StormyDragon

anthracite, 3 months ago to random

This note attached to today's Mastodon security patch might mean it's time for me to think about closing down Dragon Style; the last time I tried to update past 4.0.x I ran into some blocks I could not get past and I am pretty sure I have not magically gotten better at wrangling a giant festering pile of Unix in the intervening time.

I will attempt to get this patch in later today, once I've showered off the brain fog from the remnants of this stupid cold.

anthracite, 4 months ago to random

Today I discovered that there are trucking companies that specialize in hauling stuff like “all the sets and props for a touring musical” and somehow this makes me really happy. I was on my way to the hardware store for a new toilet seat and passed the Saenger theatre while Les Miz was unloading a couple of trailers worth of stuff.

anthracite, 4 months ago to random

fuck this cold

anthracite, 4 months ago to random

Today I learnt that you can adopt a Unicode glyph. https://aac.unicode.org/

anthracite, 4 months ago to random

pickles

StormyDragon, 4 months ago to random

TIL:

This is the angzarr: ⍼ (U+237C)

It is a character from the Unicode miscellaneous technical symbols block

No one knows what it is supposed to be a symbol for

StormyDragon, 4 months ago to random

Barnes Foundation: we have a female artist from Paris in the 20s and 30s
Me: interesting... :dragn_think:
Barnes Foundation: she was a lesbian who painted other lesbians
Me: okay, now you have my attention :dragn_owo:
Barnes Foundation: she was also a proto-furry
Me: ... :dragneyes:

Les Biches (1923) by Marie Laurencin (1885-1956)

anthracite, 4 months ago to random

I need new boots. The heel on the right one is peeling off and the sole on the left got punctured by a roofing nail.

18+ StormyDragon, 5 months ago to random

First time with colored nails :Blobhaj_Flag_Nonbinary:

anthracite, 5 months ago to random

I pulled my copy of Bear’s “Serpent Mage” off the shelf to read today. I found a plane ticket being used as a marker. No year. But it was for January 18th, from Dulles to San Jose. Hmm. Must have been the year I visited that big indy comics con out in the DC area? I should have a name but I don’t… the one that gives out the Ignatz. SPX.

I miss going to cons. I should get ahold of a bunch of copies of the Rita omnibus and go to cons again. I tried getting into one of the southern furry cons’ dealer’s room but couldn’t, and I really dunno what to do with myself at a con if I’m not dealing. Wonder how hard it is to get into Dragoncon’s dealer floor. There’s a New Orleans comic con run by the people who started Emerald City too, I dropped by there before the pandemic and didn’t relish the thought of a weekend breathing convention center air even before Covid.

Just rambling, I guess. My immediate guess for the ticket was Further Confusion and that’s certainly the right point in the year for it but what was I doing flying in from DC?

My past is a mystery, to be reconstructed from artifacts. Who am I. Who was I. What year saw me flying from DC to San Jose with this old friend of a book in my carry-on bag?

Also I distinctly recall that SPX’s dance was barely up to the standards of a furry con’s dead dog party. Furries throw good raves. I should try and find the New Orleans EDM scene at some point, I bet there are some good pocket raves lurking around this city.

anthracite, 5 months ago to random

"so what's your job?"

"Oh, I'm an artist."

"Neat, what kind of stuff do you make?"

"Mostly comics and furry porn."

anthracite, 5 months ago to random

It is December 21 and it is 61ºF outside and I am about to go out to yoga class dressed like it's summer.

New Orleans!

anthracite, 5 months ago to random

Today I discovered that Introversion’s early games are in a bundle for five bucks. I have now gone down to Office Depot for a cheap mouse because wow their games are not designed for a drawing tablet or a controller, no matter how hard the Steam Deck tries, and I have no idea where my old cheap mouse is.

StormyDragon, 5 months ago to trans

Today is my one year anniversary of starting HRT, and even though there's still far to go, it's hard to believe how much I've changed in just one year...

#trans #transjoy

anthracite, 5 months ago to random

Lots of what makes Facebook run is ads.

Imagine: what if the Fediverse had its own ad network? What if every couple pages worth of posts had a clearly-marked ad in it, whose profits went to your server's upkeep?

Maybe the profits would get split between multiple servers - I could, perhaps, hook up with some other furry servers to share ads, their profits, and the costs of running/moderating whatever linked ad buyers with those occasional posts placed in your timeline?

No animated ads, no html, just a polite static image and a link. No tracking, no market segmentation beyond about the same level as "the typical subscriber to this magazine meets these qualities". Few enough ads that "no ads for site supporters" isn't even really a perk.

There is a line to cross, I sure don't want to find myself on a slippery slope to "happily selling ads to anyone and everyone as long as I get paid" here. Somewhere much below that is "maybe creating a place for a community to talk also involves a part of that place for a community to advertise to itself".

StormyDragon, 5 months ago to random

Io #Saturnalia! May the Lord of Misrule bless your celebrations! =3

anthracite, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago) to random

Hello stylish dragons!

As you may be aware, Facebook is starting to make noises about connecting to the fediverse. There's a lot of people who are looking at how they used to be part of the open web by providing RSS feeds for every user, but now only let you see their users by using their frontend, which is designed to maximize their profit at the expense of all other concerns, and saying that they do not want to let Facebook join the party.

I am one of these people, and I have taken steps to ensure this by turning on "authorized fetch". Now that this is on, any site asking for our posts via the ActivityPub protocol will be asked who they are, and if they are a blocked site, they will be told to fuck off. Facebook's Threads is one of these sites.

This may break compatibility with anyone following you on really old Mastodon servers (<3.0) or on other ActivityPub servers. But it will certainly break any attempts by Facebook to use our posts as something to keep people amused between ads.

(There are arguments to be had for not blocking Threads; however one of the rules of this server has always been that "corporations are likely to get blocked" and this is exactly the kind of corporation I was thinking about when I set down those rules back in 2017. Six years later, here we are.)