Hello smile

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...

Wobbles and Apologies

Gah. Listen, you really must excuse the slightly 'angry' tone of the last couple of things I posted. I could, of course, flit my head into self-righteous mode and go off on one about how irked some things make me, or how displeased I get when I see/read certain things online — but truth be told, I was just (a) very very drunk, and (b) very very tired (respectively).

I dunno why, but lately Ive been very self-editing when it comes to writing about how I feel about things. It used to be the case that I'd pour out page after page of teenage-laments revolving around such concepts as "It's Not Fair!" and "Why Does Everyone Hate Me?" — but it's ocurred to me that I don't do that now.

Maybe it's the different sense of 'audience' that I have — the realisation that people I know read this, rather than some anonymous soup of mouse-clickers makes me disinclined to 'bare all' (*fnaar*) in some kind of concrete text.

Perhaps.

Anyway, sod it — I'm going to have a bit of a whinge...

Every once in a while, I have what I like to call¹ Kitchen Floor Moments™. They can happen anywhere, but the kitchen floor seems to be my gravitational point for them.

(The name, incidentally, comes from this)

Dunno what it was really. I'd had a lovely Saturday with fireworks and friends, followed by a chilled Sunday and some excitement on Monday (during which I learned A New Skill™ which has upped the general excitement levels around here a gazillion-fold), but for some reason on Monday afternoon, walking back from the shops, my eyes started to fill.

...

I love the fluidity of my life. I know that a lot of people assume that I have it easy (and, perhaps I do to an extent), but apart from the oodles of time I have to devote to little experimental projects, what I enjoy the most is that I don't have to rigidly stick to a prescribed routine.

It's why sometimes you'll find me lying around on my arse when everyone else is at work, but equally why youll sometimes find me slaving away over some code (or something) at three o'clock in the morning while you're all tucked up in bed :tongue:

I find that creaivity comes in spurts — and that being a flexible individual means I can grab it whenever it does, and not have to put it aside on the shelf because I'm doing something 'rigid'.

Having said that though, I sometimes wonder and long for some stability — some reassurance that Things Will Be OK™ in the end. I suppose it's a bit like my love-life ... I relish being single without the responsibility of 'another' and the freedom to go out and snog whoever I want², but dammit sometimes I miss the stability that I used to have...

And also, I love the isolation that I have — the space to work and play and exist on my own terms, without having to ascribe to other's movements. The peace and calm of my own space ... but sometimes I miss the interactions with other people.

And it feels, sometimes, that despite all the things that I do — all the little projects, the experiments, the inputs I have in things, the advice, the code tweaks, the Photoshop fixes — despite all those, nothing ever seems to go anywhere.

And it was that little thought that brought me crashing with a bump onto the kitchen floor on Monday afternoon — shopping in one hand, head in the other — while half an ocean flooded out of my eyes.

I ran through a mental list of everything that I've done recently, and came to the crushing conclusion that even after I'd put so much effort into everything that I've done over the past few years, nothing had come to anything and I was still sat in the same place, with the same shit going on around me, no closer to some kind of ficticious ideal that I often picture myself in.

So I got pissed³

...

Actually, thinking about it, that happened on Tuesday, not Monday :unsure:

On Wednesday morning, I drove over to Leeds in what I think was my Worst Mood Ever™. Trudging up from the car park to the Uni I was struck with the sheer futility of life. Every step seemed an effort, and the possibility of spending a whole day trying to put a happy and intellectual face on seemed like too much to bear.

And then ... well ... I dunno — within seconds of sitting down at my desk and firing up my laptop, I was bombarded with requests and Pressing Issues™, and for some reason everything seemed OK. And by the end of the day I was on the top of the world, driving over to Harrogate with the stereo blaring Some Random Shit™ making me feel like life was sweet and that pretty soon everything's going to be hunky-dory.

:smile:

...

I have no idea why I'm telling you this BTW. Going back to what I said at the start of this page, I think some part of me has wanted to be more 'selective' about what I write recently — wanting to make sure that every single page is a good'un, packed with Useful Things™ and only filling up bandwidth when I've got something positive to write about.

But I think, maybe, that's an ideal outside of my own potential — and that my personal goal of being Quality All The Time™ and trying to make sure I appease the disparate audiences in my head all the time is something that's totally beyond me.

I need to splurge once in a while :wink:

To sum up: Things, right this second kinda suck. But some of the stuff going on seems to be actually about make life groovy. And this time it really does look like it's going to happen.

If it does, I'll be the Happiest Princess In The World™

If it doesn't, if anyone needs me, I'll be on the kitchen floor.

¹ Well, I say "like to call" — I'd rather not have them and not need to call them anything, really.

² Within reason, natch.

³ Don't bother OK? I know that's not the way to deal with things.

AFK Ettiquette

So I'm standing outside my gallery, talking to a colleague about some fun things at work, when my mother rings.

It was rather cool actually — what just happened before that it. We were chatting about some developments and stuff, when a large balloon passed overhead and two avies popped their heads out of the basket to say "hi".

To be honest though, I had a sneaky suspicion (I'm a mistrusting avatar :wink: ) that they were actually just flying over the grid shooting at things with a pop-gun, and it was my friendly "HELLO BALLOON PEOPLE!" that made them come down :wink:

Still. Whatever. Sorry — this has nothing to do with my mother calling me :unsure:

So I'm like "Sorry! Phone!" and I make Kisa slump forward and assume the Away Position while my mother bombards me with questions about what I'm doing for Christmas.

("Well, seeing as it's my last chance, I was thinking maybe of spending it in Lancaster" ... that didn't go down well I fear)

All the time this is happening though, I'm watching myself on screen being very rude indeed, and I'm wanting to let my colleague (who is now just stood there staring at me) know that it's my mother on the phone and actually (which I'll explain in a sec) it's quite an important phonecall.

So I quickly type "It's my mother. I might be a while" — which, of course, wakes Kisa up in that ever-so-cute "whoah! Where am I?" animation, and gives the impression that I'm finished and ready to pick up where we left off.

This, sorry, is basically just my way of saying "wouldn't it be nice if you could send an IM to someone without flipping out of AFK mode?"

...

According to my mother, the place I spent a lot of (fond) childhood holidays has been sold to a developer :sad: So I can add that to my growing list¹ of Places From My Youth I Can No Longer Go Back To™

It's a shame really — it's where I had my first snog — and for a long time now I've been wanting to spend a week over there one summer. Guess I can't now.

Still, everything around me seems to be changing right now. The perpetual surroundings of Lancaster and my memories seems to be all ganging up on me, telling me it's time to move on.

...

There was one other thing that my mother told me — a rather big thing. But I need to talk to my brother first, then I can share the news.

Trust me — it's good :smile:

¹ It's two-things long now — that place and my old home

We shall look forward to hearing about the rather big thing.

I don't think you should write for your audience (by this, i mean don't write/not write things because of someone in the audience). You got this audience by writting for yourself and then others picked up on your writing style and started coming back regularly! Other people that you've then invited, only need to look at the archives to see what you've written previously!

We like the way you fill our bandwidth. Even when it's Second Life stuff and hardly anyone comments (in your own words(ages ago, I'm not looking for it)!), we still read the whole thing and then flick back every so often to see what comments other people have left and to see if you've added more about anything at all. Well, I do anyway :unsure:

As for the Kitchen Floor Moments™, everyone has them once in a while, and sometimes more often than othes. I like to think of them as my psyche's way of telling me to take a break for a few days.

(I didn't think I'd write that much. I could start my own blog if only i did anything worth wrtiting about!)

bekibartlett

I am reminded of something written by Anne Morrow Lindberg. For the life of me I can't find the quote so I'll try to paraphrase:

No one achieves an ideal life. No matter how well we plan and how hard we work, life is often drudgery and occaisionally tragedy. What we can achieve is a sense of pride in ourself, not because of the outcomes of our efforts but of the efforts themselves.

If we work hard and be good to people and fight our battles with honor, then at the end of the day we can take pride that we did our best.

From what I can see, you, Siobhan/Kisa/Graham have plenty to be proud of. Much more than most.

Savannah Hemingway

Thank you :smile:

No one achieves an ideal life

Perhaps, but it would be a bad thing if we all stopped trying for one wouldn't it? :unsure:

A Mathematical Puzzle

OK, here's one for you. You've got a rectangle whose sides are x and y. How do you work out what to take off each side of the rectangle, so that you end up with a square whose sides are the same length as the smaller of the original rectangle's sides, regardless of what x and y are?

No really. I'm asking :unsure: I know some blogs post little conundrums then give you the answers a few days later and appear all clever and smug.

Here at Chez Curran, we like a more collaborative approach to things :biggrin:

If I work it out, then I'll post...

x=x-(x-y)*(x>y)

y=y-(y-x)*(y>x)

I haven't had to think of this kinda thing since the first macs came out in the mid 80's. Too many cobwebs upstairs now — the cogs have nearly rusted solid.

Isobel Clarke

That is bloody brilliant :smile: I wouldn't have thought of using (x>y)

Now, if I can just get my sodding awk script to work, I'm laughing :smile:

Isobel's cogs aren't rusted just yet.

It requires a test of "is x

Becky T

It requires a test of "is x<y?"

That's the thing, isn't it? My head's been running around in "can I use the ratio of x to y somehow?" for a bit, but Isobel's use of (x>y) being equal to 1 when true and 0 when false is perfect, and avoids the gazillion ifs I've got going on in my current script :biggrin:

Huh? It truncated my comment!

The value to subtract from y, IF x<y, is (y-x), and the new side length will be y-(y-x), which is simply equal to x.

Becky T

If only I'd written some kind of 'preview' function :wink:

(Erin reads <s as the start of tags — you need to use < I fixed the second one :smile: )

People often forget that Boolean logic states are also numerical values.

Isobel Clarke

Indeed — I totally did

For the curious, here's what I needed that for — it's part of a script that converts an image into a centred square of itself...

/usr/local/bin/identify -format "%w %h" $SOURCE | /usr/bin/awk '{ print $2*($1>$2) + $1*($2>$1) "x" $2*($1>$2) + $1*($2>$1) "+" ($1-$2)*($1>$2)/2 "+" ($2-$1)*($2>$1)/2 }' | /usr/bin/xargs --replace={} /usr/local/bin/convert $SOURCE -crop {} $DESTINATION

...

The thing is though (as my eyes start to inflate and the call of bed drowns out the stereo), about an hour or so ago, I was lying in the bath, thinking about ideas for things, and I realised that if I just had little square versions of pictures on the website at work, I could get a Great Big Important Thing Done Easily™. But having spent a wee while achieving it (via thrashing through the weirdness of having (it would seem) three different versions of ImageMagick and xargs installed on the three machines I've been using tonight — and trying to compensate for the tiny syntax differences between each)...

...I've totally forgotten what that Big Important Thing™ was.

:unsure:

"People often forget that Boolean logic states are also numerical values."

That's so 1, Isobel.