Easter Monday. I slept pretty badly (repeatedly waking, and not taking ibuprofen when I first woke with a headache; I've absorbed the notion of "if possible, don't take ibuprofen if you're going to be lying down right afterward" and this tends to result in this exact situation of "wake up in the night with headache, tell self you'll go back to sleep and it'll go away [which never works], wake again later with no reduction in headache, take ibuprofen when about to lie back down anyway").
I had slightly larger, albeit still small, ambitions for today prior to the bad sleep, but we ventured out briefly on an unsuccessful quest for scones (we verified the shop was open and I even called ahead to try to make sure they had scones, but I got voicemail and no one returned my call, so we gambled and lost). Ah well.
I still have a bunch of sections I'm ??? about, but I think I've figured out the start and ending sections of the ClaireBell fanvid I've been working on!
I remember my grandparents having gorgeous marbleized looking dyed Easter Eggs and I kinda want to see if I can recreate that sometime. I wasn't there for the dying process, so I'm not sure it it involved dying them in stages, or if was more similar to marbleizing paper (with different dyes floating on the surface of water/oil).
Submissions for Vidder's Choice are now open (Premieres and Themed Premieres coming soon)! Before we get into how to submit a vid, just a quick note to say that while we still recommend Firefox as your go-to browser, at this point you should be okay using most other browsers. However, we recommend iPhone users not useSafari Mobile to submit vids.
tl;dr
The name you enter in the vid submission form must match your username.
We don't support 4K vids.
When adding new sources/audio, fine to just add the title. Clicking "Submit" will take you to a page where you will add more complete info.
Maximum of 25 sources/songs when submitting. You can add more later once the vid has been submitted successfully.
Eligibility
You must be registered for VidUKon to submit a vid. If you haven’t yet registered, you can do so at vidukon.org.
There are three submission-based vidshows: Vidder’s Choice, Premieres, and the Themed Premieres show. At the moment, you will only see the option to submit to Vidder's Choice on your Dashboard, but submissions to the Premieres and Themed Premieres shows will open soon. As the names imply, Premieres and Themed Premieres must be new vids that have never been posted publicly or shown at a con or similar event. Conversely, Vidder’s Choice vids cannot be premieres. Additionally, Vidder’s Choice submissions must be no longer than four minutes and thirty seconds in length.
Technical specifications
Please follow these if possible, as it makes it easier for us to set up the virtual vidshows. However, we do not want these specs to be a barrier to submission for anyone – if you’re having trouble, please contact us.
File format: MP4
Video codec: H264
Max video bitrate: 7-8 Mbps
Max resolution: 1080p
Audio codec: AAC
Max audio bitrate: 256 kbps
If you don't know how to follow these guidelines: If your vid is roughly under 350 MB and definitely not 4K, go ahead and upload it. If it’s not 4K but well over 350 MB in size and you don’t know how to reduce the file size, please contact us.
Please do not upload 4K vids. We don't support 4K on the platform, so your vid will be converted to 1080p and will likely end up with bleached colors, since that tends to happen with automated conversions from 4K to 1080p.
How to submit your vid
Please note that the name you enter in the vid submission form must match your username. If you chose a different username when you registered than the name you vid under, you can change it by going to your Profile and clicking on "Manage".
To submit a vid, go to your Dashboard, which will display all vidshows you can upload to. This is also where you will manage existing submissions. Click on “Submit”. This takes you to the page where you will enter your vid's details. You will see options to either select a vid from the database (any vids shown at last year's con), or to add a new vid. If you're adding something new, fill in all fields and hit "Submit".
If any sources, audio or vidders don't appear in the drop down, you can add your own. It's fine to just add the title of the source/song, as once you click on "Submit" you will be taken to a new page where you can fill in more details, such as media type (eg Movie, TV/Streaming, Commercial), full title in its original language, media year, etc. If you added a new vidder, you'll get to check that the details are correct here too. You'll also have the option to remove any entry in case you added it in error.
If you're uploading a multifandom vid, you can add a maximum of 25 new things per field at this stage. If your vid contains more than 25 sources, don't worry! You can add the extra sources once the vid has been submitted by using the "Manage" functionality.
In the description field, please enter a brief description of your vid. This doesn’t have to be comprehensive; for example a common approach is to choose a lyric from the vidsong that is particularly evocative of the vid, but it is also fine to write something like, “A Dylan G. character study” or “All the f/f ships in Xena”. Be as creative or straightforward as you like, but please keep this brief as every vid description has to fit in our printed conbook!
Please tick any of the mandatory content notes that apply to your vid. For custom content notes, you may provide additional detail about any of the mandatory notes as well as add any non-mandatory notes, e.g. warnings for spiders or snakes.
At this point you can hit "Submit", which will take you to a page where you can check and add more details to any new sources or audio and remove entries if needed. Make sure to hit "Save Sources & Continue" as well as "Save Audio & Continue" before clicking on "Submit All", which will take you to the page where you'll upload your file.
Here you can upload your vid and you also now have the option to upload subtitles (VTT or SRT format). You will also need to enter your password, so keep that on hand if it's not saved to your browser.
Once you've selected your files, click on "Upload". This might take a few minutes so don't navigate away from the page. Once complete you'll be redirected to your Dashboard, with a message to say you've successfully submitted your vid. You will now have the option to update your submission, either uploading a new file or updating info, including adding/removing sources/audio or updating the description or warnings.
You can add new uploads, and edit all other details of the vid, up until the submission deadline
We're not observing Easter in any way, other than being grateful for the four-day weekend (today being the third day). The work crunch continues, so this reprieve is a real mercy. (Am I starting a rewrite after this post? Yes. But I did take yesterday fully off, and Friday's work consisted only of reading through this translation.)
Reading: Very, very little, although I've been picking away some more at Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks.
Watching: The main thing is that, since the crunch has not kindly wrapped up, I've given up on my initial notion of holding off until it's over to start season 2 of the live-action One Piece. scruloose and I are two episodes in. (If we'd decided to actively dedicate the weekend to it, we could've watched the whole thing before Tuesday, but have opted against that.) No Chopper yet. *vibrates*
Weathering: Yay for spring and all that, but so far it's a very Nova Scotian spring--a lot of the province had a bunch of snow and ice on Friday, with more of the same today. We're mostly getting very chilly rain here, which is bad enough.
Meat-puppetry (kinda): Within the last week or two, the length of my hair went from "this is more effort than I like to keep it off my face, but hey, having a ponytail is still novel" to "IT'S TOUCHING ME MAKE IT STOP", and thankfully Ginny was up for chopping it (mostly) all off last night when she and Kas were over. It's now back to being VERY short without the drastic step of simply buzz cutting it; there's even enough length at the front that some of it's still dyed from (I think it was?) December. Such a relief.
(Ginny cuts her own hair, Kas' hair, and my hair, and mine is veryvery different from either of theirs--dead straight and slippery and, although I didn't know this until I was at least in my thirties, very thick despite being very fine. So when she does my hair, there just keeps being more of it, even with a quarter or a third of it buzzed right down in an undercut, and it slides away from whatever she's trying to do with it. On top of that, I only actually get her to do it maybe twice a year, so she doesn't really have a chance to get used to my hair, but she gamely makes it work anyway and I appreciate it. ^_^)
Every year in April, LGR used to do a themed month of edutainment game reviews. Since he called it quits I have held my own Edutainment Month here on DW, because it's important to be the change you want to see in the world.
First up is Word Rescue, a platformer designed to drill kids on reading basic words. The deep lore of the game is that the Gruzzles, these evil little monster guys, can't read, and they don't want anyone else to read either, so they have stolen all the words from our books and you have to, you might say, rescue them. You do this by jumping into question mark blocks which turn into words, and then finding the picture that matches that word elsewhere in the level. When you've matched them all, you get the key to the next level. Usually they're not this easy to find I'm gonna be honest with you guys: ( This game is actually kind of hard. [cut for length] )
You can buy the full version of Word Rescue on Steam for $4.99 USD. You can also still download the free shareware episode from the website of the developer Redwood Games, which delivers a dose of nostalgia in itself as it appears not to have been updated since 2006. (I enjoyed the indignant rant about Windows Vista breaking backwards DOS compatibility.)
But note that Redwood's site claims Word Rescue was "the first game ever made in which you got to pick whether to play as a girl or a boy," which is a bald-faced lie. Just off the top of my head, I can think of Moraff's World (1991), Ultima VI (1990), and who could forget Fred/Fiona Fixit of the great Night Shift (1990)? So it's up to you whether you want to do business with such a mendacious organization.
I'm a little worried that Disney might make them sugarcoat some things, since at its heart the whole point of Animorphs is basically "war is bad and destroys lives," and it doesn't exactly pull punches on that front. But, you know, I'm willing to be cautiously curious at this point.
On a related note, I still have all of my books from the series. They were one of the things that I pulled out of storage when I moved recently. Maybe I should do a re-read...
fancake is a thematic recommendation community where all members are welcome to post recs, and fanworks of all shapes and sizes are accepted. Check out the community guidelines for the full set of rules.
This theme runs for the entire month. If you have any questions, just ask!
First of all, relax! I'm far from being picky, and I can pretty much guarantee that I'll love whatever you decide to create for me. These are nothing but guidelines, for you to take to heart or ignore to your heart's content. Also, hey! You're writing me fic or drawing me art! That's automatically a good reason for me to love you, no matter what. So, please, keep that in mind. Trust me, you can pretty much do no wrong. ♥
I've been experimenting with my air fryer a lot the last few weeks now that I'm properly moved into my new apartment and don't have an oven. I already used it a fair bit even when I had an oven, but I've been trying more and more things recently that I've never cooked in it before.
The 1979 alt-history novel Malafrena, set in Le Guin's fictional Central European country Orsinia in the years leading up to a revolution, was only available from my library as part of The Complete Orsinia. In addition to the novel, this 2016 omnibus edition includes a new introduction from the author, as well as all eleven stories comprising Orsinian Tales, two other stories which were anthologized in her 1996 collection Unlocking the Air, and three short poems, two of which were previously unpublished. So if you love Orsinia, this edition seems to be the definitive way to experience it!
Unfortunately I don't love Orsinia, and I didn't love Malafrena either, though I didn't dislike it as much as I disliked Orsinian Tales.
The novel centers on Itale Sorde, a young political activist from the provinces who moves to the capital city and starts a newsletter that is critical of Austrian rule and promotes the restoration of an independent Orsinian monarchy. The narrative is somewhat sprawling, also keeping up with some of the people Itale left behind at home, as well as following various of his friends and associates even when their paths diverge from his.
The things I liked about it were the vivid descriptions of physical setting and what it is like for the characters to be present as events are unfolding. I've never been in a violent political insurrection, and I do not think Le Guin ever was either, but I felt very convinced by the living, breathing details of how she wrote the one towards the end of this book. The confusion, the waiting, the hiding, the crowding and pushing and knocking down, the uncertainty about who is where, who's in charge, and if anyone is winning—it feels real. (The realistic, non-idealized depiction of a battle was also one of the things that stuck with me from Planet of Exile.)
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LGR used to do a themed month of edutainment game reviews. Since he called it quits I have held my own Edutainment Month here on DW, because it's important to be the change you want to see in the world.
