tinyyellowflowers-blog:

During lockdown I worked on two projects: one was a ditch that needed to be cleared out of tules and cattails but turtles lived there. So I’d follow the excavator scooping out the vegetation and make sure no turtles were trapped in it, and if they were, freeing them and putting them in a safe part of the ditch. It’s extremely muddy, sticky work. Hold on, I have a photo of one of the guys:

ALT

No one is having a good time.

The OTHER project was going to destroy rare salamander habitat and so we had to buy some appropriate habitat. But every mitigation bank was sold out. I found a guy selling future mitigation bank credits through the powers of making a lot of phone calls and then, through the power of polite requests, got our Wildlife Agency rep to sign off on this plan. Except. You can’t say “I gave seven figures to a guy who promises to someday make habitat”, that guy could abscond. You also can’t be like “I supes promise to pay for mitigation AFTER the project.” because WE could not pay out. We were, for various reasons, disinclined to delay the project. The Wildlife Agency rep — bless her, she really held my hand through this whole process — was like “how about you put the money in escrow?” Great. A plan.

So I call an escrow company — which was not an organization used to being cold-called, much less by someone standing next to an excavator, covered in mud. I was trying to provide only the information needed to enable success and NOT go on a five-ten minute rant on salamander life cycles. Also I was DEEPLY out of my depth.

“Hi! I was wondering if you could hold money in an escrow account for a longer period?”

“… Well, in some circumstances we can hold it for up to 90 days — but we’d need to know the circumstances.”

“Ah! I need someone to hold it for up to two years? Do you know of any companies who’d be able to help me?”

“What. What is happening with the house that this is necessary?”

“Oh uh. It’s not a house, per se, it’s a rare salamander mitigation bank. It needs to be built.”

“The salamanders need a custom house?”

“No no no no no uh. They need a pond. We’re paying someone to make a pond. But! They need time to make the pond. Hence the escrow account. So. Who could?”

“So like a lizard house?”

“They are amphibians?”

“Let me. Transfer you to my supervisor.”

<after a pause a different person comes on the line but also unfortunately at this moment the excavator operator fishes a turtle out of the ditch.>

“Hi! Sorry one second I need to put down the phone to help a turtle.” <interlude> “Thank you so much for waiting! I’m back! Can you talk to me about escrow options?”

“What was happening with the turtle?”

“Oh it was trapped in some cattails but I got it out. Sorry for putting down the phone — you need both hands to grab them because they bite! I need an escrow account to hold funds for up to two years?”

“For a house for lizards? Are you a zoo?”

“Ah! Salamanders, actually! And a mitigation bank, not a house. I actually work for X organization.”

“What is a mitigation bank?” (The critical question!)

“Oh when you’re building something and need to impact some rare species habitat you can pay someone to make new rare species habitat.”

“Huh.”

“But this habitat is incomplete! It doesn’t have a pond. So my organization won’t pay until AAAAAAAAA excuse me sorry I fell into a ditch. My organization needs there to be a pond there before they pay for the property. So one path forward is an escrow account.”

“Are you OK?”

“Yes absolutely!”

“What’s the cost of this bank?”

“Two million dollars.”

<the tenor of the conversation became markedly warmer at this point.>

“OK if you get my your contact information then I’ll email you some options and then we can discuss — do you have time now?”

“Unfortunately I do not have email access right this second. Also I need to get out of the ditch. Could we put a pin in this conversation and circle back tomorrow?”

“Of course, I look forward to working with your organization?”

“Thank you so much!”

“Good luck with the. Ditch. And turtles?”

“Thank you! Have a great day!”

(via singerofforgottensongs)

xkcd-for-that:

s-lycopersicum:

rnadvillain:

s-lycopersicum:

All you need in life is a color picker willing to expose you to the unbounded madness we call color vision.

me, absolutely clueless: “I want a color just like this one, but in red”
color picker: Fuck you think you are, a Mantis Shrimp? Don’t talk to me again until you can afford a wide gamut monitor.

what is even happening here 😨 wheres the circle with the triangle inside we all know and love..

The circle and triangle are a lie we tell ourselves to cope with the ugly reality… Now this– this is the real deal!

In seriousness, this is oklch.com, a color picker for the OKLCH color model.

There are whole several hour lectures one could take in color science and theory, but to keep it short: the set of colors we can see, the set of colors monitors can display, and the set of colors computers can model are three circles that only somewhat overlap.

In this case, if I wanted this color

but in red, I could just go of Photoshop and move over the hue slider, getting this as a result:

Which is.. acceptable, but not as “bright” and “vibrant” as the green I had. Looking at the graphs in the OKLCH color picker, we can figure out why:

It tells us that a red with the same luminosity and chroma as this green is out of gamut—that is, it cannot be displayed by this monitor.

In this case, you can use the edges of the graph to find the color that is closest to what you want. You can, for example, keep the chroma but sacrifice lightness,

keep the lightness but drop the chroma,

or a bit of both, which is what the common HSV triangles already do.

But I like to know when it happens, y'know?

ALT

What if what *I* see as blue, *you* see as a slightly different blue because you’re using Chrome instead of Firefox and despite a decade of messing with profiles we STILL can’t get this right somehow.

Color Models

xkcd

(via significanceofmoths)

star-thief:

cephalopodvictorious:

olicrosse:

fixed it

(via aprillikesthings)

vampireapologist:

vampireapologist:

I think a lot about who I am to other people in the world–particular who I am to strangers as a mere concept in their lives.

Today this woman called our information desk and said, “my son’s band is playing tonight. I want to come see him, but he never answers his phone…..I want to be there. Have you heard anything about his band?”

And I felt so bad for this lady but I’m not in the music scene around here so I had to tell her no, sorry.

Five hours later, I’m hiking and run into a group of guys setting up for some outdoor performance, and as I watch them unload the drums it hits me.

“Hey,” I said, “are y’all in a band?”

They said yeah and smiled and I told them “one of your moms called today. She wants to watch you play, but she can’t get a hold of you. Call your mom.”

And they all pulled out their phones and started discussing whose mom it probably was as they presumably dialed their own.

And now, unless we meet again and recognize each other, that’s who I’ll be forever to those guys–some mysterious courier for mom-messages who came out of the woods and told them their mom called.

I didn’t even tell them why their mom called me. Who am I to their mom?? Nobody even asked. They just took my word for it and called their mothers.

Amazing.

I’M LAUGHING!!! THEY DIDN’T EVEN ASK WHO I AM.

(via remadora-black)

ivvyela:

nothing on this god’s green earth can convince me that peter parker doesn’t have an ao3 account where he is elbows deep in a ‘rise of skywalker’ fix-it fic. like, fully invested in it, been writing it pre-spider bite with ned, who is just as enthusiastic about it. but the thing is, it’s really hard to do updates when you are literally spider-man.

every three months he’ll post and in the author’s note there’s some shit like “sorry this took a while, i got shot seven times :/” or “i know it’s been a minute, i literally got hit by a bus and then stabbed in the leg, but i’m all good!” or sometimes ned would log in and post with a note “hey i’m a friend posting on the author’s behalf, they’re healing from severe hypothermia but promised an update, so here it is!”

and the fic just gets increasingly more popular for the author notes alone. a good handful of the comments are something along the lines of “i’m not even in the star wars fandom, i’m just here to see if the author is good” or “every update i cheer for another day the author gets to live at this point”

and any reader who is a native new yorker kind of pieces together that holy shit the author might be spider-man because the timeline adds up, and they just fully embrace it. spider-man will stop a robbery and the guy behind the counter will ask when the next chapter will be up. spider-man returns a stolen backpack to a girl and she’ll tell him that he “really got poe’s voice down so well, it’s really impressive.”

ned thinks it is hilarious. mj finds out about the fic from twitter, to peter’s absolute horror, and changes peter’s contact name to “friendly neighborhood ao3 author”. but the worst thing to happen is after an avengers battle where peter took a pretty big hit and ends up in med-bay. and during a press conference, when someone asks how spider-man is healing, tony just drops “spidey won’t be down for too long. the star wars fic will be updated within the week, probably.”

ao3 goes down for two days.

(via azriona)

ruinedchildhood:

Starfish dancing on a pole

(via thisfuckingdeadlife)

azriona:

Bookbinding: Seduction by Winglet

So the Epic Bookbinding project has finally at home with its author, and I can share photos.

About a year ago, I decided I wanted to try a big project, and I chose to bind the entirety of @flawedamythyst ’s series Seduction by Winglet. (MCU/Cabin Pressure crossover with a central pairing of Tony Stark/Martin Crieff. It is exactly as cracky and wonderful as it sounds.) The entire series is over 300,000 words long, if you include the AU offshoots (and I did), and resulted in nine separate volumes of text.

Which I duplicated, because I wanted a copy of my own, too.

(That’s eighteen books, friends. So when I say a big project, I mean it.)

One of the main character’s favorite planes is a Spitfire, and he will often turn to a specific Spitfire’s pilot manual when he is in need of comfort reading. I couldn’t find pictures of that manual, but most of the WW2-era Spitfire manuals had the same sort of look to them, so I decided I wanted the books to resemble that design. I went with a quatro size because the books are easy enough to handle, but small enough to fit in a pilot’s pocket (very handy, if you’re operating a plane in wartime conditions). On the left, an actual Spitfire pilot’s manual;  on the right, my cover:

(Yeah, that’s an old pic, I did change the bottom text a bit.) The covers were printed on cream-colored heather paper, slightly heavier weight than normal so hopefully they’ll stand up to more handling. The color choice was deliberate; I’ll get to that in a moment.

The interior of the books was pretty standard, but I do want to point out a couple things I’m inordinately pleased by:

The first is art I included in Volume 6 of Tony in his Iron Man suit buzzing Martin’s plane. (Source: here.) I used it as endpapers for that volume, though now I kinda wish I’d used it in all the volumes. The art is by @yutaya and used with their permission; please go heap love onto her if you like it.

As always, I had fun with the not-for-sale-or-resale warning.

(That’s the Latverian stamp, btw. And fake coffee cup stains. I am such a nerd.)

So for those who don’t know, the little tip on the end of some airplane wingspans goes up at a specific angle—that’s a winglet. The reason the series is called “Seduction by Winglet” is because Tony and Martin initially bond over their love of airplane design and specifically, the winglets Tony added to one of his jets. So I included a winglet on the title page, too:

(The lines are much smoother in the actual book, though the variegated does look cool, doesn’t it? I have no idea if that’s a good angle for aviation. Hush.)

I also included airplanes as scene breaks:

I also had fun with typeset. There’s a couple of places where Tony and Martin leave notes for each other. I decided I wanted the notes to resemble handwriting. Obviously we don’t know what Tony or Martin’s handwriting would look like, but an old fanfic author trick is if you don’t know something about a character (such as height or eye color), you turn to the actor who portrays them. So I looked up handwriting samples for Robert Downey Jr & Benedict Cumberbatch (yeah, I know, stalkery vibes going on there), and found a couple fonts that more or less matched them, but were different enough from each other that a reader wouldn’t be mixed up.

So now we’ll go onto the covers. As I said earlier, I wanted them to resemble the Spitfire pilots’ manuals from WW2. That meant keeping everything very simple and basic—which was fine by me, since I was already looking at a hell of a lot of work. Instead of bookboard, I went with a much lighter-weight cardboard (specifically, cereal boxes—we ate a lot of Cheerios for this project).

Now, color choices. The actual pilots manuals came in several color ranges, usually blue or red, and from what I saw online, were perfect-bound with paper covers with either a paper or bookcloth spine. I went with hand-bound “hardcover” with the light-weight cardboard, as said before, and used paper for the cover and back, and a bookcloth for the spine, because I do want these to stand up to regular reading, so this would give them some sturdiness but also make them easy to hold and handle.

I also chose a burgundy bookcloth for the spine and an antique gold color for the paper cover, because I was trying to pull in the Iron Man colors. (So much of the book’s design is for Martin, after all, and I didn’t want to leave Tony out entirely.)

Now, for the part I’m proudest of: the spine. Wanna see it? You wanna see it. It’s so cool. Here’s all nine books in the set, in their slipcase:

OH YEAH, BABY, THAT’S A SPITFIRE.

(And also another winglet at the bottom, because I am a glutton for Cricut punishment.)

SO. This took at least four trips to the library’s crafting hour to get right, because first I cut the Spitfires too small (but that’s okay, I gave the misprints to someone and she’s using them in her kid’s room) and then I messed up the Number 3 four times, and I couldn’t figure out how the hell I was gonna get them all lined up properly without losing my mind, and then I came up with THIS brilliant scheme.

(Feel free to imagine Arthur saying Brilliant, because trust me, I sure as hell did.)

So I took a piece of paper, marked out the exact width of every volume, all lined up in order. Using the sticky plastic bit from the Iron-On vinyl, I stuck the plane down on the paper, as well as the winglet lines and numbers, into their specific positions.

And then I just… cut along the lines marking out each volume. TA-DA. Perfectly placed plane and winglets, ready for transfer to the appropriate volume.

And now, lastly but certainly not leastly: the slipcase. With all nine volumes of the set done, I could turn to this last trick up my sleeve. Putting together the box was fine, I was pleased with how  that turned out and I will certainly be making more of them.

But I also wanted to show you the inside of the box. Because no Cabin Pressure fic is complete without…

Traveling lemons. 😊

So there you have it: my massive bookbinding project. Nine quatro-sized volumes in a slipcase, times two. No otters were harmed in the making of these binds.  It was great amounts of fun, I learned a ton and had a ball. Huge thanks to flawedamythyst for letting me play with her ‘verse, I had an absolute blast.

beardedmrbean:

One of those situations where, ‘you’re turning into your father’ is the furthest thing from a insult possible.

(via madenthusiasms)

In the last four months, I’ve started posting written works on AO3 in a new fandom and have been tracking hits and other feedback over time to better understand reader behaviour. The following is a comparison of engagement over weeks and months on fics with contrasting properties:

• Gen vs R rated short fic
• Fest vs non-fest release
• Serialisation effects

In terms of work quality, these are fine, not stellar or terrible, so the numbers are more a reflection of interest from the reader pool. Hits show how many want to take a chance on these tags instead of author recognition or strong recommendations. But while the exact numbers won’t match other fandoms, the trends should scale.

Hits over time: New one-shots

New works and updated works get a big boost of visibility on the AO3 platform because the default display for searches is reverse-chronological. Lots of potential readers are looking at what was put up recently. Correspondingly, the rate of hits naturally goes down with time, with fewer new eyes seeing the work as it slips out of the top few pages within a fandom tag or any more specific searches performed.

ALT

I’m using a power series factor to model the accumulation of hits because it’s one of the options on google spreadsheets, but also it does a pretty good job. I think its probably better to model hits over time with two terms, one for the initial burst of hits on new works and a second for the attractiveness of the tags that would better estimate the long tail, but programming that will have to wait.

The two oldest works, the G rated and R rated rarepair fics, both have slowed to 0-3 hits per day, and in a year, they should both be well under a hit a day. The gap between them from the initial rush of interest at a new R rated work will continue on unless disrupted by external forces.

ALT

Although hits slow down as a work ages, the feedback rates per hit doesn’t necessarily change that much. The G rated fic accumulated Kudos and Comments faster (per hit) in the first two weeks of being released, but after that the rates stays around 0.1 and 0.01 respectively. The R rated fic shows persistently lower Kudos rates, but seem to stay around 0.05 Kudos per Hit months after being posted, and comments continue to creep in. Both fic show fewer bookmarks after 2 months, perhaps a reflection of saturation: those who want to keep track of these kinds of works have already found it. Mean while more casual readers are coming across them whenever they dig deep enough.

Hits over time: Fest reveal vs Recent Work

The purple work above, R VHope (8.5k) was initially submitted to a fic fest. Fests are fanfic writer events that prompt and promote new works within some theme, in this case A/B/O fic featuring JHope. Fests also help foster community between fic writers with similar interest and readers looking for new niche content.

Fest fics are published on AO3 for submission but remain hidden until they are revealed as part of the fest. As such, by default, newly revealed fest fics can be found within the fest collection however they are often too old (weeks old) to show up amongst the most recent works. So that means their initial audience is only the Fest readership.

After my fic had been revealed in the fest for a little over a week, I decided to change it’s structure from 1 to 2 chapters without modifying the text at the same time as adding a few tags. This change resulted in the fic suddenly showing up in the Recently Updated Works for standard searches of AO3. This natural experiment makes it possible to see how the fic faired under fest and open conditions.

ALT

The difference in hits between the initial days as a fest fic and the hits since being visible as a recent work is pretty substantial, with almost twice as many hits accumulated after being amongst the recently updated (232) than only within the fest (133).

ALT

Of course, more hits doesn’t always mean more rich feedback for fic authors. The feedback rates differed in different directions between the conditions. The Kudos rate per hit was the same as a fest reveal and as a recent work, around 0.1, while comments were more common during the fest reveal conditions (0.023 vs 0.013) as were bookmarks (0.05 vs 0.03).

For this fic, the benefit of releasing as part of a fest collection is not so clear, but I should add that this work turned out to be a poor fit for the collection:

• It was the only work released with this particular rareship in this round of reveals
• it was at the bottom end for total hits in the collection before the update (bottom 3 of 18)
• It received the least engagement from other participating authors

When a fic better fits the fest readership’s interest, the increased comment rate is a substantial boost in engagement relative to posting just as a recent work. But they have to be willing to try reading it at all for that to have an effect. So now I know to lower expectations when posting against the grain.

Serialised Fic: WIP vs Complete

Over 5 weeks, I posted a 9 chapter fic with a total length of 58.6k words. Updates were initially twice weekly, and I noted statistics after the first 24hrs and at the next update as a work in progress. Stats have been recorded daily after the work was completed.

ALT

The biggest difference is in engagement per update is after the work was completed. While some of that boost was from subscribed users and others anticipating the completion of the work before reading, I think we can also claim that incomplete works are avoided by a lot of readers. There is a WIP penalty for hits received as a recently updated work.

ALT

Just looking at the hits gained per chapter while a WIP, we can generalise around some natural noise to a rate of engagement for the work itself. The work eventually had 44 subscribers but that later gain didn’t produce consistently more hits for every chapter. Instead we can see between 54-97 hits in the first 24 hrs (avg 83 hits) and then decreasingly many over time. Note: the clustering isn’t tied to day of week, more likely it is differences in social media mentions.

But as has been described above, not all hits are created equal.

ALT

While the fic was a work in progress, the only form of feedback that difference substantially in the first 24hrs from subsequent days is the guest kudo rate. Some AO3 users log out to leave guest kudos when they want to show appreciation for a work they have already kudoed, and I would guess this boost is from a few of those following the WIP instead of people without accounts diving in repeatedly after each update.

The first 24 hrs of the fic being complete also shows a surprising story, with a lower Kudos rate and a surge in bookmarks, public and private. After this surge, Kudos and comment rates per hit have settled back to values similar to the rate on the WIP. Presummably they will also drift down a bit like the trends on the older One shot fics. If they do something else, I’ll have to come back to explore it.

In a few months I might be back anyway with estimates on how many people have actually read these works, because the hits to feedback ratios leave a lot of room on all of these works.

Sorry for writing so much and if you found this interesting or different from you experience, I’d be happy to hear about it!