Thread "Happy 2022! General Discussion Thread" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 10:10AM, Oct. 12, 2022

lothar wrote:
This isn't about Coolio, sorry.
I hate windows 10 OMG !!!!
I lost all of my photoshop presets: gradient maps and actions because windows decided to update and for some reason that reset my copy of PS back to factory default.
Now I have to redo EVERYTHING

RIP, I frickin hate when that happens. I lost a crapton of really important actions I had built up for years because photoshop froze and got force-closed and I had to remember a 5 step process I had for a specific effect all over again. The only reason I didn't lose my brushes was because it had a dedicated folder from having been imported from a previous computer.

You should check the temps and see if it can be recovered:

C:\Users\username\appData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop ???\Adobe Photoshop ??? Settings\Actions Palette.psp

Replace your computer name where it says username of course.

I learned the hard lesson before that the only guarantee to not lose your stuff is to save all this crap to a dedicated folder, I migrated a lot of custom brush and swatch files from Photoshop 7 to CS5 this way (I don't use the cloud for these exact reasons– my work computer isn't online so I can use old programs and Adobe can't do a frickin' thing about it.)

Posted at 11:10AM, Oct. 12, 2022

Thanks Amelius, I found it but the time stamp is about an hour ago; the last time I rebooted. so I'm guessing it's after I started remaking them. Totally a a pain to try and remember the order of things i've been hitting a single button for for years. Things like knocking out the blue pencil marks or setting up the line art for color fills. it's kinda cool though.I remade most of the actions already. I think I streamlined things a little. I've only ever been using Photoshop 6 for 20+ years. I don't see any reason to upgrade.

Posted at 11:10PM, Oct. 12, 2022

Would you guys believe me if I said I'm still happily using Windows 7?

For real: I'm holding onto this thing for as long as I possibly can, because I literally have heard nothing positive about 8 or 10 whatsoever. I'm able to get by by using older versions of certain Adobe programs, such as Premiere Pro, and even Fireworks (which I always prefered over Photoshop anyway).

I am mindful to backup the things I create though, because I've lost too many of such in the past for one reason or another, whether it's because of an OS upgrade that erased my files, or leaving a laptop plugged in (directly into a wall outlet) during a lightning storm, so in the event that I do eventually have to upgrade (or even purchase an entirely new and updated computer altogether, since my current one is 10 years old), I shouldn't lose anything too important.

But yeah, for now, I'm still very happy with using 7 . . . heck, I held onto XP for as long as I could before I got my current computer with 7 - never had the displeasure of having to use the glitchy, buggy, and ugly Vista that nobody liked.

You know, now that I think about it, it seems like the only versions of Windows that anybody ever liked were 98 (I loved how customizable it was), XP, and 7.

Posted at 12:10AM, Oct. 13, 2022

And people wonder why I don't create custom tools in Photoshop. Not since the "clicks of death" sounded on my portable hard drive and I lost all my custom files, collected art and the then currently updating webcomic.

It's archived here and the incident immortalized. Had to give up a whole sequence and just have a blank page explaining what happened on the missing pages.

Damn that hurt.

Posted at 1:10AM, Oct. 13, 2022

Ouch, that sucks.

And I'm still running windows 7 on my notebook. I used to xp up until maybe 5 years ago. But you're right 98 was the best. You could even customize the windows loading screen. It was a good year and a good oS

Posted at 7:10AM, Oct. 15, 2022

I think I got through the update in one piece, but I've never used photoshop. I went straight from XP to windows 10 and still miss it. Everything you needed and nothing you didn't. You could even drag folders into whatever order you wanted them, which doesn't seem like it would be such a hard thing to achieve.

Posted at 8:10AM, Oct. 16, 2022

Just popping in to say I'm super pumped because finally, FINALLY, WM has a new overall cover :D It took me ages to get around to making it but it's here now and I got to tell someone. XDXD

Posted at 2:10PM, Oct. 16, 2022

That looks absolutely cracking Tantz! The dramatic lighting really sets the tone, great job.

Posted at 11:10PM, Oct. 16, 2022

Ironscarf wrote:
That looks absolutely cracking Tantz! The dramatic lighting really sets the tone, great job.

THANK YOU!

Posted at 7:10AM, Oct. 20, 2022

Popping in to say that I released another song. The inspiration this time was: if Drannik & Lizzep had a TV show, what would the theme song sound like? Soon this album will be done.

Buskers - Follow the Bouncing Ball

Posted at 9:10AM, Oct. 25, 2022

Just got off Facebook and saw some of old Army buddies sharing a photo remembering one of the other guys from the unit.

Looked at his feed, he'd passed away. We were the same age and came into the unit around the same time. Sad stuff. He was was around my age. We're all getting old.

Posted at 6:10AM, Oct. 27, 2022

bravo1102 wrote:
Just got off Facebook and saw some of old Army buddies sharing a photo remembering one of the other guys from the unit.

Looked at his feed, he'd passed away. We were the same age and came into the unit around the same time. Sad stuff. He was was around my age. We're all getting old.

Learning of a contemporary's death is not necessarily about getting old; it's tough at any age,

I'll recall our times together and cycle through that–sometimes it can get rather trippy. Yeah, I know, it's a numbers game: as we age the losses grow and the sadness is exponential as the good-byes accumulate.

In that way, being fortunate can become a sad affair. I recommend getting some fresh air; it helps me remember that the departed wouldn't want me to be sad as I think of them.

Posted at 2:10AM, Oct. 28, 2022

ayesinback wrote:
bravo1102 wrote:
Just got off Facebook and saw some of old Army buddies sharing a photo remembering one of the other guys from the unit.

Looked at his feed, he'd passed away. We were the same age and came into the unit around the same time. Sad stuff. He was was around my age. We're all getting old.

Learning of a contemporary's death is not necessarily about getting old; it's tough at any age,

I'll recall our times together and cycle through that–sometimes it can get rather trippy. Yeah, I know, it's a numbers game: as we age the losses grow and the sadness is exponential as the good-byes accumulate.

In that way, being fortunate can become a sad affair. I recommend getting some fresh air; it helps me remember that the departed wouldn't want me to be sad as I think of them.

Amazing part it is, most of the real old timers are still alive and you just wonder. Though Don was a chainsmoker and had breathing problems the last fifteen years. At one point about twenty years ago I built a model of his tank. That was just before Ski passed away. The young kid in the crew is now a retired major and the gunner a just retired first sergeant.
Full lives and all well lived.

Posted at 10:10AM, Oct. 28, 2022

Anybody care if I take a second to rant about my job? I need to vent my spleen a bit.

So, I take care of a lot of billing issues with my insurance company. One of the key things I do is for homeowners policies. If the mortgage company is supposed to make a payment, I try to catch issues before they become problems and make sure the insurance company, my insurance agency, the customer, and the mortgage company are on the same page. Most mortgage companies have someone that does the same thing for them. So I get a lot of calls when the mortgage company knows that payment should be due, but they haven't recieved their bill yet. I don't mind these calls, but I hate it when the rep leaves a voicemail.

They usually sound like this:
"Hi, my name is John (unintelligible) I'm calling from the insurance department from (fast but intelligible) mortgage for the renewal of Jane Doe (not spelled out) for the property at 123 (unintelligible) Street in (city name mispronounced) zip code 12345. Policy number is (fast but usually intelligible). Please send the information to (fax or email number that is almost too fast to hear) and reference loan number (completely run together gibberish). Thanks!"

I can usually make things out enough to find who they are talking about, but the last few voicemails have been utter crap. I have decided that if I can't make out anything useable, I'm just going to delete the voicemail. And if I can understand the email, I'm about ready to send them the audio file for the voicemail. I think that are doing it to save time because none of the messages are longer than 30 seconds.

I'm just tired if wasting my time on them. When I leave voicemails, I usually speak at a normal pace and I will spell out any unusual names

End of rant.

Posted at 8:10PM, Oct. 29, 2022

I will be going ahead and setting my clock back tonight instead of next week. Why? Because I've always hated DST, and for 15 years, I have outright refused to conform to G.W. Bush's extended DST, because it was one of the dumbest things he ever did during his time in Office. Why was it even necessary to extend DST a week in the fall and a month in the spring? "To improve trade with other countries," he said . . . literally the only other country that went along with this lamebrain and cockamamy proposal was Canada, and that was because they pretty much had no choice in the matter.

So, while the rest of you sheeples continue to adhere and conform to an antiquated concept that even contemporary scientists, neurologists, and other experts agree is something we should elimiate altogether, I shall enjoy an extra hour of sleep tonight.

Posted at 5:10AM, Oct. 30, 2022

I miss daylight savings time. We don't have it Japan. In the summer the sun comes up at 4AM and it gets dark around 7:30. It's kind of a waste of daylight. It wouldn't even be much of a problem to implement being that Japan is all in one timezone.

Posted at 9:10PM, Oct. 30, 2022

We don't have Daylight savings in my state in Western Australia, but they have it over in the Eastern States (as we call them here)… collectively that's New South Wales, Victoria, The Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania, and South Australia.

Our states have stupid names, apart from Tasmania, but even that one is weird.
Queensland is one of the Eastern States and in a direct line with all the rest of them pretty much but it doesn't have daylight savings haha!

Meanwhile Western Australia and the capital city of Perth where everyone lives in this gigantic empty state, is thousands of miles away from the rest of the people living in this country, so we're the only ones that really deserve a separate time zone :)

-Actually the Northern Territory does too, there in the middle of the country up North, but much less people love there.

Posted at 4:10AM, Oct. 31, 2022

Haha, I think we are only one time zone apart, Ozone.

Posted at 4:10AM, Oct. 31, 2022

lothar wrote:
Haha, I think we are only one time zone apart, Ozone.

You're right!!
You're on 9+ GMT and I'm on 8+, wow!
That's freaky! Hahaha!

Meanwhile the Eastern Sates of Australia are 11+ at the moment, LOL! So Japan is ahead of the western part of Australia and well behind the Eastern part, that's weird.

Posted at 9:10AM, Oct. 31, 2022

DST sucks here in the eastern US, especially in the dead of summer in July; the sun's already out by 5am, but it doesn't even get completely dark until 10pm! Not cool when you're an insomniac night owl like me. Hell, even as a kid, I always hated DST: my parents always had rather early bedtimes for me growing up, anywhere from 8:30 to 9:30pm, and when school would start back in August, it would still be broad daylight outside at those times . . . how's a kid supposed to get any sleep, when it still looks like daytime outside? Of course you don't want to go to sleep, you want to go back outside and play (see, kids today wouldn't know this, but back in those days, we liked to go outside and play, lol).

Posted at 9:11PM, Nov. 1, 2022

They really want Daylight Savings Time here… and by "they" I mean a teeny but wealthy and powerful minority. They want to catch up with the Eastern States, because they're so far ahead. They force "trials" of it on us every few years and it always gets voted out because almost everyone hates it XD

——-

I've bought some fancy old clothes- A mariarchi Charro suit, which I took delivery of on Monday, and a lovely old silk dressing gown.

The charro suit fits almost perfectly, but the thighs are just a little wide. I believe it was made as a high quality costume for a wealthy American woman back in the 1950s or 1960s, rather than being made for a mariarchi, at least that's what the seller thinks. It was from a deceased estate.
I like knowing a bit about the history of my clothes :)

The dressing gown hasn't come yet. It will probably be far too large but it's very beautiful- made of silk with big quilted cuffs and lapels. The body of it is in a lovely print and the cuffs and lapels are shiny bronze/copper coloured.
I don't know anything about its history yet.

Posted at 8:11AM, Nov. 2, 2022

Ozoneocean wrote:

The charro suit fits almost perfectly, but the thighs are just a little wide. I believe it was made as a high quality costume for a wealthy American woman back in the 1950s or 1960s, rather than being made for a mariarchi, at least that's what the seller thinks. It was from a deceased estate.
I like knowing a bit about the history of my clothes :)

That charro suit looks amazing on you. I like to think the wealthy woman who owned it was a mariacha fanatic who formed her own all female group back in the sixties, a precursor to the group I posted about the other day in the good things that happened thread. They were no doubt the toast of all the society and show biz events back in the day, inspiring Herb Alpert to create the Tijuana Brass.

Altenatively she was rich enough to have it made for a fancy dress ball and it was never worn again, but that wouldn't be much of a story.

Posted at 9:11PM, Nov. 2, 2022

Ironscarf wrote:
That charro suit looks amazing on you. I like to think the wealthy woman who owned it was a mariacha fanatic who formed her own all female group back in the sixties, a precursor to the group I posted about the other day in the good things that happened thread. They were no doubt the toast of all the society and show biz events back in the day, inspiring Herb Alpert to create the Tijuana Brass.

Haha, Thankyou!
OK, that will be the official history of it :D
Yes, I had a look at the ladies from your link. That's pretty cool.

I did a few searches on Mariachi to make sure that wearing the outfit wasn't cultural appropriation and I came across a vibrant global mariachi culture, with mariachi groups in many countries around the world, all nationalities, from Japan to Sweden (a bit like Scottish pipers in that way). And it seems that Mexican people are happy to see the culture spread.

I loved listening to the groups when I was in Mexico a few years ago. At day there were one or two performing on the street for tourists, but at night a bunch of different groups would go from bar to bar, performing everywhere for the locals.
-There were no tourists apart from me and the lady I was with because the cruise ships that typically delivered them to the town didn't stay over night.

Posted at 6:11AM, Nov. 7, 2022

The Twitter stuff is so silly. People's reactions are a little over the top, aren't they?

Jeez, I was into all that social media stuff back in the day and I stuck around with Facebook forever- from the beginning all the way up until the end of April this year, but it just got so impersonal.

The rise of Meme culture was pretty shitty, but worse than that was everyone just mindlessly, meaninglessly sharing and refreshing stuff. Generally some pithy, entirely out of context thing, or maybe something some celebrity said, or a news story that was total rubbish but designed to get reactions and go viral, which is exactly what it did…

People re-sharring stuff to show their allegiance and support for various sides of pop-culture issues was jarring and sickening in its open tribalism, no matter the ethics of the underlying cause.
(Tumblr was the worst at this)

Even in nerdy, topic specific groups you weren't free of that behaviour, but those had the added issue of people sharing the same topics and images over and over and over again because there were so many members so people wouldn't all see the posts when they first came up, and it would all be brand new to new members so they're repeat all the same things everyone else already did.

And that's just Facebook! XD

Twitter is a whole other circle of hell…

I'm still on Instagram but for whatever reason it's been relatively free of that crap for me so far. I share pics of art, costume and photography I've done and people like them and sometimes comment. I like and sometimes comment of the art of photography of other people. Just creators sharing what they create and appreciating it. Healthy and simple.

Posted at 8:11AM, Nov. 7, 2022

Can't argue with that. Instagram is not as painful as the others but it doesn't have as much community building potential as it once had, probably because Facebook acquired it. The algorithm will Bury your posts as effectively as Musk will Bury you on twitter if you don't stump up his $8 per month.

The sudden rush to Mastodon right now was just waiting for a trigger. These sites have been doing us dirty for too long.