Is there anything more pristine than the glass of a scanner newly unpacked? It's so pure, just looking at it smudges it.

It's done! Nobody is allowed to find typos or grammatical errors at this point. Not good enough for the times, but I think I did a pretty good job with the tools I have. All I have to do is scan it in and ship it off to the printer. (Yes, I recognize […] [Original post on fedi.raventhemaker.com]

I've been reading _Paste-up for Graphic Arts Production_ (Kenneth F Herd, 1982), and although the bulk of its 420 pages is devoted to the art of paste-up, it gives a pretty good overview of the entire process from design to plate-making to printing. The thing that strikes me is how many […]

In my "trying to not buy from Amazon," I wanted to buy a console humidifier... found that Amazon price was $40 less than manufacturer's website, listed and shipped from by mfgr themselves. Why do places sell on Amazon for less than they sell on their own website?

My alphabet rubber stamp does not contain an ampersand. Or apostrophe, even though it contains a quote, colon, semi-colon, and dash. I am doomed.

This is coming out much better than trying to apply the rubber stamps directly. I stamped out all the letters I need, waxed the back of the sheet, and am cutting out individual letters to paste into the article title. It's slow work, but it's less […] [Original post on fedi.raventhemaker.com]

The hardest part of the zine paste-up is done... the front and back covers. Two weeks until Geek Fest where I'll be distributing it. Gotta put the finishing touches on the articles and get the rest of it put together.

Rubber stamping individual letters is a right pain in the arse. Especially because pressing firmly enough to get a good impression tends to touch the square corner of the stamp to the paper.

I have now seen Perfect Blue. I liked it. It was strange. That's about all I can say.

Going to see Perfect Blue at 10:15 tonight, and I think I'm going to need a nap before we go.

It's officially "time to wear a hat and jacket in my office all day" season. 🥶

Still irked at my experience with the local boardgame group where I asked, as a guest, that we play a game I knew so I didn't have to learn new rules with strangers. They all agreed, then a latecomer showed up a moment later and said we should play the new game he'd brought which, and they all […]

Everyone keeps saying, "Stop using double-space after periods! The software takes care of the spacing for you!" Except I haven't encountered software that turns a double-space or single-space into a proper em-space except for typesetting software. Google Docs doesn't do anything, LibreOffice […]

Also, Lindsey Stirling, please put the rest of your albums on Bandcamp. I bought them as MP3s from Amazon, and I want to repurchase them in FLAC.

My one real complaint about Bandcamp (and most other music services) is that at a "show all this artist's music" level, it doesn't differentiate between "album" and "single". Probably because they're all the same... "singles" are just "albums" with one or two tracks. But it's frustrating to […]

I really should replace the washer in the leaky hose bib before the weather gets too cold. (I have a "Y" with shut-offs that keeps it from dripping water, but it means the freeze-proof hose bib is not freeze-proof at the moment, because there's water in the pipe outside the wall.)

Eating yesterday's leftover diner "breakfast for dinner" for breakfast. 😋 Shoulda put the hashbrowns in the air fryer though.

I think Costco needs to be held accountable for selling boxes of Tim Tams that hold six full grocery store packages. That is more Tim Tams than should be available in a household at a time.

Also, I watched _one_ video to understand how cotton candy machines work, and now YouTube thinks I want to start a cotton candy business and won't stop recommending videos about it.

TIL my kid had never seen a block of Velveeta until this morning. They've eaten plenty of it, they just didn't know it was a processed cheese that came in a big block. So when they saw it in the fridge, they had to investigate.

One of my favorite Harrison Ford films is _Regarding Henry_. (A drama about a lawyer who suffers brain damage after being shot in the head, and his recovery and discovery of who he used to be.) TIL it was written by JJ Abrams. 😮

"Look, I made X, which so many other people are making! I'm planning on selling them, of course." Think this has turned into a disease... nobody can have a hobby making something without trying to sell it anymore.

"Don't worry about it. Even I can't resist." - Mr Whipple #tvcharactersforgive #hashtaggames

The more I listen to Shaboozy's "Tipsy", the less it sounds like an anthem and more like a cry for help.

Watched the second Jurassic Park movie last night. I'm sure I'd seen it before, but none of it really felt familiar. I felt it was different from the first movie almost in the way Aliens was different from Alien. The plot was a lot thinner and it felt a like more of an action movie. Wondering […]

Finished 2nd season of Wednesday. Now what to watch off of my near-infinite list?

Repeating my wife's bksy post: One of the kids wants to go to DC for a film festival, has it burned to the ground yet? And if not, is there an affordable hotel that a non driver can stay at and reach WMATA or something?

I'm at the Crown Chicken I'm at the King Gyro I'm at the combination Crown Chicken & King Gyro

I post too much about what people shouldn't do. Be kind. Do something that brings you joy. Treat yo' self.

Roleplayers: Stop using heterochromia (mismatched eye color) as a way of making your character "special". Roleplayers focus way too much on superficial features to try to stand out, instead of focusing on their character as a person. Besides, you don't need to be "special" to enjoy playing […]

"Online vendors please stop automatically adding me to your weekly mailing list" 2025 challenge. 😐 Another of the things that makes trying to move away from Amazon harder. Imagine if I were on the mailing list of every online shop I've ever ordered from. 😰

Wonders how many people have personal Trello or other task boards set up for work, that work doesn't know about and would disapprove of because it's not an approved solution and you might be putting company data in a 3rd party tool.

Know what time it is!? It's free bucket weekend!

The idea of running roleplaying games for money is so bizarre to me. But apparently there are thousands of gamemasters getting paid, and some of them even making a living at it.

The problem with trying to shape your business around what stockholders want is that stockholders aren't actually _invested_ for the long term. They'll tell you, "You need more AI!" and when you put in more AI, and that doesn't pay off and your company loses money, they'll dump your stock and […]

Wondering why YouTube algorithm decided that the "Laundromat Entrepreneur" channel was something I might want to watch. "5 lies people tell you about owning a laundromat." Sure. I need to be warned about these things before I buy a laundromat, right? Sure.

Welp, stuck out Band Camp's Kosmos Klub for two albums and I'm out. First song on this new album is 20 minutes of slow bass "bum, bum, BUMbumBUM" non-stop, with some warbly, screechy non-melody around it. I don't do drugs, and apparently that inhibits my ability to enjoy this music.

Oooh, it's October... time to schedule watching Over the Garden Wall with the kiddo.

It's amazing, with a shaved head, how a 3 degrees and 20% humidity change is the difference between turning on the ceiling fan and putting on a hat.

Download new album from BandCamp. Unzip into staging area, fix up filenames, populate .source file. Encode FLAC to OPUS. Run script that shoves flac into the archive, opus into my library. Run "scan library" on desktop player. Run script that sends flac archive and music library to backup […]

I love my Crocs, and I like playing along with the Eagles fans, but I'm not paying $85 for a pair of Eagles Crocs. :(

2-hour Webex Contact Center training, for a tool I don't want my team to use. :(

Can we talk about granola? Granola shouldn't have seeds in it. No sunflower seeds, no little weird green pumpkin seeds. And no nuts. I'll give you almond slices, but that's it. No whole almonds, no danged giant walnuts. And get that danged puffed rice out of there! Totally the wrong texture […]

I know they've basically found proof that at least some dinosaurs had feathers. But man, Land of the Lost and other 70s/80s media, and then Jurassic Park movies, has cemented in my brain a certain "look" for dinos, and I have a _lot_ of trouble picturing them otherwise. I need a remake (or […]

You ever run into that person who answers people a lot, is detailed and correct, but gives way more answer than you cared about, and somehow comes off as a little grating but you're not sure why they're grating... ...and worry that you come across the same way?

My gosh, save us from people who feel the need to answer a rhetorical question with three paragraphs of speculation.

I feel like youtube is turning into some weird echo chamber... like, I get a video titled "this is the end of hobbies". Over the next weeks, I get video after video with the same theme... "This is the end of hobbies". Have no idea what they're really about though, 'cause I don't watch them […]

Went to the gym, had breakfast and settled into work, and now I'm having a "I just need a nap" kind of morning. I should have gone into a career that doesn't involve sitting at a desk all day.

When I say "socks in crocs forever," I'm not kidding around.

One of the awkward things about when a YouTube creator quits their day job to just make videos, and then cranks up their output... I was pretty comfortable with the one-video-a-month pace. Not sure if I'm going to watch them all if they're weekly. Plus, you run out of content 4x faster that way.