The beauty of loops

The lovely and enigmatic Imogen Heap demonstrates stupid amounts of skill in creating and using loops mid song. The same sort of technique can be seen in Andrew Bird's video below.

I have no idea how she multitasks like she does--knowing where each track is, fading things in and out, recording new loops and making sure everything stays synced... it makes my head spin.

Incidentally, this song is a brilliant expression of how it feels to get together with family over holidays. We love each other, but we drive each other crazy sometimes.

Of Customer Service Nightmares

Actually, if you get NO customer service at all, does that count as a nightmare? It's maybe more like insomnia. Hmm.

Well, the Culprit Company of the Day is Gamefly.

I would first like to say that the idea of Gamefly is great. You make a list of video games you're interested in playing, and then they send you a couple at a time with return paid envelopes and you send back and get the next ones on your list, etc etc. It's basically Netflix for games. Except that Netflix is both competent and reachable. If nothing goes wrong, Gamefly is just fine, but the moment there's a glitch...good luck.

Now is the winter of my discontent:

A couple years ago, we subscribed to Gamefly and were completely satisfied. It didn't even matter that they had a longer turnaround than Netflix. No biggie. We got the games we wanted, and everything was dandy.

It was after a hiatus in our membership that things went sour. I signed up again with an email address I'd created specifically for Gamefly. We have the benefit of being able to create as many subdomains for our email as we want. When I sign up for a site, I use the site's name in the email address I enter, ie: gamefly@myname... etc. that way, if I begin getting spam, I know exactly who sold me. Handy!

Well, shortly after reopening our account with the new address, I suddenly began receiving vast quantities of spam to that address. What does that tell me? My email information is not safe with Gamefly. If my email is not safe, what more of my personal information is not safe?

I know there isn't anything I can do about this but make emails coming to that address bounce. Gamefly would just deny that information was compromised or sold. Whatever. I moved on. Spamfilter, activate!

I was only mildly perterbed about the email thing until recently, when I needed to actually contact customer service about a login error I'm getting. Here's the scoop:

I submitted a query through the "Contact" page on the Gamefly site. I waited. And I waited. Though it said I would receive a reply within 24 hours... a week later, I hadn't heard anything--not even an email saying my question was recieved.

So I looked through the Gamefly site for another way to contact them. What did I find? NADA. "We are an internet company, so we deal with customers through email" the site says. What bullshit. There are only about a million internet companies that also provide phone customer services. There's not a phone number posted anywhere on the website. The only other option is to send an email to customer service, which I did. Again, no confirmation that anything had been received.

Finally, I got frustrated and Googled for a customer service number I knew HAD to exist. What I found was a plethora of people relating their fruitless attempts to get in touch with the company, along with one lone super-secret phone number.

(888) 986-6400, for those interested.

I called it, and got a message from a chipper woman saying that customer service is open for a whopping four hours a day on weekdays (9-1 PT), and that she recommends customers try emailing or "live chat" customer help on the website.

At the time I called, it should have been 9:30 PT, so I have no idea what was up with that.

There was a grain of hope, though--live chat support on the website? I might just get my answer after all! Sadly, my hopes were dashed when I went to the website and found... absolutely no evidence that there is any kind of chat or live supprt at all.

At this point, I was ready to gnaw off my own arm. This elusiveness is usually characteristic of fly-by-night scam companies that take your money and then make it impossible to contact them. If we hadn't actually received games from Gamefly the past, I would have been worried that's what I was dealing with.

Again, I searched the web, and this time, I found that by pressing "5" during the chipper woman's message, I would be rerouted to voicemail. Otherwise they disconnect you at the end of the message. Should you have to do all this spy work and secret handshakes and codes in order to talk to a real person at a company? My inclincation is NO. Not unless it's the "Super-Secret Spy Nonexistant Fun Espionage Club" you're calling. Then it might make sense.

Though I was tempted to leave an expletive laced tirade, I instead left a polite request for a call back (as the message told me to do). A few days later, still nothing.

So here were my attempts thus far to get a response over the past couple weeks:

2 submissions though the Gamefly website
2 emails to the support email address
numberous calls to the secret customer service number
1 voicemail message left at said number

That's a lot of trying to get in touch, don't you think? The happy (?) ending to this story is that I FINALLY got a hold of someone on the phone today, and the issue was fixed in about 2 minutes. That's two weeks it took to fix a two minute issue.

Nice. *golf clap*

The Other Side of the OH.

Well, I'll be gosh-swoggled! Apparently there is actually more to this state than flat farmland and Cincinnati.

This past week I went on a getaway to Southeastern Ohio (about an hour and a half due east), and found that, geography-wise, it was far more interesting than I'd imagined. One arm of the Appalacians extends into that area, and due to a massive meteor impact age upon age ago, there are plenty of gorges, cliffs and caves to explore.

We rented a "lodge" on Highland Nature Sanctuary that was actually an old farm house from the turn of the century. It was still filled with neat antiques and had most excellent wrap around porches and lots of nooks, comfy chairs, and hammocks to settle down with a book. Interestingly, though I am a veritable mosquito magnet, there were actually not many out in the woods at all.

Behind the lodge was a hiking trail that takes you down into the gorge, and along the cliff face by the river down there. It was pretty darn lovely. The preservation society has been buying up land in the area to protect caves and rock formations and such, and they've only recently begun renting out Ravenwood and Beechcliff lodges. Incidentally, people, these places are ridiculously cheap. If you dig on the website, you can find individual prices.



This has not very much to do with anything, but I find it really amusing that this turkey was hitting on a chicken. He was doing all his puffing and prancing, and she just kept rolling her eyes.



The other cool thing about the area, for those of us interested in decaying historical buildings, is that there are a plethora of tiny towns that are basically just a stoplight with abandoned general stores and houses right up by Rt 50 as you drive through. It's pretty fascinating to see, and I wish my camera hadn't run out of juice. Chillicothe in particular is not such a small town, but it's a prime example of that really interesting crumbling beauty. The downtown is like a ghost town--there aren't many for sale signs, but many of the beautiful high ceiling-ed buildings on and around the main street are empty, and unused. One such is an old opera house, that I had to restrain myself from breaking into to look around. You can just picture the old motorcars on the cobbled roads when the place was actually Ohio's capitol--bustling with people, all coming to that part of the state for business, or theraputic mineral soaks and tours through newly discovered caves and Hopewell Indian mounds.

I'm kind of tempted to look at real estate prices in Chillicothe--not because I'd want to move there, but just because I'm curious how much one those great old houses would run in a place like that.

The Bag of Bags

A while ago I developed a fascination within my crafting habits of creating something new out of itself. That sounds a little confusing, I realize, but let me give a couple examples that may clarify.

The "making things out of the same things" kick was first inspired by this vaguely creepy site wherein a lady takes the leftover fur from client's pet groomings, and spin it into yarn. How quirky would it be to make a dog a sweater out of its own fur? That's the sort of thing I'm talking about.

With the bundles of fur gleaned from the cats when warm weather finally hit, I hand-spun about 6 feet of yarn, which I fashioned into another, smaller cat for them to play with. They had a weird fascination with it, like a toddler looking at pictures of themselves--not quite sure what it is, but it's so familiar.... they adored playing with their little offspring so much that it got destroyed before I thought take a picture.

Then last month I stumbled over this instructable, which was the perfect realization of the "making things out of the same things" idea, only more sensible and less involving cat hair (which is always a plus). Instead, it involves using all those plastic grocery bags most of us have stowed away someplace and creating a sturdy, reusable grocery bag out of them.

I was lucky enough to have sisters in town at the time I decided to go about rolling and cutting up bags to make the "yarn" for the project, and Em helped by making neat plastic circles. No matter how I've tried since then, mine are ragged and wonky in comparison. :(

Ah well. In any case, here's the progress on the bag. It's not all that lovely, admittedly, but I think it'll be a handy thing, and though our community has a vigorous plastic bag recycling program, it's nice to repurpose them permanently instead.

I'm also entertained that everyone who's come to visit lately has bestowed upon me a bag or two. In the last picture, you can see the strata of various places. There are darker bags from Ohio Kroger, a line of white from a random Hillers bag I'd saved from Michigan, and then the lighter yellow of Michigan Krogers.

I also have some Target bags I'm looking forward to using on a separate bag. I think a red and white bag would be much easier on the eyes than this one.

I'll post more as the bag evolves. I'm (supposedly) crocheting it, but I'm an awful crocheter, and I don't work on it as often as I ought to.

A Kitschy Gem From Back When

The other night we were fortunate enough to be introduced to the super-sleek-sixties-spy thriller that is Mario Bava's DANGER: DIABOLIK! (Or simply Diabolk). (Many thanks, Alex!) Holy crow, was it fun... It's full of interesting camera work involving reflections and odd angles, bizzare secret lairs, fabulous costumes, and the cherry on this psychadelic sundae is a luscious soundtrack done by the illustrious Ennio Morricone. (the song above is "Driving Decoys")

Apparently the original masters of the soundtrack were lost in a fire in the 70s, but someone over at YouTube has their hands on some of the songs. Don't forget to take in the trailer.

The Boy was pointing out just how much Austin Powers owes to this movie in particular. Only this stuff is serious. Dead serious. Dun-dun-dunnn!

You little whippersnapper, you!

Fair warning: those who are squeamish about bugs should turn back now.

I was warned by neighbors and friends a couple weeks ago that this season would be the year the cicada emerge. Sure enough, not a week later, abandoned cicada shells began appearing stuck to everything, along with their sluggish former inhabitants, crowding onto trees and bushes.

Anyone who's seen Neon Genesis Evangelion knows the sounds of summer in Tokyo 3: the never-ending drone of cicadas. It makes the air feel heavy and muggy, even if it's a fairly nice day out. I'm not sure if the cicadas depicted in the anime are of the seventeen year variety, but the ones we have here in Cincinnati apparently are.

Cicada deposit their eggs into the bark of trees and such places, and when they hatch, the larvae burrow into the ground, where they percolate for seventeen years (some varieties for 3-5 years) before emerging, molting, mating, and singing frantically before dying. What a life: Laze around for most of it, then have a huge party before you croak.

Since they're relatively cute (as bugs go), and don't bite or sting, the neighborhood kids have been having a heyday collecting them. I see little herds of kids wandering the neighborhood with jars.



The most interesting thing about this whole event is the constant sound of them. It's been cool this season, so they didn't begin chirping until one particularly warm day. From inside the house, I thought someone must be running a whippersnapper outside, but when the apparent yard work went on for hours, I stepped out on the patio to realize it was actually the cicadas. Most of them are higher up in the trees, so it's not as if there are massive drifts of bugs everywhere, but man--judging by the noise they make, there are millions of them out there.

The sound of it just rolls and swells, coming from everywhere at once. It's really something.

But in a couple weeks, they will all have done their procreative duties, and will die, leaving the task of deafening the neighborhood in the very capable hands (or wings) of the next generation.

It's been ridiculously gorgeous out lately--sunny and around 60 degrees. Now I realize that a lot of people don't count 60 as being gorgeous (Fools, I tell you!), but I'd be content is this lasted all summer long.

We had a bit of an outing today with Tif's dogs in attendance--through the railroad tunnel, down to the community garden and along the river a bit. Things we saw:

I think this field is planted with winter wheat. It's very green and very pretty. Back by the river is a whole field of wild shallots with mulberry trees bordering it. Hmm... for some reason, I think I'll be going back with a basket later in the summer.

Add one to the pile...

Having folk from out of town visiting got me in the frame of mind to explore Cincinnati once again. It was a busy winter, and we'd stopped going on adventures as often as we were. It was downright lovely to explore with some of my sisters and their tiny ones this week. (Thanks so much for the visit, you guys!)

Here's a nifty blog someone did that not only gives some fun ideas of interesting things and places in Cincinnati, it has beautiful photography as well. It just recently stopped updating, but the archives are well worth sifting through.

Proof of Keenness

And as a follow-up to the below post, here's one of my favorite songs from the hardworking Mr. Bird at the moment.

Making Noggin cooler, one cameo at a time.

Hurrah for someone at Noggin liking good music! :)

I have a crush on Andrew Bird. He whistles like...uh, an angel. If angels whistled.

Der Hollow Book

Well, I've painted the outside of the hollow book/box, and it looks a bit more "booky" than it did. I do need to find a thin belt of some kind to hold it closed, since the little magnet inside doesn't do the job all that well, particularly if I'll be carrying art supplies around in it and such. I'm picturing a book strap like the kids used to carry books home from school back in the "olden days." I'll probably have to make one if I can't find one to repurpose. Ah well. It's a little sloppy, but I think if I have another go at it, I'll know more what I'm doing, and will be able to make a better one. At $1.99 a pop for the plain box, it's not so bad. I'm also considering trying covering it with leather on the outside--if I can find a leather thin enough, and an epoxy strong enough. That's for another day, though.

Charlie bit my finger - again !

Just thought I'd add to the plethora of adorable kid videos that seem to be going around...

That Charlie. He thinks the whole thing is just hilarious!

Clicking the Classics

I recently discovered Digital Classics, which is a library of "over a hundred literary masterpieces, digitized, and bound in the finest electronic leather." They have a "reader" that pops up, and you're able to view the pages as you would with a normal book, and click on the corners to turn backward and forward.

Though I do prefer a paper copy of a book in my hands, this was a pleasant way to ingest a little classic that was perfect for this time of year--Frances Hodgeson Burnett's The Secret Garden. What a perfect thing to read this time of year, when everything is becoming green and growing. Despite some of the melodrama (people making exultant exclamations!! All the time!!) of the time, the book was sweet and as charming as I'd remembered it, and I do recommend it.

If I were reading it to a child, I might consider skipping some of the bits about India, as the view of "primitive natives" at the time it was written doesn't fit in with the world these days. That, or take a couple minutes to discuss with the child about the time it was written.

These little things don't stop the book from being wonderful and magical, and one I loved dearly as a child. Speaking of books, I'm making over a cheapie little book-shaped wooden box from a craft store, and hopefully it will turn out to look at least somewhat like an actual book.

I've used an exacto to cut fine lines on the edges of the box, and have used a dry brush to paint on some gold for the edges of the "pages." Hopefully they'll eventually look like actual, weathered pages by the time I'm done with the outside.

I'm also "imprinting" the top of the book with a design I've blatantly stolen from a gorgeous 1910 copy of Oliver Wendell Holmes' Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. It's a beautiful book--even the inside cover pages are gorgeous. In any case, I'm trying to engrave that same sort of design into this book, though I'm not sure what the title will be, yet.

Internets unite! (alternate title: DON'T BUY THIS BOOK)

There are a lot of talented illustrators with an online presence, and I've enjoyed poking at their stuff for years. A lot of these folks don't see much money from their work; they do it because they love it. However... recently, a book came out that has blatantly stolen art from dozens of illustrators (one in particular got practically EVERYTHING lifted from his site) who posted their work online. It has a fake ISBN, and bad contact information for the publisher and authors. The rightful artist is trying to contact these folks, but what we, as random folk who enjoy illustration, can do to help is make sure we spread the word not to buy this book.

The post below is by Luc Latulippe. The link goes to his site.

_____________________________________________

So, here’s a super crappy way to start your day.

Yesterday, my pal Darren Di Lieto, from The Little Chimp Society website, emailed with some upsetting news. Turns out someone scraped the contents of his website and published it into a 350-page book being sold online for $100. You can read more on this post in Darren’s blog.

This book — which reprints without permission several dozen artist interviews which Darren had posted on the LCS blog — transcribes these interviews word-for-word, including the artwork, and was “published” under the title “Colorful Illustrations 93°C”. The book even includes a CD with all the illustrations from the book, all lifted off the site as well. Here’s a link to a gallery of scans that Darren made of each page of the book, with a close-up below of one of the two spreads which feature the interview Darren did of me:

The publisher — one very fake sounding “Great Creativity organization” [sic] — is allegedly in Hong Kong, so pursuing legal action seems pretty pointless, seeing as China has such a sparkling reputation for respecting copyright law. The ISBN they provide — ISBN 978-988-98142-0-5 — is also a fake. You can easily search ISBN databases online, and this number comes up empty.

“OMG! You should totally sue them!”

Yes, this is everyone’s first reaction, right after red-faced anger. Well, let me just grab my wallet and… oh, right, I draw pictures for a living! This means I’m lucky if I have enough money to pay some bills for the next few months, but not quite enough to launch a class-action lawsuit across international borders against a bogus copyright infringing publisher in China.

And here’s a troubling thought: How many more such projects is this “Great Creativity organization” publisher working on right now? Maybe another illustration book, this time filled with YOUR WORK? Maybe filled with content scraped from similar sites, such as Illustration Mundo, or Drawn!, or even Boing Boing? Or how about a lovely coffee table book full of high rez photos scraped off of Flickr?

So what are we going to do?

Several things. First, Darren has tried calling the current re-sellers, both in Spain and Japan, who so far both refuse to pull the book. This makes sense, as there’s not enough evidence for them to make up their minds right now (although I fail to see how or why a bookstore would so carelessly stock a book with a fake ISBN number, and not be interested to find out if they’re selling a plagiarized book).

He then tried locating the publisher, but of course they printed a bunch of fake contact info in the book so that’s useless. The distributor seems to be a company called Azur Corporation. They too have been impossible to reach. As we understand it, re-sellers and distributors who don’t pull plagiarized books from the circulation can be held accountable as co-plagiarists.

The main thing we want to do right now, is flood the web with the truth about this plagiarized book and its publisher, both to avoid any more poor suckers from shelling out $100 to these thieves, and to warn other bookstores against getting involved with these scam artists. You say: “So what if the internet is full of negative press regarding this company and their plagiarized book?” Well, YOU try recovering from the backlash of negative press after search engines yield nothing but red flags and warnings against your company or product.

Yes, the damage is done. The book has been printed, distributed, and is being sold. This doesn’t mean we’re powerless and unable to stop any future distribution of the book, and hopefully of any future projects they have planned.

We need your help

First, please re-distribute this blog post. Repost the whole thing, or part of it, in your blog, with links and tags included.

Next, use whatever social networks and news sharing sites you use every day — Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, Magnolia, Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook — to spread the word about this overpriced book full of plagiarized and stolen content. Feel free to quote us, and remember to also include the same keywords and tags in your posts. (Darren’s and my site makes this very easy already, with the little green “Share This” button at the bottom of every post in my blog.)

The result is that we may be able at least to shame these bogus publishers into removing this book from circulation and scare them back into their caves. A public apology, as well as forking over all the monies from sales, would be nice too but I’m not gonna hold my breath.

What else?

The longer term plan will involve approaching the current and possible future re-sellers and distributors with legal documents and press releases proving that this book is 100% full of plagiarized and stolen content, and calling for them to stop carrying the book.

We have a few more ideas too. We’re nothing if not creative individuals. Speaking of which, if you have any ideas and thoughts on this, we’d love to hear them!

Boing Boing: One of the biggest internets.

Here is an answer to all your internets related questions. Worry no more!

Magic Pen

Here's a very clever little flash game... In it, you use a crayon to draw shapes that can affect the environment--bumping into each other, rolling etc... The idea is to move a little ball to the flag. Sounds easy enough, right? What I like, though is that there are literally hundreds of ways to accomplish it. It can be as simple as dropping a circle out of the sky to bump the ball along, or as complicated as drawing a little car with two wheels and an axle, and then a crane, with a heavy piece that swings down to hit the car to bump the ball. It's ridiculously fun, and doesn't punish you for just trying things out. You can always restart the level, until you can get used to the physics of the game.

The key is thinking creatively and trying everything.

The other thing I like is that the soundtrack to the game is a pleasant little indie guitar ditty, rather than the frenetic and annoying soundtracks that tend to sometimes happen with flash games.

Enjoy!

There is also a video walkthrough if you get stumped.

Spring Has Sprung!

Apparently someone had a lot of time and bulbs on their hands one year, because the entire village of Mariemont is covered in literally thousands of daffodils. All over the hillsides, in the woods, along the roads. They're everywhere. We just walked over to the closest hill and snapped a photo--this is sparse compared to what's around downtown.

It must be spring.

*contented sigh*

Charles Heston: 1924-2008

Goodnight, Gunny Man...

But now who will save us from Soylent Green in our near-distopian future?

RIP

Mystery Solved!

A few months ago, I was mystified by the fact that occasionally, the sweet delicious smell of waffle cones drifts through our neighborhood.

The enigma was ended by Tiffany, who informed me that it's actually elves. Elves making cookies. Keebler elves. In a Keebler factory nearby. Not exactly as magical as I'd hoped, but it's still kind of awesome that the neighborhood sometimes smells like cookies baking. It's also nice that it's actual cookies, not some random toxic run-off chemical that we're delightedly inhaling deeply as it does a number on our lungs.

Besides setting me straight about neighborhood odors, Tiffany is helping me cast a version of a trilobite brooch as seen in a comic I read. We sculpted it on Saturday, and when I can manage to get over this ridiculous head cold, she'll show me how to make the mold and cold cast it. Hurrah!

Observe: I may have had a slight obsession with running Sculpy through the pasta maker. It needed a lot of softening. Seriously.








Here's the partially-done scultpt of the brooch. It's not as massive as it seems. But it's still kind of massive, now that I think about it.

Brr...

Though she's on the opposite end of the globe, this video of Condition 1 weather at McMurdo Station in Antarctica reminded me of Woman North. Stay warm up there, WN!