Friday, 7th September, 2007

Meddling Kids

outing paranoia

It worries me, you know, that for all my posturing about being out, and proud, and carefree, and whatnot, it only takes a tiny little potentially innocuous moment of fear to bring my pomposity crashing down and leave me a bit wobbly.

I was, a few minutes ago, doing my usual morning routine — just like I mentioned yesterday — making a cup of coffee whilst swishing (somewhat groggily because I'd only just woke up) around the kitchen in a nightie.

(Just as an aside, and probably of completely no interest, this morning I'm boiling a full kettle — against my normal common-sense principles. Not because I don't give a crap about how much electricity I use, but because they're cutting the water off today to do some work to the road or something)

(I wish I'd washed my hair last night)

Anyway, so there I am, in nothing but a pink nightie (and pants, natch), hair down, stood watching the kettle, when I hear some scuffling outside and see — through the gap between the bottom of the blind and the windowsill — some boys in red jumpers pushing each other around and saying things like "No, you do it"

I say "things like", because I couldn't really make it out. I mean, initially I thought it was just one of those usual run-of-the-mill-around-here things of people fighting in the street, but something about what was going on made me think it had something to do with me.

Let me just back-pedal for a second and explain something about that "gap between the bottom of the blind and the windowsill". It's something I've been meaning to sort out for ages — somehow, over the years, the blind has managed to make itself not quite reach the bottom of the window, and there's a 10 centimetre gap. I mean, all it needs is for me to take it off, give it a quick twist, and stick it back on (if you get my drift) ... but I'm an incredibly lazy cow after all, and so it's been like that for months.

You probably wouldn't notice it if you were just walking past. But, as I observed myself yesterday when I pulled up beside the house in the car, if you're sat down, or at a lower head-level (like a child's — see where this is going?), you can see right into my house.

The scuffling continued as I grabbed the coffee and headed back upstairs. Suddenly though, there was a knock at the door.

I'm not quite sure what I was thinking of doing/saying, as I pulled my nightie off and clamboured into a pair of jeans, tying my hair back at the same time. I was expecting to be confronted by a group of boys on my doorstep, curious to know if it was me they'd seen wearing girl's things, and whether or not I was therefore a 'poof'.

Part of my brain was preparing a gruff expression and a response of "No, that was my girlfriend. Now fuck off and get to school", but somewhere at the back of my mind a tiny little part was wanting to say "Yes. And?"

Of course, this is all just me extrapolating things in my head. It's entirely possible that they didn't see me, and were just having a bit of a scrap followed by that oh so funny tradition of knocking on doors and running away. It's also possible — although highly improbable — that all they saw was what looked like a long haired woman in her undies, and wanted her to answer the door in them.

It's kinda academic though, because when I got to the door there was no-one there. What annoys me about the little scenario though, is how it made me feel. Ignoring the "OMG, can I not wander around my house wearing what I like in this day and age" aspect of it, I'm annoyed with myself that a stupid little thing like that left me a bit shaken.

And I'm annoyed with myself that despite the celebratory tone of practically everything I write about being a quite out transvestite, when it actually comes down to it, I'm still as furtive and secretive about it as I ever was.

...

Anyways. Think I'll fix that blind today...

Heh, honestly, as self-delusional as I can sometimes be, I'm under no impression that that's what they thought. Really, it was definately a "Is that a guy in a dress?" moment I think

Prim Tweening

So, enthused with a sudden uncharacteristic ability to get off my arse and Do Stuff™, I set about what I was blathering on about yesterday — trying to create a smooth transition between two prims.

I'm not going to go through the code line by line (like I usually do) because in this case (like the others maybe), it's incredibly tedious — just some hulking great lines of maths.

(I say "hulking", actually, theyre quite simple really)

Basically, you take each of the properties of one prim (A) and compare it to the properties of the other (. For example, suppose you want the 6th step in a 20-step transition between A and B. The x-position of it would be:

A_x – (6 x ((A_x – B_x) ÷ (20 + 1)))

Yeah?

I run that for all the parameters I want, paste the values in a notecard, and using a similar rezzing script to the one that does my SVG rezzing I churn out a bucket-load of prims that fly off to their new destinations.

And that's the result — an (almost) perfectly smoothed out crossover between some complicatedly rotated massive rings.

It's (obviously) only a quick bodge. I mean, it takes too many prims to do, the surfaces aren't remotely smooth, and I'd much rather it worked out a lovely beizer curve between the two points rather than the clunky straight line it makes at the mmoment.

But it's a start, at least

(There's some pictures of the cock-ups I made with early attempts at this, in a set on Flickr — you know, if you were bored or something )

Bezier Curves: The Maths

link maths

How to plot a bezier curve based on four control points — I've emailed my Dad (natch), but I thought I might try and smooth out the transitions in my tweening code myself, for a change

That's exactly the plan

Hmm, you're right. Bugger. I was planning on just using the interpolated rotations as they are, and hope that they were good enough — but now that I think about it, they probably won't quite be right will they?

Tell you what, I'm going to have a play with that Bezier Generator you gave me, to see if it'll make what I want rather than me having to reinvent the wheel...

Don't Dismiss Online Relationships as Fantasy

link online relationship

"...anyone who has been affected by online love knows the emotions don't turn on when we log on and turn off when we log off." — [Wired.com]

Fly a flight simulator in Google Earth

link google

"Google Earth contains a "hidden" yet complete flight simulator" — did we know this was there? [macosxhints.com]

About Bloody Time

photo car

As brilliant and convenient as this is (you don't even need your MOT or insurance documents apparently), I can't help but wonder why it took until 2007 to be able to renew my car tax online

Well bugger me, I had no idea I'm pretty sure this is the first time a thing about it has come with the yearly reminder though.

That reminds me, I need to do the Electoral Register online as well sometime.

You can even renew your TV license (pause for sniggers) on-line too.

Someone want to do the statutory link to Becky then?

so if your garage used the old-style ones you couldn't use it

When will I be able to point my iSight into my exhaust and get my MOT online as well then?

http://earth.google.com/sky/index.html — way cool

Cool indeed — but that "Friend from Google" has to be the dullest geek I've ever seen in my life.

BoingBoing wrote about it yonks ago

Man, I am really not on the ball with newness today am I?

Shiny Shiny

ipod

OMG Look what Apple just released

(Do you see what I did there? Eh? Oh, never mind)

You know, I've probably said this far too many times, but considering that I'm Little Miss Fangirl — even so far as to becoming an Apple shareholder — I wonder how odd it is that I don't have an iPod.

There's no sense of "Nah, I don't like them" going on, it's just that, well, frankly, I'm not that big a music lover.

Sorry

But I was sat drolling these past couple of days, marvelling at this new nugget of joy from Cupertino, wondering if actually it was A Thing That I Must Have At All Costs™.

It's the browser and WiFi more than anything you see — the chance to sit down and blog with a little thing in my hand (shut it) — the ability next time I'm in That London to chuck out little tweets like "is in Starbucks on Oxford Street" (or something) and have hoardes of other iPod-enabled bloggers all turn up to talk about frocks.

Maybe.

But. Well. See, actually there are some features that I think are missing from it — for it to be the perfect device for me at least. I'd want to be able to connect to the internet all the time — not just when I was in a Wireless place. And OMG, it doesn't have a camera either, for me to take ever increasing pictures of half-drunk wine glasses.

So I don't think I'll be getting one — at least not until Apple release something similar that combines all the features of the iPod Touch with some kind of 'mobile phone' functionality, and a camera of at least two megapixels.

THat's OK, it's wasn't a particularly good one

I'm still chuffed with my K750i. Best little phone I ever had