A Post of Many Colours

[cherry]

A very happy (and similarly, very belated birthday) to two of my most favourite people on the internet -- thefourthvine and tellitslant!

Things which are awesome: for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I obtained funding for a laptop, and am now the proud owner of a Toshiba M750 tablet! I can write on the screen! I have never owned a PC before, though, so am curious as to what applications my more experienced friends think are necessary. Now, this is going to be a school machine -- I'm planning on keeping all my media on my desktop computer, so I don't need recommendations for vidding software or anything of the like. Neat or useful program recommendations would be awesome, as well as resources. If anyone uses a good reference/paper database program, I would love to hear it. Unfortunately, Papers (which is awesome), only has a Mac version.


And, somewhat belatedly:

while I am clearly made of fail for not getting this up sooner...
... you are made of sparkling bundles of awesomeness. Really, I will adore whatever you write.

General things that I love:

1) Characterization. I know this seems silly, as we're all writing stories here, but I love nothing like a story that digs deep inside an individual, and brings everything about them into the light. I'm not presumptuous at all. *cough*

2) Gen, slash, het, drama, angst, humour, violence, snappy dialogue, prose, lovely and complicated shades of grey. I'm pretty easy, really.

If it would help, my fic is tagged, or at my site.


Things that I am not such a huge fan of:

1) Graphic sex.

2) Character bashing/running down one character to 'improve' another. Conflict is still good, though.


Specifically, you should feel completely and totally free to ignore any of my more precise points:

1) Power Play
Something Colleen-centric would be amazing. I want badly for her to find some peace, or get some closure. She and Brett are complicated characters, and I love them dearly, and want them to grow, or find some kind of hope.

2) Chronicles of the Kencaryth
I love Kindrie, I love Jame, and I love Tori. I especially, however, love Kindrie. He's had more than his share of knocks, and I would love for him to have the chance to grow into himself more. As a note: this is the one fandom where incest doesn't creep me out, likely due to how it's woven into the canon. Thinky gen is also amazing.

3) Mambo Italiano
I would dearly love something where Nino comes to terms with himself, and Angelo is his awkwardly awesome self. It doesn't have to be shippy, as I also love gen. Whatever works for you!

In conclusion: Dear author, you are awesome, and I apologize for not getting this letter up sooner. :(

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_bounce_/]

Sooo... no wanting of the cracked copies of Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop CS3 I swiped from work? (I believe I also have illustrator and can probably get hold of the AutoCAD suite, too, since I think we miiight have a cracked version floating around the office.)

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

In all seriousness, those could be legitimately used for school work. You are also made of awesome.

(OMG AutoCAD! Drafting on my own computer and not having to fight for a computer and school and then hope that there's a license available on the network!)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_bounce_/]

Has your address changed recently? I'll drop them in the mail on Thursday or Tuesday the week after, since it's a little large to email. (Office 2007, AutoCAD, and the Adobe CS3 programs I've got at home.)

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

I moved about a year ago -- if you have my 7th St. address, that's the right one.

Oh, and I'm running XP? I don't know if that matters.

Thank you, hon.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_bounce_/]

It shouldn't matter, since the work computers are mostly all on XP and it's what I've got at home.

I don't have that address.

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

Yay! I've emailed you my current address. Thanks again.

[sprat.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, that's awesome! About the laptop, I mean -- a tablet! Those are so cool.

I'd give you program recs, but I'm not so familiar with Vista and I know that's probably what you're using. The things I missed the most when moving from Mac to XP were the ease of screenshots (XP has no built-in screenshot-to-image-file thingy), the limited and crappy system skins, the way your desktop background has to be static, the lack of a built-in ssh client for talking to my linux server, the way program windows tile in the taskbar when you have several open and the lack of an expose feature, and a million other bothersome little things. I've found good apps to solve these problems, so let me know if you need any of them in Vista and I'll link them.

Oh! One thing you might be able to use is Simplify Media. It lets you stream your iTunes library from your home computer to any other (work, laptop, iPod touch). It works even through a router, so if you want to have your music with you without taking up hard drive space on the portable, it might be a good thing to check out.

Hi, by the way! I have a vague recollection that I might owe you an email. *sucks at correspondence*

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

I'm running XP, actually -- some of the software I also obtained funding for has glitches with Vista, so they gave me a downgrade. I've never owned a PC, so I'm finding it painful, especially after the elegance of OSX. Sigh. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

You do owe me an email! We were going to grab coffee or supper in October. I kind of assumed you were crazy busy, however, what with the surprise parenting. I think I can let it slide. *G*

[sprat.livejournal.com]

Aw, man, really? I do not even remember the conversation. Surprise parenting is, indeed, deteriorating my brains. *headdesk*

I am really sorry, and I could certainly use a break -- what's life like for you these days? Want to do supper/coffee sometime in the near future instead?

As for program recs, yay XP! That makes things much easier. I will collect some links and add them here when I can.

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

Oh good lord I HATE Windows. This is clearly a tool of the devil. I could boot and shut down my old lap top twice in the time it takes this one to start up.

I am thisclose to dual booting it to OSX, just so I don't have to deal with this fuckery when I'm not in immediate need of some of the adaptive-type software. I don't know how that would handle the table screen factor, however.

I am really sorry, and I could certainly use a break -- what's life like for you these days? Want to do supper/coffee sometime in the near future instead?

As incredibly awesome as it would be to see you -- I'm now in the term-end-report-writing-panic right now, and then I'm immediately moving into finals. What's your free time like after December 15? (Yeah, I'm pretty much a horrible person.)

[sprat.livejournal.com]

No, that's fine! I forgot it was finals time or I never would've asked. After December 15th is going to be somewhat busy for me, but I'm in town for Christmas, so I'm sure there'll be some time for hanging out then.

Last I heard, OS X on non-Mac hardware wasn't very viable yet -- there were configurations it worked on, but I don't know if yours would be one of them. Maybe a linux dual boot? I think newer builds of Ubuntu should do pretty well for the traditional non-tablet laptop functions -- not sure how well-supported the touch screen stuff would be. But it's free! And pretty! I use Fedora with XP on a dual boot on my desktop and am very pleased with it.

And finally, here are some of those links I promised you for XP utilities.

For screenshots, either Screenhunter or Gadwin:

http://www.download.com/ScreenHunter/3000-2192_4-10063246.html?tag=mncol&cdlPid=10732691

http://www.download.com/Gadwin-PrintScreen/3000-2094_4-10727558.html

To fix the ugliness of the XP GUI, I use Replacer to patch my uxtheme.dll -- this lets you install pretty much any user-made theme you want to install, including ones that make your PC look all Mac OS-y. Replacer is here:

http://www3.telus.net/_/replacer/

You'll need to find out which service pack of Windows you have installed and then download the appropriate uxtheme from here:

http://www.withinwindows.com/uxtheme-patches/

There are a bunch of places to get the actual themes, like here:

http://www.skinbase.org/index.php

Make sure you download ones that end in .msstyles -- those are the only ones that really work.

This lets you have a changing background in XP:

http://www.johnsadventures.com/software/backgroundswitcher/

These are free tools you can download to customize XP and make it somewhat less annoying. I especially like TweakUI, which lets you prevent windows from grouping in the taskbar:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/Downloads/powertoys/Xppowertoys.mspx

You probably got some kind of Norton or McAfee antivirus thingy with your computer. If and when that gets too annoying, you can replace it with this:

http://www.clamwin.com/

It's a free and open source AV program. It has on-access protection, but I usually leave that off and just use it to scan everything I download. I prefer to watch my running processes myself, periodically, to make sure nothing is trying to hijack my system (ctrl-alt-delete, click the processes tab, watch for anything that's using more than an average share of memory or CPU).

Speaking of sketchy downloads, one real advantage of running windows is that you get to use uTorrent, which is far and away the best torrent client I've found. It keeps a low profile, resource-wise, and lets you use encryption to bypass your ISP's traffic shaping (this means your dl speeds often increase by a large margin):

http://www.utorrent.com/

And this is a great IM program. You can use it in Linux, too:

http://www.pidgin.im/

And in case you need it, this is the best ssh client for XP:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html