Isn't etc. the abbreviation for et cetra? How do you get ect. out ofET Cetra? Just ignore the Latin derivation shall we?

it is indeed, it amused me being corrected by someone who was wrong, when I explained why she told me “NO, it's ECKT- setarah!”
Humanity s doomed.

At least that's a warm coat! You need on of the big cloaks those guys used to wear!
We're mostly into post hipster fashion now… First we had the young, wealthy fashion freaks who made a little fetish out if imitating a fake punky, out of work artist bohemian look. That became a bigger and bigger trend, till it got comodofied and now it's a global mainstream fashion style.
It's a “hipster” look now… Like when punk, hippie, surf and skate culture became comodofied.

At this stage, if you were a hipster you'd be looking for a different style since you're has been co-opted… just like they originally did with the artists and musicians they took it from originally.

- just like the way imitators of the hussar uniform did… Hahaha, latterly me!!

Genejoke wrote:
Still Netflix keeps me company.

We done have Netflix or Hulu in my country, with no timetable for when it will come (there's a monopoly to be maintained here by our one expensive cable company), but my computer now lives in the US (it commutes) so suddenly I'm able to view these things. Now to find some time to actually watch something.
I can see why I resisted drawing for so long … it takes up all your time.

You mean like a VPN or…?

I'm thinking about doing a regular youtube video thing for drunk duck. Maybe start off with feature reviews? I have this idea that it'd be a good way to help further promote DD.
I envisage it being mostly some sort of narrated screencasting for stuff like that. If I did tutorials or news I may do it directly to screen, I dunno. If I did my thinking is that doing it more like a news broadcast setup would be better than the usual youtuber videoblog style:
Sitting down with the camera far enough away to show you from the waste up, with a decent background- rather than a closeup talking head with a shoddy background.

It's not something I desperately want to do though, it just seems like it could work.

The video thing could work, just a matter of getting people to contribute so it's not all on you.

Wow… I'm trying to wrap my mind around the size of a Minecraft world. Each cube in the game is 1 cubic meter. Now the total height in the game is 256 meters. However, the distance you can walk from the spot your character is “born” in that world is a radius of 30,000,000 blocks, or 30 million meters!!! Well… the map is infinitely horizontal and you can walk farther than that, but the computer starts getting errors beyond that point and the game eventually lags and crashes. Still… 30 million meters… sounds like that's larger than Earth. O_O

The height? Well… that's 256 blocks from the bottom of the world. Ocean level is at 63. The clouds appear at 127 blocks up. Doesn't seem to be really high… ‘til you’re staring down a ravine…

Got my computer back, happily! My little sister was letting me use hers which was really nice, but it's a pain trying to get things done on someone else's computer.

Now I have to get to work writing my essay on Nixon's Southern Strategy. I've done what I always do, unfortunately, and did way too much research for the length of the paper. It's only 8-10 pages long, and I'm certain I could write at least that much on busing alone.

Good suggestion Genejoke! :)

@ Hippie- goodluck with the essay! ^_^

—————

Help with finding the name of a webcomic on DD

I've had a
person ask me to find a comic he used to love. He doesn't know the
title, but this is his description, anyone remember this:

Comic
style: Manga, with light, pastel like coloring on every page. I'm not
sure if it was featured, since I went through your featured comics
archives and didn't notice it.

1.
Main characters were a girl with orange hair, and a guy with long black
hair. Black haired guy had a brother who was one of the villains of the
story.

2. There was a story arc in a colliseum of sorts, where
the main guy commented that huge, bulky robots had one major weakness:
If they fall down, they would never get up and thus lose the battle. He
ends up leaving a duel between two huge robots when one fell down (which
was manned by an old guy and his child, i think), and was surprised
when the robot he assumed had lost faced him in the finals. Turns out
that robot had incredibly powerful launchers attached to its back,
allowing it to get back up. Main character gets torched by the launchers
and critically injured, has to resort to using his super move, and
barely wins.

3. I think there were two pilots with native american backgrounds, using terminology such as Mother earth and Father sky.

4. There was an event where one of the characters was surrounded by a
mob of gangsters, and his friend wouldn't help him. The latter's
reasoning was If I helped you, it wouldn't be a 1 on 1 match anymore.
It would be 2 against 400 or something.

Would appreciate any help guys, I really want to know how the story ended.

Work is reallly starting to get on my nerves. Since I work in a call center, I have the potential to move to other campaigns if the campaign I'm on dries up. I have switched campaigns twice within the last month. I start training for my new campaign tomorrow. The big pain is that before I've been in professional campaigns with licensed agents up until now. My newest campaign will be a majority non-licensed and therefore a lot less professional. I have been in the same space as nonlicensed before. While my campaigns before demanded business casual even to the point of suits, but the nonlicensed tend to break the company dress code and show up in T-shirts and jeans. Kinda afraid of working with people that are in a job and not a career.

Of course, all of these rapid fire changes mean my schedule is entirely out of wack. The good news. I have lost 5 to 8 lbs with my new diet and exercise schedule (not quite sure. The bad news is that I haven't exercised in 2 weeks. Of curse, this is also wearing on my comic work. I feel really bad.

It's a relief to wear casual clothes though Niccea. Not having to change after work can be a good feeling!
It's still hot here right now, so while I still wear a long sleave business shirt to work every day, I also wear shorts and sprts shoes. One of the best things about the warm weather! :D

Re that comic name that was needed: It's name is “E-Depth Angel”, by Mayshing
Funny because I was looking at 2 bosses or 2 gos or whatever by the same author, thinking that might be it.

Our company dress code is busniess casual. The people on the nonlicensed campaigns blatently break the dress code. There are also a lot of things that are less palatable. But, I cannot judge any further since I haven't been an official member of the campaign.

Yeah, showing up to work in jeans and a T-shirt is bad form. I don't care if a wanker like Jonney Ive does it either, he's a tosser and dresses like one. :)

Tbh I think the jeans vs. other pants rule in many workplaces is dumb. There are definitely some jeans that aren't professional, but it has everything to do with the fit and nothing to do with the material. A nicely fitted pair of jeans look just fine in an office and are far more comfortable, I think. This may just be my personal hatred for dress pants talking, though. :P

Jesus Christ…after giving the repair shop a million dollars to fix my laptop the thing still isn't working. It turns on, which is great, but it's doing all kinds of wacky things. It won't wake up from sleep, I can't open certain programs, I keep getting a message that my display driver has stopped working and recovered, etc. I'm feeling very frustrated that it's so badly messed up now.

HippieVan wrote:
Jesus Christ…after giving the repair shop a million dollars to fix my laptop the thing still isn't working. It turns on, which is great, but it's doing all kinds of wacky things. It won't wake up from sleep, I can't open certain programs, I keep getting a message that my display driver has stopped working and recovered, etc. I'm feeling very frustrated that it's so badly messed up now.

Ugh.. just one reason why I personally don't like laptops. Sure their quality and power have gone up with the times, but if I buy a laptop, it should have interchangable parts the way my PC does. One part goes all loopy, I just pull it out and replace it rather than taking the thing to the shop.

HippieVan wrote:
Tbh I think the jeans vs. other pants rule in many workplaces is dumb. There are definitely some jeans that aren't professional, but it has everything to do with the fit and nothing to do with the material. A nicely fitted pair of jeans look just fine in an office and are far more comfortable, I think. This may just be my personal hatred for dress pants talking, though. :P

My work allows jeans, as long as they are smart, no rips etc, We have casual fridays and so on but most people still stick pretty close to the busniess/casual look.
In other news, I've been busy with art stuff, but getting very few comic pages done, time to get back to that soon as I have a chapter to finish.

http://www.guampdn.com/article/20140325/NEWS01/303250002/Plots-rob-kill-foiled-Officials-investigate-how-rocket-launcher-got-Guam

Wow… things around here are getting a bit exciting, and NOT in a good way. Had they not been caught I'd hate to know what they would've done with that rocket launcher.

And then there's that bank robbery that happened some time ago. The robbers got caught at least. I hope the money they stole gets recovered.

Unfortunately all these guys are “career” criminals. I wonder what sort of mindset it takes to be one. Kinda like that repeat dream I have of a guy who violated every human made law in existence (even the taboo ones… I'll let you think of that one). This guy is at a cliff, but not to commit suicide to escape the police who are looking for him.

Instead, he hears of the laws of Mother Nature. So he stands there, screaming explitives at Mother Nature. Then he gives Mother Nature “the bird” before jumping off… and with a horrified look on his face he falls to his death several hundred feet below.

Yeah… the guy tried to break/defy the law of Gravity.

I updated my OS and that seems to have solved most of my problems, except that it doesn't always wake up when I open it now. Not a great problem to have with a laptop, haha. And with so many cats around leaving it open isn't an option. I'm so sick of seeing computers advertised as faster, sleeker, prettier - I just want one that lasts.

It looks like my best friend has gotten a summer job in a city close to where I'll be studying this spring. Kind of awesome, we can take the train to see each other. :)

Lonne, that looks like an antiaircraft missle launcher, some sort of stinger? You need a very long, expensive missle to go in there. Carppy weapon for theives, but a great thing to try and sell to terroritsts or anti-government forces!
I get the gist it's set up for training though, with a dummy missle. It'd be hard to get active missles for it. Not impossible, but certainly a huge challange.

———-

That's good news Hippie! made the move to 8.1 eh? As Lonne says, laptops are notorious for not being very robust. A tower could last youu a good few years and be easily fixable, but without all that portability…
More and more I find that the trick seems to be to have a number of devices if you can, and have work that's easily moveable between them all: saved on flash drives and external hard drives, and cloud services like Dropbox and Google drive that're accessable from a number of OSs easily.
Also webbrowsers that you can sync across devices like Firefox, Seamonkey, Chrome etc.so your bookmarks, logins and passwords aren't all saved on one machine.
That way you can work reasonably well on tablets and smartphones, weather Android, Apple, or Windows, a number of PCs and laptops, and even quickly pick up working again on a new machine if needed.
Of course that doesn't account for special programs you only have installed on one device :(

Thanks for reminding me. Now I have to upgrade my OS next month to Windows 8. This means reformatting my HD or getting a new one to serve as the System Drive (I have no problem with this as the time to reformat again is fast approaching). Even better for me might be how much better my graphics may run (I have a AMD Radeon Sapphire 6570) and I can use the extra gig of system memory that's currently unused due to the current OS which is 32 bit.

As far as computers go, portability and multiple machines is a must. I am currently away from my desktop PC and have been for a few months. I have had to learn to adapt, but oh how do I miss photoshop and my flatbed scanner.

–

Here is the scene:

I am sitting in the car at a red light when a homeless bozo runs into the middle of the street carrying something in his hand. He then takes out some window cleaner and a squeegee and proceeds to clean the windshield. After a bit of protest he says, “It is not the end of the world. Calm down, (cuss)hole.” Finishes the job and then yells, “Have a good evening, MOTHER(cuss)ER!”

I tried to reevaluate the situation. Maybe he was just a nice guy just trying to do the community a service. However, the usage of swear words and the tone led me to believe that he was all in it for the tips.

Then as I was walking down the stairs to the elevator, this mini watermelon that I was carrying falls to the ground and cracks in half. I was looking forward to slicing it perfectly on the way home. Luckily the damage was salvageable.

What an evening!

ozoneocean wrote:
Lonne, that looks like an antiaircraft missle launcher, some sort of stinger? You need a very long, expensive missle to go in there. …It'd be hard to get active missles for it. Not impossible, but certainly a huge challange.

You could get all the active missiles for it you wanted but the launcher woujldn't shoot them. Trainer's are inert and are missing the guts to fire anything. I know people with LAW anti-tank rocket trainers. You can play with them all day but it'll never shoot anything. But the person you're pointing it at wouldn't know that…

I've definitely been thinking about getting a desktop computer next time around, but at this point in my life I need the portability. Ideally I'd like to have a good desktop at home and a little tablet or something for on the go, but I don't have the money to buy two computers. :P

@Lonne: Put off that update as much as possible. I've had nothing but problems with Windows 8, it's awful.

@Kawaii: Those people are very common where I live (probably because we have a massive homeless problem). We call them “squeegee kids” because they're usually the younger homeless folks.

Hippie, if you do get money for a device, a Nexus branded tablet is a good choice- generally nice simple design, a customisable frequently updated OS that's secure and yet doen't lock you in to one *brand ecosystem, and they're very affordably priced compared to their power and build quality.

*Apple are good but tend to lock you in to ONLY buying Apple, so you haven't got any choice when it comes to shopping for different features or prices. The main benifit of Apple is standardisation and easy servicing (because of all the Apple shops). Nexus tablets are good in that way in that they're the standard model for Andorid and Google itself will service them- still not as simple as going to an apple store though.

—–

Ahhh, such an anoying company to deal with… they're a big goldmining group and they're very anal with their stupid logo, with a big document hat says you HVAE to only use it according to its rules… But for the things they want it used on the rules ALWAYS have to be broken. So every second fucking job from these idiots involves some dance about the rules VS the actual usuage of their stupid logo.
Idiotically enough, even the masive golden sign on the front of their coprorate head office violates their logo guidelines!

Yussss, extensions galore! Had my final reading response for global politics extended a week, so I won't have to do a rush job on it. As if that wasn't enough, I got a 2-week extension for my horrible 15-page historiography paper. It turns out the prof for that class only gave us the deadline as motivation to hand it in early, and we can get it to him as late as the end of the exam period. The only downside is we won't have the chance to re-write it in that case, of course.
I'm also just about done my essay on Nixon(just have to do all the citations), and for once it's actually within the allotted space! I am just killing at this whole university thing. :P

ozoneocean wrote:
Hippie, if you do get money for a device, a Nexus branded tablet is a good choice- generally nice simple design, a customisable frequently updated OS that's secure and yet doen't lock you in to one *brand ecosystem, and they're very affordably priced compared to their power and build quality.

*Apple are good but tend to lock you in to ONLY buying Apple, so you haven't got any choice when it comes to shopping for different features or prices. The main benifit of Apple is standardisation and easy servicing (because of all the Apple shops). Nexus tablets are good in that way in that they're the standard model for Andorid and Google itself will service them- still not as simple as going to an apple store though.

Yeah, I love my iPhone but I would want something a little bit more open for a tablet. And something I could draw on, ideally. :)
I have never found going to an Apple store simple, btw…they're almost always like “Yep, can't be fixed and it's your fault. It will cost 17 gajillion dollars for a new one, but we can give you 10% off.”

ozoneocean wrote:
Ahhh, such an anoying company to deal with… they're a big goldmining group and they're very anal with their stupid logo, with a big document hat says you HVAE to only use it according to its rules… But for the things they want it used on the rules ALWAYS have to be broken. So every second fucking job from these idiots involves some dance about the rules VS the actual usuage of their stupid logo.
Idiotically enough, even the masive golden sign on the front of their coprorate head office violates their logo guidelines!

Haha, that sounds awful! It seems like just about every organization goes nuts when they get big enough. I dealt with something kind of similar at my summer job last year. As the office monkey it was often my job to make certificates, memos, etc., which would have been simple enough except that the government department I worked for had “re-branded” seemingly a couple times recently. No one knew which logo/letterhead was the right one, but everyone made certain to tell me that I had to use the “new one.”

kawaii wrote:
As far as computers go, portability and multiple machines is a must. I am currently away from my desktop PC and have been for a few months. I have had to learn to adapt, but oh how do I miss photoshop and my flatbed scanner.

I am super curious now - what program/method do you use to make all the lovely newspost graphics without a scanner or photoshop?

I have never owned any computers from Apple due to the way proprietary goods lock you in. Upgrading a computer from them is very difficult as parts can be expensive. My PC has yet to give me this problem and I've built every single one I've owned. If some hardware is outdated, I just buy the new version of that hardware and can be confident that it will work with all the other stuff that's in the box, or there will be a way to make them work. I have an IDE Hard Drive that works thanks an adapter that allows it to interact with the SATA drivers in my current motherboard. :)

I'd hold off longer on WinXP, but after the first week of April there will be no new updates for the system. Which means if a security hole is found it will never be fixed. And no one here sells Windows 7, so I'm stuck with 8 anyway. -_-

HippieVan wrote:
Yeah, I love my iPhone but I would want something a little bit more open for a tablet. And something I could draw on, ideally. :)
I have never found going to an Apple store simple, btw…they're almost always like “Yep, can't be fixed and it's your fault. It will cost 17 gajillion dollars for a new one, but we can give you 10% off.”

Exactly. The screen on my friend's iPhone just shattered completely, even on warranty they were still charging $200, or gave the option to just trade the phone for a completely new one. If something went wrong with my computer and the store just wanted to trade it in for a new one, I would be pissed for all the programs and files I would lose. I have never dealt with anyone from the genius bar.

HippieVan wrote:
I am super curious now - what program/method do you use to make all the lovely newspost graphics without a scanner or photoshop?

My usual machine is a refurbished HP desktop that I bought for $369 a few years back and it has been my most powerful and trustworthy machine to date. The only issue I had was mobility (try fitting a 20" flat screen monitor AND tower in a luggage case and checking it in the airport, while hoping the TSA officers do not destroy it by the time you reach your destination.)

I currently use a refurbished iPad 2/64GB that I bought online from the apple site for $499. It does not have a really good word processing program that I would trust, so it would be impossible to write formatted papers on this thing. It is portable to take notes and read digital books which is why I wish I could have had one of these in college.

For graphics: I use the low res camera on the iPad instead of a scanner. I guess I could use a better camera but it takes too many steps. I had to download about five different apps to do simple things that I can on photoshop. The program I use for coloring is called Procreate because it allows up to 128 layers and I can set sketches to the MULTIPLY layer. I use everclipper for specific cropping and image resizing. Also, there are tons of apps for image collages and photo editors I use. In fact, it is pretty fun using those filter modes that people use for selfies on regular drawings because it balances out the coloring in the final drawing.

I was thinking of trying a “Let's Play” thing with Youtube, so I looked into the subject. From what I can interpret (I'm no good with legal stuff) the LP'ers have some conflict with the big video game companies. I guess they see the people playing their games as another scource of revenue, or violators of verious IPs (thanks to various musicians and others putting their work into the game). And they're doing everything from forcing ads for the company onto the offending videos to taking them down altogether.

The smaller companies seem to support these players though. The creator of Minecraft sees them as one of the major reasons his game became popular despite not having any backing from the major companies.

Now I need something to cool down my brain as it's overloaded with this sort of thinking right now….

And then there's the insurance companies. One of the advertised they can get you a good rate in just a quarter of an hour. And now another one has stepped up to tell you they can get you a good insurance rate around 1/8 of an hour. I can see what those commercials will be like in the future….

“Why go to that insurance company? They're too slow! We can save you money on insurance in just .000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds!!!”

HippieVan wrote:

Haha, that sounds awful! It seems like just about every organization
goes nuts when they get big enough. I dealt with something kind of
similar at my summer job last year. As the office monkey it was often my
job to make certificates, memos, etc., which would have been simple
enough except that the government department I worked for had
re-branded seemingly a couple times recently. No one knew which
logo/letterhead was the right one, but everyone made certain to tell me
that I had to use the new one.

Government departments are the worst!
I've dealt with so many and they're always changing their logos… I have folders wull of variations and letter styles so I can make nice new vector print ready versions of any current governemt logo! State or federal!

And that's the thing: everyone will shout at you to “use the new logo”, but no one knows what it is…

————————

My Marley earbud headphones have broken :(
I got them because the earbuds were solid aluminium and wood and the cord is fabric covered with a nice low profile jack. I thought they'd be tougher than normal and less likley to have the typical headphone issue of one wire breaking (to the right or left headphone), but nope, same issue as with all headphones so far. Grr!!!!!
Maybe I'll try a flat cord pair next time?

If it's a break in the wire, I usually splice it there. First I try to cut away the white fiber entwined with them. Then use fine sandpaper or carefully scrape off the paint with a blade (even the copper colored wire as it's covered with copper colored paint). Then I just splice them together or for a better connection I apply solder them together.