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...
Void Stuff
From time to time — although, curiously, usually over the summer months — I find myself in a bit of a state of limbo. Days seem to stretch out into weeks, all the time goading me into a state of ennui, taunting me with the promise of fun after an unspecified amount of time but rubbing the current frustrations in my face like a rancid piece of cat shit.
During these moments of self-pity and tedium, even though I've got so many Fun And Exciting!™ things to do, I find myself repeatedly banging my head against the bedposts, worrying about Stuff™.
Even the usual escape mechanism of trussing myself up in some ridiculous and impractical frock doesn't work (especially since a rather alarming number of them are stuffed into bags in the loft at the moment).
The most obvious result of this, is that I have a fair few aborted blog posts currently occupying unsaved tabs in BBEdit. Normally, when I'm My Usual Self™, I fire these off not really worrying too much about how they come across — content to clarify and restate at a later date, treating them like flagpole thoughts in the hope that someone will come along and salute.
But after a while — when I've left (for whatever reason) a large (for me) amount of time between whatever I've written — I start to think "Shit, I'd better make the next one a good one". So, for the main, these unfinished thoughts sit here waiting to be saved to Erin.
There are two that might just see the light of day: (1) a reassessment of all the things that I believe — because as much as I love the Medium Of Blogs™, it really bugs me that so much information and discussion gets lost in the dark recesses of archives, swamped by general chit-chat and useless Mac links; (2) an actual helpful post all about linkage and views and attention, prompted by the strange pram-crash effect in a trannyflickr discussion.
Lots of things are floating around me in fragmented pieces, calling out to be pulled together into some kind of cohesive structure. Snippets of lives and personalities are wanting to be combined into some actual sense of self. Much of what I felt or thought about myself recently has exploded into id-soup, waiting for me to pull my self together.
But, in the meantime, do please excuse me for being a bit shit.
...
Ack, you know what? I need a fucking drink.
Soundbitten
One of the things that I really hate that I do, is chuck ideas out without really thinking through what I mean.
For a while now, there's been a small niggling thought at the back of my head that I really need to expand on something I tossed out one evening when I was plumped-up with confidence and pride:
"Ambiguity is our friend. Not 'androgyny', ambiguity "
I have to confess, that rather than it being a Call To Arms and a statement of intent, I really don't actually know what I meant by that.
There's something about "androgyny" that I think falls short in explaining what it is that I do — but, dammit, I dont have the words at the moment.
Sorry.
I <3 My EyeTV
Note to self: Must number files properly
id-soup is some of the worst tasting stuff imaginable. It's best to just take it all down in one big gulp and worry about it in a day or so...
Cool... I have an underused Miglia EvolutionTV that I keep saying that I'm going to get organised with sometime and record some stuff. Actually they just repeated the pilot episode to the new Dr Who on Canadian tv few weeks ago, and I was actually able to watch it. I loved it, and thought I should try to see more of them, but it hasn't happed yet.
Emily Grae
The Self – it’s funny, its one of those concepts that we intrinsically know what it is. Yet when we try and pin it down it becomes extremely complex and elusive.
I kind of feel that a lot people never have cause to examine their sense of self, which I think is kind of sad really.
Ciara
I love the preference of ambiguity to androgeny. Here's what it means to me: Androgeny is boring unisex blandness. It's a man or woman who looks neither masculine nor feminine, just neutral, or neuter. But ambiguity is a delicious mystery, a fascinating person who's either a sexy female or a bold "bloke in a frock." You're not sure which, but you're intrigued.
Am I close?
Savannah Hemingway
Oooh, yes. I think that's kinda what I meant 
Not So Elegant
Don't get me wrong, as I might have hinted above, I so totally love what my EyeTV does. The thing is though, well, its Export to DVD option hasn't quite worked as well as I wanted it to.
Admittedly, a warning comes up telling me that if I had the latest version of Toast, my life would be easier, but when I export a widescreen programme it letterboxes it, and makes it 16:9
So (as well as it taking forever), I get überwidescreen.
Not what you want really 
But, with the help of a few handy pieces of software, I've been able today to get super-fuckoff-quality DVDs burning quite happily...
Export the native MPEG1 stream from EyeTV
Use Compressor to encode the .m2v file (60 minutes, High quality, widescreen)
Use MPEGStreamclip (hurrah!) to encode the .aif because Compressor doesn't seem to want to do it from the MPEG1
Bang it all together in DVD Studio Pro
It's not, I must confess, a quick-and-easy solution — but it works dammit
I can see a G5 that's going to be very busy encoding tonight while I'm asleep...
Oh, and before I forget, @Kath — to make id-soup taste yummy, just add some ego-croutons 
Ambiguous Vs. Androgynous
Aren't you just splitting semantic hairs here? Ambiguous: having or expressing more than one possible meaning. Androgynous: not clearly male or female. I mean, if you make your gender ambiguous don't you, by definition, become androgynous? Now look what you've done: my head hurts!
Ambiguous Vs. Androgynous
I asked if you’d expanded on this when you posted the comment on Flickr. The statement interested me as I thought it might provide another view point on a subject I think about a lot. I’ve kind of followed your web output, occasionally and from afar, usually liking what you have to say. My initial reaction to the comment was that the differences between them are subtle, with ambiguous implying intent and androgynous representing more of a natural state. Anyhoo, I like the site a lot, and now I’ve stepped out of the shadows you’ll probably not be able to shut me up
Cay
See, I do think there's a perceptible difference between the two things, but I'm finding it really hard to pin it down. On the one hand, part of me thinks that 'androgynous' implies intent — it's usually (in my mind anyway) the result of a specific stripping down of clues and indications, in part the way that Savannah said earlier. It makes me think of 'default' and 'generic'.
(Although, I admit, that's again just in my head)
Whereas 'ambiguous' implies a different sort of intent — an intent on adding and embellishing. So one is about stripping away indicators, while the other is about overloading with indicators.
True, the resultant confusion is probably the same — but I feel it's achieved through totally different means.
Or, to put it another way, the response from outside is, in one case "WTF am I looking at? There's no information here!", while the other is "WTF am I looking at? There's too much information here!"
Maybe.
As a matter of perception, androgeny could be said to be within the realm of the Known: you can recognise it. Ambiguity could be in either the realm of the Unknown, or the Unknowable. The viewer has to fish for a suitable interpretation without the certainty of knowledge.
Or,
Androgeny has been done,
Ambiguity is fun.
I’ve just spent 15 mins thinking hard about this and I keep hitting walls. For a minute there I thought the answer lay in where you start from… but I’m not sure that plays out. I’m just left with how I interpret the words. Of the two I chose to look androgynous as I associate it with a more natural look. I don’t like to draw attention to myself. If an ambiguous look is achieved by adding and embellishing then one would have to be careful to leave clues, that is if one is lucky enough to be able to eradicate doubt by adding and embellishing… so I guess it might have something to do with what you start with after all. Probably.
The thing is here, that I really must point out that I'm not trying to be disparaging about androgyny — it's just that I don't think it fits with who (or what) I am. And I imagine that a lot of trannies would agree with me there.
Where I think they'd disagree with me, is this idea of ambiguity. I think mostly that trannies try to be non-ambiguous — specifically female in appearance. And while, on the whole, I do try to do exactly that (for whatever reasons I may have), I like playing around with what's acceptible and what's not.
I guess it goes back (a little) to my general feelings on "being accepted" by society at large. I don't want to be accepted. I want to fuck with their heads.
Sometimes
When You Can't Have What You Want...
...it only makes you want it more
Yeh, I guess we are coming at his from different places. I do this full time and generally I just want an easy life. The wilful aspect of ambiguity could (and does in my experience) court alienation, which is hard work to deal with all the time. Androgyny is less of a statement, and therefore somehow more acceptable, although that’s not why I embrace it, it just suits my identity. Nice chat
I know how you feel on SL. I got my laptop back today and had a 10 minute explore. Now I've got time to login properly, I can't 
Oh well. Try again later.
Serena Mayfly
The bad wolf burned some dvd's. I cant get the bbc but I got to finnaly watch Doomsday. Great really.
jonny b good
Do you remember the sci-fi series Babylon 5? Apparently, these http://www.swordandstone.com/armour.html were originally made for it. I think I must have missed that episode.
Must dash — gotta' update my xmas wish-list!