RatCreature's Journal

It is really annoying that the English terms for basic crochet stitches mean different things depending on which country the pattern is from. Who came up with this nonsense? At least pick different words. Having two different things both called "double crochet" is annoying.

It doesn't help that both count different from the German terms. Like what the US calls "double crochet" is apparently a "treble crochet" in UK terms whereas in German that is called just "Stäbchen", so no number at all. And tbh I find it somewhat irritating that something is called "half double crochet" ("halbes Stäbchen" in German). I mean, I realize those don't exactly work like numbers, but I can't help but feel that these ought to cancel each other and just leave you with a "crochet".

...but this historical m/m romance novel I'm reading (Best Laid Plaids by Ella Stainton) is driving me crazy. Between both of them referring to themselves and each other sometimes by first, sometimes by last name, and also by hair color, body size, age and occasionally nationality in a dizzying, randomized cycle, there are entirely too many things to refer to just two people.

It's really frustrating, because the sex scenes are decent otherwise, the paranormal plot so far is interesting, and the characters likeable, but this makes it nearly unreadable.

Is there a way to unsubscribe from the repeated AO3 fundraising E-Mails?

I get that they need money to run, but frankly mailing me more than once on top of the persistent banner that won't stay away after clicking it closed, is not making me more likely to donate to them.

So I got a mail from Flickr informing me that they have been acquired by "SmugMug", whatever that is, and that if I don't want my account data transferred I ought to delete the account by May 25.

Now, I don't remember to ever having signed up for Flickr, but I used to have a Yahoo Account, because of the YahooGroups merger back in the day, and at some point Yahoo acquired Flickr, so who knows what I got auto signed up for. So I tried to login with the e-mail that they sent the notification about my supposed account to, only then the login tells me that they don't know that email address.

So obviously I can't try to login or do a password recovery to see that Flickr account they informed me I have. I actually still have the password for my old YahooID written down, but apparently they don't ask for YahooIDs anymore. I mean, they can't have it both ways, mailing me and then claim they don't know that email.

ETA: Apparently they prompted for an email, but in reality wanted my YahooID in that field. So now I could delete the Flickr account that I never signed up for in the first place.

You should not send spammy emails that claim that the account's tweets got lots of attention (and then explain how to promote them more or something) to accounts that have never posted even a single tweet.

After first glancing at the mail I wondered whether this meant that my twitter, which I don't actively use, had been hacked (it hasn't), and somebody had actually tweeted from it, or something, and now they wanted to inform me about unusual account activity.

This applies in particular since, afaik, I had already unchecked all seven checkboxes for receiving emails about Twitter updates, including the one about new features and services. So they should not have sent me spammy emails in the first place. Though maybe they added a new one, I was opted in by default and only unchecked the latest, seventh(!) fine-grained twitter product "information" box with my unsubscribe click.

I just read a headline on a mainstream news website that misspelled "in principle" as "in principal". Aauuugh. News outlets really have cut every last copy editor to save cost, haven't they? This is one of my pet peeve homonyms. I hate it in fanfic, an it's not any better to have to see it on news sites. I mean, assuming the headline wasn't supposed to tell me that they agreed while sitting in a principal they eviscerated.

I can't believe they're selling chocolate Easter eggs and bunnies already. They really need to invent some sweets geared towards carnival or something, so that there is at least some buffer between the Christmas items deco and the Easter stuff in supermarkets.

So, LJ migrated my Scrapbook, which is a good thing, because apparently the old system had already corrupted ten of my pictures so they couldn't migrate them now, when I myself had only noticed two that had been messed up while I happened to look at old posts. However I would have liked the migration report a little more informative when listing the damaged ones, because if you haven't titled your pictures, the report doesn't even give you the folder. Or, you know, if LJ's Scrapbook hadn't corrupted my pictures in the first place, but I've learned not to set my expectations too high when it comes to LJ.

The thing is, when the old Scrapbook was still around and destroyed one of my pictures, I could usually still see the preview picture that had been created, and of course the folder and the position the picture was in. I asked support whether they might be able to give me that information at least about the pictures they corrupted, but the reply, while prompt, wasn't helpful. They could just tell me that they passed this on to the migration team as suggestion, so that maybe the log could become more informative for others who aren't migrated yet.

Thanks to the DW search function I have at least found posts for about half of the images when they were embedded or linked, and could reconstruct what they had been, and restore those. But I'm still at a loss what some of the other pictures were. Well, hopefully the new system won't eat any more of my stuff from now on.

I've already ranted several times here how computer translation is not your friend if you want to litter your English story with German words (even disregarding the characterization issues or the likelihood of random language switches occurring in the first place). That includes swear words, because believe it or not, swearing works differently in different languages. For example you can't just translate "fuck" and use it like in English for a swear word. Argh.

Well, the story wasn't very good otherwise either, so I don't regret the back button use, but seriously. And now I have the urge to write an introduction to swearing in German to explain, but that probably would only encourage people to avoid using betas, and make things even worse.

So, I couldn't resist giving the new Animal Man series a chance, because I love the character, and the story may have potential, or at least the opening doesn't seem worse than average, but yikes, that art is seriously bad. (I preordered just based on series title, if I had seen page samples I might not have spent money on this.)

It completely lacks details and textures in the background that would create atmosphere, or even just normal looking rooms and environments. Seriously, it's like empty squares, boxes and tiles, and the artist couldn't be bothered to put in any effort, but not in a deliberate minimalist way, but just because they couldn't think to put something else on a nightstand besides a square clock, or give texture to a windowsill that would make a square look like an actual window and so on. (ETA: I don't necessarily expect excessive detail rendering, considering that there time/effort constraints on a comic production schedule, but there are ways to make panels *look* decent and alive through blacks and dynamic lines and hinting at detail and texture, just look at for example Ditko's art in old Spider-Man comics.)

Then the layout is atrocious with panels being given odd shapes for no good reason, same for some perspective choices. And the artist can't really draw humans well either. All their hair just looks odd, and okay, hair is difficult, but they get paid for this after all. Then there are sometimes odd scribbles on the faces, like in one scene taking place at a hospital I thought Animal Man contracted a weird infectious disease and those were skin sores, but he didn't. I have no idea what that texture on his face was supposed to be.

I honestly have trouble believing that they paid someone for this.