[cpd2009]

I'm so glad I have a family for a lot of reasons, but one of them these days is that my stimulus will actually be worth something.

I've been holding my Sour Grapes doll for comfort and self-love. She still smells like grapes. I have a bad sense of smell and always have, like the character (in the 1985 special, but I like to think it carries over to my favorite version), and even I can smell the grape and cupcake smells. It's nice. I feel like my doll loves me. In a meta way, Grapes has her doll that looks like her that she always dreamed of.

I know this is super sentimental, but this is a Strawberry Shortcake forum, or was. Love ya.

One of my escapes during this awful year is art. I have dabbled with art creation on and off during the last year, but only began taking it seriously in October. I currently use an old vintage iMac and a drawing display tablet. The software I'm using is FireAlpaca as I refuse to pay for a yearly Adobe subscription. Photoshop and Illustrator are industry standards, but Adobe was among the first big software companies to embrace the yearly subscription model. FireAlpaca is wonderful for beginners, and offers things you would expect in a digital drawing app like brush selection, layers, color palettes, and more. And it's with this wonderful tool that I have begun my artist journey. My ultimate goal is to become a freelance illustrator for children's books, greeting cards, coloring books, and more.

I don't know if you use Instagram, but that is where I am currently posting my artwork and connecting with other artists. Here is my grid:
https://www.instagram.com/wb8979

Even if you don't use IG, you can still browse my grid and see the thumbnails, but you can't comment or view them in a larger size. I am planning on posting some of my artwork here at the forum. I prefer to do original art, but I also want to try my hand at fanart, either of SSC characters or Chucklewood Critters stuff. The latter is an obscure animated cartoon series with cute forest animals, including a fox. I'm fond of foxes at the moment.

[cpd2009]

Since I'm not really using my old Windows laptop for anything important right now, I'm going to have a little fun to finish out 2020, cause why not?

I'm going to explore different OS'es outside of Linux... Haiku, ReactOS, and GhostBSD.

Haiku will be the most interesting. It is not based on Linux or BSD, but rather a community rebuild of the former BeOS. ReactOS is self explanatory, and it will be interesting to see if an Intel B960 will be old enough to run ReactOS on actual hardware. As for GhostBSD, I'm intrigued by it. I've never tried any FreeBSD-based OS before, and it will be interesting to see how it compares to Linux.

[cpd2009]

Just because an illustrator creates cute animal pictures doesn't always mean they are nice people.

I won't name names here, but a few days ago, there was one artist I was following on IG, and this artist posted a story on how their city supposedly had no art stores and found one outside of town. This was a big town though, and I have had friendly interactions with this artist before, so I did a Yelp search, found out there were art stores in said city, and mentioned them to this artist via a story response. I sent it, and thought of nothing thinking my advice was helpful.

Later on that night, I notice I wasn't seeing any new posts from the artist, so I went to the profile, and I couldn't access it either in browser or on the app, but I could see it appear if I signed out. Essentially, this artist blocked me after I replied to their story.

People on social media have every right to block people who they perceive to be annoying or worse, but I don't fit into either of those categories, at least as far as I'm concerned. I'm a bit befuddled as to why this artist blocked me after a rather innocent, if perhaps inquisitive, reply. Maybe the artist thought my help wasn't warranted? Maybe they think I'm an attention-seeking fraud? Or worse, maybe the artist perceived my help as encroaching on their privacy, which I can't seem to figure out how my response would do so.

Of course, after a few days, I sent this artist an email through their website, apologizing for my response yet at the same time, telling the artist I respect their decision to block me if they so choose and I would use this experience to learn whether or not a story response is warranted. I later find out the same artist found my Twitter handle and blocked me there as well.

There is even an earlier experience that sort of clued me in that this artist either doesn't like answering questions or looks down on amateurs. This was at the time I was searching for an iMac and I wanted to find out first hand experience on Fusion Drive reliability. Said artist uses Macs, so I asked them about Fusion Drives and whether or not it has been reliable. I never got a response.

It's a shame, too. I really liked this particular artists work and I even bought some of the books they helped illustrate. Perhaps I will end up donating those books to the library or thrift store since this artist's rather rude treatment of me really puts me off wanting to further support their work. Couldn't this artist have messaged me instead and let me know the response was inappropriate instead of just blocking me outright? What's the point of trying to be inclusive and respectful of others when you can't do the same to an aspiring artist who was only offering helpful suggestions?

And if this artist ever comes across my rant (I doubt they will but you never know), please be more considerate of other aspiring artists who ask questions or offer advice, and at least MESSAGE the person if their story response or DM offends you before resorting to the block button. We all make mistakes, and some artists aren't horrible people like you believe they are.

Rant over.

[cpd2009]

The paltry $600 government stimulus has landed in my bank account, and I probably won't see more until the next administration in a few weeks. Until then, time to figure out what tech upgrades I can get with it.

I did some more research into M-Disc, and M-Disc BD drives are very expensive. Recording media is also rather spendy, but given how M-Disc media is supposed to outlast consumer-grade recordables, the cost is warranted. I will eventually purchase an M-Disc BluRay writer, but not right now. I'll make do with DVD-R DL discs until then. I can find them easily on eBay, but I must research which brands are most reliable.

Some upgrades I will get straight away are RAM sticks for my iMacs. Periwinkle can take up to 6GB, while Lilly can do up to 16GB. I will go with 8GB since that is enough for video capture and basic editing. An SSD is also in the cards for the old Gateway laptop.

[huckleberrypie]

The paltry $600 government stimulus has landed in my bank account, and I probably won't see more until the next administration in a few weeks. Until then, time to figure out what tech upgrades I can get with it.

I did some more research into M-Disc, and M-Disc BD drives are very expensive. Recording media is also rather spendy, but given how M-Disc media is supposed to outlast consumer-grade recordables, the cost is warranted. I will eventually purchase an M-Disc BluRay writer, but not right now. I'll make do with DVD-R DL discs until then. I can find them easily on eBay, but I must research which brands are most reliable.

Some upgrades I will get straight away are RAM sticks for my iMacs. Periwinkle can take up to 6GB, while Lilly can do up to 16GB. I will go with 8GB since that is enough for video capture and basic editing. An SSD is also in the cards for the old Gateway laptop.

Every dollar counts so I guess it should do.

Speaking of dollars I didn't knew the Treasury department there does accept reimbursements for those who got their monies toasted or water-damaged due to a calamity. As long as they found a good reason for the damaged bills to be replaced of course.

[cpd2009]

RAM is ordered, and it should take a week or so to arrive. The USPS should be less delayed since the Holidays are now behind us.

I also have the results for testing those various OS'es on the old Gateway laptop. And it was mostly for nothing. ReactOS froze on the language selection screen, Haiku booted to a solid blue screen with a lone mouse cursor, and GhostBSD doesn't recognize the USB DAC's audio input jacks. I'm settling on Xubuntu 20.10 with Xfce desktop and Audacity.

Oh yeah, Happy New Year everyone! 2020 is FINALLY done with. I'm not holding my breath about 2021, but hopefully things will begin turning out for the better.

[huckleberrypie]

RAM is ordered, and it should take a week or so to arrive. The USPS should be less delayed since the Holidays are now behind us.

I also have the results for testing those various OS'es on the old Gateway laptop. And it was mostly for nothing. ReactOS froze on the language selection screen, Haiku booted to a solid blue screen with a lone mouse cursor, and GhostBSD doesn't recognize the USB DAC's audio input jacks. I'm settling on Xubuntu 20.10 with Xfce desktop and Audacity.

Oh yeah, Happy New Year everyone! 2020 is FINALLY done with. I'm not holding my breath about 2021, but hopefully things will begin turning out for the better.

I doubt you'd be any better off with ReactOS at this state lol. Given how slow the progress is especially as they're mostly a volunteer project.

I also ordered an SSD stick for dad's Acer laptop as having it run solely on a slow mechanical hard drive is an exercise in frustration.

[cpd2009]

Well, Xubuntu wouldn't honor power management settings, so I went with Ubuntu MATE, and now everything is working fine with the Gateway laptop. Strange how two different variants of the same OS would behave differently.

Do you have any experience with ADATA SSDs? Amazon has a 240GB model for only $24.99, and it does have a 4.5 star rating. I've seen ADATA SSDs in computer stores before but always went with something a little more well known like a WD, but if this particular SSD is getting decent ratings, then I may spring for it given it's low price.

I also find it amusing how extremely cheap bluetooth speakers steal OS sound effects. I recently bought one to use with Bluebell (2009 MacBook) since the built in Macbook speakers aren't great at all. When you turn it on, you're greeted with a stolen Windows Vista/7 alert sound. I also have another BT speaker from "Craig" that steals the Mac OS installation/burn successful sound when you power the speaker off. I think I should get video of these for the lulz.

[huckleberrypie]

Well, Xubuntu wouldn't honor power management settings, so I went with Ubuntu MATE, and now everything is working fine with the Gateway laptop. Strange how two different variants of the same OS would behave differently.

Do you have any experience with ADATA SSDs? Amazon has a 240GB model for only $24.99, and it does have a 4.5 star rating. I've seen ADATA SSDs in computer stores before but always went with something a little more well known like a WD, but if this particular SSD is getting decent ratings, then I may spring for it given it's low price.

I also find it amusing how extremely cheap bluetooth speakers steal OS sound effects. I recently bought one to use with Bluebell (2009 MacBook) since the built in Macbook speakers aren't great at all. When you turn it on, you're greeted with a stolen Windows Vista/7 alert sound. I also have another BT speaker from "Craig" that steals the Mac OS installation/burn successful sound when you power the speaker off. I think I should get video of these for the lulz.

I only had experience with their flash drives, so I can't vouch for ADATA's reliability when it comes to SSDs.

As for Bluetooth speakers, I find it lulz when devices such as those use the now-infamous BL-5C battery.

Anyway, I've been on the X roasts Franklin meme train over the past few days, so here's one of my contributions to the ever-growing tirade of insults against Frank:

[cpd2009]

Nice work on the Franklin video, but at first, I thought Franklin meant the turtle Franklin, from the Nelvana TV show. But it shouldn't be too hard to rig an accurate Franklin the Turtle character to replace... Franklin.

That brings me to an odd observation with Franklin the Turtle. Qubo started airing the series again, and it reminded me how Franklin is the only animal that actually has a name. All of his other animal friends just go by the name of what species they are, such as Franklin's best friend Bear, or the rather sassy Beaver. There's also Fox, Raccoon, Squirrel, etc. That begs the question... what if he comes across other characters that share the exact same names? Why isn't Franklin simply called Turtle? Am I overthinking this with an overload of FridgeLogic?

Maybe it's a result of what happened here in America yesterday. I don't need to say any more. With crap like that, I'll do anything to keep my spirits up and hope for a brighter future.

Oh yeah, RAM upgrades from OWC arrived. 2008 iMac is upgraded, and after lunch, I'll focus on the video capture iMac.