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...
Ooh, You Bastard
Just when I was about to go to sleep and all
Oooh — that was an accident. Well spotted 
Spooky indeed.
Working His Ass Off
Steve Jobs' Best Quotes Ever
"The products suck! There's no sex in them anymore!"
Just an observation — it may just be me, but I've only just realised that many of the images on this blog are actually embedded video. The videos are great — it's just not always obvious that they are videos, until or unless I actually click on them. (There's no underlying URL when I mouseover them, whereas your Flickr images show the underlying Flickr URL when I mouseover them.)
Your blog, your rules, etc, but I wonder if providing some visible clue that "this is an embedded video" might be an idea?
Yeah, I'm just trying to work out the best way 
I've been thinking
along the lines of automagically overlaying either a QuickTime logo over
the image, or the words "click to play" (or something). I'll need to get
my head around the GD library first.
The thing is though, I'm trying to avoid over-complicated elements to all this — trying to keep it as simple as possible. I don't like having 'instructions' or 'labels' on things in the general stream of stuff — but yeah, some kind of visual "this is a film" thing is needed.
Kind of adds to the mystery (hidden embedded objects). I usually know there's an embedded video because the page takes longer to load — a la quicktime plugin initialization...
oh, and could you please get some RAM in that box? 
What are you talking about?! He's got 1.5 Gig in him
BT cracks down on broadband data gluttons [MacUser]
Well something is going on, Alexa reports you as "Speed: Very Slow (93% of sites are faster), Avg Load Time: 6.1 Seconds" (via http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=www.tranniefesto.co.uk)
Maybe the crackdown has already started, though more likely its your php code.
though more likely its your php code
Or maybe it's because I server this site through a 256K DSL line, and
share it with all my students who are ftping Gigs of MPEG4s all over the
place. Eh? 
Or it's Flickr. Flickr is slow.
Well, it could be Flickr, but I just checked another very popular site that makes heavy use of the Flickr API, as well as a couple of other RSS feeds and obviously some fairly intricate PHP processing and .htaccess constructs and it clocks in at "Fast (68% of sites are slower), Avg Load Time: 1.3 Seconds" which is not bad for such a site.
Obviously whoever wrote this code has seriously optimised it, taking advantage of feed caching and post-loading Javascript procedures to load and display the pages quickly...
...or, even more obviously, they don't actually give a shit?
hmmm...I made that too obtuse, didn't I.
of course, the obvious reason this site loads slow is because it's so popular and people all over the world are all trying to load it at the same time! I'm sure that's it...
too obtuse
Nah — I'm just in a grump today. I'm being bombarded by stupid questions from students who should know better.
In fact, right this second one of them is talking in the most irritating voice EVER — and hasn't noticed that I'm not paying him one blind bit of attention.
Sorry — I'll cheer up later when I'm drunk. Or get worse — one of the two.
I demand to know what the most irritating voice ever sounds like. Because if it can beat my housemates, then I will buy you wine.
DId you not see my picture yesterday? I laugh in the face your offer of
wine
Meh
I dunno what's wrong with me today. This morning, I was up-and-out the house with a spring in my step. The sun was shining, I was all full of myself for having sussed out my little video-blogging script, and I was coasting along knowing that it wouldn't be hard to implement here at Uni so the students could republish their stuff on their own blogs.
In fact, as it turns out (with a little moment of panic and debugging), I did just that — which means that there's slightly more point to them posting their stuff all over my server.
But the thing is, well, today has been a day of constant interruptions — not just of people interrupting what I'm doing, but people interrupting each other whilst interrupting what I'm doing.
Sort of like this:
X: "Siobhan, can I ask you a question? How do I..."
Y: "Siobhan, could you show me how to..."
Z: (plonking himself down on the seat next to me and pulling the keyboard out of my hand) "Siobhan, can I show you something?"
As a result, I've felt all day like I've been buffeted left and right, up and down, forwards and backwards. My nerves are on a knife-edge, and inside of me there's been this constant urge just to scream in a few people's faces.
So, I really must apologise if anything above seems a little grumpy.
...
There is a sense, perhaps, maybe, that just by me being here, I suddenly become a resource for people to use. I think sometimes, that some of them have it in their heads that I hold every answer to every single software/hardware-related problem that they have — and if I don't tell them, then I'm just being mean.
The thing is though, what I really want to tell them (or rather 'teach them') is how to find things out by themselves.
There was one today, who wanted to know which effect to use in After Effects to achieve a particular thing. It soon became apparent, through talking to him for five minutes, that not only did he not know the first thing about using After Effects (like "what a composition" was), he didn't really grasp the concept of pixels.
I really hate the way that software is seen as some kind of 'shortcut' to a result, and the idea that it's the software itself that's responsible for a photograph/film/audio track.
Ack, I dunno — I guess I'm just a little sick of people wanting to run before they can walk.
Jowlers.com
I guess I'm just a little sick of people wanting to run before they can walk.
Now this, I can understand. Everything I know about my job, I taught myself. I didn't just start doing what I do. I had to build up to it, constantly screwing up along the way.
However, you are their teacher, and they're paying to have you show them things right? Maybe a wholesome mix of "this is how you do it" and "this is where you can find out more about how to do it, so RTFM dammit!" is in order?
Now, I'm going off to create my Jowler's submission.
If you just point them in the right direction and tell them to play around with it (since they can probably just "Undo" any potential problems) instead of actually showing them, then they not only learn how to do what they needed to do, but probably some other stuff too. Hell, I never had anyone around to show me how to do anything at all and now I know a lot more than people my age (she says, not really knowing). The problem is that whether we want to admit it or not, we have a tendency to use people like you as some kind of crutch. There's really no need for it.
Or you could start a whole "Students Teach Students"-type thing. That helps, too.
Just...I get your dilemma. I understand it perfectly. Considering I used to have classmates running to me for every little thing they didn't know how to do, and I work where I'm supposed to help people do those kinds of things, I know that kind of aggravation. But the above thingy really works. Just last week, a girl I helped before was so goshdamn happy that she was able to make her own PDF. It was nice.
However, you are their teacher, and they're paying to have you show them things right?
Actually, no. When I'm in less of a bad mood, I'll try and explain why.
Right now, I'm off to the pub.
[spam]
mmmm — serving spam in the pub, are they? Tasty
...people interrupting each other whilst interrupting what I'm doing...I suddenly become a resource...
Welcome to my world!
Being a bit of a guru is a double-edged sword: On one hand, you get to show off with all the neat things you can do; on the other, everything that's evolved sufficiently to walk upright beats a path to your door and bugs you with stupid questions — preventing you from doing anything! I usually just try to 'suck it up' and answer their questions; I remember only too well how people helped me when I was just starting out. That said, there are days when I wish I had a retro 'Frankie' shirt: Frankie say, "R.T.F.M."
There are, however, one class of people who are completely 'beyond the pale' and deserve to be strangled with their own entrails: The ones who ask the same effin stooopid question TWICE!
Alli' Cat'
[spam]
..."ooh its so nice, I'm gonna have seconds", she said.
[spam]
"The thing is though, what I really want to tell them (or rather 'teach them') is how to find things out by themselves."
Oh this I understand completely! I don't want to tell them how to find things out, but just to bugger off and find it out on their own. I was going to rant but I'll spare you all of that. There's the t-shirt I'd buy if it wasn't tacky, 'No, I won't help you fix your computer', except it needs to say not only that but 'hook up the dvd player, attach a file to an e-mail, transfer a photo from the sd card to flickr, etc...' Not that I mind teaching somebody that's willing to learn, it's those that don't bother even paying attention and just want me to be their own private software solution. Double click on me and I'll cure all their ills. I think for me it's more a lack of their appreciation than the fact that they don't know what they're doing.
Mint
Conclusion:
Spams screws with your layout.....a tad.
[spam]
That's easy for you to say.
Aw, and I bet your mood was SO much better when you got back from the pub. 
Conclusion, there's a hole or something you need to plug. This is the first spamming I've seen....
"The thing is though, what I really want to tell them (or rather 'teach them') is how to find things out by themselves."
Oh I've been down this road, one of the few things I think I did successfully... so my sage advice:
You can't tell them how to find things out by themselves and you can't teach them how to find things out by themselves BUT you can find things out for yourself in front of them so they see what's involved. And you have to do this over and over and over and over and over with apparent joy and wonder and a bit of self-deprecating humour...
also you don't know whether or not you've taught somebody something this complex in the short space of a term. It can take years to register. I get emails from students from 20 or more years ago who decide to tell me how I changed their lives. I had no idea... Nevermind, now i'm changing my own life (she giggles).
Penny
"he journey over the heath gave them in a monotonous piece, composed of three tones, quite dissimilar"
"while ady lorence, with much grace and courtesy, followed up this invitation by her own. o the surprize of some, and the disappointment of the rest"
hmmmm, a bit jamesjoyceian... well done!
Penny
Mint. As in Mint the club, where back to Basics was held in the late 90's?
Polo mints for stools, Dave Beer running around like a loon, Tom Middletoon and alike spinning some delicious tunes?
Halcyon days.
Ignore that last comment, you meant "mint" as in good/ cool/ spot on/ great, didn't you?
Actually Kat, no — I meant the club 
It was where I did a spot of VJing for the Beeb in 2001.
(Fucking spambots 
Normally they target days way in the past. That was quite embarassing. I'd better plug that hole...)
I was just wondering why the street sign doesn't simply read 7:30pm — 6:30am.
Selina
I keep telling ya, you'll never escape 12:34! I do have a question, though. Did you alter the exif data manually, or did you actually wait until it was 12:34:56 to take that shot? Or neither, and that was just too spooky!