Well THIS BITCH ran eleventy-eleven point eleventy-eleven miles today, which is pretty dang cool. That is a personal distance PR/PB for me. I signed up for another 5k. At this point I'm ready to call a 5k a fun run. What I like about the local 5ks that I'm signing up for is that nearly all of them have the money go to benefit some cause or something. So I'm having fun running "competitively," at least getting experience with racing, and my dollars are going to causes I like to support in my local community! This new 5k will be in May (after my upcoming 10k) and it supports my local SPCA. Guess what they're calling it. Go on, guess. Ahahaha. OK, you guys give up? They're calling it...the fast and the furriest 5k. Seriously guys, how could a gal say no to that?? Also, here are some stamps I've been carving. I've been doing a lot of research into printing, as in carved-print-printing, and it's pretty cool. But also a little too serious. I like my stamps. I think I'm going to continue artistically experimenting with a healthy mixture of both approaches. Now excuse me, while I go eat a pizza.
You can get the starter materials real quick! Google “speedball Lino set” and get the handle which should come with a number of blades. You should be able to find this for $10 or under. Most of the time I carve on the speedy-cut pink rubber blocks that you will probably find listed right by the link cutter. They are easy to carve, relatively cheap and fun. I have tried carving using real linoleum at this point and I ripped a 3/4 inch blister open on my middle finger doing so. Linoleum is pretty hard and the speed ball cutters aren’t really designed for it. I really enjoy stamp carving and enthusiastically encourage you to check it out!
You're right. There's tons of really awesome artists and techniques out there, but it can quickly become pretty complex and a lot of work. Have you maybe considered, instead of doing more formal block printing, maybe experimenting with making your own inks?I've been doing a lot of research into printing, as in carved-print-printing, and it's pretty cool. But also a little too serious. I like my stamps. I think I'm going to continue artistically experimenting with a healthy mixture of both approaches.
You are bringing my whole life full circle, I made ink from pokeberries and wrote using quills from our local domesticated geese when I was a very, very cool and popular early teen. Funny how things work out!
Lady, you're just legit. Don't let anyone let you think otherwise. I saw a few videos on dye making, which came from watching videos about block printing on fabric actually, and have loved the idea. Ink making looks a heck of a lot more accessible and I've been mulling over giving it a shot.
Prost :) Y'all, I'm doing really damn well these days. I finally made the decision to stop stressing about my degree and just use my studies as an excuse to keep my visa (and cheap rent), which is really just what I was doing in the first place, except that now I'm being conscious about it in a way that takes a huge amount of stress out of my life. These days I'm free to focus on the things I care about: my half-time job and a few interesting courses each semester, but also reading for pleasure, playing in a 7-piece funk band (!) and a baseball team, and being an active part in the incredible community in my dorm. (And lots of foosball.) After years of stressing about relationships and loneliness and sex, I finally feel like I'm at a point where I can just kind of relax. I really like being single, so if nothing happens, nothing happens, but I can also enjoy (purely hypothetically, of course) going on a first date with an incredibly cute Swedish girl on a Wednesday evening and walking her to class Thursday morning. It's nice. I've even gotten to the point of moving therapy to once a month instead of once a week—my therapist and I put in the work and said fuck depression. Oh, and term break starts today, so expect to see me back on here a bit more ;)
Learning a lot of shit in my new role at a diversity and inclusion consulting firm. A lot of it is really interesting, though quite a lot of it is over my head. If anyone knows anything about automating workflows, Zoho, LMSs, or online learning, I'd love to have a chat. I know that I'm not super active here anymore, but I do come back! One of the things we're trying to accomplish with the online learning platform is a community for thoughtful, engaging discussion. If anyone would like to chime in to give their perspective on what makes hubski the kind of place that people want to come back to, or to engage with one another, I'd really like to hear those points of view. For me, part of the appeal of hubski is the individual personalities, and the space to interact with various, recognizable personalities over time. I also really like the willingness of the community to take ideas and run with them, whether it's the threads where people are collaborating on things just for the fuck of it, or continuing discussions over a number of threads over time. It would be great to get something similar going on in a more focused way, but I'm not sure if such a focus might have a negative effect on engagement. If anyone has thoughts on this point, I'm happy to hear those perspectives too!
But seriously, those who continue on hubski after the honeymoon tend to demonstrate qualities I appreciate.If anyone would like to chime in to give their perspective on what makes hubski the kind of place that people want to come back to, or to engage with one another, I'd really like to hear those points of view.
ummm, the ongoing possibility of meetups?
I've been thinking on these issues recently, and plan to eventually create a post to discuss it. For one, I believe that we can lower the entry barrier a bit once again, enabling new users to post more readily, and yet keep our anti-spam effective and low-effort. Here, we take the approach of putting as much moderation as possible in user's hands. I consider how we as people moderate our interactions in meatspace, and take a lot of cues from that. IMHO there are social dynamics that arise from top down moderation that can be positive in the short run, but often decay in the long run. I believe that the summation of individual choices results in the best of spaces, because participants do not have clear leaders which give them cause to champion opinions or to form factions that result from such opinions. I do not believe that there is such a thing as a proper space, or a safe space, or even a thoughtful space. However, I do believe that people can feel that spaces are proper, safe and/or thoughtful, and that they can choose to frequent them for those reasons. I believe the fact that physical architecture outlasts social architecture says much about the human condition. All this said, I do think that Hubski could sustain more thoughtful interaction than it does, and that it could be a better example or counter-example for online interaction in general. It's a goal I'd like to meet.
Man... you have hit all of my areas of (mild) expertise... Online Community. I've been moderating online communities since the mid-1980's. A good and positive community does not come without constant vigilant moderation, in subtle ways. (The Ban Hammer never works.) I have a facebook group of 2,500 people that we manage to keep polite and civil with a team of 6 moderators/admins. It is an art, not a science, and it is exhausting and requires constant tending. People who sit at keyboards are utter and complete dicks. Period. Workflows. Taught myself Microsoft Flow (now called Power Apps), which is built in to SharePoint. If you are asking about Zoho and LMS's, then I assume your company has not bought in to the full Microsoft environment (Active Directory, SharePoint, Outlook, etc.), and therefore MS Flow (and other associated apps) will be useless. Zoho and ZenDesk and even tools like SmartSheet are often used to automate data collection and dissemination... all are basically glorified FAQs and knowledgebases. They are all the same thing: A configurable database of objects that tries to make associating different objects with each other simple, or automated. There are three distinct branches here that each do different things, that you have conflated into one: - workflows, which attempt to create 'wizard-like' interfaces for data collection; - knowledge capture and dissemination, which are glorified databases, but are highly configurable environments where you build your own customized solution using the vendor's tools (Zoho, Smartsheet, ZenDesk, et al). The end result is never as good as the demos they show you, because you suck at designing with their tools (because you have never done it before) and will do it wrong, and before you can fix it, too many people at your organization will have already adopted it, and you will always be stuck with a half-finished solution; - learning management systems, which are effectively glorified XML file creators, that allow you to create a series of steps and if/then decision trees that contain assets like images/text/video, then output those steps and assets in a standard file format so they can be imported into other LMS's (because most large companies have their own LMS, and don't want to use yours, but they want your content in their system.) --- Effective online communities: 101 - Moderators are online 24x7 monitoring the system. - New users are only allowed in after some basic vetting steps. - Community rules are posted next to the commenting area. - A core group of "high power/visibility" users are connected together and coordinating efforts in a separate online chat (usually WhatsApp) where they strategize about how to guide conversations or tamp down embers before they become flames. - Any moderation is first done in private 1-on-1 conversation with the "problem user", discussing your concerns, and asking them to edit/update/delete their comment that caused the kerfuffle. - Users are almost never banned, but when they are, it is permanent. No returns. Note that none of this exists in Hubski. That's because Hubski doesn't follow the "rules" of community engagement; new people can't post, so they have to hang out for a bit and see the flavor of the place before they can interact with it. In every way, that is the "wrong way" to build a community... but look at us! I am not aware of any community-building tool that is designed from the start to make it hard for new people to interact. It's counter-intuitive, and it works for this unique space we have. I do not see how it could work using any of the off-the-shelf community tools available on the internet today; they are built with a different purpose in mind. Anyway. Yeah... those are my thoughts.
It's like you've been looking over my shoulder the whole time ;_; That said, thanks so much for your insights! If you'd be open to me further picking your brain, particularly about online community moderation, please let me know. What's here is really great, but I find myself wondering if showing you in more detail what I'm working with and discussing what we're going for might spark other thoughts. If you're not interested in that, then again, thank you for taking the time to collect and to share your experience with me.- knowledge capture and dissemination, which are glorified databases, but are highly configurable environments where you build your own customized solution using the vendor's tools (Zoho, Smartsheet, ZenDesk, et al). The end result is never as good as the demos they show you, because you suck at designing with their tools (because you have never done it before) and will do it wrong, and before you can fix it, too many people at your organization will have already adopted it, and you will always be stuck with a half-finished solution
Happy to chat about it, and help in any way I can. But you need to understand this is never a TOOLS problem. It's not something the right software can address. You can use any of dozens of different software tools. What it comes down to is the HUMANS who are pulling the strings in the background; the moderators. Not many people have the skills/perspective/talent to be a good moderator, and without the right people, the tool you choose won't matter. It's almost like you are approaching the problem from the wrong direction - looking at the tools first - rather than figuring out how to make your existing community leader's job easier. But yeah! Hit me up! Let's chat.
diversity and inclusion consulting firm
A firm that couldn’t have existed 20 years ago and though most likely a net positive for the world and needed, may not survive a recession. Tread carefully, my friend. But good on ya!
Cheers! Many companies survived the last recession that shouldn’t have due to special interests. Who knows? Maybe you’re right, maybe it will be the same, maybe the next recession is just around the bend. Hopefully, I’ll get no empirical data on that front!
I'd like to answer, but I feel like the ideas need some time to incubate. Ask again in a week?If anyone would like to chime in to give their perspective on what makes hubski the kind of place that people want to come back to, or to engage with one another, I'd really like to hear those points of view.
Four of the past five days have involved somebody or another crying. I could use getting through a full day without anyone in my life crying. It’s tiring.
I just deleted all my tweets save three paintings I did. I used Twitter for a bit more than a year, but concluded that its ok as a news/gossip feed, but the interactions I had were sparse and without depth. I also realized that I would get responses from my most edgy or opinionated tweets, which made me more likely to be edgy or opinionated.
I saw your tweet considering the value of twitter. I didn't have a good response for you. I have always used Twitter for thoughts that I wanted to vent but didn't think were purposeful enough to share with actual deliberate people. Either that, or were so shallow or snarky I didn't want them "out there" (a la facebook). My profile tagline is, "most of these are drunk," which has been more and less accurate over the years, for sure -- but the point of that kind of tagline is primarily, now, to discourage anyone who might read my feed from taking it very seriously at all. As a result, though I remain on twitter, I absolutely don't defend it as a bastion of intellectual or even invigorating thought at all. I find most value in it for purely social uses -- that is, I find more value from following friends' tweets and seeing what inane things they have to say and vice versa -- and I certainly don't mean to apply that just because I find the "most value" out of that piece of Twitter doesn't mean it is truly a very valuable component. In other words, I almost support you leaving... ;)
Thanks for the feedback. I suspect that if my account was pseudoanonymous I would feel differently about it. I considered an account with a handle, but don't have enough motivation to finding out if it is satisfying for me. I'm glad that I tried Twitter, however. It made my views of social networks a bit more nuanced. I do think I will post my paintings to Twitter as I complete them, but nothing else. At a minimum, it will give me an inventory and a timeline.
It's pretty hard to have in depth interactions when the amount of characters you're limited to are good for, at best, pithy statements and responses. Any conversation, no matter the topic, needs room for exploration.the interactions I had were sparse and without depth
Last week we had a public holiday, Waitangi Day, so I took some further days off and had a nice 4 day weekend. I went to Christchurch to visit my brother and my partner's parents. Was such a lovely trip! My brother likes his hiking and long distance running, so he dragged me up into the Port Hills where I took this shot The body of water is near Lyttleton harbour, on the other side of the Hills we climbed up. The city is well off to the left down the hills once more. The harbour exits into the Pacific. We went to the latest installments of the Art Gallery I found this tree! I used to play in this tree when I was a child growing up in this city. I remember the feel of the bark and the safe surroundings very well. A wonderful bit of nostalgia during my trip. Now this is new. This is the Riverside Market, it opened up at the end of last year, in the main area where the city was demolished by the Earthquakes. We arrived at about 10am and it was dead quiet, but that photo was taken just after lunch and it was humming full of people. The Market was primarily indoors and hosted at least 50 different shops and eateries. Absolutely mindblowing to find it here! We had crepes in the morning, ramen for lunch on the tables in front, then went upstairs and had a few beers from the local brewery under one of those red umbrellas. We visited the memorial erected for those lost in the earthquakes It was really tastefully done, I felt. A simple wall just sitting by the lazy Avon river, people having lunch in it's shadow, or visiting the names of those they lost. Just another photo - this is directly outside the City Council building. I've always admired the energy put out by the Maori carving work. Afterwards we headed back to her parent's place and by night time her father had his telescope out and we had a look at the moon in startling clarity. Could make out the scars and craters all over. I've become a 12 year old again and have been having an absolute blast playing Modern Warfare. I thought I was too old and crusty to be any good but my old friends who felt the same banded together and clean house most matches. Infected is a wonderful game mode - for the uninitiated, Infected is where all players started with the same equipment; a count down begins giving you time to run and hide or barricade yourself in somewhere. Once the countdown ends, a randomly chosen player switches sides and becomes the infected player, armed with a knife and greater movement speed - tasked with turning every other member over to their side. It quickly becomes an absolute mess as you find your team mates whittled down and switched over, suddenly you're holed up in a dingy building as these madmen clamber over your walls and claymores to end you. Or you hide in a bush and pray they don't get close enough to see your nametag. Anyway I've been having fun. Hope you're all safe and sound.
Little Trees and Gardening and Bugs I understand that the odds of individual seeds making it aren't the best. I also understand that all of my seeds are still over-wintering and I probably have a couple of months to go before I see any results. But I'm so bored of looking at bare pots. So . . . if these little guys could hurry up, just a little? That'd be greeeat. I'm kind of looking forward to spring this year, besides the trees, cause I'm just ready to do some gardening again. Weeding is as much fun as it is a pain in the butt, but when I'm doing it with someone, like Dala in our garden or helping a friend out in their garden, the pain in the butt part just kind of disappears. I don't think I'll have my good camera with me when I'm out, for fear of getting it took dirty, but I might have my half-broken point and shoot camera with me. If I see any nifty bugs or whatever else, it'll be a convenient opportunity to get some shots to load onto iNaturalist. That said, getting insects identified is a little hit or miss, which is understandable. A lot of species look near identical to one another. Video Games Stardew Valley is addictive and fun, which, fun addictive is probably the best and worse kind of addictive there is. I'm enjoying the fishing. I'm enjoying the mining. Farming can just straight up go away because man, that's a literal chore. I think my favorite part of the game is giving people random gifts and seeing what they like and what they hate. Some people have odd tastes. You give them a dandelion, they're all like "Awesome! Thank you!" You give them a semi-precious mineral like topaz though, they're all like "Ew. Why would you give this." Don't even get me started on the lady who didn't like the cake I gave her. It's cake lady. Who doesn't like cake? It's been a bit of a slow week for me so far, which is good. I've needed a bit of a break after the hecticness of the holidays. I hope you're all doing well and staying warm this winter, Hubski. That is unless, you live close to the equator or in the Southern Hemisphere. In that case, I hope you're enjoying the sun! Either way, here's to a pretty good week.
I've played many, many games in my short life - Stardew Valley still has the most hours poured into it by far. Hundreds. Replays, figuring out the most efficient money maker, trying different map layouts. Of course you need to court absolutely everyone just to see their heart events. But I agree who doesn't like cake? Purple haired lady will literally eat rocks when you give her some but noooooo cake is just too moorish. Can confirm it is rather hot and sunny down here in the Southern Hemisphere. We hit our hottest temperature of the Summer at 2-3am and we've gotten hotter since.
Cheers! New job continues to be ridiculously good. I jumped yesterday when my desk phone rang with the name of the paper I was currently reading. My partner and I are changing life plans. We're no longer planning to move to Chicago for her to get a graduate degree, but instead are looking to stay local. Decision is 1/3 to keep this job I've landed, 1/3 economic, and 1/3 emotional (family, including the old and dying, are all local). Cost will be less than half that of the other degree. The snafu of US Democratic primaries is frustrating, but I think overall it is a good thing. The post-2016 rules, largely instituted by the progressives, lead directly to a wider field (specifically, 15% threshold, more and more-populated debates), and gave voters the ability to express their first-choice preference, even if it's Marianne Williamson the Earth Mother like it was for 91 people in NH. In Political Science they talk about the primary cleavages between parties, the single thing that mostly decides which side of the aisle you fall on. I think the Dems are positioning themselves well to be the party of democracy, as opposed to the Rs, actively and vocally suppressing non-white votes. I'd love to hear others' views on it. galen and I have been talking, only slightly jokingly, about writing music reviews/having an album listening club on here. If there's interest, we can do a thread this weekend. If not, we'll probably just continue to text each other our pretentious opinions about Coltrane.
It makes me so happy when you're happy. Miss you, buddy. Do we tag all our reviews with #pretentiousopinionsabout?
everyone wanted to touch mutilated taped-together, brought out instead of a wallet (fits in pockets!) the one taken home, souvenir mystery cow, international traveller (perennial good punchline!) i held up and kissed sits, standing proudly, bovine on my desk. (Moo~) or right now, in my hand love you lil buddyThe Cow
Hi everyone! I was completely dried out by a throat infection - Fever of 103.5 (yikes), chills, cold sweats, sore throat, the works. Doctor tested me for influenza, asked if I'd been hanging out with anybody from mainland China (chose not to disclose that a coworker is Chinese since I don't believe she's been back in the last six months), and then tested a nasal swab. For those who don't know, a nasal swab is when they take a LONG rod with a dab of cotton at the end and rub it around DEEP in your nasal cavity! It's extremely uncomfortable! Turns out I just had a severe bacterial infection, and I was given antibiotics in kind. They're fucking horsepills, and they turn my digestive system into a fucking slip-n-slide. Still finishing the regimen because I don't want any super-resistant bacteria incubating in my gut. Either way, less than 48 hours later and I'm no longer contagious OR experiencing any symptoms. Thank god for modern medicine! I've been fully reconstituted, and it feels nice to have clear thoughts and freedom from frightening fever dreams. Had a delusion that my sister and I accidentally opened a portal to hell in one of our hallway closet doors, and that opening it led to a full House of Leaves style spooky-corridor-that-shouldn't-exist-branches-off-into-many-rooms-full-of-spooks experience. We're happy to leave that one behind us.
A coworker who is really capable and smart has just gotten a puppy... and is a complete disaster as a dog-mom. She's completely freaked out (not sleeping, panic attacks, etc.) why her 8-week old puppy is scared and timid and unsure of herself, and why she knocks over her water bowl, and why she cries when she's left alone, etc. We are in a "pod" of 3 people. Me and the other woman have had dogs all our life, and know dogs and puppies VERY well. So when coworker brought her puppy into work, we took over. Played with the puppy until the adorable little fuzzball was so tired she fell asleep on the desk next to the keyboard. Took her out for walks. Talked dog-mom down and helped her understand that she's fucking this up from Day 1. "The puppy STARTS with believing you are all-powerful and all-knowing. You need to BE THAT for her. Be confident, and authoritative, and let the puppy know you are the boss... but ALSO that the puppy is SAFE with you. If you freak out, if you stress out, the puppy KNOWS, and then realized THEY have to be the boss... and you've lost her. MAN UP and be a GOOD DOG-MOM." That worked for a day. Last night her uncle passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. She's a wreck. I do not have high hopes for the dog. (I have given her the contact info for a very good friend of mine who is an EXCELLENT human-trainer for dogs. She works with the humans, trains them on how to be good dog owners, and makes happy, healthy dogs. Hopefully my coworker will call my friend. But...) In other news, I am fighting again with InDesign, which keeps losing track of the more than 60 images I have in my file, and I have to relink them every single time I open the file. Grr. The issue is the way shared drives on servers are set up on our corporate network... but it's only Adobe products that can't figure out how to find file paths on the network. Everything else is fine. Oh. And I bought a new bass guitar: I was going to get a 5-string, with active electronics, in a more reasonable body design, with a less-silly paint job... but when I went into the shop and tried them out next to each other, I fell in love with this silly thing. And it was $800 cheaper. I've got some recording to do this week for a couple of musical projects, and am looking forward to the tones I can get from this beast! It's good to be a Dingwall owner again...
So the good news is that I survived storm Ciara in a moving van! It was...tense to drive such a big rental truck empty with 6BFT side wind. We were very quick with the loading and unloading of the truck, so we were at our destination at like 1pm, just before the wind was said to be picking up even more. My usually clean and minimalist bedroom/office is now a cacophony of materialism with boxes and stuff from my girlfriend everywhere that fits. It's only for a week or two like this, then I'll be going on a long holiday and when I'm back my roommates should be almost done moving out. So then we have 1000sqft all to our own, which I am really looking forward to because it's a bit tight with the four of us now. This week and the next is one big f'n sprint to get everything done before I leave. Right now it looks like I might have not one, but two work trips the two weeks after I return - one to NY Geo in Albany where we might show off our geothermal tool, and one to Bilbao to show off another tool. Both tools are not done but should be finished by the time I'm back. Both tools are under my control, so I need to step up my delegation game and get as far as I can while I'm not gone yet. I'm really looking forward to my holidays. We've planned an awesome trip to Edinburgh, the Highlands and London, with a day in York as we head southward. And the Eurostar back to the Netherlands from London. Go trains!
Off to CA yet again. I gave Klobuchar some money. Pete is good, Bernie is fine. I’m happy with one of those three as the candidate, but all things being equal, I’d prefer Amy. It’s time we end this sausage fest. I just hope Biden and Warren don’t linger. Bloomberg is my least favorite of possible candidates. Two rich old dudes arguing about what America needs is what we don’t.
Amy vs Trump on the debate stage gives me a sense of deja vu. But I think she’d hold it down better than Pete. Of the three you mentioned, considering they are female, gay or jewish still seems novel for presidential candidates making it this far. The best part of each being those qualities aren’t centerpieces of their campaign.
i was gonna write a lil thing about how i've been vibing a lot easier lately but i questioned the term - where did vibing come from? mr. google says there's been a sharp increase in vibing lately, which matches my own suspicions - it snuck into my vocab very easily, and it's such a good word too - it's a good state of mind to be in i know i've been happier lately because i can finally be just vibing. coming out of somewhere mentally dark is like getting high on your own supply - i don't need special events to be productive or happy, sometimes it just happens all on its own stay vibing everybody :) ~k