RatCreature's Journal

For some reason I've been just finding it harder and harder to pick what to read next, despite a growing book pile of things that looked promising when I saw a review or such. I never had any particular system, so I'm not sure why it's a hurdle now. I suspect it's that I'm reading more ebooks, so the unread piles is somehow both usually hidden yet overwhelming when I look at it?

It used to be that my electronic reading was mostly fanfic, where somehow this is less of a problem with the way that's published, but currently I'm less fandom engaged, and looking more to books, but it seems such an effort right now to decide what to start. Meh.

Maybe I should just use a random number generator or something.

So the good news is that I actually managed to finish a sketch for my recipient before the deadline tomorrow. I even managed to get my finicky scanner to work (after the simpler phone photo attempt just produced a somewhat garbage result). So now I even have a file.

However, the exchange is supposed to be anon initially, but of course the AO3 does not support fanart, and unlike the fanart-only anon exchanges I have participated in, chocolateboxcomm does not come with mod-provided temporary hosting. Normally I upload to my website, but of course my domain that would be visible in the URL is "ratcreature.net" so that would destroy the anonymity, ditto for dreamwidth image hosting.

I thought I could just upload it to Google photos temporarily, and set it to sharable, and eventually delete that and upload it to my website with a sig once the anon phase ends, but the share link that Google gives me doesn't get me the image, but some Google page showing it, that also shows my username.

So now I need to figure out, how I can anon host my image, so that it is embeddable but I can also easily delete it afterwards (because obviously I don't want the no-signature version out there permanently). And I also don't really want to have to create yet another account somewhere.

For example I really like the "fish out of water" trope in stories, but I also have a pronounced embarrassment squick. Unfortunately far too often the former is peppered with the latter. So I end up being lured into reading stories and then have to put them down frequently because I just can't deal. That doesn't make for an immersive reading experience. I wish I could just bring myself to power through the squicky bits rather than taking breaks.

August shouldn't be a month in which you have to huddle under a blanket for warmth, not in the Northern hemisphere and far out from the Arctic anyway. And yet here I am. Under a blanket.

I've resorted to wearing thermal underwear as sleepwear too (rather than just a t-shirt as I usually do in summer), because two nights ago I woke up cold and shivering.

Thanks to my regular weather complaints here I realize it actually is not that unusual (I complained about even colder temperatures in August 2011) but I'm still grumpy.

I'd like some nice temperatures with pleasant highs in the upper mid-20s, balmy nights and some sun. Weather should be tradeable, like I'm sure that say Portugal would be happy right now to take our excess rain and give some five to ten degrees in warmth, then we could have pleasant temperatures in the mid-20s and not be soggy, and they could get some rain against their horrific fires and not have a heat wave anymore.

The Tumblr app has notifications, usually only "So-and-so liked your photo", but sometimes the notification starts differently but then I can't find out what it wanted me to inform about, because when I tap on the notification, it only opens my dash, and when I go on to check account activity nothing shows there either.

I just clicked on a Tumblr notification on my tablet that had popped up without really reading the excerpt, except noting that it wasn't the standard like/reblog thing, but now I have no idea what it was, because there is nothing new in the inbox or the account activity of either of my two Tumblrs, and of course the notification goes away once you tapped it. Argh.

The recent trouble Pinboard is having (victim of DDOS attacks, I think based on its twitter?) is disrupting my fandom engagement, i.e. fic browsing and bookmarking, quite a bit. General web surfing too, because I use its private bookmark feature for most of my other bookmarking (recipes, art tutorials, whatever) too. People who target websites like that suck.

This also reminded me that once the site is stable again, I really ought to export my bookmarks. It's been a long time since I backed them up last.

So I bought Iron Man 3 on DVD today, and at first my computer didn't want to play it at all, then after some reading of online how-tos I found that sometimes disabling the menus makes the DVD work with linux players. And it did become playable but jumps in places so that a bit repeats and the stuff immediately after is missing. Now I don't know whether my DVD is defective or whether it just won't work on my computer but would on a DVD player. I actually reactivated my DVD player to see, but it turns out that it got broken somehow since I last used it (it wouldn't play that DVD nor another one I tried). I guess before I return the DVD to exchange for another I'll have to check it in someone else's working DVD player, whether it glitches there too. And now I have spend 14€ on a DVD, wasted two hours on fiddling with various techonology, and still don't get to rewatch Iron Man 3. Things like this make illegal downloads so attractive... >:(

My laptop won't boot anymore. It just makes some noises and then shuts down again. :(

I did have the foresight to buy a four year extended warranty when I got it, which is useful, since it is just after the two year usual one (quite suspicious that), so I ought to get it repaired on that. But of course I was less than scrupulous about backing up all my stuff (my last full backup is some weeks old), and my creaky, old desktop is not as nice to use, and of course you can't take a desktop to use it from the comfort of your bed covered by a warm blanket either. And who knows how long the repair will take.

So I'm likely to be around less online with this inconvenience. :(

ETA: Maybe it's not quite dead? Just before bringing it to the store I tried one last time to boot it, just to be sure not to embarrass myself (I've had that happen in the past that in the store a computer suddenly changed its mind about being broken), and this time, unlike the last four or five times I tried to turn it on, the laptop booted normally, pretending it hadn't played dead brick for the last few hours. Obviously right now I'm scrambling to do the backing up I'd neglected, to get all my data.

The logs I looked at, do not show anything for the time around 2am last night when I turned it off and the boot now. Obviously right now I'm highly suspicious of the laptop. Once all my data is copied, I'll risk turning it off and see whether it'll start again. I hope it'll remain non-dead *crosses fingers*, to spare myself the repair hassle, though even if it does, my trust in it is severely shaken.

ETA2: I finished the backup, and the laptop turns on again after I turn it off. So for now I'll hold off from bringing it for repair, as obviously I can't reproduce its total failure, which is both good (because I have a functioning laptop) and bad (because it feels more unreliable than the usual computer having failed me for no reason I can discern). I guess I just have to be very diligent about backups and hope for the best.

I suck so much at coloring hair. I need to draw more bald people. Or they could all wear hats. Better yet, paper bags. That would take care of a whole lot of other difficulties too. Sylvester Jr. would be the ideal subject...

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.