June 24, 2003
If you're addicted to cute little applications that do odd things, especially with sound, go here.
Virtual Piano actually sounds like a piano. It really does. I can play chords and make awkward tinkling noises and everything.
-E
June 23, 2003
Techno three-way
I have a good friend in this city who has ADHD (making her thrive on
complexity). We both think fast and type fast.
Once upon a time we were each on our respective computers (she didn't live
here yet), and were having an online conversation.
Well, actually, we were having three conversations. We had two instant
messenger clients open, plus were volleying emails fro and to. Here's the
funny part. The ICQ conversation was a flirt betwixt the two of us. The
Yahoo! IM conversation was a philosophical debate on the merits of a line
of software. And the email conversation was a sad one, talking about a
friend who'd had some trouble in her life.
We'd talked in this way for some time before I spotted the strangeness of
having three simultaneous *and different* conversations with the same
human.
So, curious as always, I started swapping my responses from one medium to
the other. The ICQ conversation was answered by email. The email went to
Yahoo! IM. Our erstwhile smooth conversations suddenly ground to a halt.
We laughed about the absurdity and intensity of what we'd been doing.
Gawd, I love technology.
-Elaine
June 21, 2003
June 12, 2003
The Butler Did It (Fight Repression! Make Porn!)
Once upon a time I worked with Lezzie SMUT! magazine, first as a lowly submissions-getter, then as one of the editors on the board. Back in '94, one of the things that had just begun to have a great effect on our work as queer pornographers was the Butler decision -- you know, where the powers that be decided that pornography of any sort is very bad for us poor women who need protection from such stuff as sex. [snort]
Since the heavy powers wielded under the Butler decision had immediately been brought to bear against (1) Trish Thomas, a butch dyke author of some pretty dang hot smut and (2) Eli Langer, a queer artist expressing his emotions about his childhood abuse, we knew we were in for a difficult haul.
Now, I can't draw so goodly, but I was moved to create a wee single-panel cartoon on the matter, which was featured in Lezzie SMUT! issue five. Clicky-clicky for a Very Big Version of the image.
June 11, 2003
Read it to me, baby!
I am playing with the demo version of TextAloudMP3, which reads text on your computer to you aloud (or saves it as MP3). I've picked up a British male voice, since that's the calmest sounding computer voice I've been able to find.
NextUp.com - The Power of Spoken Audio
But here's the cool part -- while testing it, I set it to reading me some of my own lezzie pornographic poetry.
Nice. Very, very funny.
-Elaine
June 06, 2003
New Entry: Extra! Extra! Read All About It!
I do extra work for the movie industry sometimes.
I consider it a kind of holiday -- sure the pay is low, and people want you
to do silly things like stand in a fake bar and pretend to be enjoying
oneself, but you can't beat it for a way of getting paid to spend eighty
percent of the day with no responsibility or hurry except to think "My what
a good book this is I'm reading while sitting on the lawn in the shade."
and "What? No more canteloupe? I guess I'll have to have watermelon, then."
Ooo. Hardship.
-E