 
As absolutely beautiful as that video is, um, would it be at all possible to share the code you used to post it? Or is it too hard-coded for you own purpose? I mean, obviously you wouldn't want to give out code that posted only to your site, is there a way to choose where you want to ftp into? Or at least outline what the code more or less does, and somehow make it relate to transvestim! Unless of course you want to keep it all top-secret...
Well, the ftp directory is kinda hard-coded into the code to take advantage of the Big Fat Server™ that I use for a couple of things, so no, not really. Not without sharing the entire code (and there's a lot)
What I'm doing at the moment though, is finding out about various blog APIs — and how to make new posts in them. I've sussed out Blogger.com:
http://siobhansvideotest.blogspot.com/
...and I was just having a peek at Movable Type (more complicated )
I have plans, you see 
I {heart} Virgin Wines
"Buy twelve, get thirteen free"
Wow. What a deal. Two hangovers for the price of one!
surely its 2.083(recurring) hangovers for the price of one.
Yeah, hold on a second — are yous suggesting that I can get through 12½ bottles in one sitting?
Not twelve and a half no....
Maybe five or six? So four for the price of one? 
If it were me I'd just be calling it a continuous headache interrupted by sleep. No use counting hangovers...it's like trying to count the number of stars in the sky. Which, by the way, you can't do too well when you're hung over.
The trick is to lie down underneath a large piece of glass and put black tape over each star as you count them off.
You'll need a lot of tape.
Let us know you get on.
I'll try it tonight, assuming there's a piece of glass that I have lying around that's big enough... might smother me, though. Problem is that I definitely won't be hung over, so the experiment will be rendered useless.
But anyway, you can't count the stars (very well) with a hangover, but I figured out something that at least I can do with a hangover. Summarize psychology research articles in APA format. Ta-da! I was surprised to find a good grade on that, considering the state I was in when I did it...
Embarassed Napkin
Seeing as how I can't seem to stop myself linking to the page where I tell the story about how I met Eddie Izzard, I thought you might like to see the film that came out of that little, um, social faux pas.
I've only actually made¹ one film since then, which is a bit shit of me really I dunno — I guess I reached a point where I realised that it wasn't enough to just keep making stripey films, I needed to get people to see them as well.
(¹ I say "made", it's not finished yet. It's a 90 minute striporama set to a progressive, dischordant 'soundscape' that a colleague was experimenting with. Apparently a French TV channel are interested in it )
(Note to self: At some point will you please get round to fixing the bug where films don't get processed if they don't have an audio track. Ta)
The film looks lovely, it reminds me of "roobarb and custard" though.
rats that didn't work should have been a link to "roobarb and custard"
Just missing a quote that's all Jane.
Hope you don't mind, but I've fixed it for you
www.eyefood.co.uk
Once upon a time, I had a little idea for a video-based website...
See, the thing is that around 1999/2000, I'd been noticing a lot of shite films that were circulating around, all labeled "New Media". They were mostly Premier-based things — and heavily effects-laden.
There was one in particular that stuck in my memory — a short film consisting mainly of aeroplanes taking off and landing ... but wait! — these aeroplanes had a filter applied. That's what made them "cool".
(It's the same thing with most 'digital' art these days. I look at it and a voice in the back of my head screams "yes, well done again Photoshop")
I figured though, that there must be loads of people experimenting with new ways of making films, people dicking around in their bedrooms with After Effects and the like, making weird and wonderful films.
Films that never saw the light of day.
And so I kinda had this little idea — a website that you could upload films to, to share them with people, discuss them, get resources for making them, and find out about stuff that was going on.
The real killer part of this idea was that I was going to pitch it to the BBC, so that they could go through the stuff that was there and showcase it on some obscure channel that they might (or might not) have in the pipeline.
...
I dunno. One of the things that really bugs me about myself is that sometimes I have vaguely cool ideas — but I never follow them up.
I find it slightly ironic, slightly frustrating, that it's taken me six years to actually write the code for such a website — and that the climate is only now ripe for such a thing, at a time when I've no longer got anything to do with the BBC, let alone a certain channel they might have up their sleeves.
...
Maybe I should rekindle that idea. If only I knew someone who worked there...
Today Was A Day When Things Arrived
You know, as guilty as I feel for taking today off (even though I needed it), I'm rather glad that I did. For today saw a rather unprecedented amount of delivery-van-activity at my house.
First off, I had the postman call, and with him came the delights of Tit Glue (and remover) a Happy Bank Statement™ (a rare occurrance), and something I'll mention in a bit.
Then, the Virgin Wine man came, bringing (as I've already mentioned) 25 bottles of wine.
And after that came the tail-end of a delivery from additions-direct.com — just a skirt.
So yeah. Goodness, joy, and happiness all round
...
(The "something" was a pair of silk French Knickers. More trannie-points to me!)
But minus several thousand trannifesto points for having at least one bottle of white wine in that lot. And don't tell me it's for cooking.
I should give you the number for my osteopath. She's very good. She's german, she gets me to take all my clothes off and then hits me with hammers.
I pay her money for this.