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  • Gardener4

    On an even older tip, the sampler in my studio was made by my grandma's mother as a 12 year old in 1893, that's definitely the oldest family heirloom. If only kids today were taught to do such beautiful things in class at that age.

  • Gardener3

    Going through old photos last night I discovered the oldest family picture - my grandad at 2 years old with his grandmother circa 1922.

  • shellie11

    I finished another feature script this morning before work. I have one more script thats on page 45 with 45 pages left to go and I can’t wait to jump back into it. Both of these scripts I started in mid January.

    Then I’ll have 4 low budget feature scripts completed (2x for >300k and 2x for >200k production budgets )that I can package for 1M and shoot consecutively with the same crew, shared resources, and some if the same cast. I have some decent cast attached so far and a financier that’s interested but I gotta close the deal.

    I’m just so excited to keep pushing.

  • Nairn2

    ^
    This is the first Easter.. possibly ever.. that I've recognised the exstence of somewhat in advance. Usually it comes up as a dark surprise to fuck my schedule and expectations.

    Because the kid's in school, I am now acutely aware of upcoming holidays and such, however this year it would appear that roles are reversed and it's my clients who've been blind-sided by Easter's unexpected appearance. Oy vey.

  • OBBTKN1

    Very slow weeks, work-wise, everyone is on vacation for holy week and easter now (6 projects stopped right now)... but also elections time, regional and EU that paralyze everything...

    Except for the money issue, everything is going well, but there is always THAT black cloud that doesn't let us live in peace.

    • I'm going to take 5 days off, but when I get back, I know everyone will come calling like crazy.OBBTKN
    • I will take advantage of Easter week to finish some courses that I have pending...

      That, and eat some tangerines, LOL.
      OBBTKN
  • palimpsest-8

    If you were born in 1965 you would turn 59 this year.
    Follow me for more tips.

  • SimonFFM8

    Nastya came to Frankfurt and I gave her a copy of my new book. There are 14 pages with her and I wrote her a personal note of how much she inspired me. She almost cried and was so happy. It was really heart-warming.

  • Gardener2

    Coming this Friday morning on Tak Tent Radio - part 2 of my Skylarking mix 'Behave Yourself', sorry...

  • NBQ00-5

    I fucking love it spicy. Putting hot chili on everything. Even chocolate.

  • bainbridge4

    Remember when you could smoke in restaurants and bars?

    • some countries still let you do that.pango
    • which countries?uan
    • some restaurants in japan is still ok to smoke indoor. china too.pango
    • There is a bar in our town where they allow smoking after 12 at night.OBBTKN
    • I remember going to a pub in SF where you could still smoke, it was an Irish bar that would show Celtic games, was strange seeing Scottish teams on the wall.PhanLo
    • A pub I was in last year in Denmark allowoed smoking too. I don't smoke thoPhanLo
    • File under “signs you're getting old“dee-dubs
    • It sucked so much.SimonFFM
    • Not a fan of those daysstoplying
    • at least i don´t remember the time when doctors said its healthy as in- a vacation for your lung - ads...neverscared
    • Even as a regular smoker at the time, i was much gladdened when it was banned from restaurants, pubs and clubs - no more stinking clothes when you got homeNairn
    • Smoking section on a plane!Bluejam
    • +1 Nairn. Although at a recent gig a significant number of the audience lit up doobies and that was most enjoyable.MrT
    • ya smoking indoor is much worst. 10-20 times? can't remember exact. just throwing numbers here.pango
    • Many bar/grill places with gaming in Las Vegas you can smoke/eat/drink/gamb...Akagiyama
    • Oh yes Vegas. I hated walking through the hotel lobby. The mix of cigarettes and perfume is really irritatingpango
  • Ianbolton1

    Went to watch comedian Jerry Sadowitz here in Leeds last night. Fuck me, he really doesn't have boundaries. There's nothing off-limits, but he openly says he's too far into his game to change his routine and accepts that it'll get to the point where he won't get anymore gigs. (He did suggest maybe adopting a ventriloquist routine to make the character-play more obvious).

    It's important to understand there's a character he's playing and all the racist, misogynistic, homophobic bollocks he spews is all in the name of comedy. He really was amazing, although you could see certain parts of the crowd were the 'you can't say anything these days' sort - totally not understanding the fact that being racist just isn't acceptable - ever!

    • His show got shut down in Edinburgh last year because some of the young staff at the venue couldn't handle it.PhanLo
    • yeah, like he wasn't gonna talk about that haha. But watching it, i did think 'yeah, i see why they'd not like it.'Ianbolton
    • But then, imagine accidentally seeing Jerry Sadowitz, not knowing what he's like. It's pretty racey stuff!Ianbolton
    • My mate went to the first show and thought it was good, but for a young person he's probably too wild now. Strange young people are usually pushing boundariesPhanLo
    • His stuff is pretty bananasPhanLo
    • His jokes about Diane Abbott were fucking awful, but the delivery was so amazing you couldn't help but laugh. But yeah, totally bananas!Ianbolton
    • Guess they are pushing boundaries by saying 'i can identify as whatever i choose'. Whether that's right or wrong, who knows.Ianbolton
    • Comedians aren't the ones pushing boundaries... it's the fucks whining that he's 'broken them' who have set 'boundaries' in their own narcissistic heads.PonyBoy
    • I saw him in Dundee on this tour a few weeks ago and yes, he was still brilliant, it was the EIGHTH time I've seen him too, I am sick...Gardener
    • I took my teen with me, he knew nothing of his act but thought he was "mildly amusing" tsk, fuckin' kids today eh?Gardener
  • ephix4

    Welp, started university for "applied design" which includes things like design thinking, aesthetics, but more importantly creative entrepreneurship and ofcourse ui/ux. Being self taught I thought I'd see if there are any gaps to fill so to speak. Was daunting at first considering I don't even have a year 10 certificate but it's been fun so far, and the lecturer is an amazing illustrator. His style has brought back a lot of fond childhood memories. So far so good.

  • NBQ00-3

    My wings are black from all the dust and ashes that I picked up in hell. But I'm cleaning my sword, I am dusting off myself, licking the wounds. Bring it on.

    • have you joined a cult?pango
    • No pango. I am describing my inner world.NBQ00
    • Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In My Lane. Focused. Flourishing.palimpsest
    • Is that your inner world Palim? Sounds magnificent. Being moisturised is a luxury that most people can only dream off.Ianbolton
    • I thought you'd found 'the one' NBQ? The next one will defo be the one.Ianbolton
    • Has nothing to do with my relationship status :)NBQ00
    • Are you a larper NBQ?milfhunter
    • lol, not really. it's metaphoricalNBQ00
    • Andrew Tate's on QBN?Nairn
    • So you’re an angel in this metaphor? lol, what’s hell then?monospaced
    • QBN? lolNBQ00
    • Are these Wu-tang lyrics?futurefood
  • HAYZ1LLLA-4

    Can anyone recommend a good free AI portrait generator for desktop? One that makes you look like a astronaut or viking, shit like that. I had NameSake on my phone but they want ££ now.

  • BabySnakes1

    Any of you with middle school kids, learning Vex Robotics stuff? My Friend's daughter was explaining to me and its really cool they have the access to this type of stuff in schools now.

    She was just bummed that her class partner wasn't letting her code much, and as a developer i can't let that stand. So i was looking in home tool options.

  • Ianbolton7

    I've just eaten a hog-roast sausage roll. Fuck me it was delightful. I'll send a photo next time, but for now, use your creative faculties to imagine how great it was.

    Hope we've all had great weekends and NBQ stops being such a teary, emotional rollercoaster.

  • NBQ00-3

    I am so hyper-sensitive right now. I can listen to a moody or beautifully ambient/ epic audio track and start crying. It's mostly tears of joy. Being so close to the universe is vulnerable.

    • Sometimes one is open.jagara
    • TAKE OUT OUT OF YOUR WINDOW MAN. IT'S ALL FUCKING BURNING.Horp
    • erm, take a *look* out, was what I meant to type

      *exasperated face emoji*
      Horp
    • I have the same “condition.” Look up info about being an emotionally sensitive person. It’s not a bad thing.mg33
    • I have the opposite condition. Totally dead inside. Nothing moves me. My GF declares "OH! A SWAN! HOW SERENDIPITOUS" and I'm all "eh so fucking what".Horp
    • She's dying slowly like Artax in a swamp of sadness, except I'm not tugging her reigns and saying "DON'T GO" I'm just watching, saying "eh so fucking what".Horp
    • @Horp there's no known cure, I'm afraid: https://www.youtube.…jagara
    • @mg33 +1jagara
    • Pussies.crazyprick
    • Emotionally sensitive person + being an empath has so many benefits but just as many downsides. When anxiety is bad these things collide like a car crash.mg33
    • As a musician the emotionally sensitive part can be amazing. As a music listener it can be intense joyous emotion or intense dark emotion.mg33
    • I get triggered at the oddest times by music especially when related to a happy memory in conjunction with a song. It's an amazing phenomenon.mg33
    • Just curious. Microdosing lately?monospaced
    • lolNBQ00
  • Horp0

    Ehhh fuck it. Still logged in so I'm going to post again. It's going to be long and boring though. I'll log out again soon and go back to watching you all through the soundproofed one way mirror.

    I've always loved writing. Typing really, rather than writing. I like to violently shart the contents of my brain into different places, in unmanageable splatterings that hit a large circumference in disorganised patterns. A hot wet mess of thinking, transcribed hastily by my pulsating epileptic sphincter. I have done this for years across a lot of platforms.

    As a result, I do get people saying "write a book, I'd read it" quite a lot. However this sort of comment, whilst frequently offered, needs to be tempered by a few things:

    1. I cannot write a book to save my fucking life. I've tried. Sharting your mind-mucus is not the same thing as structuring and telling a complex story with realism and well-grounded characters. It's completely different.

    2. People see you doing something and feel compelled to offer encouragement. I think of this as the Moonwalk Effect.

    Over the course of my life I have seen many many people do a Michael Jackson moonwalk and their gathered friends and family all applaud and cheer and clap wildly and say how very good that person is at doing that.

    However, that person wasn't actually doing a moonwalk, they were merely walking backwards with draggy feet, T-Rex arms and a stupid look on their face. People cannot discern between a technically well executed moonwalk (the illusion of travelling opposite to locomotion) and just walking backwards in a party setting for entertainment.

    Similarly people cannot discern between 'lots of words on a page' and 'a skilled writer'. They just see the words and think "oh look he's a writer! He's good at that... he should write a book!". My fat arse should I write a book. Ridiculous.

    3. As frequent as the encouragements to write are, statistically, they are almost zero on a data chart against all the people who saw any given post and *didn't* make that comment.

    It probably sits at 1 in 5000 people who reply with a "Write a book" comment. Those are not encouraging odds but we as humans tend to use selective bias when it makes us feel good. I don't though.

    But I do also dabble in writing things that are just for me. Stored on my hard drives, not published anywhere. They are my projects and a few of them have been things I've picked up and put down over decades. The Planetarians, The Dolsda Figures, Frank Dandyhand (a wordplay parody of the old timey detective noir genre), All The Ham In Halifax (a deliberately stupid parody of romance fiction); a stupid fucking thing about a mad painting that's honestly the lamest piece of crap that wouldn't even make it onto a fucking blog post. It's all shit. All of it.

    But, when down time is enforced by the economic climate, and I can't land my next contract or a job, I get really stuck into one or more of these things and start pushing it towards completion.

    This time around it's The Planetarians. I'm at around 30,000 words and I've become excited by different format. It's not a book, it's a sequence of transcribed notes and interviews spanning decades, detailing the weird life of my Uncle Gerald and what happened to him. A mailshot series of documents that form the idea of a mystery, loosely, with the reader needing to fill in the gaps and reach their own conclusions.

    I am now *SERIOUSLY FUCKING OBSESSED* with completing The Planetarians. I am *GENUINELY VERY EXCITED* about it and work on it every day between other tasks. I stay up late smashing the shit out of my keyboard, working out the structure, adjusting the timeline, working out how each mail-out would be packaged in something that relates to the particular aspect of the story being covered.

    A kind of deconstructed book that you maybe would subscribe to and receive each new part in the post across months. Official documents from various sources across decades.

    I'm almost ready to admit that I could start sending this thing out to people.

    That's VERY important. It is important because whenever I get to that point... the point of maximum self-belief and enthusiasm, I get offered work and have to stop thinking about it. Then it sinks back into the soup of hard drive storage and I forget about it until next time I'm between projects.

    Probably nobody here recalls the time back in around 2009 when I was in a similar difficult situation and I rustled up a mail-out art project and a whole bunch of you sent me $20 by post (as specified) to receive a bunch of artworks over the course of the following year.

    Well, the "rescued by a job offer" phenomenon happened then. I got all the cash... $20s / £20s from QBN people in the post, and I never sent a single fucking thing out. Not fucking one person got anything in return.

    Unintentionally, a grift. The thing was, I was suffering a very severe depression back in 2009 and that project was how I got through every day. But as soon as I decided "Fuck it, hit the launch button and share this project" the cosmic order said "hey, here's a much needed full time job, and you start tomorrow, and you'll be busy".

    So nobody got their artwork, but to be fair I never spent that money either. It's all still cash in an envelope somewhere in my loft, mentally noted as "must be returned to senders". I found it a few years ago and thought "I must return all of this", and then I put it back and didn't do that.

    (about 10 people sent me cash, just for scale. It wasn't a major scam heist... just a few friends being bilked by a manic depressive Brit on QBN)

    So, ya know.... sign up for my latest writing project The Planetarians. You won't receive anything, it's another unintentional grift, but it gets me back into paid work by operating the standard cosmic mechanisms of "infuriatingly inconvenient timing" and "creative ambition thwarting".

    Okay I'm done. Time to log out.

    • I never said a book. I don't even know how people accomplish such a thing, but there're a lot more uses for written words outside of books. Or podcasts :)Nairn
    • Oh hello! noI didn't specifically mean you Nairn. Sorry. I'd actually forgotten you made that comment...Horp
    • It's actually more a thing on LinkedIn (lately). I get DMs from people saying "I love your posts you should write a book", and I always answer "no".Horp
    • Nor did I mean to presume you were talking alone to me, but I was serious about my comment. You have a knack, but how you wrangle it, I dunno.Nairn
    • I do believe that some things are more important to us and than mere fincancial transaction anyway. I've lost every other passion to commercialism...Horp
    • across a long, varied career. Typing out a load of shit remains impervious to cash, and therefore remains highly valuable, therapeutically, spiritually, maaan.Horp
    • My knack is really just the moonwalk at the party. It appears to be a decent enough approximation that it passes as entertainment, briefly. Sometimes.Horp
    • Aye, the thing is - that's how most Creative is. It just needs to fool enough of the people, enough of the time :)Nairn
    • See, I do LOVE fooling people. That kind of thing motivates me.Horp
    • so don't write a book. write a column instead.hans_glib
    • Eh, columns, books, blogs. I just like to take a big shit in different people's boudoirs.Horp
    • http://concep3.com/d…Nairn
    • ^Horp
    • For mobile users...

      <
      Horp
  • doggydoggdog0

    Randomly browsed Nordstrom today.

    First, the store is huge, do they really sell enough to pay rent?

    Lots of random brands, some cool, but mostly trying too hard

    The clothes are very expensive. Many random shirts for $300+

    • they have a lot of personal shopping services. some outside of work hours.pango
    • Prince's assistant used to buy clothes for him at their kids department.jagara
  • mg3312

    I'm kind of losing my mind at the awesomeness of Chat GPT and the ability to generate code with it. I've used it for code before, but this weekend wanted to work on an audio player for my music site. I can't tell you how many times I've looked for nice, minimal HTML5 audio players that were easy to customize, free, and MINIMAL. Let me repeat MINIMAL.

    Go look for Wordpress plugins for audio and it's so hard to find a minimal one. So many are multi-song playlist styles, cost $, are difficult to customize, or can only have visual pieces removed through CSS.

    I got a paid GPT account last week which opened up the floodgates of all the different GPTs that are available. Thought I'd see of one called "Code" could get me what I want. I've used free ChatGPT to create code before, but tried this one out. I'm sure they're all generally the same, but Code has a really nice conversational explanation of what it's generating.

    Anyhow... long story short, in about an hour yesterday I asked for the following, in order:

    1. Create code for an html 5 audio player that uses font awesome icons and consists of a play/pause button, a back button to the left, and a forward button to the right. I should be able to use multiple audio files.

    2. can you add a horizontal progress bar below the play buttons that can be styled with css?

    3. Add a numeric indicator that displays the number of the track being played before a forward slash, and after the forward slash, displays the total number of tracks in the player.

    4. update this code to change the pause button back to play button when a track is over.

    5. (Lastly, today) update the code above to let me pull audio files from a Wordpress advanced custom fields repeater. (the original code required adding urls into the javascript, which I didn't want to mess with on a regular basis.

    And here it is: www.theagelesssea.com

    Just a couple sample tracks there now as I'm testing it out, but I'm so happy to be putting more time into this project.

    • Great work. Really love the music. ChatGPT or AI couldn't make something as lovely as thatIanbolton
    • Thank you Ian!mg33
    • Nice. Please give us more.Longcopylover
    • ^ Thank you! Hoping to finish a 7-8 song album this year. Laid off recently so it's nice to have time to focus on it more.mg33
    • that's pretty damn awesome mg33... cool use of chatgpt, and excellent music to boot :)exador1
    • I've been trying to think of a way to combine chatgpt and figma... i know lots of others are in this space as well, but it just seems like an interesting space.exador1
    • Next thing is ask ChatGPT how to fix SSL.zaq
    • exador1, I've been thinking of Figma plugin ideas lately as well.mg33
    • took'r jurbss!BabySnakes