Braindump // VOID-STAR.NET

Braindump

I’ve been stopping and starting blog posts for the past couple of days but they all get far too long and introspective and fuck that! So instead have a brief summary of my brain:

• Thinking vs Not-Thinking: I like thinking. I dislike not-thinking. I dislike it when other people don’t think. I really dislike it when other people hold up their not-thinking as being a somehow positive virtue. I super-duper extra specially dislike it when people who have previously thought about something make a pretence to not-thinking in order to prevent the dissemination of knowledge to ‘the masses’ in order to keep some kind of faux ‘expert’ mystique.
• Birthdays!: Happy birthday to koorime, Mage, matt and gnosis! K and Mage’s party at Legends in Manuka was aa-aa-all right, though it made us feel old. Also, the people next to us had this weird obsession with food being ‘oily’. I didn’t get it. I ate too many whitebait (like chips; but spiky).
• Webdesign: To pay off my fishtank, I took some freelance webdesign jobs. Fuck I remember now why I don’t want to be a webdesigner. Not to mention it’s total monkey-work; a real go-nowhere job. Kids, I know you think it sounds all big and prestigious, but in the IT world, webdesigners are the lowest of the low. Just Say No!
• Job: …
• Houses: Mat and I are looking at houses. As in, for buying. We should be able to get something great in our price bracket; I am very positive. Saw some nice places on the weekend, but nothing I wanted to buy right then. Keep looking.
• Pizza: I made the spiciest pizza last night. It was yum! The tiramisu was probably too much, though.
• Painter X: … I’d only just gotten used to Painter 7.

And that’s about it. Have some sketches instead…

8 Comments

1. 

   1227 days ago
   102 comments

   Belinda

   I agree with your thinkingness. I super duper dislike people who complain that detailed, intelligent responses to a question equates to being “pompous”.

   What do you mean that webdesign is total monkey-work? I heard people talk about artistic creativity and what not.

   Ooooh buying house! Big step!!

   • Reply
   • 

     1227 days ago
     1,606 comments

     Dee

     I super duper dislike people who complain that detailed, intelligent responses to a question equates to being “pompous”.

     It’s funny, it’s something I have almost exclusively encountered in female communities, especially proto-geek ones. It seems equivalent communities that don’t feel female dominated (I can’t quite explain what I mean here without sounding totally sexist, but what they hey) are more-or-less willing to give a ‘nobody’ kudos for knowing something… and knowing things is the best way to become a somebody. I’ve been in a lot of communities like that; sailormoon.org back in the day (at least it was on a staffing level; displaying technical aptitude would get you noticed by the webmasters), my WoW raid is like that (deliberately by my hand) and the odd little huddle of people who write the Furcadia proxy Furnarchy are like that too. The Furnarchy forums especially are interesting to watch; the mods have this reputation for being arrogant jerks who’d sooner scream “noob!” than help you, but really I think they just don’t like idiots (which they get a lot of, because this is Furcadia we’re talking about; the massive internet sinkhole of idiots). I’ve been there a couple of times with problems and they’ve always been unfailingly polite to me, even if I’ve been doing something extremely stupid (i.e. insisting I had the latest client version when I didn’t). If they think you’ve actually sat down and tired then they’re really nice; but they don’t have time for people who want to be spoonfed.

     I think I like these communities because not only is knowledge appreciated, but the sharing of knowledge is appreciated. Our WoW forums are filled up with these huge long, maths-filled posts about game mechanics and whatnot, and if anyone tried to call the writers ‘pompus’ they’d be laughed out of the forums (new people to the raid occasionally try, but they usually learn quick or drop out). It doesn’t matter that the net result is kind of trivial in the Scale Of Life — people know that when they’re all off at their days jobs being rocket scientists and whatnot — but it’s the intelligence and care that goes into the thinking that people admire. I guess it’s kind of like, if you can afford to daydream up this stuff in your free time, imagine what you must be like in your real work.

     People who like thinking like thinking. It’s not ‘work’ to us, it’s pure fun.

     But most of the ‘geek girl’ communities just don’t work like that. I sometimes get the sneaking suspicion that very few people in these communities — lest of all the so-called ‘experts’ — actually know very much about what they’re talking about, hence the almost total lack of any content-driven discussion. This sounds very arrogant but meh; I’ve done the hard yards of ‘real’ computer science and while I’m no guru I can tell geek from chic. I get the impression that I’m very threatening to a lot of the self-proclaimed alpha-femmegeeks…

     And, heh, see response below about webdesign. As far as jobs go, ‘artistic creativity’ usually means “crap pay and no respect”. Webdesigners; the unwanted bastard stepchildren of both coders and graphic artists…

     • Reply
     • 

       1227 days ago
       102 comments

       Belinda

       Mmm I agree with you. My foruming have taken me to boards that consist mainly of anime/gaming fans and there’s none of that attitude there either. Even when said forums are populated by women. If people asked a question and they got a lengthy answer, the response to that would be some sort of positive thanks or further discussion.

       I, myself, care very little about coding and stuff but I don’t see how just because you’ve spent a lot of your time (and if you’re not doing it professionally, then it’s a lot of your SPARE time) on it warrants you to think yourself better than others. However, I’d be cautious here to not generalise to all “geeky” webdesigners though, there are plenty of decent ones. I think the problem is that bitchy people (who happen to know coding) group together and promote attitudes like that. I’m quite astonished by the implicit “cliquey” and status-driven behaviours that exist in some forums but it simply doesn’t exist at all in others.

       • Reply
       • 

         1227 days ago
         1,606 comments

         Dee

         The thing is, most people who really know what they’re talking about — in any field — don’t have that cliquish kind of attitude (in fact, I’ve yet to meet a single one).

         But it’s unfortunately very common to find people whose bark is greater than their metaphorical bite, and they get very threatened when anyone else comes along and threatens to reveal that their emperors have no clothes, as it were. :

         • Reply
2. 

   1227 days ago
   125 comments

   Jem

   Big dig at web designers there

   Buying a place to live is impossible over here.. bloody house prices.

   • Reply
   • 

     1227 days ago
     1,606 comments

     Dee

     Meh, it’s the IT industry; you work in it, surely you know? Coders and level 1 tech support are the lowliest jobs. And a webdesigner is just a coder without the mild cred that comes with knowing a real language.

     Webdesign jobs only look plush if you’re a grad straight out of uni (or a high school drop-out; something I considered momentarily once upon a time).

     • Reply
   • 

     1226 days ago
     125 comments

     Jem

     Not going to disagree with level 1 tech support.. been there, done that, looked like a monkey. Over here I know several web designers that all get a lot of respect from non-designing IT buddies/etc though.. maybe it’s a cultural difference? (Or maybe I’m ignorant to other people’s opinions these days.)

     • Reply
3. 

   1225 days ago
   413 comments

   Mat

   The only web designers that get any cred are those that have BA/consulting talents. HTML monkeys in the corner that can’t work directly with clients are very low in the heirarchy.

   • Reply