practicality

...Or, Adventures of a Human Fuzzer (because geekosaur suggested it and it sounds better than 'Guys, I Think I Have Gremlins')

So, anyone who hangs around me for a long enough time knows that I love technology. But sometimes I love technology too long, or too hard, and then technology fails to love me back. Which is a nice way of saying I am really good at breaking things through either clumsiness or aforementioned human fuzzer status. The last few weeks have been grand adventurse in new and exciting ways of breaking technology, which are best summed up as bulletpoints, because otherwise I'll be writing all day.

The Laptop
- Buy more RAM for the laptop, because 2GB isn't cutting it
- Decide, well, if I'm going to do more RAM, I should sit and wipe my Win7 install, too, because I never use it, and having my storage partitions split up is a pain
- Make USB boot key of PartedMagic! Get into it successfully! Hooray!
- ...delete the wrong NTFS partition: the storage instead of the Windows one
- realize that while it was mostly just a download dump, I had ALL my photos from the con on there (along with some nice photos I took in lab)
- spend roughly three hours trying to run partition recovery via Testdisk, guided by the very patient sophie
- Finally give up, accept that I have a better chance of running file recovery on the camera's memory card for the con photos, and that the rest is write-off
- Go to clean up the other partitions, because dual-booting Win7 means having really messed up boot set-ups because Windows Updater eats other bootloaders
- ACCIDENTALLY DELETE THE PARTITION WITH MY KERNEL ON IT
- Bang head against metaphorical wall and wail at the wonderful denizens of #dw for a short while
- Go to reinstall my root file system, being very thankful /home was on a separate partition
- ...Install 32-bit Ubuntu on 64-bit machine, causing it to only recognize 2.4GB of my nice shiny 4GB of RAM
- Facepalm
- Reinstall 64-bit OS and reconfig files.
- It is now six am.

The Tower
- Tower fails to boot. Again. (this is a fairly regular occurrence)
- Decide to actually play with boot settings instead of just reinstalling OS like I usually do.
- Get boot to work!
- Give in to the nag window to upgrade to 11.04, thinking 'it should be fine now, right?'
- Upgrade!
- Tower fails to boot again :| (this has happened every time I try 11.04 on any of my machines, I think it's cursed)
- Sigh, reinstall 10.10, decide I will work out why boot keeps failing on the main disk another night.

The Nook
- Fail to write the disk images needed to root the Nook repeatedly
- Disk image writer attempts to summon elder gods
- Fail some more.
- Finally succeed! Nook is rooted.

The Razr
- Get shiny new phone!
- Discover rooting shiny new phone is surprisingly easy!
- Gleefully start deleting Motorola and provider apps I don't need
- Discover the hard way that BlurEmailEngine.apk? Controls display text message notifs
- Oh, and BlurEmail.apk is necessary for contacts to works. Thanks, Motorola.
- Try factory reset. Accomplish nothing other than deleting all my apps.
- Attempt to reinstall system apps from other people's dumps. Fail.
- Attempt to install Brazilian stock ROM, because nobody bothers ripping the Canadian ones. Also fail.
- Give in, find replacement apps (to the good people behind the GO suite? I love you)

...and there has been some shenanigans with both my camera memory card and J's camera memory card, but file recovery ran okay and format worked, so those aren't worth writing up. And this is why I don't have con photos up yet.

So I think at this point all of the regulars in #DW have been hearing about my (mis)adventures with Drupal and PHP. Basically, after many years of waffling around I am finally building a cosplay website, and because apparently my mindset is 'go big or go home', I've been designing it to be multi-user scalable.

Because I am only one person and cannot remember what I want half the time until the exact moment I want it, I would love some feedback on what it could use. I should also note my intent was to make it a cosplay site, ie, mostly geared at people doing media recreation costuming, but I think most of the functionality works for other types? But I may have to try and classify by things other than just character and series.

This is the site!
What's still on my to-do list:
-being able to add links to accounts on other sites to user profiles DONE! (current list is dA, DW, LJ, Twitter, Tumblr, Plurk, and ACP; other input welcome)
-Add good search functionality. I've got some modules for it, but I'm still working on the set-up.
-Making the links to a given user's content easy to find on their user profile (costumes and tutorials are in the sidebar, but they're hard to find with the nav links there)
-Styling.

Specific feedback I'd love would be on whether the fields provided for tutorials/costumes/profiles are adequate, what other sites people would like, and... well, anything else you can think of.

So I made a cosplay tumblr so I can stop spamming the shit out of Plurk and my blog with WIP photos and ramblings and tutorial links. Is there any interest in me setting up a syndicated feed account for it on DW, for non-tumblr users?

momijizukamori
momijizukamori

(And if you want to friend me either of those places, be my guest)

Tian-sama is gone.

[The writing is a touch more... calligraphic than Souji's usual. But poetry demands it, even if it's not his own. And even if it's awful.]

Of the seven spring herbs
five I have
put to memory.

[The handwriting is a touch shakier than usual]

Is everyone alright?

[There's a long pause, and then-]

I'm sorry.

I don't know where they came from all of the sudden, but all of these fireflies are really pretty. They look a little like hitodama, all gathered together like this.

It happened almost as if he'd blinked his eyes and the world had shifted - one moment he'd been staring at the table in the tea shop he'd been wiping down, and the next - he was putting a set of chopsticks down neatly on the rest, without having even thought of the action. He tried to turn his head and look around, but found he couldn't - his body was moving of it's own will. Out of his peripheral vision, he thought he could see Usagi. And across the table from him, there was a girl, twelve at most, who evoked such a strong feeling of familiarity and protectiveness it almost caught him off-guard.

"Thanks! It was delicious," Usagi - and that was definitely Usagi's enthusiastic voice - piped up from beside him.
"Yeah, thanks I guess." His own voice, then, and he could hear the careful feigned indifference in it.

Usagi leaned forward to give the girl a bright smile. "You're an excellent cook, Sakura. The hamburger casserole was great!"

She blushed a bright pink in return. He could feel himself scooting back his chair, and reaching for a bag on the floor.

"Can't help with dishes, gotta get to work."

Usagi's grin really was a permanent fixture, it seemed like. "I'll help you clean up. After all, you did treat me."

Momotarou headed across the room to the entryway, Usagi trailing him as he slipped on his shoes. "Is it still raining?"

He opened the door to reveal the answer to Usagi's question - a torrential downpour of rain. "Yep. It's not natural..." He could hear the suspicion and worry in his own voice - but a moment later, he was staring at the teashop table again.

Is the name 'Renée' familiar to anyone else? I saw it in some of the graffiti, and I feel like I should know it - but I can't remember.

Samehada-san, we should spar again sometime soon.

[OOC: As this is ~meta~ Souji is going to be dodgy about it on the journals, but I'm happy to use this for quicklogs!]