Saturday, 16th December, 2006

First Look: Photoshop CS 3

"[Those without a CS2 licence] can download the application (for Windows and as a Mac Universal Binary) and use it for 2 days" — Good job it's speedy then [wired.com]

Housebling

There are a few candidates around Lancaster for "most hideously decorated house", I must document them and tag them "housebling" — I encourage others to do likewise

Is It License Or Licence?

"[a] way of knowing which to use is to replace the 'practice' or 'licence' word you want with 'advice' or 'advise'" — just a note-to-self, because I got it totally wrong earlier

In case you were wondering BTW, yes, I am just going to post a bunch of links today.

*cough*http://www.flickr.com/groups/housebling/*cough*

Although its pool is a bit rubbish...

If You're Going to Be a Female, Please Don't Be an Airhead

"[W]hat's riling me is, shall we say, a certain underlying attitude that he (and some of the other would-be gals I've met) seem to have about what it means to be a woman." — Miss K linked to this ages ago. I should have commented at the time, that whilst this is a very emotional piece, it does raise the question that — I think — a lot of us are afraid to ask: Does what we do offend women, because of the way that some of us equate 'femininity' with 'ditziness'?

I know that I, for one, get very irate when I see grown men exploring their 'feminine side' through being 'girly', and wonder whether that's one of the reasons people don't take us very seriously.

And don't get me started on the "I'm having a blonde moment" thing — if we want people to stop stereotyping us, then we shouldn't stereotype others. No?

(She said, realising that she was just about to launch into a chav-based stereotype about housebling herself )

URNA is getting out of the Adult Content Business

"We've always felt that having the Adult Content Section of URNA detracted from our Primary Goal, which is, to provide a Community for Transgendered People, their Friends and their Family." — hmm. That's rather interesting. Not sure what I think about that.

"th?"

del.icio.us clipped my original post

Yeah, that article rang a lot of bells with me. It's something I've ranted about before, it's also something that really used to wind Kathie up — she'd sometimes be reading something over my shoulder, brimming with rage¹

Not sure why I didn't mention it at the time I think perhaps I was maybe planning on building up to another rant — but things got in the way.

¹ I miss that

I also meant to follow up on it but forgot.

Considering your news, that's highly forgivable

Tell you what, you gotta wonder just how many TVs you could leave in standby, if all of the blinghouses¹ turned their lights off...

¹ Blinghouse. n. A house with housebling on it.

*boom boom*

You astound me with your comic genuis

Guy Browning: How to ... blog

"Posting bad things on your blog is like dumping rubbish in space. Eventually it will fall to earth and could hurt someone, very possibly you."

Yes I was very very careful which quote I used from that, in light of current events

Now all I need is some contributions

Unfortunately, I've not left the house all day. So I have no pictures

On... Mailing Lists

I have a confession to make: Tonight was the first time I read any of the posts in The UK Angels mailing list for four months.

I can't remember exactly why it was — I guess I'd just gotten a little tired and irritated of the constant stream of a lot of the gumpf that was coming into my inbox — but I made the decision to switch to the digest version, and it wasn't much longer 'til I'd modified the rule that shoved them into their own folder to also mark them as 'read'.

I think I was trying to 'de-clutter', perhaps. I'd found that the signal-to-noise ratio was too much (little?) to warrant getting individual messages — and that more times than not, the excitement of seeing the little red star in my Dock was too quickly replaced with a crushing sense of disappointment. The promise of exciting TV news, scintilating gossip, or fervent discussion gave way too often to mindless "ME TOO!"s.

To be perfectly honest, I'm considering doing exactly the same thing with the Second Life Education mailing list, which is either just a barrage of introductions, or a back-slapping excercise — mostly.

I dunno what it is about mailing lists — they and I just don't seem to mix very well. I think it's got something to do with a 'levelling' effect — both in terms of the people and the emails themselves.¹

The emails all have the same weight — which means that a tiny quip appears in my inbox exactly the same as a lengthy discussion. If I scan down the list of them, I can't tell if something's going to inspire excitement and interest in me, or if it's going to be a non-snipped, badly re-quoted reply, with "I agree" tagged somewhere within it.

And don't get me started on the ones that slip through the "plain text" filter and spew various sizes (usually tiny) of bad HTML out of my monitor at me (although admittedly, that doesn't happen with The Angels )

But the people get levelled too — and what I find is that I'm always drawn to a 'lowest common denominator' in how I perceive the majority of participants in a listserv²

It seems (and sorry for being harsh) that The Angels (for example) decends in my mind to the 'girly' chitchat that the linked article above finds so offensive — with the occasional beacon of maturity sticking out like a sore thumb.

(Dammit Curran. Stop mixing your metaphors)

It's like, I suppose, a room in which everyone is talking at once — with the same level of volume in their voice...

...which, I suppose, in the spirit of 'democracy' or something is maybe a good thing — but I can't help but wish sometimes that there was a way of turning down the volume on the more tedious voices

...

The thing is though, I also have to admit that in the space of those four months, I've managed to cut myself off from the general trend of transvestite discussion — and a lot of the thoughts and stuff I've written about in that time has been rather turgid and uninspired.

I was looking back through some old posts a few days ago, and it struck me that some of the better things I've written (in terms of rantage, at least) have been prompted directly from things I've read in mailing lists.

(Here's a fucking good example)

So it's a bit of a Catch-22 thingumy wotsit (although not really ) — I find mailing lists to be soul-sapping, ire-inflaming, rant-building depths of tedium ... but without them, I have nothing to rant about

...

Anyways

Tonight, as I said, I read through a few of the digests. Now, forgive me for not being a bundle of congratulatory joy, but will someone pulease shove at least a couple of words of caution into the "I have come out to my wife" thread — something along the lines of:

That's great. Well done. But don't think for a second that life will be all lovely and roses³ from here on in. Coming out to anyone is just the start of a long process of 're-acquaintance' — a two-way dialogue. It's not just about saying "I'm this" and that becoming the status quo — opinions, desires, likes, dislikes all change over time — and as well as your wife suddenly finding things about you, you're going to suddenly find out things about her.

It's not a question of "things can only get better" — you and your wife have just started down a long road, one that's going to be difficult at times. Make sure you show a great deal of consideration to how she feels, and most of all remember that she's just found out that there's a whole other side to the guy she married.

And when someone says something like "but once its done", take what they say with a pinch of salt, because it's never "done"

But not me, obviously. Because I'm chicken.

¹ Have I said this before? I think I might have...

² For the record: "The word 'listserv' is now often used as a generic term for any email-based mailing list application of that kind. L-Soft international, Inc. has a registered trademark for the term, and argues that it is not legal to use the term commercially except in reference to the L-Soft product; using the word in the generic sense is not a trademark infringement, but does contribute to trademark genericide. The standard generic terms are electronic mailing list or email list." — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISTSERV Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some hoovering to do...

³ Ha! See what I did there?