So if you lived in a society where you had to secure your communication in order to be yourself around others, here are the apps that could help you do that.
Signal let’s you securely text and make phone calls.
Onion Browser allows you to surf the web without leaving a trail.
Duck Duck Go isn’t super secure but it won’t record your searches like Google.
ProtonMail is a email client that lets you email other secure email accounts.
Periscope allows you to stream live video.
Semaphor is there so you can securely make group chat rooms.
American privacy laws allow you to use these all. So that’s pretty cool.
Because we’re currently living in the prologue of a cyberpunk dystopian novel, imma reblog this.
FYI the feds can crack Signal when they’re sufficiently motivated, which means the rest of these are probably also done. Not to say you shouldn’t use them–you should–but don’t go around thinking you’re immune to snooping.
True. These things delay, put up barriers that make you harder to follow and it takes more work and time to decrypt your messages.
That’s useful if you wanna pass on information that only needs to be hidden for a short time but if you need communication to stay secret forever no matter how hard the state tries, don’t use the internet at all. There is no encryption that is going to stay uncrackable forever.
with very old (and ugly) furniture, like me, you know how hard it is to make something ‘pretty’. You can’t invest or change much. That’s why I’m super excited about these self-adhesive decorative foils.
Guess what, I bought 5 rolls ($2 each). You can imagine what will the kitchen look like when I’m done with it
Anyway, I just wanted to suggest, if you want to change something, and can’t afford or live in a rented place, a self-adhesive decorative foil is a way to go. It’s plastic and has no problem with water or grease. And it’s fun to apply it! 😀
Have fun getting that off again when you move out.
These are actually very easy to remove 🙂 Leaves no glue on the surface where it was and doesn’t do any damage. I did this before, so I’m good 🙂
Update! I’ve had these foils for almost two years now, and I want to show you how the original surface looks like when you take it off:
See? Nothing 🙂 Easy to take off and no glue residues. I finally got rid of that pink paisley. 😅
Of course, I couldn’t resist of doing the table, too.
Can i get link to where to buy them from?
I bought these in a wallpaper/paint store in Croatia, but it’s called contact paper (just learned that now, thanks) or self-adhesive foil, so you can find it like that 🙂
By the way! This stuff is also super cool for if you want to decorate your sketchbooks or other stuff A friend of mine used to cut little stars and hearts out of them and put them onto her clipboard
I forgot about that!
I got this planner/notebook from my bank which was nice, but (of course) I didn’t like the promotional cover, so I did this:
people are STILL OUT HERE IN 2018 W BLACK TEXT ON DARK PURPLE AND DARK BLUE BACKGROUNDS. WHY.
lads, literally the very first rule of web design is READABILITY.
you have to have contrast between your background and your text.
like…….you pretty much can’t have a dark background if you have black text because it’s super difficult to read; if i have to highlight and puzzle out what your text says because it’s two shades different than your background? i and 95% of people looking at your page are going to hit that back button REAL fast
I am having difficulty reading that white on yellow (even though it is labeled good), other than that this is a pretty neat chart.
PAYPAL IS TRYING TO SLIP THE RUG UNDER US. Or they may have said this and just no one read about it or noticed/knew.
OKAY SO BEFORE YOU SEND ANY MONEY FOR THAT AWESOME COMMISSION YOU WANT TO BUY FROM THAT AWESOME ARTIST. PLEASE STOP AND READ THIS.
Paypal changed the look of how you will fill out information and send money. Thus, you need to be super careful. Don’t go all willy nilly through and be like “Yeah yeah yeah send” you need to stop when you see this screen right away.
Before you proceed, you will first notice one major thing: your address is showing. What you need to do if you are ordering a DIGITAL WORK (aka, it is being sent to you via the interwebz) is you need to click on your address and there around be a drop down menu of 3 (or more) options:
No address needed
Your Current Address
+ Add a new shipping address
Be sure to select “No address needed”, it is very important that you do. If you leave your address in there, Paypal will assume that you are to receive a physical package. A physical package which needs proof that exists physically. Paypal will want the artist to provide shipping labels and tracking info on said package. This is bad, very, very bad. Artists can get in trouble if they cannot provide these things.
Please, if an artist asks to send you back your money so that you can send it again correctly, do not be offended. You are paying them to do your commission, how can they do your commission with no money?
Reblog this, send this around, if you want to make a proper tutorial go ahead, I hope this was clear enough as it is.
Important!!!
And in case the buyer does do this, there is a work around. All you have to do is click on the transaction and go to “edit tracking info” at the bottom.
Then go to order status and set to “Processed/Service Rendered.”
This will let paypal know that the order was a digital good, and no shipping was required.
You just have to check your incoming payments and make sure to do this if this does happen. Cause you aren’t notified otherwise. And you really only get in trouble if left unnoticed.
Reblogging again because I can’t stretch this enough!
emergencycommissions Not a commission post, but I think you may need this on the blog for people who are commissioning!
Yes, this is very important! I have a link to a post on our sidebar showing the same thing – this is why posts are tagged either ‘physical item’ or ‘digital file’
Hey all! I thought I’d get some thoughts out in regards to conventions and what I personally have gone through to continue exhibiting at conventions after becoming chronically ill and disabled. Obviously, it’s a personal perspective, and not by any means a one size fits all summary.
This topic has been weighing on me of late, through a combination of wistfully wishing I could attend the conventions I can see via social media my friends are all at, interacting and selling and making connections and most of all having fun, and a sullen realization that I may not be physically able to continue selling at the convention I’ve had a table at for six years.
My personal condition mixes heavy dietary restrictions (celiac disease, intolerances like egg, nut, dairy, plus low FODMAP diet) with a chronic illness called POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), which causes me to suffer from heat intolerance (hugely problematic since cons tend to be in the summer, and regardless of air conditioning, once those bodies fill the place up, it’s very hot), dizziness, lightheadedness, blurry vision, not able to walk far unassisted (I use a rollator, which I’ll come back to in a later section), blood pooling in my legs, brain fog, fainting on standing, insomnia (which worsens symptoms, and I ALWAYS get pre-con jitters leading to insomnia), and several medications every four hours. So basically… really fun times!
At Fan Expo Canada, my biggest and most profitable convention which I’ve exhibited at, as mentioned, for the last six years, I am situated on an endcap table. It was at first a strategic move – my first year was down an aisle, and while it was a great start to be artist alley career, the end cap proved to receive far more foot traffic. So I partnered up with friends of mine and split the end cap tables. The end cap is essentially two tables, and similarly priced to the regular aisle tables, but with the bonus of FAR more foot traffic and visibility. The extra bonus, which later proved to be a downfall in terms of sales, was that we were the last aisle and very close to the bathrooms. Once I became too sick (still yet undiagnosed at this point) to make it far on my own, the nearby bathrooms were a godsend, and the “extra space” the endcap provided was the only way I could actually get my rollator/wheelchair to fit behind the tables. (Sidenote here: Fan Expo is actually terrible about giving you room behind the tables. For the artists down the aisles, they’re told they have 3 feet of space behind their tables. That 3 feet includes chairs and sometimes banners… and bumps right up against the other person facing out the other way. People clamber down, knocking banners, bonking chairs, tripping over merch, just to make it down to where I am and guiltily ask me to move my seat, my wheelchair, so they can get by and go to the bathroom or get food. And I have MORE space than them and they still can’t get by!!) The end row… not so much, as buyers rarely made it all the way down there, considering there are about 500 tables before ours to wear out their patience and wallets before making it there.
So, while the positioning is ideal for me with my physical condition, it became clear in the last two years that sales were plummeting. The toll it took on my health in order to get to the convention at all, nevermind make it through the day, became very clear in 2017. My dear mother, who has been ridiculously accommodating and abundantly helpful as my table helper, gently suggested that maybe I can’t do this anymore. What was once my nerdy four day Christmas had become an incredibly stressful, time consuming, health destroying money pit.
I used to cosplay. That joy was taken from me by my chronic illness, as was any chance I could walk around the convention I loved so much since first going to it in my college years.
Pre-illness, cosplaying Arya Stark.
To give you a rough idea of what it’s now like for me to set up and vend at Fan Expo:
Set Up:
Recruit as many of my friends as possible as helpers, as I’m not able to physically carry anything from the truck down three floors and across the huge hall to my table. Bribe them with food, money, passes, whatever works, just so my mom doesn’t have to make 4-5 trips solo to carry down all my supplies. (My table is very bulky.)
I have several personal fans turned on ASAP so I don’t suffer a heat induced fainting spell, including one hanging down around my neck.
I guiltily and anxiously try to set up the table while I wait for my helpers to bring my stuff, and inevitably overexert myself.
I try to think clearly enough to instruct my helpers how to take over, as they force me to sit down and eat some of the food we prepared. (Important note: All of my food is premade. On Thursday this isn’t as much of a big deal, but consider this: on the rest of the days, my parents have to get up 1-2 hours earlier to prepare 14 hours worth of uncontaminated food for me and figure out how to keep it appropriately warm/cold)
The table gets set up before the show’s earlybird hours begin at 2pm.
The show is open until 9pm on Thursdays, and I am so utterly exhausted already on the night of day one that I have a thousand yard stare on the long ride in my wheelchair back up two elevator trips to the truck, and a 30-45min drive home to reflect on how this is my life for the next three days.
The Convention:
My mother has to do most of the greeting, especially at eye level. I have to remember that I cannot stand up quickly, or much at all, but feel incredibly rude when I don’t greet customers on foot like I had in previous years.
My view for most of the convention.
Eating is a chore, and something that will always make me feel very sad and alone. It’s very isolating to always eat something different from everyone else, to have to think very far ahead and worry if there will be enough food to last me, and turn down all free food offered by fellow vendors. I exhibited at TCAF in 2017 and was extremely nervous about their “no food” rules, as I have to eat small meals every 2 hours or risk exasperating my symptoms, and I also cannot walk immediately after eating. Originally, as per the rules at TCAF, I would have had to leave the area and get to the first floor to eat my meals, which would essentially mean… I couldn’t ever be at my table. This didn’t happen, thankfully, as accommodations were very kindly made on my behalf to eat my prepared dietary food discretely behind the table. Fan Expo wants you to eat from their provided vendors, which is very much impossible for me, and we’ve never been stopped and questioned while bringing in full cooler bags worth of food as exhibitors.
Bathroom trips. They were an embarrassing ordeal. Everyone knew when I was getting up to go to the bathroom, when my wheelchair was converted into a walker by my mother so I could stumble down the aisle to the washroom that is thankfully so closeby. However, that restroom has one (1) handicapped stall and it is almost always occupied inappropriately. Last year, I sat in dizzy agony for 12 minutes, near tears, my necklace fan’s battery near dying and not providing me enough air, my phone unfortunately forgotten at my table, and me sitting on my walker feeling very near to passing out. Some very kind soul pounded on the handicapped stall door and told the woman making a phone call in there (????) that it was needed by an actual handicapped person. Bless you a thousand times, you wonderful lifesaver.
If people want to talk to the artist, or interview me like I was last year for someone’s vlog, I have to carefully calculate if I have enough spoons left to stand or talk for that long. That’s right, talking exhausts me. I’m too disabled to work, let alone go anywhere on my own, and I spend the majority of my time alone in silence (well, verbally – I do play music while I draw) at home. Conventions require you to be On, On, On! all weekend, whether it’s greeting people, thanking them for their purchase, asking them to repeat themselves because the other 129000 attendees are chattering too loudly that you can’t hear what they asked for, or whatever else might come up along the way. I wish I could say that the rest of the year spent in reverent silence is my way of stockpiling spoons for the four day exhaustionfest that awaits me, but it really just works in the opposite way from deconditioning!
Takedown:
The convention finally wraps up, and there’s a collective sigh of relief.
I wish the work was done as soon as the last guest leaves, though! Like set up, this process is arduous and exhausting. I nearly passed out several times last year, and the scary part was that I was all alone. My tablemates had long left, as had 90% of the artist alley. My fans were on their last legs with their batteries and doing nothing to regulate my temperature at this point. I tried feebly to pack away the next box for my mother, now bringing back a load of items solo, but having to wait in ENORMOUS lines for the ONE elevator to go up to the parking level and then the ONE elevator to get into the actual parking garage… each trip took way, way, way longer than bringing items in…) It’s extremely scary for me to feel this way at all, especially alone and in an environment where I would be extremely vulnerable should anything happen. (Nevermind my cash box sitting right there, so had I passed out… ugh)
I cry a little as I count the cash on my lap in the car (yet another very long line to leave, only this time with air conditioning blasting in my face thankfully) to realize that I made ~$500 less each DAY than I had the year before, and that in 2016 I had made less each day than I had in 2015…
Riding home with this very heavy spinner rack on my lap.
What was my point in writing all this? Well, there are several, and… sort of… none. I needed to get it off my chest. I needed to vent, even if no one may read this and give me feedback on what I should do. But most of all, I want to give feedback to the convention world on what THEY should do.
Make conventions shorter.
This trend of four day cons, and cons with RIDICULOUS 12-14 hour artist alley times are ludicrous. Make them shorter. Make more actual weekend conventions. Heck, make more ONE DAY conventions. Two of the best conventions I’ve had were two and one day conventions (TCAF and MCX).
Make artist alleys more user friendly.
Leave enough rooms down the aisles behind our tables that we can walk. Can you imagine if I, a wheelchair user, had a table down an aisle? How would I POSSIBLY get my chair down the aisle where there essentially is no aisle, there’s just chairs and banners and merch?
Accommodate disabilities. TCAF did this VERY well. Fan Expo gave absolutely no shits about helping me, including when I lost my pass because the flimsy thing fell off their cheap lanyard. I was sitting in a wheelchair the majority of the day and it managed to fall off somewhere unnoticed, and yet they required a $90 replacement fee, ie. a full weekend pass price. Even when the situation was explained that my mother was my helper and according to their policy, helpers who are pushing wheelchairs (which my mother has to do, my chair doesn’t have wheels like that, it’s a walker/wheelchair combination) receive free admission so she shouldn’t have even had to buy her original $90 pass to begin with, nevermind us pay for a second one.
Make online conventions.
This is my biggest suggestion. I would like to see conventions held online. I am positive there are people in a similar situation to me who cannot physically go to conventions, and who are missing out on the opportunity to reach other fans.
Online cons could host panels through livestreamed google meetups, could exhibit artist alley vendors through personalized listings of their online shops (along with sales/coupons/free shipping/whatever to make the experience exclusive to “congoers” as well as serve as a boost in advertising), could connect people worldwide with one another who would not meet at a local con where proximity is an issue.
Last time I suggested this online con thing via twitter, people were like, “Yeah that’s cool! Let me know when you launch it!” I have no capacity nor reach nor energy to do this myself. Go ahead and run with the idea yourself!! I give you full permission to springboard off this and do with it what you will! I’m suggesting it because I want to see it done, not because I want to host it myself. I physically can’t, if that wasn’t clear enough earlier.
Tumblr Dashboard Image Display Sizes (Updated July 13, 2015):
Photo Post: 540 by 810 pixels for dashboard view. Use 1280 by 1920 pixels for high-res version (except for superwide panoramas).
“Tall” Photo Post: Tumblr takes a 300-by-810-pixel version of your image then stretches it by 80% using HTML height and width attributes to make it 540 by 1458 pixels. Image quality may be diminished. Aim for uploading at least 710-by-1920-pixel images in case Tumblr switches to a better image size on the Dashboard. (It’s happenedbefore.)
Photoset: 540-pixel width for one image in a photoset row. 268-pixel width for two images in a photoset row. 177-pixel width for three images in a photoset row. Gutters are 4 pixels.
Audio Post: 169 by 169 pixels for album art.
Link Post: 130 by 130 pixels for the thumbnail image grabbed by Tumblr from web link (if available).
Text Post: As of March 30, 2015, inline images can appear full-width (540 pixels wide). Any inline images that are 300 pixels wide or larger will display as full-width.
Avatar: 64-by-64-pixel icon next to posts.
How to post art without tumblr making it look like a blurry mess. I can’t believe this is a website made for posting images sometimes.
one of the most reblogged comics i’ve ever made is on my tumblr with half of it blurry as shit and the other half not so pay attention to this stuff
Guys, this is really important. Until now, Google collected your data, but did not attach your name to it. Now, they can, and will. This new thing they’re doing will allow them to collect your data across searches, your email, Youtube, Maps, Google+, and all their affiliates, and build a complete profile of YOU.
If that doesn’t bother you, maybe this will: they own and can sell all that data, including anything you create and send (artists and writers, take note).
There is a way you can opt out of this ridiculousness. It’s described in the link, but if you’re still not sure about it, please ask me and I’ll guide you through how to turn all this off.
This is my wake-up call. I’ll be locking down my devices and scaling back what I put through the big Google machine, which means you may see less of me across social media. I’m going to keep researching this, but it may mean in order to keep the rights to my creative work, I’ll have to keep it out of Google’s hands. And that may take some doing.
Duckduckgo is a nontracking search engine….may be worth a try.
So according to the article there is an opt out for this. Instructions are I the last paragraph. I’m on mobile so I’ll edit this more later. EDITED TO INCLUDE OPT OUT INSTRUCTIONS
To opt-out of Google’s identified tracking, visit the Activity controls on Google’s My Account page, and uncheck the box next to “Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services.“ You can also delete past activity from your account.
Procrastination Queen 