Jackie's Fridge

Gary’s hats don’t always have a connection to what he brings you, but they are always on point.

https://maddox.xmission.com/

I was going to advocate machines, specifically the vintage Singer machines (the black, all-metal dudes). They are very simple, there’s tonnes of information online for repairing & maintaining them, and you can usually find people just trying to get rid of them. Find one that isn’t rusty and moves freely and you’ll probably just need to oil it and mess with the tension.

If space is a concern, you don’t need to keep it in the sewing table (though it’s more comfortable). Those vintage machines are simple and tough to kill.

If you can’t play music but want to play WITH music, I’d recommend getting a groovebox like the Novation Circuit (original or Circuit Tracks). It gives you 2 synthesizers and 4 drum parts in one small, battery-powered box, with a sensible note/pattern sequencer. It’s limited, but there are a lot of resources online for using it, and it’s cheap if you buy used. Great fun to sit on the couch and make tunes.

There are also groovebox apps for iOS (like Grooverider GR-16) that do the same and sound great for less money.

What I’m saying is: music creation is more accessible than ever these days, so never tell yourself you can’t do it.

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Had to upvote for the ideal midwest pronunciation of “bag”

I also have to use it for work. I don’t know if it’s Adobe, or Windows 11, or a toxic combination of both, but not a single day goes by where I can just create without things randomly breaking. Illustrator stops letting me drag with the direct selection tool. Premiere switches to hotkeys as I’m typing text. InDesign…actually InDesign has been behaving.

But literally all the other Adobe apps will break AS I’M USING THEM - like, an action I’ve literally just done suddenly doesn’t work or glitches out. A couple weeks ago Premiere and Photoshop would literally crash on open. The day before they were both fine.

I have Gimp, Inkscape, and KdenLive installed just in case.

I use a Kaweco Sport as my daily driver.

Bonus: Nobody ever “borrows” it at work because it confuses and terrifies them.

Maybe Canada, but the US is ruining them too

Love it! Minimal but effective.

Can dimly remember what he looks like. Apparently he looks like someone’s creepy uncle who was always doing sleight of hand tricks to wow the little kids

This is why I joined a track-a-week music challenge this year! I’ve been dabbling for 5 years and still have no idea what I’m doing musically (no theory or anything) but I figured cranking out a finished song every week throughout 2024 would force me to get better and it’s really working!

I mean, I’m still cranking out garbage, but now it’s higher quality garbage and I can make decisions faster, let go of ideas that aren’t working without a second thought, and learn from other people taking the challenge.

As far as art goes, I’ve been drawing live caricatures for 15 years and I’m WAY better than even a few years ago. Definitely stick with it. Be too stubborn to give up. Keep doing the thing. Skill will develop the more you persevere.

The Birthday Massacre are so gooood

I am with you on every one of these points. The image selection process is terrible now, where before it was quick & simple. And in the past couple of updates, sending larger images and gifs was sporadic until now I always get an error. I was happy when they added message reactions, then puzzled when they just stopped at six, half of which are rarely useful.

I’ve been a paid user for years, but now I’m causally shopping for something else. If they’re giving up on their app, so am I.

Seriously. USA is like the generic video game starter character before anyone’s had a chance to customise it and level up. At all. And I say that as someone who lives here.

She vaguely thinks there may be something out there but it has zero bearing on her life. I think that makes her functionally an agnostic atheist.

Yes, yes, yes, of course he will, and I think the new outrage is that he is literally only disclosing the stuff he gets caught on, which begs the question, exactly how deep does his corruption run - not to mention the other “justices” (ahemcoughALITOcough)

Women raising their voices makes Pence wet himself in fear (or possibly joy) so that’s probably not a good metric.

Another vote for the T480. I have a T480s running Mint and it’s been lovely. No driver issues and for office/light media creation/consumption it seems to work without a hitch.

A Mary Sue can fail, but those failures don’t usually have a massive impact and are easily reversed without the feeling that the MS had to struggle to earn the reversal.

The more flaws a character has, the more they have to work to balance them out. Readers are more likely on the side of a character that has to work and make sacrifices to make it through the difficulties the plot throws at them.

Random Example: Diana Rowland’s “My Life as a White Trash Zombie”. Protagonist Angel has a criminal record, drug addiction, abusive home life, and generally makes very bad decisions. Because of her life course, she has very few resources (she can’t go to the cops, nobody she knows has money or connections, etc) but she can think quickly and has a sort of desperate resourcefulness. Because everything is working against her, she has to fight for any positive forward movement, and one misstep can be a serious threat - and those happen frequently, undoing any success and forcing her to burn her resources to try a new path. IIRC in one of the books the B-story is her trying just to earn her GED as the main plot around her is utter pandemonium. Just that struggle to graduate high school is a herculean task given the deck stacked against her. Readers aren’t thinking “how will she win”, they’re thinking “well what’s going to go wrong this time?”

TL;DR: If every time your protagonist has a setback the readers shout “can’t she ever catch a break?” instead of “ah she’ll just breeze through this” you should be doing okay.