...Things I forget about, obviously. I guess general status update - I have a job! It is basically a trained monkey job, but it's fulltime, and may have benefits (I started as a temp but am being switched to perm). It's also kind of a gongshow right now because it's a new facility so stuff isn't 100% online and they got kind of flooded with business, which in the long run is good but in the short run means I worked like a 44hour work week last week, and that was with finishing early on Friday.

April is con month! After a lot of waffling, I decided that yes I am going to Sakuracon, mostly to hang with and enjoy Seattle. Costume line-up:
-Gintoki (Gintama) for Friday
-Ukitake (Bleach), with Unohana and Kyoraku for Saturday (YAY old captain group)
-Hakkai (Saiyuki) for Saturday night and Sunday. Maybe, idk.

And then ACen at the end of the month which I am SUPER EXCITE about:
-Gintoki (Gintama)
-Juubei (Getbackers)
-Hakkai (Saiyuki)

OTHER THAN THAT, I have been cleaning more, which is good, and have a terrible headcold right now, which is bad. I called in sick to work for basically the first time ever because I woke up at seven this morning with a fever and a headache that's been there since Friday. I feel kind of guilty but on the other hand fuck, I couldn't handle an 8+ hour day of lifting and walking and LOTS OF NOISE like this. So I'm going to hide in my house with tea and maybe cook some. Home remedies for terrible headcolds with bonus sore throats appreciated, this is an awful feeling :|

>>timestamp\ 4:52 PM
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This was born out of a Skype conversation with Andy a few weeks ago (by way of the Dewey decimal system, incidentally). Basically - being a design nerd, I ended up going off on a long rant about how basically every cosplay community site (ie, places you can join rather than an individual or group's personal cosplay page) has the worst interface ever (or absurd arbitrary rules for joining, for the few I haven't tried), and are terrible at actually sharing information about costumes and process, which is ostensibly what they are about. And she replied that in the cosplay community nobody cares about process, so why would they bother? Which, honestly, is completely true, and kind of depressing.

To steal a way of looking at things from the fiber arts community, there are kind of two ways at looking at a crafting project, mindset-wise - the process mindset, and the product mindset. They're sort of a spectrum: the process extreme is that you could be making absolute gibberish in physical form and it wouldn't matter, because the joy is in the making; and the product extreme is that every step of making the thing could make you want to go into the wilderness and gouge your eyes out with blackened sticks, but as long as the end result is what you wanted, you're okay with that.

Most people, obviously, fall somewhere between the two. For me, when I'm doing knitting or crochet, I tend a little more towards the process side of things - small mistakes won't get me in a huff, whereas when I sew I'm more concerned with end results. Recreation costuming (that is, trying to duplicate exactly an outfit that already exists somewhere) is, by necessity product-focused. You have a strong incentive to make your product as close to the source as possible. The cosplay community (focused mostly on doing Eastern-media recreation costuming) goes about this by foisting a lot of the product onto the physical attributes of the costumer, rather than the costume itself.

This drives me crazy. Crazier, I suppose. Because this is a community where someone who handsewed a fully-lined jacket with bias tape trim and perfectly matched buttons will be discarded for someone who bought their costume on ebay but by genetic coincidence looks more like the character. The latter person is, by the community's standards, 'better'. Also, as an aside, you want to know why everyone thinks Japanese cosplayers are the bestest ever? 1) everyone links around the good pictures (I've gone to actual Japanese cosplay sites, and honestly, some of them a pretty crap too) and 2) photoshopping the hell out of things in the norm. You don't need crafting skill when you have a photographer with photoshop!

As you cross boundaries into other types of costuming, the process/product balance starts to shift. Western-media recreation costumers are also product-focused, but in ways that take into account the effort put into process and technique (google the 501st or the Rebel Legion, for example). Then the steampunk and the more freeform original-design edges of the sci-fi/fantasy get even more into the 'how' of things rather than the end result.

And, well, I love talking about process. Which is why I post WIP photos everywhere and go on long rambles and have most of a thousand-word post on working with plastics written up for tumblr. I want to make beautiful things. And I want to not be constantly judged on my results of genetic roulette while I do so. Which is basically why I avoid the bulk of the cosplay community (and particularly the ones that love to fat-shame. That shit's not on)

Back on the topic of cosplay websites. So you have a beautiful costume and you want to share photos of it! Awesome! Here are your choices:

-CosplayLab - lets you upload one photo per costume. Writing about it has to fall into one of the questions the page asks for. Still has one of the better frontend and backend interfaces I've seen.

-Cosplay.com - The behemoth. Used mostly for the forums. Uploading photos is an exercise in futility, and trying to create costume pages equally so. Seriously, it would be easier to make a Geocities page by hand, and it would look nicer too. Search has no real set backend database so you're pretty much relying on the cosplayer to have used whatever character/series name spelling you are. Searches also don't filter well.

-ACP/ACE - Okay. To be straight up, I find the idea of having different sites for male and female costumers to be 1) super creepy and 2) borderline offensive (for bonus creepy, for a long time only the female version existed), so I don't have an account and can't comment on the backend. The database search is pretty good, though but not good enough to make up for the creepy.

-Cure - used to be Japanese-only, and while they have an English interface now, it's honestly still Japanese only. I can't even comment on the site because it's not viewable to non-members, but I've been told that it's pretty much just image-sharing.

-DeviantArt - NOT EVEN A COSPLAY WEBSITE and yet, it's one of the better ones for uploading photos, linking to other users in the pictures, and sharing with groups.

So, in other words, all terrible. This is even more highlighted by my participation in Ravelry, which is a site for knitters/crocheters/spinners, and basically has a user interface that is made of unicorns and rainbows, metaphorically speaking. Seriously. The design is that good, and the site has one coder. Yes. One. By way of example for non-Ravelers, here's a project page as shown to a logged in viewer. It's got lots of nice links to the yarn I used, and the pattern, and yardage info, and nicely displayed photos next to a freeform 'Notes' section, after the more technical info. Here's the same project, on the editing side of things. Lots of nice info boxes! A button to click to search for the yarn I put in, and match it to ones in the database! I can share it with as many Ravelry groups as I'm in to be listed in group projects!

My dream is to have something like this for cosplay. Instead of a pattern database, you'd have a character database, and be able to magic-link to that, so searching would be easy. Instead of having info like 'needle size' and 'yardage', you'd be able to add a 'compenent' - say 'Gloves' or 'Shirt' or whatever you felt like breaking it down into, and you could talk about each piece individually, as well as having a general 'Notes' section. Have it so you can share the costume with a con you wore it at, so someone can look up the con and see all the costumes that were a part of it!

Unfortunately, getting a community site off the ground is a lot of work, both in coding and in attracting enough users to make it a viable community. My smaller goal is to maybe code an easily deployable content management system (like the blogging software for your webserver. Hopefully someone other than me actually knows about those these days....) that would make adding costumes easy. You wouldn't be able to interlink things the way you could on a community website, but you could do everything else, and have skinning functions, too.

Of course, first I gotta learn Perl *g*

>>tags/cosplay,

>>timestamp\10:57 PM
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Things I have been doing lately:

1) RP - which I plurk about all the time and nobody here cares about *g* Or if you do, well, ask. Three DW games, two tabletop, and looking at apping into two more DW games right now.

2) Dev type things - mostly on styles because apparently people complaining on anoncomm and plurk about DW having ugly base layouts is enough to gallivant me into action. I have one new layout submitted, and, uh, another three in various states of work. One header-image-friendly, one request from (I haven't forgotten, I swear!), and one port of a Smooth Sailing custom theme. And Tropospherical bugs. I have also become a conveyor of information between plurk and IRC apparently.

3) Trying to regain control of life - which you would think would be easier sans job, but somehow isn't. I am, however, slowly working cleaning into my routine, and I've been doing the job search dance again. Still not eating well and I think Effexor is giving me insomnia, though. So kind of a mixed bag.

4) Cosplay - what the rest of this entry will be about! Mostly because I have been working hard and have lots of picspam and thoughts and lists to share. Blame - I think we enable each other on this. To wit - Juubei is on track for getting done next week sometime, I have Gin's ridiculous shirt more or less finished, and I put in a big shiny order of dye supplies tonight.

>>access file\"State of the Me"?

>>timestamp\12:03 AM
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Mostly reposting photos here for the dubious benefit of people who didn't witness them via plurk or my IRC spamming. Juubei's shirt is almost done - I ended up going with version 2, aka Useless Buckles, and, well, the Useless Buckles are about all that need to be done now. And some inside finishing. I also styled my wig for Gintoki, and a friend's wig for Sakura (the Getbackers one). Gin looks great, Sakura could use a little more volume but I'm not sure how to achieve that. I've also been working on Those Damned Bells to little success because epoxy is full of failure. Also, shopping for jingle bells when you have a migraine? Hell.

>>access file\"Cosplay WIPs"?

>>timestamp\ 2:22 AM
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So I started work on the Getbackers stuff, and by 'work' I mean going through scans and figuring out wtf is up with Juubei's outfit (he has two), painting a giant flag, researching formable clear plastic, and trying not to slice myself open on cheap coil springs. The first one of these brings me to the second part of my subject, which is: I need to decide which of the two shirts to make. And I am the least decisive person ever. You do not need to know canon, or even really costuming, just have Opinions XD My quick sketches of each shirt and notes under the cut. Along with a photo of the bigass Fuuga flag.

>>access file\"In which there is cosplay and making the internet help me with decisions"?

>>timestamp\12:35 AM
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(A little late for me, but things have been a little weirder than usual, lately)

In 2011, I:
-got laid off from a job
-completed '11 in 2011' and every challenge for all three tournaments of Nerd Wars
-got better at learning to resolve disagreements
-had a flat tire! (two, actually)
-did Real Science

2011 was kind of a weird year. Lots of changes all the time, and the last month was really rough. But I do feel like I've learned a lot, even in the chaos. I used to say that I'd never bother with resolutions, as I never keep them, but we'll try one this year: keeping the house at least clean-ish all the time.

>>timestamp\ 1:22 AM
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So, as somewhat of a personal challenge to myself, I decided to try and go for the '11 in 2011' challenge (though unofficially!). Basically, the challenge was to knit (or crochet) eleven shawls in one year. Mine are all more of the 'shawlette' size, as that's how I like them, but I thought I'd share the photos, along with what patterns and yarn I used! Posted in order of creation~

>>access file\"Knitting - 11 in 2011"?

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The former is, well, something of a non-entity for me. It's actually kind of weird - I've spent every Christmas before this with my family. Last year my dad came out for a few days, and before that, I've always been at my mom's house. Christmas is a big deal for our family in a sort of family-tradition way (and Christmas Eve is the one church service a year you will possibly find me at). But I only have a four-day weekend for it, and my dad's busy, so... my plans are mostly to catch up on knitting and cleaning, and spend the rest of the time sitting on my ass doing fuck-all. So basically a regular weekend, just... more of it. And with mail.

As for the latter - I feel the need to get out my two cents (or the Canadian equivalent thereof) and both sides of the debate on my plurk timeline have basically been chugging the rageahol and it basically makes me want to crawl under my covers and not deal with it. They have a right to be angry, and I have a right to be stressed as fuck about it. So. Posting here instead, where I think I will be less attacked for my POV. I hate the changes - it's laggy, removes functionality, and is aesthetically displeasing. But I'm not up in arms about it, ironically, because I've been more or less on the anti-LJ side of the fence forever. I will admit that for communities, it's awesome. But I started blogging on a personal site (and right now, am writing this entry in Movable Type, which I will then copy-paste to DW, which will crosspost to LJ for me), and I've never liked the feel of being part of the 'cloud'. I also joined when it was invite-only, and didn't like invite codes (though there is a certain irony to people bitching about that as like their number one hate-on for DW. I understand both the necessity of them and the dislike of them, but LJ used to be the same).

As a result my expectations for LJ as a site are pretty much nil. I mean, things started going down the tubes when Six Apart bought them, and haven't improved since. I have spent years stoically giving LJ as little of my money as possible (unlike most RPers apparently I am not compulsively addicted to icons?) - I've bought paid time exactly twice: once as a Christmas present for a friend, many many years ago, and once recently because I needed a journal I could track subthreads on for RP. And honestly, shit like this is pretty much why. This, Strikethrough, staff abusing their admin privileges, clusterfucks with other changes - this is just the bale of hay that broke the camel's back. And I pretty much sat on my ass through those, and will continue to do so again. If everyone moves, so be it, if they don't, I'll continue crossposting and reading my friendslist there (which, along with my DW circle and my RSS feed reader I do every day). And if all of the social media sites implode, I still have here. My own little domain, my own little blog. Probably one of the only ones left in fandom, at this point, but I'm okay with that. I like having a space that's mine.

(And, on the whole, I like DW. I don't like the feel of invite-only, though I know why, but I do like the level of transparency present so far in both changes and malfunctions. It probably helps that one of the founders is responsible for my favorite FST of all time, though.)

>>timestamp\ 1:27 AM
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I have a job! It's only for two months, but it's fulltime for those two months, and it's better than nothing. I'm working the nightshift at a distribution warehouse for a big clothing retailer up here. The work isn't too bad, though it's definitely a work-out - I'm still sort of adjusting to having eight hours of my day taken up by work, though. I get home at 12:30 and have no energy to get stuff done, but I surf the internet for a few hours and then sleep until it's basically time to get up to go to work again anyway. Ugh.

Needless to say, not much else is getting done around the house. I lost a big chunk of 'getting stuff done' in October to adventures in antidepressants - switched to a new one with the hopes it would be more effective than the one I was on, but apparently Zoloft makes me a nervous wreck. So I did a bunch of crafting and television watching and not much else.

In the watch pile lately (as I'm starting to give up hope of... actually blogging about things I'm watching/have watched) - Gintama, Fringe, Planetes, LOTS OF GUNDAM, Gurren Lagan, Gintama and Fringe I powered through earlier this year and am now watching as they air - the others are going through my backlog of recs and whatnot.

>>timestamp\ 8:36 PM
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Yep. The oldest entry on my blog is ten years ago today (read at your own risk, I was thirteen).

It's kind of a weird feeling. When I started, blogging was pretty niche - it wasn't something talked about in the mainstream, and only a handful of my online friends did it. I watched it explode into the mainstream, to the point where everyone had a blog or a livejournal or a xanga. It became something you could get paid for. In the last few years, personal blogging has kind of declined. Big-name writers still keep blogs, and there's a lot of focused-topic ones around - I follow probably close to ten on my feed reader. But it's kind of falling out of favor for person contact, and being replaced by social networking. Which yes, I'm guilty of, I throw most of my thoughts at Plurk these days XD

But I do still like the permanence of a place like this - I can see how far I've come, as embarrassing to myself as it can be, sometimes. And it gives me a place to put down longer thoughts and ideas.

So - here's to a decade more, maybe.

>>timestamp\ 6:48 PM
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