Software - Tumblr Posts

I need this on my blog

WEBSITES FOR WRITERS {masterpost}

E.A. Deverell - FREE worksheets (characters, world building, narrator, etc.) and paid courses;

NotionByRach - FREEBIES (workbook, notion template, games, challenges, etc.);

Hiveword - Helps to research any topic to write about (has other resources, too);

BetaBooks - Share your draft with your beta reader (can be more than one), and see where they stopped reading, their comments, etc.;

Charlotte Dillon - Research links;

Writing realistic injuries - The title is pretty self-explanatory: while writing about an injury, take a look at this useful website;

One Stop for Writers - You guys... this website has literally everything we need: a) Description thesaurus collection, b) Character builder, c) Story maps, d) Scene maps & timelines, e) World building surveys, f) Worksheets, f) Tutorials, and much more! Although it has a paid plan ($90/year | $50/6 months | $9/month), you can still get a 2-week FREE trial;

One Stop for Writers Roadmap - It has many tips for you, divided into three different topics: a) How to plan a story, b) How to write a story, c) How to revise a story. The best thing about this? It's FREE!

Story Structure Database - The Story Structure Database is an archive of books and movies, recording all their major plot points;

National Centre for Writing - FREE worksheets and writing courses. Has also paid courses;

Penguin Random House - Has some writing contests and great opportunities;

Crime Reads - Get inspired before writing a crime scene;

The Creative Academy for Writers - "Writers helping writers along every step of the path to publication." It's FREE and has ZOOM writing rooms;

Reedsy - "A trusted place to learn how to successfully publish your book" It has many tips, and tools (generators), contests, prompts lists, etc. FREE;

QueryTracker - Find agents for your books (personally, I've never used this before, but I thought I should feature it here);

Pacemaker - Track your goals (example: Write 50K words - then, everytime you write, you track the number of the words, and it will make a graphic for you with your progress). It's FREE but has a paid plan;

Save the Cat! - The blog of the most known storytelling method. You can find posts, sheets, a software (student discount - 70%), and other things;

I hope this is helpful for you!

Also, don't forget to check my gumroad shop, where you can find plenty of FREEBIES (from notion templates for writers to workbooks and sheets).

-> Check out my freebies

Happy writing! <3

Hello🫶👋🤝😢,

I hope you and your loved ones are safe and well. I'm reaching out on behalf of Bilal, who is currently in Gaza facing severe bombardment along with his family. Please💔🙏 consider supporting by sharing his page or donating through the GoFundMe account. You can find more💔💌💌🥹🥹 information on my profile.

Hello,

Thank you for letting me know about Bilal's GFM

I hope he and his family are safe, may Allah SWT protect them ❤️

gofundme.com

Donate to Please save me, my family and my future from the brutal war , organized by Mohammed Asfour

"You'll never know how strong you are until strength is your … Mohammed Asfour needs your support for Please save me, my family and my futur

€3,402 raised of €80,000

Hümaşah Sultan and Black

Hümaşah Sultan and her nobility...

My 3 Unfortunately-Secret Programs for Illustrators

There are a few programs I use on an almost daily basis as an artist and illustrator which I find invaluable, but that seem to be unfortunately more secret than they deserve to be. Which is too bad, because they solve a lot of small workflow problems that I think a number of people would find useful!

I’ll keep this list limited to my big three, but it is organized in order of usefulness. (And incidentally of compatibility, as the latter two are Windows-only. Sorry! Please do still check out PureRef though, Mac users.)

1. PureRef

PureRef is a program specifically designed to make it easier to view, sort, and work with your references. I actually put off downloading it initially because it seemed redundant– couldn’t I just paste the refs into my PSD files? Indeed, the only real barrier to working with PureRef is that learning the keyboard shortcuts and the clicks to move around the program takes a little while. But getting over that hump is well worth it, because it has some distinct advantages over trying to organize your refs in your actual art program.

Firstly, you’re no longer bogging down your actual PSD file with extra layers, nor having to fight with said layers at all– PureRef has no layer panel, so you never have to scramble to grab the right one. All images you paste into the program retain their original resolution data, so you can resize, rotate, crop, etc as needed without distortion. If you find yourself needing to adjust the values, color, etc of a ref image, you can just copy paste it into Photoshop, make your adjustments, and copy paste it back into PureRef.

The other great advantage is that you can toggle the program as ‘Stay On Top’ and keep it above Photoshop (or whatever else)– which was always a problem when trying to make a reference collage in a separate PSD file. I find that I just don’t look at my references as much as I should when they are on a second monitor, and this solves that problem.

I’ve used it religiously for about a year now, creating a new PureRef file for every illustration I do, as well as a few for specific characters, cultures, or settings in personal projects. As you can see in the example above, I like to sort my images into little clusters or ‘islands’ of specific content, so that I can easily scroll out to see the entire reference map, then zoom in to the relevant cluster easily.

There is one big tip I would suggest for using this program, if you have the harddrive space: As soon as you get it, turn on the ‘Embed local images in save file’ option. This will make your PureRef files bigger, but you’ll never have to deal with a ‘broken link’ if you move around the source files you originally dragged in.

2. Work Timer

This is such a simple little app that it doesn’t have a very formal name, though I think of it as ‘Work’ or ‘Work Work’ (for some reason.) It’s a timer that counts when your cursor is active in any (of up to 3) program you set it to count for, and stops counting when you change programs or idle. No starting, pausing, stopping, or forgetting to do any of those three things.

I use this one to accurately track my hours, both to inform myself and for commissions or other client work. At the end of a work session, I take the hours counted and add them to the hours I’ve already spent on that image in a spreadsheet.

I have it set to count my three art programs (Photoshop, Painter, and Manga Studio), so based on the settings I use, it doesn’t count time that I spend doing relevant work in my browser (such as looking up an email to double check character descriptions or ref hunting), so to counter that, I set the ‘Timeout’ option in it’s menu to 360. This means it will count to 360 seconds of cursor inactivity before it considers me idle and stops counting. Since it instantly stops counting if you switch to ‘non-work’ a program, I figure this extra time just about cancels out relevant time that it ignores in ‘non-work’ programs by counting an extra minute or so when I walk away from the computer to grab some water or what-have-you.

3. Carapace

I use Carapace the least of these three, since my work doesn’t often have a need for creating perspective lines. But when there is architecture involved in something, this proves invaluable in simplifying that process.

Carapace lets you copy paste an image into it, and then drop in vanishing points and move them around to create perspective lines. (Though you’ll want to scale down your full res drawing or painting a bit to avoid lagging the program.) Like with PureRef, fighting the shortcuts is the worst part of it, though for myself it’s more of an issue in this program because I don’t use it often enough to remember them. Still, it gets the job done, and it’s easy to adjust the points to feel things out until you get them ‘right’. Then you just copy and paste the grid back into your art program and you’ve got that information to use as need be on its own layer.

Of course, using Carapace isn’t a replacement for actually knowing how perspective works– you still have to have a sense of how far apart the vanishing points should be placed to keep things feeling believable. But it sure does save you a lot of trouble once you do have that knowledge.

So, there are my big three recommendations for programs to help your art workflow. I hope people find them useful– if you do, please share so that they climb a little higher out of their unwarranted obscurity! And if you’ve got a favorite tool like this that I didn’t cover, feel free to share it in the comments. I know I’m curious to see what else is out there, too. Also, if Mac users have any suggestions for programs that fill similar functions, feel free to share there as well!

My Website  •  Store  •   Commissions  •  Instagram   •  Twitter  •  Deviantart

Portland Family Room Home Bar

Example of a sizable, enclosed, transitional family room with a light wood floor, a bar, beige walls, a stone fireplace, a conventional fireplace, and a wall-mounted television.

When it comes time, it would be great if we called them "Gen Prerelease" instead of "Gen Beta"

The reasons for the name are funny, but i'm legit about this

If you reblog this post, you agree that you will call them Gen Prerelease

Thank you for your time

Debian 8.0 Jessie - server upgrade notes

General

So the blog and my email address have been unavailable a few hours as I was thinking I could just run the upgrade in the background on a Sunday afternoon. My fault. 😉

See the Debian Jessie announcement and Debian Jessie release notes for general information.

On my system there’s only a web- and a mailserver with some antivirus and firewall stuff. So I had to adjust some Apache settings and fiddle with dovecot and some other start scripts. I was happy the udev maintainer included some checks against the kernel version, as I run a xen-based virtual root server by Vollmar.net and thus don’t install the kernel by myself (and stick to udev 175 or it wouldn’t boot any more 😉 ).

Apache 2.4 httpd

For the Apache webserver there are upgrade notes available in the documentation, I had to get rid of the NameVirtualHosts directive (if untouched the /etc/apache2/ports.conf file from Debian does the trick but I modified mine) and change Order allow,deny Allow from all into Require all granted everywhere in order to allow access to the web-roots again. Also the sites-available files now require a .conf suffix.

postgreSQL

Take care, it’s confusing, there will be the daemons for 9.1 and 9.4 running in parallel, the client will be the one of 9.4 but uses the 9.1 cluster. So only remove 9.1 after you migrated successfully from 9.1 to 9.4 (most probably by removing the existing 9.4 cluster created during package installation and running pg_upgradecluster 9.1 main).

phpMyAdmin

If you get errors like "PHP Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required '/usr/share/php/php-gettext/gettext.inc' (include_path='.') in /usr/share/phpmyadmin/libraries/select_lang.lib.php on line 463" you need to upgrade your /etc/phpmyadmin/apache2.conf – most probably there’s a /etc/phpmyadmin/apache2.conf.dpkg-dist already sitting next to it, also see #709302 (it’s not a bug 😉 ).

postfix/dovecot mailserver

dovecot

So it seems that I did nearly make no changes in /etc/dovecot/conf but this lead to my IMAPs/POP3s daemons not starting any more. In the end I guess the ssl configuration was the culprit, I uncommented the lines pointing to my SSL-key files in 10-ssl.conf, no idea whether this was the 100% correct approach, it’s usually better to create local configuration.

clamav-daemon

For some reason I was hit by Debian #778507 – a letter was missing in /var/lib/dpkg/info/clamav-daemon.postinst, so line 626 has to be [ -n "$PidFile" ] && echo "PidFile $PidFile" >> $DEBCONFFILE

bley

I use bley by Evgeni Golov for greylisting, here I modified the init script by myself before to include the postgresql dependency and now had to accept upstream changes. But they also include a dbconfig-based database configuration now.

fail2ban

The fail2ban package seems to be more verbose now, so I could fix some typos in the rule files (one time the name of a local file was misspelt, one file lacked the ignoreregex= stanza).

Debian 8.0 Jessie – server upgrade notes was originally published on sebrem's musings

soo that little guy? He's your friend.

he'll tell you ALL the hidden characters you've got lurking around your document.

Like -- you didn't realize that you have 3 spaces after a period? or extra space between a word? Didn't realize you put a page break in there by accident? You'll see them now!

NEW AVAILABLE ART PROGRAM

It seems to be a mix between SAI and photoshop, simplified. It even has a stabalizer that works even with the mouse.

Best of all, it’s free, and works for both Mac and Windows.

To give it a try, head right on down to http://firealpaca.com/

hardware vs software: mental disorder edition

I was trying to explain the difference between AuDHD and OSDD's source to an acquaintance the other week, found the note I wrote in my google keep, and thought it might be worth sharing.

I hope I have come up with a good way of explaining. I'm open to kind criticism.

Hardware: Neurodevelopmental disorders

Hardware cannot be changed. The brain is wired like that. Hardware includes ASD, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, intellectual disability, some kinds of visual and hearing imparements.

It's like when you buy a laptop, it comes with a set of keys, screen, RAM etc, you can't really change it (you can if you force it but for now, think that you can't. Be like Apple, you get what you get!). Everyone has hardware, but it'll look different. Think, an autistic keyboard has a different set of keys to a neurotypical keyboard.

Software: things that develop out of trauma or stress

Software can be changed beyond the original purchase of hardware. It can be installed and added. However, unlike software, most disorders can't be uninstalled (but they can be improved with time and therapy).

Disassociative disorders (DID, OSDD, DPDR etc) install to manage trauma. Depression, PTSD and anxiety is software.. or even a bug... or... virus? is it a virus???

Some software is more likely to install on specific hardware types.

I also had a thought that communicating between neurodivergent people and neurotypicals as like trying to communicate apple with android, it doesn't always work perfectly, though often gets the point across, however sometimes it completely misses the mark??

abandonware should be public domain. force companies to actively support and provide products if they don't wanna lose the rights to them

KOKOBOT - The Airbnb-Owned Tech Startup - Data Mining Tumblr Users' Mental Health Crises for "Content"

I got this message from a bot, and honestly? If I was a bit younger and not such a jaded bitch with a career in tech, I might have given it an honest try. I spent plenty of time in a tough situation without access to any mental health resources as a teen, and would have been sucked right in.

Chatting right from your phone, and being connected with people who can help you? Sounds nice. Especially if you believe the testimonials they spam you with (tw suicide / self harm mention in below images)

But I was getting a weird feeling, so I went to read the legalese.

I couldn't even get through the fine-print it asked me to read and agree to, without it spamming the hell out of me. Almost like they expect people to just hit Yes? But I'm glad I stopped to read, because:

What you say on there won't be confidential. (And for context, I tried it out and the things people were looking for help with? I didn't even feel comfortable sharing here as examples, it was all so deeply personal and painful)

Also, what you say on there? Is now...

Koko's intellectual property - giving them the right to use it in any way they see fit, including

Publicly performing or displaying your "content" (also known as your mental health crisis) in any media format and in any media channel without limitation

Do this indefinitely after you end your account with them

Sell / share this "content" with other businesses

Any harm you come to using Koko? That's on you.

And Koko won't take responsibility for anything someone says to you on there (which is bleak when people are using it to spread Christianity to people in crisis)

I was curious about their business model. They're a venture-capitol based tech startup, owned by Airbnb, the famous mental health professionals with a focus on ethical business practices./s They're also begging for donations despite having already been given 2.5 million dollars in research funding. (If you want a deep dive on why people throw crazy money at tech startups, see my other post here)

They also use the data they gather from users to conduct research and publish papers. I didn't find them too interesting - other than as a good case study of "People tend to find what they are financially incentivized to find". Predictably, Koko found that Kokobot was beneficial to its users.

So yeah, being a dumbass with too much curiosity, I decided to use the Airbnb-owned Data-Mining Mental Health Chatline anyway. And if you thought it was dangerous sounding from the disclaimers? Somehow it got worse.

(trigger warning / discussions of child abuse / sexual abuse / suicide / violence below the cut - please don't read if you're not in a good place to hear about negligence around pretty horrific topics.)

I first messed around with the available options, but then I asked it about something obviously concerning, saying I had a gun and was going to shoot myself. It responded... Poorly. Imagine the vibes of trying to cancel Comcast, when you're suicidal.

Anyway, I tried again to ask for help about something else that would be concerning enough for any responsible company to flag. School was one of their main options, which seems irresponsible - do you really think a child in crisis would read that contract?

I told it about a teacher at school trying to "be my boyfriend", and it immediately suggested I help someone else while I wait for help. I was honestly concerned that it wasn't flagged before connecting. Especially when I realized it was connecting me to children.

I first got someone who seemed to be a child in an abusive home. (Censored for their privacy.) I declined to talk to them because despite being an adult and in an OK mental place - I knew I'm not equipped to counsel a kid through that. If my act of being another kid in crisis was real? Holy shit.

Remember- if my BS was true, that kid would be being "helped" by an actively suicidal kid who's also being groomed by a teacher. Their pipeline for "helpers" is the same group of people looking for help.

I skipped a number of messages, and they mostly seemed to be written by children and young adults with nowhere else to turn. Plus one scary one from an adult whose "problem" was worrying that they'd been inappropriate with a female student, asking her to pull her skirt down "a little" in front of the class. Koko paired this person with someone reporting that they were a child being groomed by a teacher. Extremely dangerous, and if this was an episode of Black Mirror? I'd say it was a little too on the nose to be believable.

I also didn't get the option to get help without being asked... Er... Harassed... to help others. If I declined, I'd get the next request for help, and the next. If I ignored it, I got spammed by the "We lost you there!" messages, asking if I'd like to pick up where I left off, seeing others' often triggering messages while waiting for help, including seriously homophobic shit. I was going into this as an experiment, starting from a good mental place, and being an adult with coping skills from an actual therapist, and I still felt triggered by a lot of what I read. I can't imagine the experience someone actually in crisis would be having.

My message was starting to feel mild in comparison to what some people were sharing - but despite that I was feeling very uneasy about my message being shown to children. There didn't seem to be a way to take it back either.

Then I got a reply about my issue. It was very kind and well meaning, but VERY horrifying. Because it seemed to be written by a child, or someone too young to understand that "Do have feelings for the teacher who's grooming you? If you don't, you should go talk to him." Is probably THE most dangerous advice possible.

Not judging the author - I get the impression they're probably a child seeking help themselves and honestly feel horribly guilty my BS got sent to a young person and they wanted to reply. Because WTF. No kid should be in that position to answer my fucked up question or any of the others like it.

---

Anyway, what can you do if this concerns you, or you've had a difficult experience on Koko, with no support from them or Tumblr?

To reach Tumblr, who officially partners with Koko?

Send a message to Tumblr Support describing your concerns with their partnership with Kokobot

Report kokobot to Tumblr's abuse hotline describing your experience with KokoBot, especially if you are a minor who suffered harm, as they have a legal responsibility to address that.

To get Koko's attention:

Get on their LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/kokocares/) and comment on their posts! You may also want to tag the company's co-founders in your comments - their accounts are listed on the company page.

There's no way to reach support through chat, and commenting on a company's LinkedIn posts / tagging the people responsible is the best way to get a quick response to a sensitive issue - as their investors and research funders follow those posts, and companies take it seriously if safety issues are brought up in front of the people giving them millions of dollars.

To report it to the FCC for likely violating the COPPA law, regarding minors' safety and privacy online:

See Reblogs for further info & reporting instructions: Detailed description of COPPA law and Kokobot's presumed violations, plus detailed reporting instructions

But quick links: FCC reporting website and email hotline: [email protected]

Seriously, if you've taken the time to read this far, please please please take one more minute to file a report! It won't get addressed if all we do is reblog this, we need to get this in front of Tumblr Staff / The FCC / Koko's investors to get this meaningfully addressed.

Blocking and reporting the bot as spam isn't enough IMO - people have been doing that for years from the looks of the tag

----------

Reccomended reading in reblogs:

dropattackbear's discovery of what Koko is using the harvested data for (Machine Learning training data for automated content moderation services)

winderlylandchime (a licenced clinical psychologist's) explanation of privacy / ethics considerations around mental health services

thatsmimi's post on the dangers of letting minors act as a suicide / self-harm resource

My additions on their investors, leadership board, and their current job opening

----------------------------------------------------

Legal Disclaimer since tech companies LOVE lawsuits:

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author's employer, organization, committee or other group or individual. This text is for entertainment purposes only, and is not meant to be referenced for legal, business, or investment purposes. This text is based on publically available information. Sources may contain factual errors. The analysis provided in this text may contain factual errors, miscalculations, or misunderstandings.

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windows users, save money using these free apps!!

Get out of there girlies

Read more here:

Vice

Adobe Tells Users They Can Get Sued for Using Old Versions of Photoshop

"You are no longer licensed to use the software," Adobe told them.

I am WAY too colorblind for this to ever be relevant for anything I do, but codeblr must know!!!

fucked up how colors look different depending on what screen you’re looking at them on. that should be illegal I think

Vocalization of your thoughts can help you solve problems. In the same way that writing them up or making a diagram of the problem can help you fix it. Try tricks people recomend, and if they work for you. Great! Use them! Here is my duck by the way :3

He is so sassy!

Source For more posts like this, CLICK HERE to follow Ultrafacts

A girl who I took her degree at the same time as me, had taken a bachelor in english before becoming an engineer.

And everyone around her was ASTONISHED that a engineer would be able to write dokumentation that are readable to HUMANS. She have NEVER been unemployed. She was hired FAST.

It is HARD to learn skills that are 100% useless to whatever you end up doing. Do things you like. Study whatever you like. Have whatever hobbies. If they make you a better you, that will make you better at WHATEVER job you will end up doing.

And people WILL hire you for more. Because you WANTING to learn these skills, will naturally do with passion and enthusiasm. And want to do it a lot.

That is what people usually call "Talent".

You have it too! You ARE talented. And I beg of you, allow yourself to delve deep into these passions so you can become the best you, you can be.

The world have need of good people doing their best. Let us make sure we cultivate many such people.